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Your best just got better: How important is "design" to you?

From the ain't-that-kewl Dep, linking in and out at its best, Francis' post is getting some good mileage! 

Your best just got better: How important is "design" to you?

It's nice to see a guy like Jason, thinking Design, and most importantly how users use your product(s) matter!

 

No need to say it - but I highly recommend Jason's seminar on Productivity and time management.

Procrastination!

From Kevin Dee here in town of Eagle Professional Resources. He wrote a while back about Procrastination. I had taken a note to re-visit that post, since for me in my day to day procrastination is a constant fight. For Kevin to get over it is about telling himself "FULL day of work, for every day AT work". For me his motto sums it up and this is what I aim to do everyday, but if I'm to stop there it won't work. Take cold calls for examples, we all have tasks we don't particularly enjoy doing, but we do them to get to our goals. For me when it's time to cold call during the day the handset any given day will weight from a few grams, to 50pounds.

What works best for me is the way we were taught to program back in University. I decompose the problem in smaller pieces, and after decomposing for a while I always come up with an action that I feel is not difficult to do, and I strictly focus on the task at end, then on the next one, but not before the previous one is finished. In the case of the cold call - it's start with pick up the darn head set, then dial, wait for pickup, then put a cheerful tone in your voice and off I go with the flow.

Habs after game rioting

I think it's sad to see what we saw in MTL after the Habs won in 7 against Boston. This was an occasion to celebrate, and a few individuals decided to break things and several people being a little too drunk followed suit. So watching the news yesterday, everyone was complaining where the heck were the cops, and why haven't they learned from the 1993 experience when the habs won the cup. later in the same news there was an interview with minister of public security, and he said "Why are the cops being the ones blamed here, we should blame the instigators of the riot" or something close to that. Well I agree strongly with him, we have to grow up, you don't go out and set cars on fire because your team won a game, or a serie, or a cup, or for crying out loud you don't set a care on fire for just about any reasons!

Mussels vs Muscles

Ok - Francis just made me realize two things yesterday. First blame it on my French accent, it's not "Mussels" it's "Muscles". Second when he told me this I tried to post a correction from my BB, and I must have the wrong email address because the correction post is no where to be found.

blogging mussels

Are you exercising your blogging mussels. Blogging is like going to the gym, the more you go the more you want to go. The less I blog, the less I feel I have things to say!

web 2.0, community, and creativity

Dilbert.com relaunches with Web 2.0 flavor | Webware : Cool Web apps for everyone
So now every one can write the punch line in Dilbert's strip. I like Dilbert, so I might even write a punch line on some of those strips, but I'm more passive than anything so I will probably more enjoy what every one else writes.

This will seem off tangent but, we speak a lot about community, and the fact the user is in charge in the context of web 2.0. I don't think Dilbert is a user community in charge. I understand the goal of Scott Adams, he wants to drive more traffic to his site, that's his living. For users of that site they are riding the dilbert popularity.

This morning the only thing that comes to mind when I think user in charge is people doing things that have been done before, or creating a free alternative. It's like a users getting together and thinking "it would be neat to launch a category 5 Hurricane on so and so business by teaming the web people together" - my point where is the out of no-where creative solution? the one that doesn't have a real world alternative, or an existing but paying alternative. great solutions have been created that way, I use many of them, but genuine innovation, MS doing something the community as done - I can't think of any.

Technology knowledge vs Business domain

Francis posted an interesting tidbit about the technology totem pole. It got me thinking about it. Francis took the technology angle an dived. The perspective I would like to take is one of a balance to explain the sometimes condescending behaviours of programmers. If we think of a spectrum in software you have one end which is pure technology, and the other which is pure business.

In mind mind the technology end is where one will find Linux Kernel Hacking, C++, etc... While at the business end one can find more the VB like skills. At the technological end we have functionality based engineering, while at the business end we have task based development, business needs. The business end of the spectrum is you've guessed it by now much more rooted in solving a problem for a business to go better, faster, bigger with much more efficiencies with no degree of separation or very little between the end result(the need) and the software person/team.

At the technology spectrum end most of the time for the kernel hacker the link to a very specific business improvement in a given project is not there. How many times have you been in a discussion where - if only the kernel could do this, then I would rack in that much more money. The point is many more avenues will be explored before one even think about the kernel, so the connection to the business is not nearly as strong.

The reality, and this is where I high five Francis', in my my mind if I'm from one end of the spectrum and I want to go work at the other end I will have a steep learning curve. In one case it maybe technological, and in the other it will be in business "saviness". Neither one can't be taken lightly they are both crucial to the success of any given project.

Palm come up with something new! ...Very Soon

When I read story of a battery review and custom battery door, my reaction is if this what we're down to talking about on the Palm platform and phones it ain't pretty. It a sign the company is taking too long to come up with something that will set blogs abuzz. Where is the new new thing, the stuff I know Palm for.

Ad-sense - not all words are created equal

Google puts a lot of weight on certain words in posts and the ad-sense thing gets off base quickly. I'm sometimes, like today very surprised to see my post about Paul Buchheit on the importance of design in new product linked to adds about bikini! I guess the L word has a lot to do with it... But again upon a refresh I get new product introduction advertising which makes much more sense. anyhow another one of those mysteries I will not resolve.

Paul Buchheit: The most important thing to understand about new products and startups

The more I read this guy the more I realize why gmail is such a great product. in the book founders at work he is identified as the inventor of gmail.

