The first time I heard about designing with XHTML was in 2005 at an IA retreat in Asilomar, where Christina Wodtke bluntly proclaimed that we should "stop doing wireframes." I was both skeptical and enticed.
I knew if I stomped around complaining long enough someone would invent something new.
Out of Print in The New Yorker
Three centuries after the appearance of Franklin's Courant, it no longer requires a dystopic imagination to wonder who will have the dubious distinction of publishing America's last genuine newspaper. Few believe that newspapers in their current printed form will survive. Newspaper companies are losing advertisers, readers, market value, and, in some cases, their sense of mission at a pace that would have been barely imaginable just four years ago. Bill Keller, the executive editor of the Times, said recently in a speech in London, "At places where editors and publishers gather, the mood these days is funereal. Editors ask one another, 'How are you?,' in that sober tone one employs with friends who have just emerged from rehab or a messy divorce." Keller's speech appeared on the Web site of its sponsor, the Guardian, under the headline "NOT DEAD YET."MORE...
From The Financial Times, Seven categories of rot that appeal to big cheeses
Last week, I came across the following rot-rich announcement from a leading UK institution. "It is with regret I announce that Mr X is leaving Institution Y by mutual agreement at the end of April. Mr X has been an outstanding colleague who has contributed much to the organisation . . . I am sure you will join me in wishing him all the best for the future."There are four rotten sections in this peach of an announcement. "It is with regret" means it is with relief. "By mutual agreement" means we fired him but have agreed that neither of us will talk to the press.
Mr X "has been an outstanding colleague" means anything but; indeed, the greater the protestations about the departing person's marvellousness, the greater the joy to be seeing the back of them.
"I know you will join me in . . . " means I don't care what you actually think, but I am the boss around here and I am telling you what the public line is.
Truth, naked and cold, had been turned away from every door in the village. Her nakedness frightened the people. When Parable found her she was huddled in a corner, shivering and hungry. Taking pity on her, Parable gathered her up and took her home. There, she dressed Truth in story, warmed her and sent her out again. Clothed in story, Truth knocked again at the doors and was readily welcomed into the villagers' houses. They invited her to eat at their tables and warm herself by their fires. -- Jewish Teaching Story
I've been reading a number of books about how to communicate effectively, and one thing they all harp on is the power of story telling. No need to sell me! But it did send me to my bookshelf to fish out a book I had ordered long ago on someone's recommendation. The second chapter opened with the above story, and I found it so compelling I had to share.
Since I am currently enamored of lists, I'll share the author's (Annette Simmons) six key types of stories:
1. "Who Am I" Stories
2. "Why Am I Here" Stories
3. "The Vision" Story
4. "Teaching" Stories
5. "Values-in-Action" Stories
6. "I Know What You Are Thinking" Stories
Each one is designed to establish credibility, create empathy and eventually teach or persuade the listener. I appreciate Simmons continual attention to the end goal of story telling in the context of our work lives, as other books get caught up in the mythology and poetry of our oral history. This is a business book first, and knows it. If you are a disciple of Fray, if you are a student of Joseph Campbell, or looking to write the next American novel I recommend you look elsewhere. Bu if you have to make a presentation to the executive team, this is the perfect book for you. I'm only a third in right now, so I'll probably have more to tell as I work my way through, but so far I'm enjoying the focus and the form.
Here is a short article by her if you'd like to sample her writing style: The Power of Story: Dressing Up the Naked Truth.
I don't know how I got so lucky, but suddenly I find myself bombarded with rules about how to write SO YOU CAN BE HEARD just as I am attempting to edit a couple books.
Thought I'd share them.
From Frank Luntz's WORDS THAT WORK: IT'S NOT WHAT YOU SAY, IT'S WHAT PEOPLE HEAR
Ten principles of effective language.
Rule 1. Simplicity: Use Small Words. Don't use words you have to look up, because most (people) won't.
Rule 2: Brevity. Use short sentences. Good: Just do it! Bad: John Kerry "a bold progressive internationalism that stands in contrast to the belligerent and myopic bush administration"
Rule 3: Credibility is as Important as Philosophy: "Ultimate driving machine" "Read my lips: no new taxes." Both catchy... both true?
Rule 4: Consistency matters. "It's the real thing" 1943. "The breakfast of champions" and "M'm M'm Good" 1935. "Good to the last drop" 1915.
Rule 5: Novelty. Volkswagon (and now Mini's) promoting small when everyone else is pushing big.
Rule 6: Sound and texture matter. "Snap, crackle pop" "intel inside" "quicker picker upper" "think different" ... beauty before accuracy.
Rule 7: Speak Aspirationally. "A diamond is forever" "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." I think Obama read this book.
Rule 8: Visualize. "melts in your mouth, not in your hand" The secret to visualization is the word "imagine" The work is done by the reader.
