Just before Stowe Boyd asked me to blog on /messagelast week, he sent me this tweet:
hey bro. Nice Tumblr template. I am interested in a reworking of my /Message typepad stuff. Ideas? Costs?
Stowe and I met, very briefly, last year at Reboot. I was impressed by his talk and we exchanged a few words. I doubt he even remembered me. So as two perfect strangers, we connected and sealed the deal with a few tweets. The briefing came in an email. Questions were asked and answered in a free-flowing mix of chat, email and tweets. He was in the U.S. at the time, and I’m in Hamburg Germany.
Since I knew we’d both be at reboot this year, I set myself that as a deadline for the first screens. I’m happy to say that we got to know each other much better, and he liked the design.
As a soon-to-be-freelance designer who’ll be living on the other side of the world as of October, this was perhaps the best possible test of a way of working I hope to practice in the future, and what for the increasing numbers of freelance knowledge workers (is there a term for us that wanks less?) will be the daily grind. Here are my thoughts and what I’ve learned so far:
It works. I honestly wasn’t sure it would. I’m sure it varies from client to client, and Stowe and I are both pretty open, flexible, and used to digital communication, but I don’t see why it can’t work with many other clients too.
Tele-working can improve the process. I’m used to clients that can’t talk before 2 p.m. the day after tomorrow, which wastes a lot of time. Despite the time difference, Stowe and I answered each other’s queries within six hours. At no point did I have to stop working and wait for anything.
Flow beats meetings hands down. Because we were constantly in contact, we didn’t overload each other with masses of information all at once, and didn’t make any decisions which couldn’t be discussed an hour or two later if needed. In a meeting once a month, the pressure to decide is high, and the cost of changing decisions is higher.
Online reputation matters. Stowe’s a bit of a rock-star in the online world, and I’m relatively unknown. He liked my own site’s design and how I write, and asked me to blog and design for him based only on that.
Trust is essential. Stowe didn’t have much to lose by asking me, but I could’ve wasted a lot of time if he turned out to be a jerk. I trusted him due to his reputation, and my trust was well-placed. Face to face client relationships can work (badly) with a lack of trust, online it becomes essential.
Face-time is important. Yeah, we’re both hyperconnected and can do almost everything online, but after reboot Stowe and I know one another better, have some shared meatspace memories, and trust each other more, which can only improve the online relationship.
So what’s come of it? Well, the design’s still in the fine-tuning phase, but the basics are there. Stowe wanted a simple, minimal design which would accomodate the group of bloggers he’s gathering around /message. At the moment it’s looking like this. Keep in mind it’s only an image, you can’t click anything and it only scrolls so far. What do you think?
And do you have any experience working with clients in far away lands? How’d it go?
Who could possibly know more than Disney about guiding, exciting and entertaining people? Interface designers can learn a lot from “Mickey’s 10 Commandments”, developed by Walt Disney Imagineering President, Marty Sklar. (commandments in bold, my comments beneath)
Know your audience The first link in the chain. Be aware of who your users are, what they like & dislike.
Wear your guest’s shoes Put yourself in your user’s shoes, visit what you make regularly and try and see what it’s like for your visitors. Watch them and what they do.
Organize the flow of people and ideas Know where you want to lead people and offer clear pathways to help them find the goals.
Create a “Weenie” Like a hotdog on a stick, draw people on by offering clear visual attractions.
Communicate with visual literacy Use the basics of form, colour, typography, etc. to get your message across clearly.
Avoid overload Don’t confuse users by pulling them in too many directions at once.
Tell one story at a time Think in stories, and make sure you’re only telling one at a time. A well-told story has far more impact than an info-dump.
Avoid contradiction Be consistent in each experience you design, create a little world which is believable.
An ounce of treatment, a tonne of treat Sometimes users will have to work their way through the experience. Offer them a treat at the end, a reward which makes the work worth it and leaves them feeling good about it.
Maintain it Peeling paint gives a feeling of dysfunction. Spend time on upkeep: fix broken links, update content, remove or update outdated info.
