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Go for the writing, stay for the experience
I largely agree with Marco Arment’s article about advertising in digital magazines. His response has one little problem for me, though.
The total of something like the New Yorker is much greater than the sum of its parts. Cutting cartoons, illustrations, or sections you don’t read might not seem like giving up much (and to be fair he admits that’s stuff he doesn’t read), but those touches are why we come back every week. It would be a shame to lose them.
I wonder how he’d feel if Apple products came in plain cardboard boxes? Surely the objects within and their utility would be unchanged, but I think we can all agree we’d be missing something special and important.
Why Software Development Is a Good Skill
- September 28th, 2011
- send to twitter
- found in philosophy+ideas
- tagged with
Today in the elevator I overheard a conversation between two guys who work at the start-up we share space with. One of them was talking about how his daughter is a PoliSci major but is learning some basic HTML, to which the other guy replied something along the lines of “that’s a great skill to have if you want a huge salary later.”
Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he didn’t really mean a huge salary, but was using it as a stand-in for “a good job.” But even that is really underselling the value of understanding some basic programming.
Being able to write enough code to get something online means that you can create something independently. Whether it’s making something you can sell, a service you can provide, or simply just in expressing yourself by making a platform for your ideas, knowing some code is equivalent to independent publishing. Cheesy example, but it’s like having your own printing-press in pre-internet days.
There are services that offer ready-made solutions for these needs but you’re back to relying on someone. I’m by no means a developer, but teaching myself mark-up because I wanted to build myself a portfolio was one of the best things I’ve ever done. I always say that if you can make something yourself, you’ll never be out of work.
Linking in Apps
- July 26th, 2011
- send to twitter
- found in tech and gadgets,
user experience and interface design,
web and apps - tagged with
app, magazine
I don’t intend to use this post to make a case for either side in the imaginary debate between web vs. apps, but one point in The Case Against Apps (and for the Web) deserves addressing:
As a web enthusiast, the lack of URLs for apps and the information they contain is my biggest complaint against the app marketplace.
Suppose I read the center article in the “timeline” interface … and then wanted to share it with a friend or among my social network. There is really no good way to do so; the article itself doesn’t have a specific address of its own, nor does the issue as a whole.
While this point is absolutely true, the author’s “biggest complaint” against apps is a straw man. This is true of many current apps, but not a requirement of apps. This problem could be addressed in any number of ways, such as simply mapping app articles to their online equivalent. It is my understanding that this is how The Daily works.
You probably have experience with this frustrating work-around:
Being the savvy and resourceful web user that I am, I went to WIRED.com, found the article I liked, and sent a link to that URL—the web version—to my friend. Just a second or two later, after clicking “Send,” I thought, Why didn’t I just start here in the first place?
There’s no need to throw away the app model just because their publishers haven’t addressed this problem. Let’s hope they do soon.
Lessons learned
So, minor freak-out today when I saw that The New Minimum had been posted on siteInspire (of course it was right as a client project’s launch was hitting TechCrunch and Engadget). I generally prefer to stay behind the scenes so this was a good learning experience in having your work in the public eye (or in front of a firing squad depending on your perspective).
Never develop live, never publish things you don’t love
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TNM doesn’t get tons of visitors and I usually work on it late at night. Thus, I build right on the live site. I learned that this is a huge mistake as pageviews started ticking up and there were tons of things that were still not working quite right from the work I was doing last week. Learn Git, develop locally, hold-off on new features — whatever.
Also, I’ve recently been of the mind that launching and improving is far better than delaying or not launching at all. Well, today I learned to never go live with something you don’t absolutely love because you’ll “fix it later” or because time necessitates it. I learned this the hard way, as the worst the site has ever looked is how it was captured on siteInspire and saved for posterity. I sure as hell came home and made some of those fixes.
Comments still suck
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Hater’s gonna hate — what can you do? I take design criticism all day so I thought I could handle it, but something about online comments are especially slimy. Dealing with the trolls is just part of the game (you know who you are).
That said, if it’s in ALL CAPS you can probably safely ignore it.
Coincidentally, I had the following conversation with the proprietor of siteInspire about a month ago (we don’t know eachother otherwise and I didn’t solicit him to feature my site):
Design for yourself sometimes
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Every day I design things with tons of limitations — some good, some completely arbitrary, some bad — imposed on me by clients, users, colleagues, convention, etc. Sometimes you need to design things for yourself to stay happy, to stay motivated, to exercise the creative muscle. If you can’t do that on your own blog, where can you? So just let it rip.
Yeah, the site is wide and tall but I really don’t think scrolling is hard or new.
Know your limits
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I’m not a developer. I don’t get paid to work on TNM. I don’t have the coding chops to build things 100% the way I want. I don’t have time to write and design things exactly how I’d like. Since nobody else is going to cut you any slack, cut yourself some.
Take compliments graciously
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I admire the sites on siteInspire and the curator’s discerning eye. I visit daily and it’s an absolute honor to be featured among such talented folks. It’s also been a good learning experience. So, thank you siteInspire!
Announcing: Lunch & Dinner
- June 27th, 2011
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- found in recent work
- tagged with
Have you ever been in the shower in the morning thinking of all the things you want to do during the day and you get so eager to start that you wish you could skip drying off and dressing and just reappear clothed and already at work? (Or is it just me that gets that?) Picking something to wear is one extra creative decision too many, and that’s why we own solid color Ts. And of course you can never go wrong with black, white, and the shades between. Timeless, dresses up/down, no graphics because you believe in less, reasonable price because you know better.
The only three Ts you ever need.
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Lunch & Dinner
Where do you send feedback to Conde Nast?
- May 9th, 2011
- send to twitter
- found in rants/ raves,
web and apps - tagged with
app, ios, ipad, new-yorker
Who is responsible for this interaction and how can I yell at Conde Nast for allowing it?
Readers want to share content, and conveniently, this is in the best interest of publications looking to increase their circulation. So why make it such a horrible experience? Opening a new email with pre-filled content (subject line, body with text and a link) within the current application is a default interaction provided for in iOS. The current interaction is to show an alert and then force the user out of the application — failure.
I hope there’s a technology reason for this decision because anything else is inexcusable.
There are no emergencies in the design profession
It’s easy to blame clients but we do it to ourselves. We commit to unhealthy deadlines — for the work, for us — because we’ve set this precedent. We answer emails at night or on the weekend, or immediately after receiving them, and it sets an expectation that this is OK. Worse, nine out of 10 of the deadlines we commit to are completely artificial.
Think about it the next time you say ‘yes’ when you want to say ‘no’.