Rule 9: Ask a question "can you hear me now" "got milk" "are you better off today than you were four years ago?" Passive becomes interactive
Rule 10: Provide Context and Explain Relevance: From "Have it your way" in 1973 to "No late fees ever" from Netflix today: Be relevant
You can't help but notice that rules 1-5 are all Strunk, while 6-10 are all White, if you are a fan of The Elements of Style
Next up, from Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
Six Principles of Sticky Ideas
PRINCIPLE 1: SIMPLICITY
How do we find the essential core of our ideas? A successful defense lawyer says, "If you argue ten points, even if each is a good point, when they get back to the jury room they won't remember any." To strip an idea down to its core, we must be masters of exclusion. We must relentlessly prioritize. Saying something short is not the mission -- sound bites are not the ideal. Proverbs are the ideal. We must create ideas that are both simple and profound. The Golden Rule is the ultimate model of simplicity: a one-sentence statement so profound that an individual could spend a lifetime learning to follow it.PRINCIPLE 2: UNEXPECTEDNESS
How do we get our audience to pay attention to our ideas, and how do we maintain their interest when we need time to get the ideas across? We need to violate people's expectations. We need to be counterintuitive. A bag of popcorn is as unhealthy as a whole day's worth of fatty foods! We can use surprise -- an emotion whose function is to increase alertness and cause focus -- to grab people's attention. But surprise doesn't last. For our idea to endure, we must generate interest and curiosity. How do you keep students engaged during the fortyeighth history class of the year? We can engage people's curiosity over a long period of time by systematically "opening gaps" in their knowledge -- and then filling those gaps.
PRINCIPLE 3: CONCRETENESS
How do we make our ideas clear? We must explain our ideas in terms of human actions, in terms of sensory information. This is where so much business communication goes awry. Mission statements, synergies, strategies, visions -- they are often ambiguous to the point of being meaningless. Naturally sticky ideas are full of concrete images -- ice-filled bathtubs, apples with razors -- because our brains are wired to remember concrete data. In proverbs, abstract truths are often encoded in concrete language: "A bird in hand is worth two in the bush." Speaking concretely is the only way to ensure that our idea will mean the same thing to everyone in our audience.
PRINCIPLE 4: CREDIBILITY
How do we make people believe our ideas? When the former surgeon general C. Everett Koop talks about a public-health issue, most people accept his ideas without skepticism. But in most day-to-day situations we don't enjoy this authority. Sticky ideas have to carry their own credentials. We need ways to help people test our ideas for themselves -- a "try before you buy" philosophy for the world of ideas. When we're trying to build a case for something, most of us instinctively grasp for hard numbers. But in many cases this is exactly the wrong approach. In the sole U.S. presidential debate in 1980 between Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, Reagan could have cited innumerable Statistics demonstrating the sluggishness of the economy. Instead, he asked a simple question that allowed voters to test for themselves: "Before you vote, ask yourself if you are better off today than you were four years ago."
PRINCIPLE 5: EMOTIONS
How do we get people to care about our ideas? We make them feel something. In the case of movie popcorn, we make them feel disgusted by its unhealthiness. The statistic "37 grams" doesn't elicit any emotions. Research shows that people are more likely to make a charitable gift to a single needy individual than to an entire impoverished region. We are wired to feel things for people, not for abstractions. Sometimes the hard part is finding the right emotion to harness. For instance, it's difficult to get teenagers to quit smoking by instilling in them a fear of the consequences, but it's easier to get them to quit by tapping into their resentment of the duplicity of Big Tobacco.
PRINCIPLE 6: STORIES
How do we get people to act on our ideas? We tell stories. Firefighters naturally swap stories after every fire, and by doing so they multiply their experience; after years of hearing stories, they have a richer, more complete mental catalog of critical situations they might confront during a fire and the appropriate responses to those situations. Research shows that mentally rehearsing a situation helps us perform better when we encounter that situation in the physical environment. Similarly, hearing stories acts as a kind of mental flight simulator, preparing us to respond more quickly and effectively.
Finally, from George Orwell's Poitics and the English Language. Interestingly he also said "Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one's meaning as clear as one can through pictures and sensations."
"I think the following rules will cover most cases:(i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
(ii) Never us a long word where a short one will do.
(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.
(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous."
New York Times on the semicolon
"When Hemingway killed himself he put a period at the end of his life," Kurt Vonnegut once said. "Old age is more like a semicolon."
Recently I had a beer with Josh Porter, and he mentioned to me how something I said had resonated with him. Apparently, I had advised him to keep a blog on a single topic, posting regularly and well, and that would allow him to "own the space" or at least build reputation in it. My own blog had let me establish authority in IA when I had only been doing it a few months... .
Well, we all know it's easier to give advice than take it. I've been blogging for seven years, and while my first few years reflect a focus, there have been plenty of divergence, and my audience has fluctuated with my attention span. I remember bitterly when a reader commented "I like it better when you blogged about design."
This caused me to wonder, now in these days of blog proliferation, is Josh's success the norm, or an anomaly (and I should clean up my act, even though all I really want to post about is the amazing stuffed pork chop I cooked last night.) This led to an unscientific LinkedIn Answers query:
Has blogging affected your professional life, and how?Has blogging brought you notoriety, gotten you clients, respectability, a job? Love to hear if all this writing is helping (or hurting) folks. Less the "I was fired for begin indiscrete" and more an overall effect ..though anecdotes are fun.