Listening to Marty Sklar explain these made me think that there’s one commandment missing. When you hear his voice, it’s clear that he likes the people who visit Disney parks—“guests” in Disney-speak—and really wants to give them an enjoyable visit. Sometimes we interface designers develop an arrogant attitude, and look down on users who are too stupid to understand our genius. “The button’s right there you fool!” We need to remember that we’re trying to help people navigate through complicated functions and information. I’d add “Learn to like your users” between commandment 1 and 2.
The most enthusiastic, positive, funny web-guy I know was interviewed at RailsConf about the being a designer who can write code, and “touching the magic wand”, which isn’t nearly as pornographic as it sounds. Have a listen.
And this is me showing off my new Flip camcorder to Ryan, and his silly little dance, complete with my belly chuckle wobbles.
Discouraging Design Decay
If you’ve ever designed a site which someone else will be maintaining, you know design decay: the little tasteless changes that slowly but surely turn your masterpiece into a piece of trash. Jina Bolton’s written a good guide to laying down the law with a style guide, and pushing back the forces of entropy as long as possible.
My two cents: Jina’s right in everything, except the choice she offers at the end: print or HTML. Don’t make the mistake of creating a printed or PDF styleguide. If you’re working on a project that’s really big enough to need a detailed styleguide, then the odds are that your guide will land in 20 different pairs of hands—various client departments, various content providers, and different agencies working for your client. I’ve seen this happen more than once. By the time they all have a copy, you’ll have changed it, and the annoying distribution cycle begins again. Make your styleguide in HTML, so there’s only one copy, and changes are instantly visible to all. If someone insists on hanging it on their wall, they can print it themselves. For extra credit: make your styleguide a living example of the rules it explains.
Skip the Shop
This just popped up in my reader: “Why We Skip Photoshop” from the 37signals blog, where Jason lays out 7 good reasons to skip Photoshop and jump right into HTML & CSS. I’ve been having quite a few talks with people in my company about this lately, so it’s pretty timely for me.
There’s already a pretty lively conversation going on over there, and I ‘m hoping someone from 37 answers Jeff Croft’s questions, especially:
Is it possible that your no-Photoshop workflow has actually influenced your design style?
I think that’s a big “yes”, but either way, even though I’m a glorified Photoshop-jockey, I’m eager to try skip the Photoshop phase in a project and see what happens. Update: Jeff’s written his own response over at the Blue Flavour blog.
Last Thursday I stood up with Leisa Reichelt in front of at least 100 (could’ve been more, didn’t have time to count) intelligent people (an assumption I know, but I’m an optimist) at the next08 conference and we told them what we think. As my first ever conference speaking experience it was faintly terrifying, but more than that it was enjoyable and exhilirating, and even better, I learned a few things from it. If you’re also just starting out with public speaking, I’ve got a few recommendations which might be useful.
[Update] Although this article has little to do with the content of our presentation, you might want to have a look at the video of our song & dance below.
Tip: organise your thoughts and hack your slides together by the night before the presentation. Start the day confident that you’re on top of your subject and that you’ve got a flow which works, and you’ll avoid plenty of unnecessary stress.
Am I Smart?
In the seven years I’ve been an art director at Sinnerschrader, I’ve presented to potential and existing clients countless times, usually with large sums of money hanging in the balance. When doing this I rarely sweat or twitch or stumble over words.
Just thinking about our next08 presentation beforehand made me sweaty and twitchy, and when our talk started, I had to hold my microphone with both hands to keep my shaky hand from dropping it.
At first I didn’t understand this at all. The only clear difference was the size of the crowd and lack of financial pressure, both of which didn’t bother me at all, but I couldn’t figure out what did. Leisa has much more speaking experience than I do so I asked her. “The only thing you’re afraid of is that you might be stupid.” she said. I realised that I’m used to presenting things at arm’s length, essentially asking the audience questions like “is my company smart?” or “is the work our team’s done smart?” At next08 I talked about my own opinions, ideas and passions, so for the first time I was asking a far more personal question: “am I smart?” The answer has a far more personal impact.
