June 2010 Archives

80 Ways to Steal Valuable Minutes for Your Work Day : Lifestyle :: American Express OPEN Forum:

One way to see a boost in productivity is to be explicit about your work when interacting with your coworkers, boss, clients, and vendors. Wear your progress on your sleeve. Be open and honest and leave politics to those who work in the Capitol building. Notify the people who are dependent on you of your status, especially when a glitch or event changes your deadline. When you communicate well and manage others' expectations, you help them to better manage their time. When others do the same with you, you can better coordinate your schedule and efficiently complete your work.

(Via @smashingmag.)

Human Transit: confessions of a spatial navigator:

Humans have two methods of navigation. Spatial navigators can construct maps in their heads as they experience a place, and also tend to be good at using maps as navigational aids. Narrative navigators navigate by creating or following verbal directions. For spatial navigators, the answer to the question where? is a position in mapped space. For narrative navigators, the answer to where? is a story about how to get there…

I wonder if the difference between spatial and narrative navigation lies at the core of the very common mutual incomprehension between the planning and marketing departments in transit agencies. It is a common complaint of planners that marketers don’t understand the values that drove the design of the network and therefore aren’t promoting it in ways that feature those values. Marketers, in turn, can claim that the planners are talking in abstractions and don’t know how to connect with the typical user. Planners must be spatial navigators, but marketers are often experts in crafting stories, comfortable with narrative, and this can correlate… with a preference for narrative navigation…

Only a spatial navigator can tell you if a map works. Only a narrative navigator can tell you if directions do.

(Via bobulate.com.)

News Desk: The Velluvial Matrix : The New Yorker:

“Anyone who understands systems will know immediately that optimizing parts is not a good route to system excellence,” [says Don Berwick, of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement]. He gives the example of a famous thought experiment in which an attempt is made to build the world’s greatest car by assembling the world’s greatest car parts. We connect the engine of a Ferrari, the brakes of a Porsche, the suspension of a BMW, the body of a Volvo: “What we get, of course, is nothing close to a great car; we get a pile of very expensive junk.”

(Via kottke.org.)

The best vacation ever - The Boston Globe:

[Part] of why we enjoy ourselves on a vacation stems from the fact that it gives us a deadline: an often sharply limited time window during which we have to go out and enjoy ourselves.

If you realize this… you can give yourself some of the benefits of a vacation without going anywhere, simply by cordoning off a day or two and strictly scheduling it for leisure. That way you’ll actually go out and see the play or concert you would otherwise have skipped, or take the time to dig the tent and camp stove out of the basement.

Give yourself a milestone or a deadline by which you’re going to go do this enjoyable thing, and you’ll actually enjoy yourself more often.

(Via bobulate.com.)

Deep in the Heart of Texas - Opinionator Blog - NYTimes.com:

Students tend to like everything neatly laid out; they want to know exactly where they are; they don’t welcome the introduction of multiple perspectives, especially when no master perspective reconciles them; they want the answers.

But sometimes (although not always) effective teaching involves the deliberate inducing of confusion, the withholding of clarity, the refusal to provide answers; sometimes a class or an entire semester is spent being taken down various garden paths leading to dead ends that require inquiry to begin all over again, with the same discombobulating result; sometimes your expectations have been systematically disappointed. And sometimes that disappointment, while extremely annoying at the moment, is the sign that you’ve just been the beneficiary of a great course, although you may not realize it for decades.

The Art of Non-Conformity » Motivation and Product Launches:

Important lesson: It’s very difficult to motivate yourself to do something. It’s much easier to leverage what you are already motivated to do.

Progressive Disclosure: Presenting Information On A Need To Know Basis | Van SEO Design:

Progressive disclosure is the concept of managing information by [presenting] only what’s necessary or requested at any given time. The idea is to help prevent information overload and keep designs cleaner by reducing clutter and noise. The goal is to keep your audience from becoming frustrated or disoriented by giving them what they need and want and nothing more.

From his 2006 Alertbox article on progressive disclosure Jacob Nielson points out the dilemma faced by designers.

1. Users want power, features, and enough options to handle all of their special needs.

2. Users want simplicity; they don’t have time learn a profusion of features in enough depth to select the few that are optimal for their needs.

How does one provide all the features users want while still keeping interfaces clean and simple? In the same post Jacob also offers the solution.

1. Initially, show users only a few of the most important options.

2. Offer a larger set of specialized options upon request. Disclose these secondary features only if a user asks for them, meaning that most users can proceed with their tasks without worrying about this added complexity.

(Via @smashingmag.)

Innovation is the New Black: Observatory: Design Observer:

I was surprised to learn… that although innovation is always good, it isn’t always effective. “We all know that reliable methods of innovation are becoming important to business as they realize that 96% of all innovation attempts fail to meet their financial goals,” read the invitation to the Institute of Design symposium, a figure derived from research by Doblin. Now, I suppose you could do worse than failing 24 out of every 25 tries, but this sounds suspiciously like Albert Einstein’s famous definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result. But thank goodness, a solution is at hand: “Business leaders are increasingly looking to design to not just help, but lead their innovation processes.” So we come full circle. Don’t say design, say innovation, and when innovation doesn’t work, make sure you saved some of that design stuff, because you’re going to need it.