Clarification added 7 days ago:
I'm also interested if *reading* blogs has helped you professionally...
posted 7 days ago in Career Development
Admittedly the last bit was an afterthought, and most respondents did treat it as such.
From the results, I determined Josh (and my younger self) were dead right. Post regularly, and well and it can only do you good. Some folks built a big audience, some built a small one, and some just found themselves with an audience of their potential employers. If I were to list the priorities in order, I would say
You need to
Some particularly useful insights:
from Michael Angeles
Excluding my first job out of grad school, every job that I've taken, including my current full time job, has been because of blogging. I can't say enough about how writing a blog is one of the best things you can do for your career. I get way more in return than I put into blogging. For testing out new ideas, nothing has been better for me than blogging--even better than posting to mailing lists because the audience can be more diverse.Reading blogs is also an essential part of my professional development. The evolution of my craft as an IA really grew much greater when I started reading blogs of peers who like to share ideas (like your EH) and having conversations with people on their blogs. Same is true of mailing lists, however. These days, I do more lurking or freeloading of other peoples blogs than I do commenting because of the lack of time to write, and because Google Reader makes it easy to take things in without engaging. But when I bother to engage in conversations I really get more out of the experience.
Brian Ghidinelli says
Blogging casually, in my opinion, is relatively worthless for your career. I believe if you blog "professionally", meaning it's a core component of your professional strategy, then you will likely develop a following large enough or content of a certain caliber to have some impact on your career.37 Signals' SVN is a great example of "professional blogging" even if the blog isn't what makes them money (directly). They sold thousands of their Design E-Book thanks to the legions of fans they've developed via their blog. In the sense that your readers can become your sales force (or are your sales targets), then blogging is a communications channel like PR, advertising and direct sales. It takes work and vigilance to develop and execute on.
Personally, I blog for myself. I tend to post HOWTO or research-driven pieces where I've invested time in sorting something out and wish to contribute back in exchange for the help I find out there. I don't receive many comments but that's not the goal of my efforts so it's OK. Wordpress has become the easiest way for me to track what's going on in my (mostly professional) life and the fact that it's public, if carefully edited, is a bonus to my "reputation". ...
Gagan Diesh says
... Yes blogging has been helpful as it keeps me honest as a designer by forcing me to research. It IS read my clients before they hire us (part of their due diligence) and we use it in client meetings as reference material when trying to sell the power of design! I have had some good debates on blog entries with programmers who take exception at my design-focused project management approach.
Scott Abel says
Blogging has helped me reinvent myself and create an entire new career...one that I never imagined. My blog, TheContentWrangler.com, has allowed me to share what I know, what I discover, and what I am doing with others. And, it's helped me create a valuable audience of 17,000 newsletter subscribers, and several hundred (or thousand) folks a day visiting my site and/or reading my RSS feeds.It's also attracted advertisers anxious to gain access to my audience. Paid advertising campaigns allow me to continue looking for the next great topics to blog about.
And, blogging has helped me increase my notoriety. Conference organizers have spotted my blog and invited me to speak at their events. Journalists have found my writings online and interviewed me as an expert. Magazine and newsletter editors have asked me to author articles. And, venture capitalists have contacted me for advice before investing in new technology initiatives.
So, yes, blogging is worth it.
However, blogging involves discipline, commitment, and a drive to do better, learn more, and help others. It creates lots of extra work (email, instant messages, and telephone calls). And, it involves thinking outside the box.
Reading blogs is an excellent way to identify new technologies, techniques, and strategies worth writing about. Reading blogs in disciplines outside your own area of specialty helps you to relate the concepts familiar to you with those of others to create "ah ha" moments that may not have ever materialized without such information.
Rob Tannen says
When I started blogging about designing for humans three years ago it was as much to organize and store information of interest to me, as it was share information with people of similar interests. So in a very tangible way it helps me do my job by providing quick access to reference sources (helps that I had to summarize them too).
Joshua Porter
Short answer:
Yes to notoriety, clients, job offers.Also made me a better writer (I hope). And being a better writer is how you not only participate in conversations, but help lead them as well. Being an independent who has a blog to help start and keep conversations, it's incredibly important to be able to write. The more I can make ideas clear, the more clients I'll get.
There were so many awesome answers, and so many good points, I want to encourage you to read all of them... Has blogging affected your professional life, and how?
Okay, more asking questions on LinkedIn time. This time it's
"Has blogging affected your professional life, and how?Has blogging brought you notoriety, gotten you clients, respectability, a job? Love to hear if all this writing is helping (or hurting) folks. "
I only posted it two hours ago, and I'm already getting terrific answers. For example, Michael Angeles said
Excluding my first job out of grad school, every job that I've taken, including my current full time job, has been because of blogging. I can't say enough about how writing a blog is one of the best things you can do for your career. I get way more in return than I put into blogging.
I'll be writing up a summary once it's closed...
