I can finally share what I'd last been working on for a loooooooong time at Google, which is member tiers for the Google Home app: "Google Home rolling out Admin and Member access levels" 9to5google.com/2024/12/16/g...

Apparently the @washingtonpost.com wants to demonstrate how democracy dies in darkness. It's honestly not a good sign given past world history. Here's nationwide voting registration & voting information by state/territory: vote.gov

I'm not on the team anymore, but the trickle of work I started continues: updated headers & Google Material 3 buttons for device settings in Google Home app. This round covers 1st-party devices. Detail: finally, there's a place in the app that names device models. 9to5google.com/2024/09/23/g...

FYI my team is hiring; fun Google Home app stuff... www.google.com/about/career...

A last look before e-wasting the Nest Guard: ok the custom USB power cable that matches the curvature of the device is quite a detail. But on the other hand, I would've preferred a standard USB cable, because you're unlikely to ever see the back of the device and it's easier to replace/repair, etc.

As we near the end of May and the end of Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, I just want to thank band-aid makers for making Asian-skin-tone-color their default. #AANHPIM #AAPI

I made this for a presentation, but also for my own amusement. Apparently memes can be an excellent way to describe settings UX findings. In foundational research, almost all people are like, "Oh I never go to settings". But the people who did were fixing something important and broken.

#InternetTreasure 1 for when you need a pick-me-up: Khruangbin's NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert from 2018, and the viewer comments regarding the otherworldly precision of drummer DJ Johnson www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWLJ...

#job-hunting #tip: AI tools are handy for succinctly summarizing the responsibilities and desired skills in job descriptions. But: I've found that the free version of Google's Gemini is no longer as good as it used to be at editing help (which was expected, given the pricing tiers & cost of AI).

A thread: critiques of the live-action "Avatar: The Last Airbender" series, using references that only fans of the original cartoon series will get. First, the repetitive mentions of hope make me think of this:

For years, I'd try to start a stopwatch w/ the Google Assistant but stopped trying after always getting punted w/ "Unfortunately I can't do that". This week I find out Google Assistant eventually got a stopwatch feature! ...when they announce that they're getting rid of the stopwatch feature. [sigh]

+1 for The San Antonio Express News lmao

yeah as far as presidential statements about the death of an american official goes, this is the closest you’re going to get to “yes he deserved to die and i hope he burns in hell”

#2023 #gingerbread #cookies Apparently I can't let go of hashtags even though Bluesky doesn't support them. www.instagram.com/p/C0FvGzlpTn_/

I've been thinking of doing a workshop or panel on the topic of access-sharing UX. The working title is: "Principles of sharing UX: Everybody dies and anybody could be a bad actor"

This Halloween, the husband ate into my jack-o-lantern time by asking me to hand-paint a helmet for one of the children. If I can figure this much out in one afternoon, forget the connected home industry, let's paint cars and motorcycles for a living. www.instagram.com/p/CzHD2JzgFp...

It took a lot of tricks to get these poses from one child. The other child required no coaxing.

my 9-yo enthusiastically agrees with this bauhaus rationale for why we don't need capital letters. this came up because he didn't want to capitalize 1st words in sentences; i told him at least he doesn't have to capitalize every noun like they do in german. www.bauhaus-bookshelf.org/bauhaus_writ...

I set up a small variety of connected devices from different brands recently. The TLDR is: the connected home industry is NOT user-friendly.

LOL Duolingo's description of German fashion. The main text translates as, "Forget Italian and French fashion! I love German fashion! Do you know what it is? White socks and brown sandals."

Never stops being true

Holding this quote close to my heart while I grieve and call my reps again and again making my flaccid little Jewish pleas to cease the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

Maybe it's just me but Vivek Ramaswamy still sounds like a caricature Vinny Thomas made up. I am sad because Ramaswamy is real.

Getting my older parents onto smartphones = I'm seeing that Google's cutesy product naming & icons create a learning curve. - "Keep" = the note-taking app - "Play" = the app store - The triangle icon (Drive) = your files app - The pinwheel icon = the photos app?!

An MSNBC reporter said, "[Houston's mayor] thinks the move is anti-democratic…" but this is more accurate: "[Houston's mayor] points out that the move is anti-democratic." (RE: state of TX replacing Houston elected school board + appointing their own superintendent + cutting back school libraries)

I recently prompted #Bard to generate a few astronaut/space-themed jokes, and every joke that involved a human character was male. 🤦🏻‍♀️

They somehow managed to improve on "taco trucks on every corner"

First question in the GOP debate is a softball question to DeSantis, "Do you want to pander to this audience by telling us how you agree with this song?" Everyone else has gotten more real, well, real-ish questions.

Dunno when they did it, but Twitter disabled the pronouns setting. BTW it's still sitting there in profile settings. You just can't edit it...like the remnant of a half-assed Musk-directed effort to exclude people. Until Bluesky gets the feature, you can put pronouns in your profile. #inclusivity

#PrivacyUX practice: for privacy-related settings (e.g. show/don't show this info, allow/disallow access, make private/make public) follow a consistent pattern of the "ON" state = the show/allow/make public state. Why: This gives users a reliable pattern of what "on" vs. "off" means in your product.

The 2023 FIFA Women's #WorldCup starts in 10 days, and I'll be watching with my soccer-playing 10-yo. My #proTip from the 2022 Men's World Cup: Watching #Telemundo coverage (even if you know little Spanish) helps you learn players' names waaaaay better than Fox Sports coverage.