Screen Time

A cautionary tale of iPad ownership from my friend Sean Brennan.

Reposted from Facebook.

The Importance of Honest Feedback

or Why I Don't Like Hearing "It Looks Fine"

Taking critiques well is a learned art. In grade-school we learn that red pen marks are bad. Over time these, bad marks tend to start eliciting a visceral reaction to suggestions for improvement.  Our goal became the perfect paper with no marks and a big A+.

However, in the real world, there is no such thing as perfection.  This is particularly true of web design, where the work is subjective and the process sometimes messy. The question is not, "Is the design perfect?" but rather, "Did I correctly interpret what you wanted?" My goal when soliciting feedback from a client is not to hear "It looks fine," but to hear in what aspect it might be changed, tweaked, and/or improved to better support the goals of the web presence. I hope for a big fat red pen list of suggestions because I know the final result will be better for having spent that extra time refining a design.

So, take your best shot - I'll jump at the chance to make your site look even more fabulous.

Room to Think - Coworking in Richland, WA

Yesterday confirmed my feelings that coworking in the Tri-Cities is a fantastic idea. For a little while now, the core group of Room to Think has been the same people, and I haven't seen much interest from new people. I was fairly certain though that tons of untapped freelancers remained out there somewhere. To broaden our group, I decided to start a few new avenues of outreach. I started a meetup group, and got direct with asking specific people to join us. Something worked, because we had a new coworker join us who seemed to be as excited about coworking as I am. +Travis Person just moved back from California and was able to share perspective on a cool space in the south bay. He must have dug our vibe cause he's RSVPed for Tuesday's meetup.

For the time being, the Richland Public Library will suit, but I can't help be excited and dream about moving into our own rockin' space. For now, Room to Think has a pretty heavy web technology bent, but our idea is to include tech and creatives of all types. If you know anyone working out of a coffeeshop or a home, please pass along my invitation to join us!

Changing Perspective

Every so often, even the most creative folks can fall into a rut. By doing so, we box ourselves into a mental space that limits the way we view our work. How do we deal with this?

Let's Get Physical

When I was a kid, I used to turn myself upside down on the sofa and imagine I could walk on the ceiling. Looking around the room showed me all sorts of things in a different light. Even the dust motes in the sunlight sparkled a little differently. Whether it's flipping around like a kid or standing on a desk Dead Poet's style, shifting your physical person is a really effective way of seeing things anew.

Are You Mental?

Changing your perspective in a physical sense is only one way to bust out. Although completely changing your mental perspective may be unrealistic, it's possible to at least get a glimpse of the limits we impose on ourselves simply by being who we are. Take a good look at the next person you pass on the street or in a store and imagine yourself as that person (yep, with THAT look on your face and in THOSE pants). Carrying someone else's happiness or cares for just a few short moments can bring amazing insight into what the heck is weighing down your own creative inclinations. For instance, what type of person did you imagine when you thought about the pants and face combination above?

Choose Your Own Adventure

Here are a few thoughts for when the humdrums come knocking at your design door.

• Chase down the ice-cream truck next time it rolls by.
• Ride the bus around a single circuit.
• Leave your t-shirt on backwards next time it goes on wrong.
• Buy that weird vegetable at the grocery store and figure out what to do with it.
• Write a blog post starting with the first-person plural narrative mode, then follow it with first-person view, then flip in a little second-person narrative.

Shaking it up with some little things can shift your perspective just enough to get out of that rut. If not, hopefully you at least got a quick break and had a little fun in the interim.

PS - If you're the type that never comments on a blog, this might be a good time to give it a try.

Better...stronger...faster.

A while back I got a call about making some minor changes to an existing site. Projects like this help to fill in the blanks between the larger jobs, and I'm fine with helping folks out on stuff I didn't personally create.  However, when I dug in to the bones of the site, I found some incredibly strange code. It was messy, chock full of errors, and oh so very very slow. It was apparently built in a proprietary content management system (CMS) owned by Intuit.  I suppose it makes sense that a company famed for tax software wouldn't necessarily do a great job at web site building tools.

There are many moments when a web developer needs to put things into layman's terms.  We don't always do a great job of it, and sometimes we rely on dumb analogies, “We can rebuild it. We have the technology. We can make it better than it was. Better...stronger...faster.” Thankfully, it doesn't cost six million dollars to take out all the bum parts of a web site and retrofit it, Steve Austin style.