I missed the second talk, see http://www.geekdaily.org for jim's write up. also, slides:
first a anatomy of a facebook ap
first to give ap developers access ot social graph and demographics
you get a splash, a spot on the profile and an icon in the ap list
difference between facebook ap and myspace widget? FB is viral and itneractive, myspace is all aobut self expression
- CONCEPT FRIDAY 6/15
- DESIGN FRIDAY
- IMPLEMENTATION 3 DAYS
- ADVERTSING 6/18
- VIRAL GROWTH 3 WEEKS
- caplock off
From a hilarious David Pogue column (read the whole thing for more funny anecdotes)
We reviewers aren't supposed to divulge our official opinions until the article appears in print. But years ago, Benjy, a P.M., asked me what I thought of his product, a database, while the review was still in progress. I said cautiously, "Well, I need to keep working with it."But Benjy continued to prod. "Any ideas for our next version?"
"Well," I shrugged, "a list view would be nice."
Forty-eight hours later, a FedEx man appeared at the door, bearing a new copy of the program: version 1.1. It was identical to the version I'd been testing -- except now it had a list view. Some programmer had had a very busy weekend.
Benjy called. He thanked me for the list-view idea and asked if there was anything else I'd like to see in the program. I hedged; he prodded.
"O.K., well," I managed, "it'd be nice if you could mark and print subsets of your cards."
You guessed it: within two days, version 1.1.1 arrived, complete with mark-and-print features.
This loony cycle went around a few more times, the little company writing the software to accommodate the review. I knew this wasn't quite the way the reviewer-vendor relationship was supposed to work -- but I really thought the software was getting better. At last the review deadline came, and Benjy stopped adding new features. That program was probably the only version 1.1.1.1.1 ever sold.
From Google blogger slams Michael Moore’s Sicko
Turner, writing in Google's new Health Advertising Blog, which was officially launched in June, opens chides Moore's new investigative documentary by saying that it "attacks health insurers, health providers and pharmaceutical companies by connecting them to isolated and emotional stories of the [health] system at its worst." She also goes on to accuse Moore of portraying the medical and pharmaceutical industries as being "money and marketing driven" while failing to focus in on "interest in patient well-being and care," throughout the film.A related Forbes report relays that Turner's suggestion that health care companies battle the criticisms levelled at the industry by Moore's latest movie by investing in Google ads that would be shown over "Sicko" search results has not been well received by the blog community.
Royal Carriage Inn goes on my list of places I want to go hide to write.
Cheap, warm, comfy. Wonderfuly kind innkeeper Jennifer. Private cottages as well as rooms in the main house. Free wifi.
I'm surprised how often I see the word "versus" in email. Photoshop vs. illustrator, personas vs. ethnography, email address vs. username, and blogtools vs. CMS. When I was a freshman in art school, I learned a useful word: dichotomy. It was years later I learned phrase "false dichotomy" and I'm wondering how many people have yet to learn it. In particular, I'm thinking of those working in new media/participatory media/social media.
I keep reading how blogs will make traditional publishing irrelevant. I also read how traditional publishing already provides a reliability and consistency that will show blogs to be merely a fad; the geocities of our time. And just over a year ago (I know because my domain registration notice just came) I sat down with friend Lars and added the word false to that particular dichotomy by thinking up PublicSquare.
A dichotomy is defined as "a division into two especially mutually exclusive or contradictory groups or entities."
1. Almost everybody talks about blogs and big media (usually thinking about New York Times or Fox news, depending on who has annoyed you most recently). But publishing is currently taking the form of a continuum, from blogs to big media, with wikis, jotspot, writerly, writeboards, scoop and many others filling in the space between one maverick vomiting up ideas to a group refining raw facts into something palatable.
2. Mutually exclusive: Bloggers are adding editors, Om Malik for example, and newspapers are adding-- nay, forcing-- reporters to blog. Drupal has blog modules and articles modules and the difference is slight.
3. Contradictory. um. yeah. How contradictory are these two writing forms? When I was looking at them recently, they both depended on one thing for success: a person who can consistently write, and write well. Of course someone who writes every day, but only on their cat's antics and their hair challenges is an aspect of the blog, but is this person really making Arthur Schultzberger tremble in his shoes? A journalist and a (successful) blogger are much of a muchness, except one gets fact checked and edited.
Where revolution is truly happening in my opinion is in the birth of collaborative publishing tools that enable new behaviors in writing, often children of the wiki family. Where blogger and other blog platforms were simply (though certainly impactfully) ways to make writing significantly easier, and came form a long line of tools form the printing press to the electric typewriter to microsoft word. They are all technology to get technology out of the way.
But wikis, writerboard, slashdot and scoop are all trying to get groups to be smart together, to write together and they give birth to a new kind of writing *and* giving voice to one-hit-wonders of authorship.
More on this coming soon... .
I've been writng and editing a bit lately, and I have recalled three key concepts from my book days. I share them here with you, in case you find them useful:
How do I interview people (for the press, not for jobs)? | Ask MetaFilter is just a terrific comment I tripped over, especially for those doing user research.
Kerry has a plan, Bush has a strategy, I have a lingering sense of unease. This is an orwellian sense of doublespeak.
This guide is based on the style book which is given to all journalists at The Economist.
