Ramblings from a user interface designer and amateur neuroscientist. http://dustincurtis.com/ en-us Copyright 2009 Dustin Curtis Many startups hire junior programmers and designers immediately after they receive funding, and then hire up the ladder, filling the most senior positions last. When you’re building a new team inside a company with lots of money, this is almost always a bad idea... http://dustincurtis.com/hiring.html http://dustincurtis.com/hiring.html Fri, 8 Dec 2009 06:58:00 EST Here in UnitedLand, people consider fried chicken to be a very important part of a good life. So important, in fact, that we have a strange set of laws surrounding the purchase of it. http://dustincurtis.com/public-fried-chicken.html http://dustincurtis.com/public-fried-chicken.html Wed, 16 Dec 2009 07:21:00 PST Once when I was doing some work for a well-known brand, the company's marketing group decided it was going to start selling gift cards. They asked me to come in early on the project so I could begin thinking about how to incorporate this new type of payment into the site's checkout path. http://dustincurtis.com/clear-war.html http://dustincurtis.com/clear-war.html Tue, 07 Dec 2009 03:21:00 PST It was 2am, and I was walking along the deserted streets of downtown Seattle. I turned a corner toward Pikes Place Market and saw a plaque behind the window of an unassuming storefront. It said: http://dustincurtis.com/humble-beginnings.html http://dustincurtis.com/humble-beginnings.html Tue, 24 Nov 2009 03:21:00 PST A FEW MONTHS AGO, I wrote an article expressing my displeasure with American Airlines‘ hideous online presence. I also spent some time mocking up a redesigned version of their website. To my surprise, the head of user experience at AA.com... http://dustincurtis.com/incompetence.html http://dustincurtis.com/incompetence.html Thu, 05 Nov 2009 09:09:00 PST Send a real printed letter to anyone you want for just $5. http://snail.dustincurtis.com http://snail.dustincurtis.com Mon, 02 Nov 2009 09:20:00 PST I was denied health insurance... for heartburn. http://dustincurtis.com/healthburn.html http://dustincurtis.com/healthburn.html Wed, 21 Oct 2009 09:56:00 PST I was denied health insurance... for heartburn. http://dustincurtis.com/healthburn.html http://dustincurtis.com/healthburn.html Wed, 21 Oct 2009 09:55:00 PST MARK KANDARSKI IS TERRIFIED. Sweat is dripping down his bright red face. Both of his hands are clenched tightly to the arm rests. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was having a heart attack... http://dustincurtis.com/to-fasten-your-seatbelt.html http://dustincurtis.com/to-fasten-your-seatbelt.html Fri, 18 Sep 2009 06:40:00 EST WHEN DISNEY WORLD OPENED IN 1971, it was the first theme park to have continuously playing ambient music on pathways between attractions. The music was there simply to be enjoyable, but it had an unintended side effect... http://dustincurtis.com/how-mr-q-manufactured-emotion.html http://dustincurtis.com/how-mr-q-manufactured-emotion.html Thu, 17 Sep 2009 03:47:00 PST When I heard that JetBlue was offering a pass for unlimited flights during September, I wondered if it would be theoretically possible to buy it and visit all 43 JetBlue-served cities. After looking over some flight schedules with a friend, we discovered that it might be possible, with more than 83 flight segments... http://dustincurtis.com/30dayflight.html http://dustincurtis.com/30dayflight.html Mon, 24 Aug 2009 09:14:00 PST In April of 2006, when I was 19, I suddenly started getting painful headaches. Over the course of several weeks, they increased in intensity until the pain was unbearable. I saw a neurologist, and he ordered some tests including an MRI series... http://dustincurtis.com/a-tour-of-my-brain.html http://dustincurtis.com/a-tour-of-my-brain.html Thu, 20 Aug 2009 12:03:00 PST A quick study exploring the power language has on clickthrough rates. I spend a lot of time thinking about how to improve user experiences. Sometimes, I take my ideas and create experiments to get hard data about how users behave in the real world. For the past few months, I have been performing an experiment on this site. http://dustincurtis.com/you_should_follow_me_on_twitter.html http://dustincurtis.com/you_should_follow_me_on_twitter.html Tue, 14 Jul 2009 03:21:00 PST My body is incompatible with Earth. It has a daily sleep-wake cycle that lasts about 28 hours instead of 24 hours, which means each day I stay awake