(Via @iA.)

At 7:28 a.m. EST this morning, the Solstice occurred, marking the official start of Summer. Enjoy!

The Art of Non-Conformity » Free Advice:

Free advice is often worth less than the price. Much of the time, you already know what you need to do about something—you just need to do it…

“You should ask people what they want when developing a project.”

Who said that? Oh, it was me. Oops. Well, here’s the thing: sometimes this is true. I’m the first to say that it can be helpful to run your ideas by people, get feedback, etc.

But it’s also true that if what you’re doing is truly innovative, not everyone will understand in the beginning, and maybe you should just go for it. Lately I’ve been thinking about what Henry Ford said:

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said ‘faster horses.’”

Seth’s Blog: Dunbar’s Number isn’t just a number, it’s the law:

Some people online are trying to flout Dunbar’s number, to become connected and actual friends with tens of thousands of people at once. And guess what? It doesn’t scale. You might be able to stretch to 200 or 400, but no, you can’t effectively engage at a tribal level with a thousand people. You get the politician’s glassy-eyed gaze or the celebrity’s empty stare. And then the nature of the relationship is changed.

Effective Leadership--An IT Perspective:

According to the current literature, IT leaders for the new millennium — a world of vast technological advancements and high tech tools — should possess the following characteristics:

• Vision — a knowledge of the future and how to get there
• Integrity — absolute dedication to doing what is right
• Trust — ability to nurture the “leader” in others
• Selflessness — an idea that their existence is to serve their followers
• Commitment — passion as seen through caring, concern, and building perpetuation
• Creativity — seeing the world as a series of opportunities with fewer barriers than possibilities
• Open-mindedness — always ready to try new ways of doing things
• Toughness — knowing in their heart-of-hearts what is needed and demanding that it be done
• Ability to communicate — keeping abreast of what’s going on — connected
• Ability to listen — knowing how to keep quiet yet informed
• Calculated risk-taking — open to possibilities, questioning assumptions and taking a stand
• Innovative — without fear of failure
• Visibility — a sense of community
• Inquisitiveness — constant questioning and probing for answers
• Intuition — possesses new insights and different perspectives
• Action-orientation — willing to do something for the good of the organization
• Candidness — ability to be forthright yet still have compassion and empathy
• Tenaciousness — inability to give up or let others do so
• Ability to network — a team builder

Dunbar’s Number « You Are Not So Smart:

Dunbar’s Number explains why big groups are made of smaller, more manageable groups like companies, platoons and squads — or like branches, divisions, departments and committees. No human institution can function above 150 members without hierarchies, ranks, roles and divisions. To keep groups together, you fall back on rules and regulations, norms and laws, borders and jurisdictions. In the wild, it takes a lot of social grooming to get a group of 150 people to cooperate and pursue a common goal. In modern life, you depend on institutional structure. As Malcolm Gladwell pointed out in “The Tipping Point,” if a company grows beyond 150 people, productivity sharply declines until the company divides its outlying entities into smaller groups. You function better in a cluster — that way everyone in that cluster is connected to each other and only certain individuals connect your cluster to other clusters.

Doing More With Less Time | UX Magazine:

The first objective in any project, large or small, is to establish trust between the [developer] and the client. Having trust in one another [allows them] to work more efficiently together. As time is always an issue in any project, it is imperative to make this a priority as early as possible. Sometimes this may come naturally and the trust is already there due to a referral or recommendation. No matter how it gets made, it needs to always be there. Trust is the foundation of efficiency, and without it friction and miscommunication will continuously slow progress.

(Via @smashingmag.)

Tribes by Seth Godin | BryanAllain.com:

Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, maybe you ought to set up a life you don’t need to escape from.

The 22 minute meeting (updated) « Scott Berkun:

1. Schedule a 22 minute meeting

2. Have a goal based agenda

3. Send required readings 3 days beforehand

4. Start on time

5. Stand up

6. No laptops, but presenters and note takes

7. No phones, no exceptions

8. Send notes ASAP

(Via @smashingmag.)

Shyness - The Boston Globe:

[Let’s] not confuse shyness with modesty or humility. Charles Darwin, who was very interested in shyness, correctly diagnosed it as a form of “self-attention” — a preoccupation with self. How do I fit in here? What do they think of me? It’s not always virtuous to sit on one’s personality and refuse to share it…

Nonetheless, there is much to celebrate in shyness. It has cunning, to begin with. Entering a room, it situates itself immediately in a hierarchy of social unease — this person is less shy than me, that person more so — and goes to work. And as a psychic state it is almost pure information: Talking to a very shy person, you feel yourself to be inside his or her electrical field, close-up in a way that the un-shy man, jawing on obliviously about his trip to Six Flags, would never permit. As for one’s own shyness, the shyness within, it is something to be endlessly tested and negotiated with. Should you attempt to hurdle it, and enter the situation full-bloodedly? Or is now the moment to heed its counsels and fall back? There’s an element of the existential in shyness. At the very least, if you’re shy, you’re never bored.