I'm writing today. mouf mouf mouf. I forgot what a wrestling job it is.
here I am:
I write a paragraph. Gosh I'm cold; I think I'll make tea. Wow look at all those dishes I sure should wash them... wait, I need to write. I write a sentence-- hey, i'll check mail, wow, that looks like it needs my attention and oh, i can't believe i didn't respond to that mail... tea kettle whistles-- oh, i'm supposed to be writing, but first the tea. I write a paragraph, whew, I deserve a cheese stick. Hey, the dryer stopped. I'd better fold laundry and start a new load.. Oh, i should be writing, I'll just go do that and hey, I haven't blogged in a while, maybe a quick entry on...
Hey I should be writing....
or I could go to amazon to find this book
instead of playing with photoshop filters
I love writing, excellent craftful writing. Often my favorite articles in New Yorker are on the most banal subjects: a recent article on concrete, a much older one on steel processing. It's almost like watching the strong man at the fair-- you don't really care what he's lifting, it's the show of the raw strength. A writer who makes five pages of concrete or ten pages of steel riveting is impressive as a chopin impromptu.
Everyone knows that the web has allowed every moron that can type access to publishing, but what too few people say when they speak of blogging and self-publishing on the web is how common it's made good writing. Reading a recent entry by Anil Dash on Fear of Flying I was struck by the muscular grace his writing had achieved. While not at a New Yorker level (editors do count) it still reflected a comfortable strength in constructing words on almost any topic to entertain. A quick flip the blogs I read shows a dozen other proto-articles also thoughtful and skillfully executed.
Revist your daily reads now and rather than just luxuriating in the tales of mark-up and parking, consider this is just some fellow in his/her basement, or on the couch, with a background in who knows what-- history, or engineering and not a journalism major... what a marvelous little miracle.
The metaphor of muscles was not chosen randomly, btw--- the one way to become a better writer is to write daily. A journal will transform anyone's prose, and a public one does so much faster. Working out makes you strong; working out in public makes you push yourself. Writing makes you strong, writing in public makes you try harder.
I suppose that makes an editor a personal trainer.
Famous Quotes - Sir Winston Churchill
"Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement; then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him out to the public. "
this anecdote is also quite interesting.
Check out the opening of this newsletter from my ISP, Dreamhost. You can't accuse them of not having a voice...
"0. Introduction.
I think every February newsletter I end up either talking about what a
short month it was and how it only makes sense that the newsletter is
going to be short, or else how it's my birthday in four days, and my
birthday is the best.
This time I'm going with birthday.
My birthday is the best! It's March fourth! Which is the only date
that's a command! And it used to be the date of the U.S. presidential
inaugaration! And it's a tricky birthday too because it sneaks up on
you because February is so short (now I've covered both topics!)..
always around February 25th or so I'm like "my birthday is in like two
weeks or something" and then one second later I'm all "I MEAN ONE!"
The other great thing about my birthday is PRESENTS. I can't really
think of anything I want or need, but I know I'm sure as sure going to
take everything I can get! In fact, I think the theme for this
newsletter is going to be "presents for Josh". This may just be the best
newsletter ever.
I would like to stress the purpose of this newsletter is to inform
Happy DreamHost customers about important DreamHost going ons."
I'll include the whole thing in the "more" section. Pretty funny. This may be why I keep forgiving them, despite the fact they break something or another almost every month (they do usually fix it again under 24 hours, which maybe the other reason)
from On the Art of Writing
specifically from the section On Jargon.
"Has a Minister to say "No" in the House of Commons? Some men are constitutionally incapable of saying no: but the Minister conveys it thus "The answer to the question is in the negative." That means "no." Can you discover it to mean anything less, or anything more except that the speaker is a pompous person?"
I came across this delight because today I ventured into a library and suddenly started reading 84 Charing Cross Road and realized I was going to read the whole thing standing there and how long had I been standing there and where was my husband anyhow?
I found Philippe in the photography section, and since we couldn't check anything out from that particular library (our residential status is insufficiantly documented), he went to take pictures with a kite, and I went to a bookstore. I couldn't find 84 Charing Cross at that particular book store (though let me comfort you by saying I did find it three bookstores later, not that I spent my day going from bookstore to bookstore -- they were on they way as I did my chores I swear).
I was lucy enough to find Q's legasy at Bookbuyers which introduced me to Ms. Helene's introduction to "proper writing," Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch (what a face-- he knows things); and while Amazon is kind enough to charge me extra for looking for it, whammo, it happens to be free on bartleby's.
Whaddya know.
This information wants to be free: The Online Books Page
I didn't have this hard a time -- Why Computer Books Suck -- but it's not far off.
guess it's a nng day today: reading Don Norman's interviews I discovered
"The article quotes me as saying: "But in Cambridge I became so frustrated with British water taps and switches and door handles - those awful sideways handles on many British doors that catch your sleeves. They don't exist in the US."
I actually said "But in Cambridge I became so frustrated with British water taps and switches and doors. The most frustrating thing about it was that no one seemed to care." The rest was added -- I didn't say it. "
Holy cow. This is immoral. indecent. plain old fashioned WRONG.
Still mired in chapter 9, which is starting to be a damn encyclopedia of diagramming. And I haven't even touched the range of posibilities out there. Well, I'm cutting myself off, as soon as I finish affinity diagrams and user flows.