about four hours longer than most people. In the middle of the week, I sometimes find myself waking up at 11PM and going to bed in the early afternoon the next day. When I was younger, people thought I was insane. The only thing I remember of elementary school is being tired... http://dustincurtis.com/sleep.html http://dustincurtis.com/sleep.html Thu, 25 Jun 2009 04:00:00 PST The solution to the enterprise quality problem is easy: foster a culture that doesn't allow the company to make, produce, sell, or accept shit. Done. Well, it's not quite that easy... http://dustincurtis.com/the_filter.html http://dustincurtis.com/the_filter.html Thu, 11 Jun 2009 04:00:00 PST A while ago, I went to a dinner party at the house of a very wealthy executive in San Francisco. The food was great, but the house was absolutely, insanely beautiful. The living room has large, 20-foot-tall... http://dustincurtis.com/two_stories.html http://dustincurtis.com/two_stories.html Sun, 31 May 2009 06:00:00 PST The response from American Airlines http://dustincurtis.com/dear_dustin_curtis.html http://dustincurtis.com/dear_dustin_curtis.html Fri, 22 May 2009 19:00:00 PST I redesigned your website's front page, and I'd like to get your opinion. http://dustincurtis.com/dear_american_airlines.html http://dustincurtis.com/dear_american_airlines.html Mon, 18 May 2009 19:00:00 PST Entrepreneurship is not just the process of having an idea and then building a business. A true entrepreneur has to predict the future. The idea that a businessperson is great because he had "built a company from the ground up" is missing a major component-- the entrepreneur's original hypothesis. Without a well-defined theory and end goal, it's difficult to test a market and therefore difficult to start an enormously... http://dustincurtis.com/the_science_of_entrepreneurship.html http://dustincurtis.com/the_science_of_entrepreneurship.html Sun, 15 Feb 2009 19:00:00 PST Fuel tracks your fuel use, your car's gas mileage, and how many miles you drive. It also tells the future. http://fuel.dustincurtis.com http://fuel.dustincurtis.com Mon, 12 Jan 2009 19:00:00 PST Today is the 7,925th day of Dustin Curtis' life. http://www.dustincurtis.com/about.html http://www.dustincurtis.com/about.html Thu, 1 Jan 2009 19:00:00 PST Within an hour of emerging from its shell, a seagull chick finds its mother’s yellow beak and begins pecking. The towering mother then spends several seconds positioning herself over the chick-- almost as though she is carefully aiming-- and then, after waiting a few more deliberate seconds, she violently regurgitates food all over the place. Obviously, some of it ends up falling into the waiting chick’s mouth. This is how a seagull is fed for the first time. It is one of the most disgusting things I have ever seen... http://www.dustincurtis.com/4.html http://www.dustincurtis.com/4.html Fri, 26 Dec 2008 18:00:00 PST AT THE INTENSIVE CARE UNIT of a hospital in Monterey, California, a red light began to flash and a mono-tonal voice began to speak over the intercom. A man in his mid-thirties rushed past me, his white coat fluttering behind him like a cape. he meticulously considered each passing second, looking at the ceiling for a few moments and then quickly glancing at a clipboard he was holding with a giant 6 printed on the back... http://www.dustincurtis.com/3.html http://www.dustincurtis.com/3.html Sat, 06 Dec 2008 18:00:00 PST I have always been fascinated with pavlovian conditioning because it shows how little control animals really have over their own behavior. The most famous example of this is the experiment Ivan Pavlov performed on his dogs in the 1890's. Dogs normally salivate at the smell and sight of meat, but Pavlov noticed his dogs began to salivate when they noticed the lab technician who fed them would enter the room. These “psychic salivations” didn’t make sense to him... http://www.dustincurtis.com/2.html http://www.dustincurtis.com/2.html Fri, 05 Dec 2008 18:00:00 PST The past few years, I've noticed a common theme in talks by the rich and successful people I've seen speak. They all seem to be extremely (in some cases obsessively) curious about why they, in particular, have been successful. It seems almost as though they feel undeserving, as if the rest of their lives have been an attempt to prove their first success had a reason or formula.... http://www.dustincurtis.com/1.html http://www.dustincurtis.com/1.html Sat, 29 Nov 2008 18:00:00 PST