(Via kottke.org.)

Estimating Projects | CSS-Tricks:

Sometimes, as much logic as you try and throw at estimating a project, you end up with the feeling that you just don’t know. You just don’t know how long it’s going to take. You just can’t foresee what kind of roadblocks you are going to come across. You just don’t know how well these new clients are going to communicate with you.

At this point you’ll need to do a little reflection on previous projects and then perhaps, pull a rabbit out of a hat.

(Via @smashingmag.)

What’s the middle ground between “F.U!” and “Welcome!”? | Ask MetaFilter:

In some families, you grow up with the expectation that it’s OK to ask for anything at all, but you gotta realize you might get no for an answer. This is Ask Culture.

In Guess Culture, you avoid putting a request into words unless you’re pretty sure the answer will be yes. Guess Culture depends on a tight net of shared expectations. A key skill is putting out delicate feelers. If you do this with enough subtlety, you won’t even have to make the request directly; you’ll get an offer. Even then, the offer may be genuine or pro forma; it takes yet more skill and delicacy to discern whether you should accept.

All kinds of problems spring up around the edges. If you’re a Guess Culture person… then unwelcome requests from Ask Culture people seem presumptuous and out of line, and you’re likely to feel angry, uncomfortable, and manipulated.

If you’re an Ask Culture person, Guess Culture behavior can seem incomprehensible, inconsistent, and rife with passive aggression…

Thing is, Guess behaviors only work among a subset of other Guess people — ones who share a fairly specific set of expectations and signaling techniques. The farther you get from your own family and friends and subculture, the more you’ll have to embrace Ask behavior. Otherwise you’ll spend your life in a cloud of mild outrage at… the Cluelessness of Everyone.

(Via Oliver Burkeman. (Via kottke.org.))

The Importance of Personal Projects | Design Shack:

Burnout is something that hits every designer at some point. Being forcefully creative as a way to pay the bills can be mentally exhausting and eventually results in you feeling like you’ve got no creativity left. This is the result of teaching your brain to literally loathe creativity. You begin to associate it with mandatory work and the daily grind.

Creativity should add awe to your world, make life more bearable, and provide you with a fundamentally more enjoyable way to view your existence. That may seem a little abstract or high-minded, but it’s a much more pleasant view than the utilitarian method of being creative simply to earn a paycheck.

The key here is to stop ruining your talent by using it exclusively at work. Instead, channel it through activities that can actually make you happy.

(Via @smashingmag.)

The cult of busy « Scott Berkun:

We all get the same amount of time every day. If you can’t do something it’s not about the quantity of time. It’s really about how important the task is to you. I’m sure if you were having a heart attack, you’d magically find time to go to the hospital. That time would come from something else you’d planned to do, but now seems less important. This is how time works all the time. What people really mean when they say, “I don’t have time” is this thing is not important enough to earn my time. It’s a polite way to tell people they’re not worth your time.

(Via marco.org.)

Seth's Blog: Is this noise inside my head bothering you?:

I think these voices… determine which career we choose, how good a job we do, where we shop and what we watch. Here are a few:

• The ego — seeks applause and recognition.
• The lizard — seeks safety, wants to fit in and not be rejected or criticized.
• The artist — wants to be generous, creative and make positive change with impact.
• The boxer — wants to poke and be poked, seeks revenge and ultimately victory.
• The zombie — wants to turn off and be entertained.
• The carpenter — seeks to do useful work, and finish it well.
• The philanthropist — wants to help, anonymously.
• The evangelist — wants to spread an idea.
• And the hunter — wants to successfully track and bring down a target.

DNA/How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Internet:

So people complain that there’s a lot of rubbish online, or that it’s dominated by Americans, or that you can’t necessarily trust what you read on the web. Imagine trying to apply any of those criticisms to what you hear on the telephone. Of course you can’t “trust” what people tell you on the web anymore than you can “trust” what people tell you on megaphones, postcards or in restaurants. Working out the social politics of who you can trust and why is, quite literally, what a very large part of our brain has evolved to do. For some batty reason we turn off this natural skepticism when we see things in any medium which require a lot of work or resources to work in, or in which we can’t easily answer back — like newspapers, television or granite. Hence “carved in stone.” What should concern us is not that we can’t take what we read on the internet on trust — of course you can’t, it’s just people talking — but that we ever got into the dangerous habit of believing what we read in the newspapers or saw on the TV — a mistake that no one who has met an actual journalist would ever make.

(Via kottke.org.)