I have to pause every so often and touch the world. This is my third day of all-day writing.
Yesterday I walked into the wrong bookstore when I was looking for a book on PHP and right there in front of me was a collection of Frank O'Hara poems. It's rare, trust me. He didn't write much.
It opens with the wonderful Personism, a manifesto which has many extraordinary moments including this on writing
"You just go on your nerve. If someone’s chasing you down the street with a knife you just run, you don’t turn around and shout, "Give it up! I was a track star for Mineola Prep." "
which jibes with me.
Anyhow, I give you a poem from this book
MORE...Killing the biggest myth of web design In which Derek eloquently pounds down the biggest web-myth of all.
... then don't do that.
"An Anti Pattern is a pattern that tells how to go from a problem to a bad solution"
A List Apart: How to Write a Better Weblog is actually "How to be a better writer." And it gives excellent advice: be precise, don't be timid, be active (I'm a recovering passive voice addict)
Still..
I don't know what it says about me that I prefer the amateur example over the professional example. "New York is magnificent in the spring"
yawn.
from the digital storytelling conference and festival
"Good storytelling establishes a personal relationship between the storyteller and the audience. Enhanced through digital media and shared via the Web, digital stories become a powerful tool for improving your business, your creative vision, your community, and your bottom line."
Dying Scent of E-Mail Ad Campaign is the story of CK One's email soap opera that enchanted thousands... and sold perfume.
"More than that, though, the campaign worked. 'Hundreds of thousands of people went through the cKone e-mail,' Davis wrote. Fragrance sales increased"
Don't Shortchange the User With a Minimalist Approach to Writing User Instructions
An interesting justification for longer and more ccurate help and intruction text. This flies in the face of what many usability "gurus" have told us. Interesting read.
Structured Writing - An Outline is a lovely article on one of the most undervalued arts: writing.
I was particularly cheered to read "While spelling and grammar are grossly overrated as an indicator of personal worth or general intelligence, they are important when writing to teach or convey other important information. "
whew! So Im knot a lewser after all!
For people who supposedly "passionate about language", Ask Oxford sure did a poor job of labeling their sections. I came here having been promised a thesaurus by yahoo. Where am I supposed to click?
The rest of the page gives no better hint
askoxford.com screenshot
I suppose I'm lucky, getting such a fine example of the perils of not using subtitles on the same day I blog about them....
I'm thinking about the nature of standards a lot lately. So this is a full-on blather about them...
A couple weeks back, my biz partner, Gabe, was sitting at his desk, surrounded by books: Microsoft Windows User Experience , a similar guide to OS X (which I can't seem to locate on Amazon), the sun interface standards one, and Elements of Style.
Gabe said "They are all essentially the same book--- they all explain the standards, and how to adhere to them to be more effective."
Today, browsing Digital Web Archives, I came across The Destination Matters More Than the Journey, in which Dean Allen points out that Elements of Style -- not just Elements of Typographic Style -- is very useful to typographers. Which caused me to re-open Strunk & White's masterpiece.
The Elements of Style is still the best seven bucks you'll spend if you want to be better at pretty much any creative act. Not just writing (though it is the book to read if you want to be a better writer. And everyone needs to be a better writer.)
The book does more than give rules of proper English; it provides principles of the art/craft of writing. And these principles are so succinct, so well crafted in themselves, so universal that they apply beyond the art/craft of writing to the act of creativity, no matter what the medium.
There is a big difference between a rule -- say, "use blue underlined text for links" -- and a principle -- "group like items together to provide context and relevance." The rules are hard and fast and unquestionable-- you either live with them or break them. Principles are subtle, hard to learn and hard to unlearn. Rules lend an air of efficient professionalism to your work, a veneer of unassailable propriety. Principles improve your work immeasurably, and move the judgment of your work from "correct" or "incorrect" to "true, real, meaningful, dismaying, disturbing" ;i.e. following a principle can take your work away from being judged for its execution and get it judged for its intention.
Part of the power of the Strunk and White book is the relationship of the Strunk to the White. The first half is written by a English teacher, and has succinct excellent clear cut rules for writing proper English. The second half was written by his pupil, E.B. White, a writer of fiction, and pays attention to the more subtle act of creating compelling writing. Thus the first half is strict rules, the second principles.
From the first section "Place a comma before a conjunction introducing an independent clause" which is followed by an explanation and examples.
"Two-part sentences of which the second member is introduced by as (in the sense of 'because') for, or, nor, or while (in the sense of "and at the same time") likewise require a comma before the conjunction."
From the second section "Do not affect a breezy manner" Which is followed by
"The volume of writing is enormous, these days, and much of it has a sort of windiness about it, almost as though the author were in a state of euphoria. 'Spontaneous me.' sang Whitman, and, in his innocence, let loose the hordes of uninspired scribbers who would one day confuse spontaneity with genius."
The division is not always perfectly neat-- Struck gives fine principles such as "Omit needless words" and White lays down the rules-- "Do not dress words up by adding ly to them, as though putting a hat on a horse." But overall it is Strunk's job to make the rules, White's to teach you the principles.
