Famous world's most wanted hacker Kevin Mitnick signing his new book at RSA Conference

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

... from my puppy pet training!

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

See the full gallery on Posterous

Thanks to the Californian weather, cars can sleep in the driveway and garage can be use for more usefull things: Building computers in garage has already been done many times :-) so I decided to think different and build a gym. Here is how I did it:

1. The easy part: Cleaning out he garage and taking down shelves and wall cabinets
2. The engineering part: Adding structural beams and building attic ceiling with plywood floor, aluminium stair and a mounted stub pull-up bar
3. The geek part: Connecting cables for electricity and audio 
4. The hard part: Insulating walls with fiber glass and adding drywall and wall wood panels (the drywall lift was required for the ceiling) 
5. The painfull part: Finishing the room, sand and paint the ceiling, walls and floor 
6. The enthusiastic part: Connecting recessed lightning, ceiling in-speakers and amplifier, mounting glassless mirror, white board and bike hanger, etc.

I also insulated the garage door, I tried with a garage insulation kit but it was not working well with our type of door so I brought it back and simply used insulation foam sheets, clean, easy to cut and put in place.

This project was a workout by itself and thanks to my dad Daniel aka site foreman, 3 weeks and ˜25 trips to Home Depot after, we were able to move in our fitness equipements and start to exercice :-)

See the full gallery on Posterous

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

See the full gallery on Posterous

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

The Empire State building from the corner of 34th Street and 9th Avenue, home of B&H Photo

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Last week I went for the first time to the Silicon Valley Product Management Association (SVPMA) monthly meeting. The topic for this first meeting of the year was about User eXperience and presented by Glen Lipka from Marketo. I guess slides will be available soon in the SVPMA archive (they are still not available at this time) and beyond the networking opportunity, here are the key points I retained.

• There is decision in any design process, actually design is just decisions and who is making these decisions really matters, it might be engineering people, an end-user, a manager or a researcher, etc. but at the end of the day the designer is the one who wrote the PRD (Product Document Requirement).
• UX designer and PM roles might overlap, it's fine, as long as PM stay focus; there are already many tasks under his responsability, he should be dedicated and works actively with marketing to get comprehensive MRDs (Marketing Requirement Document) including competive landscape, packaging, go to market strategy and research.
• Get a direct interaction with users, learn from them (e.g. make up-front call), understand their problems, what they are trying to achieve, why they didn't choose your product, etc. but don't let them define the actual requirements, people are terrible about their own perception... 
• "A picture is worth a thousand words" - we all knew that visual PRD helps to explain complex ideas or UI concepts but it also helps to convoy ergonomic features, hardly describalble with words but often critical for the user experience (e.g. moving / manipulate objects on a page)
• Don't put too much instructions in your product (users don't read) but pay attention to remove frictions that would require to read these instructions. 
• Address the overall user experience, from product design to support and observe well things when they go wrong - i.e. The way to handle things go wrong is way more important than the way to handle things go right.
• Because user don't have the same perspection as you, as the designer, more small improvements is often percieved as better than one big one, they usually don't know what was the work required 
• And last but not least, give yourself permission to put fun stuff in your product, messaging, etc. people wants to be treated has human being and if it's authentic they will adhere to it.

A bad UX design is a bug (picture from Flickr)

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Los Altos Hills bike ride at EveryTrail

Fantastic weather today, it was like summer, perfect for working out, I did the launch of Body Pump #80 at the Palo Alto YMCA then jumped on a bike for a pretty nice ride with friends. I discovered the Rancho San Antonio County Park, it seems a great place to workout with a lots of trails, I'm looking forward to run there. 

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Still discovering new places in the Bay Area, today was the Crystal Springs Reservoirs created by the San Andrea fault. Mostly flat, perfect to start a new year. 

2012 first bike ride at EveryTrail
EveryTrail - Find the best Hiking in the Bay Area, California

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Happy new year everybody, once again make this new year full of fulfillment. 2011 was a great year and we look forward to 2012. Last year I didn't took any good resolutions or built any to-do list and I actually achieved more than we would have expected... I will do the same think this year, I'll just follow my passion :-)

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

In France for a few days... will be in Belgium next week and then back to California just in time for Christmas.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

See the full gallery on Posterous

Thanks to everybody, especially to my parents Daniel and Patrica, for your help for the last 4 weeks, to build a gym room in the garage and do some insulation in the house. Work is now completed, more pictures to come :-)

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Permalink | Leave a comment  »