What is the humble approach to product design? Pay attention. Notice which things are working and which aren't. Experiment and iterate. Question your assumptions. Remember that you are wrong about a lot of things. Watch for the signals. Lose your technical and design snobbery. Whatever works, works

This quote alone could get our usability architect explain its meaning for hours. It says so many things, but I take away the following

• Design with your users, involve them
• Since there is a lot of trial and error - make sure I can do it effectively and cheaply, ie low fidelity prototypes
• fall in love with the idea of your user falling in love with your product, as opposed to be in love with the elegance or the technology I used.

Blackberry Jott

Jott brings email voice recognition to your BlackBerry | The Boy Genius Report
I'm a Jott user, I like it when on the road to jott to myself or others, and get a nice little email with the transcription and the voice attached. I don't know how Jott works but with my broken English often the text I get is not up to snuff. The text is in fact really bad, but still I find the service useful. I don't think that if I jott someone using this BB app the text that will get sent will be any better. I will give it a shot but my hopes are really low it will be useful for me.

Celio Redfly mobile companion

REDFLY - a clambshell laptop like companion to your mobile phone A screen and keyboard teaming up with your mobile phone to give you a better experience. You connect the redfly to your phone, and the driver installs, and voila, you have your screen resolution better than what you would have on your mobile, and a keyboard where you can use more than your two thumbs. Right now it seems like a windows mobile thing only. They seem to think that they can succeed where the Palm Foleo failed(Frédéric Boulanger's Journal: Palm Foleo - does anyone care?)

I wonder if they will do a Blackberry version of this, it would seem like a large enough market. I know the usefulness of such device is very limited, but let's say that I was to use RIM BES, or that the email client on the BB was in fact a good IMAP client, this means the work I do on the BB would be really work, not only an answer to get more information, or just to give an update on where things are with feature xyz. I'm not the best judge of gadgets since I tend to like them all...

Vista Sp1 problems con't

Guess what - I still haven't been able to install SP1 on my XPS m1330. What a bonehead I am, anyhow this is how I feel. I've tried three more times just today. I think it's over, I'm about to give up. Reading further, even talking to someone at MS - I have disabled all the hardware that is not essential, and reverted some to plain old default drivers, no sound card, no imaging, no webcam, no etc... all disabled. Next I went into msconfig, to disable all services that are non windows, then I disabled all startup programs. I rebooted, thinking that nothing could now interfere between me and SP1, so double click on the SP1 exe, the process takes longer than usual, good sign I think - it even gets to 100%, wow i think, then it all comes down crashing - the same old message appears "Service pack did not install, reverting changes". How screwed up is that? We're in 2008, I'm not talking about Dos, and fiddling around with config.sys and autoexec.bat here to get to more than 640kb of ram, I should double click and it should update. Pls someone get me an OS that works...

vista sp1 - double trouble!

twice tonight I have tried to install the SP1, first time manually and second time auto update. I was wondering why SP1 didn't install automatically, I didn't read enough and I went ahead and downlowaded the 434MB file and manually started the install. After an uneventful install, and a final reboot, I'm running what I think is SP1, but then I notice my sound driver doesn't work. First info I find on the web is "reboot the machine, then if the problem persists ..." So I reboot, it takes forever to shutdown, and then the following message "SP1 didn't not install successfully, reverting changes" oh Great! So I read a little bit more, and then apparently there is a problem with my sound driver, which explains why auto update didn't kick in automatically, SP1 won't install on my machine with those drivers, I need to update. So I update the drivers. Then auto-update, finds an important vista update, SP1. So it installs, then every thing seems find, I reboot just for the heck, and here we go again - "Service pack did not install successfully, reverting changes". Well that's it for me, somebody tell me what the heck is wrong with my machine or me!

What would an A player do?

Too often I find myself puzzled by a situation. Asking questions is not always easy either.

Often I hear: "You don't know what an A player is until you've met one" Ok that's not useful right now for me. What is useful though is I can ask myself what would an A player do in the situation I'm in, I know this may sound corny, but I find it helps me.

The A player varies with the situation. The one constant is - "What would so and so do in this situation? What would be the next step according to him/her" and then I go and execute. Putting myself in someone else's shoes for a short period of time to analyze or action on something I have to do - helps me and reduce my overall procrastination ratio! I don't know why, but when I do this, I always have the feeling I gave it my best shot, and this feels good going home at night.

Product development outsourcing - close to home

We've all heard those short sentences or short statements from people, and too often I think well what an obvious thing to say "Of course I'm thinking, thanks you for repeating the obvious" kind of thing, not meant in a rude way. One day though this little sentence comes back and hits me in the face.

So my father in law always use just enough words, not too much, not too little. So when Nathaniel was born, he said "Only sleep will get you through", hmm - yeah right... I'm thinking I understand what he means. After 3months oh man! I can't complain much because Manon is the one up every night, but he is so right - Sleep is the only thing that really matters. See the guy has had three kids too, and he knows that at one point they will be getting on your nerves so bad, and if you're not well rested, everything gets very painful, the kids crying, the diapers change, taking one to school, not getting all greens for behaviour at school etc... The worst - supper time, just after a good/bad day at work, it can ruin you, one is talking to you, the other wants to jump off the high chair, and the little one is screaming his lungs out, so you gobble up the food in record time - running for the hills is the only thing you think about. So my point is you can hear something, think you understand, but not fully grasp the depth of what you just heard. We always say Communication is important, and this is a strong point at Macadamian. When it's time to innovate, time is always of the essence, so getting it fully is a matter of success or death. If the type of misconception above can slip in between two people in the same family, can you imagine what can happen when you insert, distance, culture, timezones, etc... Can a company who wants to be successful at creating new products afford to not deal with a team of designers, architects, experts close to home? For more on this please read our analysis about Outsourcing Strategy