The failure modes of fear of failure
August 29th, 2008The two failure modes for smart people who are afraid of confronting failure is to either consistently take on low risk/low reward tasks or high risk/high reward tasks.
The low risk/low reward route is well recognized. Smart people who are accustomed to and depend on praise will consistently perform well below their level such that they are guaranteed success. The high risk/high reward phenomena is one I have seen less talked about.
When the risk is high, failure is expected and can be safely blamed on chance circumstances and the nature of the task. In the meantime, the rare success can be trumpeted as a mark of true skill. After realizing this, cases of when this occurs become obvious. Smart people will often deliberately up the ante and multiply contingencies upon contingencies and then when they fail, the excuse is “at least I tried”.
The true mark of talent is to perform difficult things consistently and without drama.
Also featured in blogs: Figuring Shit Out, sketches
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Universal undo
August 21st, 2008Why is universal undo supported by so few text editors? When I close a file, the text editor erases my entire undo history. Being able to undo a file all the way to the very first keystroke I typed in would be a really compelling feature to me.
In fact, what I want source control to be still is a giant unified universal undo for my project. Don’t bother me with releases and versioning, just log my actions on a per keystroke level and let me revert back to the second before I fucked up.
I understand the technical challenges of implementing this and how more formal version control scales better to more complex projects but I still crave the ability to mark a folder as being under universal undo with a super lightweight mechanism.
Also featured in blogs: Developer, sketches
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Pierce Transit: What Not to Wear
August 9th, 2008<rant>
My mother had to match my clothes when I was a kid, and even then, she was only marginally successful. I would still somehow manage to slip out the door wearing nothing but a bright red T-shirt and oversized Power Rangers boxer shorts. My problem was that I loved so many things, and so many colors, that I wanted to wear all of them, all the time.
I have read of many graphic designers who mix with a color palette before making a brand. I believe the people behind Pierce Transit’s “look” were just the sort of designers. There is no problem with that, but I’m afraid that those who dressed up Tacoma, Washington’s buses did so like a 3rd grader with a low attention span.
Also featured in blogs: XYFU
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Software as a backdrop:
August 3rd, 2008We must first recognize that what a town or building is, is governed, above all, by what is happening there. [...] Those of us who are concerned with buildings tend to forget too easily that all the life and soul of a place, all of our experiences there, depend not simply on the physical environment, but on the patterns of events which we experience there.
- Christopher Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building, p62
Software is not about code, it’s about experiences. It’s about people doing things. Your software should serve as a backdrop to this, an enabler and a force multiplier. But keep in mind that software is never the center of the show.
Stop thinking about your product in terms of code, in terms of technology and features. Instead, your software is stories, it’s actions and people doing stuff. If you haven’t got people doing stuff, then you don’t actually have software, just a bunch of bytes sitting on a server. When people change the stuff they’re doing, your software has changed.
As a designer, you need to be always mindful that you’re designing spaces, it’s up to the users to inhabit them.
Also featured in blogs: Figuring Shit Out, sketches
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Not impressed with the iPhone user interaction
August 1st, 2008So I finally broke down and got an iPhone today and I have to say, so far, I’m not enormously impressed with the fit and finish of the user interface. This being my very first Apple product, I really didn’t know what were reasonable expectations but Apple has built it’s brand on producing polished, solid interfaces.
Don’t get me wrong, the interface is gorgeous and has a lot of cool tricks but there’s certain areas where the underlying lack of care shone through. The problems started from the moment after unboxing when registering for the very first time. iTunes software is required for registration but nothing was provided in the box. Downloading it was a trivial task for me but it was still an annoyance to have to download it.
Right at the *very* start of the registration process, there’s a series of relatively technical and fairly unimportant questions which really, I didn’t know what the hell I was supposed to answer and making me do that up front is just plain bad UI design. On the grand scheme of things, this is a relatively minor thing but first impressions count for a lot and, IMHO, Apple dropped the ball on this one.
Also featured in blogs: Figuring Shit Out
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