2006 // Kenneth Lim

There Is No Such Thing As Work/Life Balance

August 20, 2006 By Kenneth Lim

A lot of companies claim to respect employees’ “work/life balance”. The only problem is that no such thing exists. Work is part of life for most people and the term “work/life balance” is semantic more than anything else. It basically assumes that “life” consists of all the things you find important or enjoyable. Inversely, “work” represents that mountain of stuff you actually don’t like to do.

It’s almost like the companies embracing the “work/life balance” mantra are saying “Hey, we try to limit it but we understand that you don’t really like doing your work!” and there is something rather disturbing about that.

So before you start buying into the “work/life balance” movement, create your own definitions of “work” and “life” first.

Filed Under: Musings Tagged With: work life balance

Good Design Is More Than Good Looks

July 16, 2006 By Kenneth Lim

Good design is often underrated or undervalued. People focus a lot on what something looks like and whether they consider it to be user-friendly.

However, user-friendliness is not the same as usability. Design encompasses so much more than aesthetics. Design sits at the core of everything: aesthetics, user-friendliness, usability, functionality, scalability, flexibility and level of standardization just to name a few criteria.

Of course there are factors that relate to the target audience and the market / industry, but good design is generally universal.

As a second measure of quality, try explaining the design over the phone to someone, preferably someone who’s from another country / lives under different cultural circumstances / has a different mother language, to test your design.