Rereading Strunk & White reminds me that while learning the rules is useful, internalizing the principals is vital. Yesterday Gabe and I were talking again, this time about an interface for a project, a weblication. He was stuck with a problem of displaying hierarchal toolsets. He was digging through the Window's book for a standard to adopt, and was dissatisfied with all the current conventions. The solutions the book presented were ones we'd seen fail in user testing.
I suggested he figure out a way to visually associate each toolset with the item it was modifying. It seemed more sensible to me to simply stick to the more ancient standards of design principles, if recent software standards were lacking. We brainstormed back and forth, and came up with a satisfying design.
So standards, rules, principles... was our solution breaking conventions? true to principals? What are rules, if they don't make for better designs? useful? hindrances? Even as I write this I begin to think about the power of rules, and all the gradations between rule and principle... when is a rule a rule? a principal a principal? How do standards fit in? What about style?
It's a lot for a Sunday...
Another fine source for gleaning: write the web
some of their headlines:
A new direction for weblogs: pornography
Watch those radical librarians
Making micropayments micro enough
Captain Cursor is talking about reawakening his youthful passion for D&D, which got me thinking about collaborative storytelling...
D&D, which I used to play as a pup, is really a game of collaborative storytelling. Oh, sure there were always those geeks who got a little too into the elaborate die and math side of it, and I do remember almost dozing off at a large table with 10 other guys arguing about health points, but the most satisfying games were those played in my best friend's Mike basement with my first boyfriend Carl, and the dice would sit unused between us as we told each other what our characters were doing, what we saw, what happened next... when I think of these times I not only can remember the slight pervasive smell of moldy carpet and see the 1960's furniture, I can see us fighting monsters, falling in love, betraying each other, and then resolving bitter feuds just in time for Mike's older sister to offer us Mac and Cheese and baked beans.
(anyone here forget I grew up in Iowa?).
Storyfuck is a dueling banjos of collaborative storytelling, in which two writers try to derail the other's story in favor of their own-- not too different than Mike, our eternal webmaster messing with Carl and me, the lively players. Mike would throw challenge after challenge at us, but he would always tuck an escape route into his plot so we could win. We were heroes, and in Mike's heart he wanted the heroes to win-- as long as it wasn't too easy. I think a storyteller's ultimate loyalty tends to be to the story, in boht D&D and storyfuck.com. Much as you want to win, you find your loyalty slowly shifting from your own interests to creating a compelling tale. It will be interesting to discover how the participants of storyfuck resolve the conflicting urges of bard vs. competitor.
Fray is an example of a community built on entirely on the pleasure of exchanging stories-- a different kind of collaboration and probably the most common one; that between teller and listener... Derek has said that fiction is for the weak, and Fray is composed of true stories, making a bit different than the act of shared fiction creation. Fray is a sophistaticated version of truth or dare for grown-ups, the dare is to bare yourself before strangers in the hopes of transforming them -- and yourself-- into ordinary real people; people you can love. What D&D and Fray have in common is that they are both based on the understanding that a story is most powerful, most pleasing for the storyteller when one can look the audience in the eye, when you can refer to your audience by name.
Both Cluetrain Manifesto and Creative Company note the power of the corporate story; how it can bond together employees and engage customers. At CIQ we enjoy telling our creation story: Noel begins it "I thought, what if I brought together people who wanted to learn from each other?" and Gabe continues it "Noel asked me to do the logo because another guy flaked, and when I found out what the company was going to be..." and I tell the third chapter "Peter introduced Noel and I... said we both wanted to start communities of people to exchange ideas about user experience. Once Noel told me about Carbon IQ I said 'Let me in!'" Quite a different story than a company blurb that starts "In 1998, Carbon IQ was incorporated..." Our stories let us connect with our clients as fellow humans rather than legal entities.
Stories, both true and fictional, are bridges for humans to touch each other. If we are lucky, we will tell stories to each other our whole lives and in every aspect of our lives. What's the difference between D&D, storyfuck, Cluetrain and Fray? Less than you'd think.
On peterme.com, Peter contemplates evil VC and Evil Jargon.
Let's play a little game: match the jargon to the company.
The Arion Press Catalogue:"The Physiology of Taste"
A book on food, written by the king of explaining, translated by the queen of the lucious desctiption, illustrated by Wayne Theibaud! My hero! Sigh..... I'm starting a penny jar now.
I own a beaten-up paperback of Physiology of Taste, it will have to do for now.
eNarrative 3
Hypertext Narrative Flash Time:
San Francisco, CA, USA
June 16-17, 2001
"The role of narrative in Web experience is a pressing concern throughout the Web world, from entertainment to ecommerce. While new technologies for hypertext and web-based motion graphics promise to bring powerful narrative experiences to the Web, the reality is not so rosy: engaging web narrative is still hard to find, and commercial motion graphics have largely failed to merge sophisticated interaction with compelling storytelling."
http://www.enarrative.org/
Been thinking a lot about rules put forth by gurus. A woman recently put forth a post on the SIGIA list about how some higher-ups came back from a conference with a bag full of rules she was now expected to live by. They included:
1. "3 goals of a site have to be identified to determine the direction and voice for the site"
2. "There should only be a maximum of seven links on each page, more than that and we lose the user. It's just too many choices."