Tip: rest assured that if you’ve got ideas that excite you, and somebody’s invited you to present them, you’re smart enough. No matter what you do there will be a few folks who’ll get up and leave before you’re done. Forget them. Focus on your own passion, and bring it across in your talk, and there will also be a huddle of folks waiting to chat with you afterwards. Which leads to…
Find the Fan
Our talk began with technical problems, so when we started we were 10 minutes behind schedule and off balance. Anything we’d sworn to remember to say we’d forgotten, and any feeling of security our rehearsal might have brought was washed away under the adrenaline wave. After we’d gotten relatively smoothly through our introduction and I spit out the first real point I wanted to make, a guy in the first row smiled, nodded, and nudged the guy next to him. And I thought to myself, “hey, this is going to go okay.”
Tip: once you get to the meat of your presentation, scan the crowd for nods and smiles. Those are your fans. Focus on them as you talk, especially if you stumble — their reactions will keep you confident. Plan B: brief a friend or colleague in the crowd to play fan, just in case. For extra credit: seek out the fans afterwards and have a chat. They’ll springboard you to new thoughts and you’ll end the day with ideas for your next talk.
Don’t Mess With the Wires
An important part of Leisa’s presentation was to demo the Silverback alpha, which was installed on her laptop. I’d massaged our Keynote slides on my laptop. We decided we’d switch the projector’s cable from hers to mine in the middle of everything, and then switch back, instead of simply copying everything to her machine. Don’t ask me why. I don’t know either. Although why the techie helpers insisted that wouldn’t work is still a mystery to me, it was also somewhat silly of us to even want to try it, and we lost those 10 minutes at the start because of it.
Tip: never assume you can do anything complicated with your technology. Instead, remove as many technology dependent variables as you can. If you must do something tricky, test it before you start with the actual setup you’ll be using.
More?
As a result of our talk, I’ve been invited to submit to another conference, so I’ll be thinking quite a bit about how to present better. Have you ever spoken at a conference? Do you remember your first presentation well enough to know what you’ve learned since then? Help me and all the other n00bs out, and leave your tips in the comments.
[Update: Removed the ugly, bloated video embed from exxplain and uploaded our talk at Vimeo.]
I’ve read Andy Rutledge’s blog as long as it’s been around, and his articles have never failed to be opinionated, structured, intelligent and useful. Now he’s got a podcast called The Design View Show and I can wholeheartedly recommend it for designers, but also clients, project managers, and anyone else who needs to understand, communicate, sell and judge design. He started with a bang in his first show by making it clear that the design profession has been stolen from designers, and we let it happen. Get it in your ears and learn something. And if you’re into the show, you’ll love his blog too.
Andy Rutledge, designer and author of the beautifully minimal blog “Design View” manages to elegantly turn the typical list of agency bitcheries about their clients into a list of valuable advice for clients when dealing with agencies. His post “Don’t Walk; Run.” recommends that clients refuse to work with agencies that are willing to do work for spec (freebies), who are unwilling to spend time getting to know their clients and their business, and who keep their designers too far away from their clients. If all clients would take Andy’s words to heart, they’d not only get better work from their agencies, but we designers would also be having much more fun on the job.
Haven’t written much in a while, and today won’t really help. Just noticed a quote which brought a smile to my face and Thursday’s show and tell day!
Content is supposed to be king in the royal order of what makes or breaks online endeavors (for those who care executive management is the queen while design and development are the bratty step children who never, ever, get along and are always being talked about in the tabloids) but we don’t really talk about it.
When I grow up (and leave the days of being a bratty step child behind me), I want to write as good as Greg over at Airbag.
For the last two and a half weeks, I’ve worked an average of 12 hours a day (including weekends), attended hours of brainstormings and meetings, made a large stack of sketches, produced around 25 screens, spent over 12 hours travelling and made two presentations for the CEO of a large firm. And I haven’t earned my company a cent.
Where I now work, there’s always been a pretty wide gap between development and design. When I started 5 years ago, the design department was a black box into which (once the consultants and developers had a budget, timeline and technical concept mapped out for a project) a briefing would be inserted and after a couple weeks the designers would deliver a stack of screens. We’ve changed a lot in our company, and today it works the other way around: consultants and designers develop a concept and screens, and once they’re done the developers turn them into functional web pages. Designers never write HTML or CSS, and developers are never asked for layout ideas. There’s even a four meter wide physical chasm in our office which seperates design from development.
