steve kwan user experience designer

Looks like somebody's got a case of the Mondays

(September 29th, 2008 - 11:45AM)

So far today:

• I got dragged out of bed at 6:30AM.
• a nasty problem at our hosting facility caused us docmetrics grief for several hours.
• an internal server which has been on its last legs for a while has gone down.
• the CEO choked on food and had to have it surgically removed.
• oh, and the Dow dropped 600 points when Congress rejected the $700 billion bailout scheme.

And it's not even 12:00 yet.

The pitfalls of relying on third-party software

(September 26th, 2008 - 12:51PM)

I've been swamped at work lately and incredibly frustrated because of some issues with third-party software.

Software engineers love to building things they can be proud of. There's nothing like slaving away on a project, then upon completion, sitting back and admiring the quality of your work. And, of course, it's even more validating when real users tell you they love your product.

So it's incredibly distressing when, after hundreds of hours of labour, your wonderful product falls apart because of some third party you have no control over.

Like all software, our product relies extensively on programs from third parties. In 2008, reliance on third party software is impossible to avoid. We rely in several pieces of software that are ubiquitous, but also unreliable. I won't mention which pieces of software, although astute readers can probably guess.

In any event, the developer of said third-party software is notorious for breaking things with every new version. Every time this developer announces a new release, we cringe, because we know that new release will break our software.

In many cases, we can repair these problems with several man-weeks of labour. However, this third-party developer has recently released a new version that totally breaks aspects of our software in ways that we may not be able to resolve.

So there's a lesson to be learned here: if you're making software that you actually expect people to use, make sure you don't break anything when you release a new version. Or, as the doctors say when they take the Hippocratic Oath: "First, do no harm."

(And no, I'm not the first person to use the Hippocratic Oath in the context of software engineering - the ACM, among others, has made this comparison before.)

Whether you're a user or an engineer, nobody wants to use a product that might cease to function the way they expect when Update 1.9.19294923 is released.

The Jiu-Jitsu American Nationals

(September 23rd, 2008- 3:34PM)

I just finished watching my friends Ron and Clarence compete in the Jiu-Jitsu American Nationals. We flew down to Huntington Beach for four days of fun in the sun, and competitive sparring.

Ron and Clarence did great, with three medals apiece. (Three silvers for Clarence, two silvers and a bronze for Ron.)

I wasn't sparring - not the competitive type. Kristi and I were on vacation. But after watching these guys and feeling the energy of the crowd, I think I might've been bitten by the tournament bug.

The competition doesn't particularly interest me - beating someone (or worse, being beaten) doesn't strike me as "fun." But it'd be a great learning experience, and it's the knowledge I want.

I have a lot to learn before I'll feel ready for competition - my offense is not nearly as good as my defense, and I have very little knowledge of takedowns - so I need to work those weak areas before I compete.

But I'll train those weak areas and we'll take it from there.

www.protectedpdf.com launched!

(September 17th, 2008 - 5:48PM)

It seems that every time I turn away from this website for a moment, when I look back it's been two weeks since my last update. My apologies for this.

Good news: protectedpdf, Vitrium's original product, finally has a website! It's been a long time coming (three years, to be specific), but we just launched www.protectedpdf.com. The entire site was developed in just three weeks - not bad!

But I can't take all the credit. In addition to Vitrium's great team, we received help from Avenue Creative and Bluelime Media.

Anyway, please let me know what you think of www.protectedpdf.com! I hope you like it.

A failed review of Google Chrome

(September 5th, 2008 - 3:23PM)

I spent a lot of time writing an initial review of Google Chrome on release day, but I didn't finish quickly enough and now the entire Internet has weighed in. Mashable posted a Chrome review that basically says exactly what I wanted to say, so I figured I'd just link to it.

I've made Chrome my default browser, and despite its imperfections it's remarkably solid for a beta.