3. "Users won't click on items they believe are advertisements. Banner ads only work if they appear on the right side of the page."
4. "Users are trained to respond to "blue" or underlined items on a site to get somewhere else.
5. "There is no need for a button and a text click through (to the same page) on the same page."
Each of these "rules" is derived from a larger, smarter principal that someone has apparently determined is too complex for the idiots building websites.
Let's take a look:
1. "3 goals of a site have to be identified to determine the direction and voice for the site"
Let's translate this one: determine the goals of the site before you start building it. Goals need to come form multiple sources:
What are the business goals? (customer loyalty? investor excitement?)
What are the engineering goals? (easy to maintain? extensible?)
What are the sales goals? (more banner space? Customized pages for cobranding opportunities?)
What are the marketing goals? (reinforced branding?)
What are the user's goals?(I want to learn? find? buy? I need it to load fast? Work on my 3.0 browser?)
It's called requirements gathering, and no site should be built without it.
New rule: Do requirements gathering before you start designing a site
2. "There should only be a maximum of seven links on each page, more than that and we lose the user. It's just too many choices."
A better way to look at this would be "not everything can be the most important thing on a page" A page has to have a visual hierarchy and organization to make sense. Which means somebody gets to have their stuff in the top left corner of the homepage, and someone gets be below the fold. It is important to understand user tolerance of information but people can take a lot more than one might suppose if it is designed well. And sites with only seven links often look empty (I've seen this in user testing) belying the wealth of content that lies below.
New rule: Prioritize your page elements. Design a clear page hiearchy.
3. "Users won't click on items they believe are advertisements. Banner ads only work if they appear on the right side of the page."
It doesn't matter where you put the ads, if people think they are worthless they won't click it. I found the eyetracking study very interesting-- it showed people's eyes were looking at banners. yet Neilsen's banner blindness study showed people have no memory of seeing ads. To me that suggests that some lovely tiny bit of people's brains is quickly taking everything in, deciding what is valuable and trashing what isn't.
What is quite more valuable is designing ads that show the value of whatever is being offered and place them where they have meaning. So ads for a credit card don't make much sense on a greeting card site, but ads for flowers, chocolate, etc do. especially when placed at that important "susceptible moment"-- you've just sent a card.. don't you want to send a present too?
People don't want to be offered stuff they don't want. it's as simple as that.
New rule: Make ads contextual and meaningful whenever possible
4. "Users are trained to respond to "blue" or underlined items on a site to get somewhere else."
They were. and then every site on the web changed the rules (except maybe Jakob).
They key principal here is "make a link look clickable" make it a different color, make it a button, underline it-- do something to say "click me."
I've been in a lot of tests recently where people used "Braille" to find links-- they ran their mouse across the page and watched for the hand to show up. Kinda of a cruel thing to force users to do, no?
see earlier post on links
New rule: make links look clickable. Don't make non-links look like links
5. "There is no need for a button and a text click through (to the same page) on the same page."
I'm going with a flat "no" on this one: I think the real issue is "Should you have multiple ways to get to the same page on the same page." In a recent usability test of a large entertainment site, you could get to each piece of content by clicking on the thumbnail, the headline or the "click here" link that appeared after a short description. Some users used the image, some the title and some the "click here" link. None of them hesitated or were confused as to where to link-- I believe because each found a link they recognized would work for them.
I recently was shopping for a cd, and couldn't figure out how to purchase it. There was no "buy now" button. However the price was linked to the shopping cart. I didn't know that, and I started clicking randomly on things until I managed to hit the price link. Bah.
Why did I put up with this frustration? Honestly, it was the cheapest price on this particular cd. If it wasn't, I would have just bought it from Amazon.
New rule: support different people's ways of doing things (support different mental models)
Got an expert's pronouncement you need debunked or re-interpreted? write me
Hungry for more? IBM has a terrific article that goes after "the rules" of software design: Debunking the myths of UI design.
Dang I'm tired of reading that statement. Why would anyone with a lick of sense say anything so generalized and unlikely to be true as "users don't read"?
because the statement "people read sometimes, and don't other times." just isn't sexy?
What I've seen in the slew of user tests I've been involved in is that people do read content, though they find it tiring and have a tendency to not complete a story/article. Jakob Nielsen's 1997 alertbox on how people read on the web is still on the money.
People do read instructions when they don't know what to do. However, if they think they understand the interface, they do *not* read the instructions, which can cause serious problems if they are wrong. Most people do not want to RTFM.
They read when they have someting at stake, like when shopping or registering for a service. The fine print suddenly makes for compelling reading.
And of course, the statement "people don't read" is mostly false because there are no "people" as there is no all encompassing "user." Instead there are many individual people. Some people read, some don't, some vary wildly in their reading habits.
So the most important thing to think about is "who are my people?"
Then you can ask the key question: not "do they read?", but rather, "how do they read?"
UI guidelines for the palm pilot.
thanks Kayla Black for pointing these out.offtopic...anyone else love Kawabata's palm of hand stories? Are they available for the palm?