- IT's recovering complexaholics
- “We in IT are addicted to complexity. And our addiction to the complex, the expensive and the clunky is increasingly indulged at our own peril. That’s because business people have discovered that consumer IT is better than corporate IT. It has more features and is more responsive, easier to use, faster to install and a whole lot cheaper to operate.”
- Chef David Chang on staying simple
- “Chang opened Momofuku Noodle Bar in 2004 after having an epiphany: ‘Why can’t I cook something simple? I’m not an awesome cook—I just want to make noodles.’ MacFarquhar writes, ‘The idea of Noodle Bar from the start was to take the humblest meal—a bowl of noodles, a pork bun—and, with a combination of obsessive devotion and four-star technique, turn it into something amazing.’” [via JK]
- The origin of the iChat UI
- “The original 1997 sketch I made of a chat user interface based on speech balloons.”
- People who are sleep deprived have no sense of their limitations
- “For the millions of people who don’t get enough sleep because their commute to work is too long, or they spend too many hours at work, or they just want this lifestyle of go, go, go, it’s convenient to say, ‘I’ve learned to live without sleep.’ But you bring ‘em into the laboratory – and we have an open challenge to any CEO or anyone in the world, come into the laboratory – we don’t see this adaptation.”
- How caricaturists draw the candidates
- “Every four years presidential candidates are given satiric makeovers and in this spirit I asked four caricaturist/illustrators to describe the most critical feature needed to achieve the likenesses of John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and whether or not a single pose best defines the candidate.”
- Book on graphic design in movies
- “Uncredited is the first book to offer a general and historic insight into the role played by graphic design in films, from the dawn of cinema to the present day. It presents a critical analysis of the opening title sequences, thus throwing a light on the typographic work and composition of anonymous designers or of those rarely accredited. This book includes over 1,000 films and over 300 sequences of opening titles, from more than 150 creators.” [tx Matt]
- Logos can make you 'Think Different'
- “Each of us is exposed to thousands of brand images every day, most of which are not related to paid advertising. We assume that incidental brand exposures do not affect us, but our work demonstrates that even fleeting glimpses of logos can affect us quite dramatically.”
- Top 5 reasons why “the customer is always right” is wrong
- “1: It makes employees unhappy. 2: It gives abrasive customers an unfair advantage. 3: Some customers are bad for business. 4: It results in worse customer service. 5: Some customers are just plain wrong.”
- MP3: Jim Coudal at SxSW
- A talk about where creativity comes from from our officemate.
- Down for everyone or just me?
- Is [insert site here] down for everyone or just you? Find out here.
David Andersen
on 21 Mar 08“We in IT are addicted to complexity”
I’m not going to say that many IT folks aren’t addicted to complexity because they definitely are, but surprise, surprise, the business folks are also addicted to complexity.
Ever sit through a requirements gather session with business users? They typically want a slew of custom modifications and they aren’t terribly concerned with the cost-benefit tradeoffs. Business users tend to be just as concerned with trying to perfectly model their operations in the software even though the marginal cost far exceeds the marginal benefit. IT certainly tends to feed into this because – more often than not – we can make the software do just about anything with enough time and money.
Ever try to implement their data security requirements in an application? More often than not a ridiculously complex web of exceptions based on innumerable conditions that change frequently often as a result of the umpteenth re-org of reporting relationships.
Business is rarely a proponent of simplicity in my experience (though some are learning). Everyone involved needs to refocus.
Joga Luce
on 21 Mar 08The complexity and sleep articles i think are intricately related.
“We in IT are addicted to complexity. And our addiction to the complex, the expensive and the clunky is increasingly indulged at our own peril. ” + “people who are chronically sleep deprived, like people who’ve had too much to drink, often have no sense of their limitations.”
Joe
on 21 Mar 08Is http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/ down for everyone or just me? Not joking.
Alanis Morrissette
on 21 Mar 08I too just tried to access http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/ and got a “Temporarily Unavailable” message. Isn’t it ironic?
Ed Knittel
on 21 Mar 08http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/ is very slow but not down. It must be you.
Metatone
on 21 Mar 08The frustrating thing about the sleep article is that I can agree with all of it, but it’s missing completely the vital information:
how much sleep do you need to make up for not having slept enough and how do you actually get it? After all, even on holiday with no reason to get up, I still wake up after about 7-8 hours… so is “catching up” even possible?
August
on 21 Mar 08I don’t know how much credit I’d want to take for the iChat UI. I only use the app for video chat, and wouldn’t use it at all if I could get my iSight to work with Adium. There’s two reasons I don’t use it: 1) I have more contacts on MSN than on all other protocols combined, and 2) it’s ugly as sin and doesn’t allow me to customize it to any serious degree as compensation.
Anonymous Coward
on 21 Mar 08comment test
Grant
on 21 Mar 08@Joe – it’s not just you
Cody
on 21 Mar 08How do you guys stay motivated working at home? I’ve hit a wall. My productivity is lost…
I’m a student, I’m a gamer, I work at home. All in the same room, all at the same desk. Boundaries are hard to see. When I still go into the office (which is rare) I have no problem pulling 8 hours. But at home, I have trouble working straight for even 2 hours.
Any tips or recommendations?
Brian Moschel
on 21 Mar 08Damn, I was so excited to make a “Is ‘Down for Everyone’ Down for everyone, or is it just me” comment, then I saw 3 other people beat me to the punch.
Kevin
on 22 Mar 08At the risk of being labeled a smartass – are folks in IT really recovering from an addition to complexahol, or are we displaying a far too common misunderstanding of suffixes? I’m guilty of an addiction to workahol myself.
Once this frequent blunder was pointed out to me I found I couldn’t let it pass without bringing it to the attention of others. Let’s all come together to cure this terrible abuse of a suffix once and for all.
Kevin
on 22 Mar 08Damn, here I am pointing out grammatical errors and I screw up the spelling of “addiction”. Sorry.
Alex
on 25 Mar 08I call BS on that “subliminal Apple logo” study; as far as I know, there’s been no evidence that flashing subliminal images or messages has any effect on anyone, despite many experiments over the years looking into it. I don’t know what the researchers got wrong, but I’m sure there’s some basic error there – maybe just some statistical randomness being given too much meaning.
This discussion is closed.