Inspired by Firefox Myths:

Earlier this year, I dropped an interesting quote to my friend Mark, who ran with it and blogged this: What not to do next.

Yesterday I wrote a post entitled “The evil in design”. It’s a title that came to me whilst writing the post, because at the crux of our client’s email was a simple question. I could have replied straight away with the answer, but instead I gave some thought to the various consequences of answering in particular ways. I considered the various paths of development this particular requirement might take and started formulating a complicated reply. Such a reply, if sent, might have turned our client away from us, or led to more discussions. Neither would have been good for us or our client, because now was not the time to talk about these issues.

As Paul Arden recommends, “Give [the client] what he wants and he may well give you what you want”. So this is why I replied the way I did.

This all comes down to distraction, which, according to Mark is “one of Satan’s chief tactics”. Now, I’m not about to go off on a religious tangent. This is not what I do – especially here – but, let’s for a moment consider that all distractions are bad news. This idea backs up the tenets of Getting Things Done – don’t worry about what you have to do later, n steps down the road. Just deal with what needs to be done now, because there is always one next step. And there’s always only one next step. Ruminating on things doesn’t get you anywhere (least of all historical things) and your time is finite. Distractions provide the illusion that there are multiple next steps, multiple things to do. But you can always only do one thing at one time. Choosing to do one particular thing and choosing it quickly kills distraction.

Now, let’s try the converse: assume that everything bad is a distraction. Does this assumption work? Well, certainly I think it’s easier to be good than bad, or rather being good is no more difficult than being bad. Don’t believe me? Look around the world: consider the amount of effort, resources and expenditure it takes to do bad things. Why aren’t the people involved doing good instead? Because they are distracted – they are under the illusion that it’s an easier way of living or getting what they want, but it’s not. This applies equally well to governments as it does to individuals.

So, play nice and be good. It’s easy and you’ll feel better for it.

Somebody needs a hug: Firefox Myths

More on the reason for this in a later post.

I’ll admit it: I’m crap at paying credit card bills on time. Years ago, all you got was a slap on the wrist and some extra interest. Now, if you’re a day late you get hit with a £20 fine, on top of interest.

To get around this, I thought I’d set up an entry in kGTD to remind me to pay. Sure enough, all went well for a couple of months, but not today. Because payment dates for my credit cards gradually become earlier, at the rate of around 1 day per month.

No more! I cried. It’s a despicable practice. So today I’ve set up standing orders for my credit cards, putting money into the accounts every 14 days. Thereby removing the possibility of late payment fees regardless of when the payment dates fall.

Recently, Media Guardian noted that Palmer Watson had won the contract to redesign the Manchester Evening News. Intrigued by a design company that specialises in newspaper design, I visited their website.

It’s undeniable that they turn out good designs. Designing newspapers is a niche capability because aside from the rules of design, one has to supply templates and components that others use to produce new material every day. However, I realised that I don’t like any of them. Obviously design must not get in the way of the content and it has to appeal to target readership.

I wondered whether there is a place for truly innovative design in newspapers. I don’t mean outrageous or avant-garde, but something a bit different, taking leads from ideas in magazines, or indeed stylish websites and blogs.

I might revisit this issue, but not today, because I read this critique on on-line newspapers. I couldn’t agree more. Online newspapers can’t decide whether they are content providers, advertisers or portals. Usually they’re confused and messy. Content is difficult to find and searching is a nightmare. Really basic design principles seem to be ignored. But it shouldn’t be a problem: when designing the on-line version of a newspaper bring in some of the people who produce (and design) the printed version, but let the web designers lead. Maybe the managers of newspapers are naive and don’t demand or expect a level of quality, or maybe everything is done in-house by whoever stuck up their hand to the job. But really, should online newspapers be as bad as this?

So this might be my summer project whilst in Canada: to come up with a redesign for The Times. Because, even though it’s better than a lot of online newspapers, I still hate it.

In the middle of one night last week I woke up with a design idea. Not just a vague idea that came upon me, but something fully formed: layout, image, fonts and colours. The whole works. I scribbled the design down on a some paper I keep at my bedside.

When we design a website, we’d rather not create one that supports a business. Instead, we prefer to create one that changes that business. It’s a different emphasis that we think distinguishes ourselves from our competition.

The first important job I had after leaving university was to manage the development of a new embedded air defence system. New really meant new: hardware that still had to be invented, using microprocessors that weren’t commercially available, developing software in a language that the company had never used before, using methods that hadn’t been used. Whilst the company had extensive domain knowledge, none of my development team did. It was quite a learning process.

The company’s development standards were tied in with 1970’s techniques. I took one look at them and realised that we needed something different. For better, or worse, but probably because there was nothing else around at the time, I chose DoD 2167A standards. I know now that this little better than a documentation standard, but it proved a practicable template from which to drive our development.

I mention this little bit of history because based upon the success of this project I was invited onto a team set up to lead the company’s software process improvement programme. Our first meeting was not with anyone within the company, nor was it about software. It was about change. Change is a difficult thing to achieve in any business. Corporate and personal inertia prevents changing quickly. Conversely, changes that are quickly adopted usually fail because people have not ‘bought into’ the change or such changes are not institutionalised or internalised. Changing is not only difficult, it also takes time, will and effort.

So, why do we want to change businesses? I think this comes from two angles: one point about good designers is that they end up being partners – de-facto employees – of a business. It’s only right, therefore that we’d want to make it a success. And that success reflects upon us. My second point is that we are experienced software engineers. We know how to analyse, which means if we see opportunities for improvement, we’ll let someone know. We like to use the full range of our experiences and skills – we’d be bored stupid if we didn’t.

Recently we helped one of our clients change their process for managing credit, thereby reducing the amount of bad debt they might incur. Not bad for a web design company.

Today is Heidi Berry day at my house, that is after I got my dose of Joanna Newsom.

I just lined up all of Heidi’s albums in iTunes and pressed Play. No more thinking “this album’s going to finish soon”, whilst listening, spoiling my enjoyment. It just plays. I can drift off, do something else, listen to a song I like – anything. I’ve been using iTunes since it was first released in January 2001, but this is the first time I’ve used it to play an entire artist’s output in one go.