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The Senz aerodynamic umbrella turns itself to the best position in the wind and won a red dot award for its novel design. Even the shaft was rethought and redesigned (it’s oval, not cylindrical or square). I love reinventions of every day objects that are long taken for granted.
And not that an umbrella matters in a hurricane, but…
Once again I’ll be speaking and giving a three-hour workshop at Future of Web Design in NYC this November 3-4. The workshops especially are a lot of fun.
What would you like to hear me talk about? Please post your ideas here or email ryan at you-know-where dot com.
I’d love to see you in New York, and especially hear your questions and ideas.
The #1 piece of advice you hear from frequent travellers: Pack light. Lay out everything you think you need. Then put away half:
You see that pile of stuff sitting on your bed, waiting to be stuffed into your suitcase? Take half of that stuff and put it back in your closet. Seriously. I know you think you’ve already narrowed your pile down from what you really want to bring. I know you don’t see how you’ll ever survive for weeks/months/years on that meager selection. But you will, I promise. And you’ll thank me when you’re dragging/carrying an already heavy suitcase/backpack down a 500-year-old cobblestone road. If you don’t ditch the stuff now, you’ll ditch it on the road. Trust us: unlike most scenarios in life, having too little is far, far better than having too much.
It’s pretty good advice for how many features you “pack” into a product too. Lay out everything you think your product needs and then cut out half.
You’ll be liberated:
1) You don’t have to spend as much upfront.
2) You don’t have as much weight to carry.
3) In truth, you won’t actually need a lot of the things you fantasize you’ll need.
4) You can pick up whatever you didn’t include when you get there.
5) You have extra room for future additions.
“Proper Trip Preparation” offers similar advice:
Remember and repeat these words: PACK LIGHT. PACK LIGHT, PACK LIGHT. A good rule of thumb is to pack half of what you need, then take half of that out of the bag. Face it, do you really want to be schlepping around a three suitcases on the train or dragging them up five floors of narrow stairs in Amsterdam?
Keep your product light and it will have a lot better chance of chasing down that train about to leave the station.
Related: Getting Real: Half, Not Half-Assed
Vinnie Cilurzo is regarded as one of the most innovative microbrewers in the country. He explains why he’s happy keeping his brews local:
Right now your beers are mainly available on the West Coast. How important is it to you to go national?
Not at all. We expanded three months ago into this new brewery space, so now we’re brewing in both our brewpub and in this brewery. And we started bottling Pliny the Elder, which until six weeks ago we had never done before. It had only been available on draft. We could be [widely available] like Stone or Lagunitas, and I get calls from distributors all the time from all over the country. But we do this more for the lifestyle, my wife and I, and same with our employees. I can ride my bike to work. I live one to two miles from either brewery. I fill my gas tank once a week. I think you can get caught up way too much in growth. We don’t have any growth goals.
[thanks MA]
{via Coudal}
If you have a problem with someone on your team, have the conversation in private: IM, one-on-one email, face-to-face meeting, etc.
But if you want to praise someone, do it in public so others can see it too: via a Basecamp/Backpack message, in your group’s Campfire chat room, in a blog post, an email that CC’s others, etc.
It’s a modern way to apply the advice Dale Carnegie gives in “Be a Leader: How to Change People Without Giving Offense or Arousing Resentment”:
Call attention to people’s mistakes indirectly…Let the other person save face…Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement. Be “hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise.”
Related: A transaction makes a customer [SvN] discusses Carnegie’s suggestion that if you want to make someone your friend, you should ask them to do something for you.
Anthropologie
Interesting “walkthrough” metaphor at Anthropologie. You navigate through a room where everything’s for sale.
Threadless
Threadless adds some personality to the typically boring shopping-cart pattern.
Sad cart.
Happy cart.
New York University is looking for a Programmer/Analyst – Interface Designer in New York, NY.
OpenCongress.org is looking for a Rails + MediaWiki Programmer located anywhere.
ActiveRain is looking for a Rails Magician in Seattle, WA.
NY Times is looking for a Ruby on Rails Developer in New York, NY.
Connected Ventures is looking for a PHP / MySQL Developer in New York, NY.
The Chronicle of Higher Education is looking for a Web Developer (LAMP) in Washington, DC.
Crispin Porter and Bogusky is looking for an Interactive Developer (Flash) in Miami, FL or Boulder, CO.
TheLadders.com is looking for a Software Engineer in New York, NY.
The George Washington University Department of Health Policy is looking for a Web Communications Specialist (Research Associate) located in Washington, DC.
Redpoint Technologies is looking for an Adobe Flex Senior Software Engineer in Chicago, IL.
Check out all the Programming Jobs currently available on the Job Board.
Songbird is looking for a Visual Designer in San Francisco, CA.
eBay/Kijiji is looking for a Head of User Experience in San Jose, CA.
Wall Street On Demand is looking for an Interface Designer in New York, NY.
TechSmith Corporation is looking for a User Experience Designer in Okemos, MI.
Crate and Barrel is looking for a Senior Internet Art Director in Northbrook, IL.
Abcam is looking for a Web Designer in Cambridge, UK.
Interactive Factory is looking for a Front-End Web Developer in Boston, MA.
PARTNERS+simons is looking for an Information Architect/User Experience in Boston, MA.
Zepinvest is looking for an Web Designer and UI specialist in New York, NY.
Check out all the Design Jobs currently available on the Job Board.
The Job Board is flush with great programmer and designer jobs all over the country (and the world). The Gig Board is the place to find contract jobs.
Photos of Mike Rohde’s sketchnotes captured from Jason Fried’s talk at Discovery World, Milwaukee, WI on September 24, 2008. This talk was sponsored by Milwaukee Area Technical College. View the archived live video from the event.
Special thanks to Vicky Hennegan (MATC teacher and proprietor of Remarkable Parents) for making this event happen, Melissa Pierce (Life in Perpetual Beta Movie for keeping me company there and back, and to Matt (last name unknown) for his nighttime camera work for Melissa’s interview.
Related: Links to more of Mike Rohde’s sketchnotes from 37signals events.
Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog:
Basecamp
[Case Study] UK-India development team keeps the beat with Basecamp
“We can all communicate in an efficient way and if we need to discuss or share something about a project, it goes on Basecamp. No longer are we searching our Inbox for Photoshop designs, snippets of source code or finding out what happened to a task. We all simply log onto Basecamp and there is everything we need, in one place. It’s that simple.”
Just updated Project Recon lets Windows users bring Basecamp projects and to-dos to the desktop
Project Recon, which gives Windows users browserless access to Basecamp projects and time, just released a major update with a completely redesigned interface (inspired by the iPhone).
Backpack
Backpack reminders can help you quit smoking
“What the World’s Healthiest Guys Know” [Men’s Health] talks about quitting smoking. The magazine’s hot tip? Use Backpack to send yourself daily text messages encouraging quitting. A study showed that reminders like that double your chances of success.
Tips on using Backpack for travel planning
“With Backpack, I can create a page far in advance to capture the basics of the trip. I was recently at a conference in Copenhagen for example where I had registered about 6 months in advance. I created the page, forwarded my registration confirmation to it, and the info was there waiting for me to polish off the details later on when the event was closer.”
Getting Real
Getting Real helps teachers too
“many Getting Real ideas are well suited for teaching, e.g. ‘Test in the wild.’ As a teacher, you can have a million great ideas and approaches to teaching. Many teachers try to work out perfect solutions spending a lot of time BEFORE the first run. If it turns out that the idea does not work well, this time is wasted. Instead, I’m trying to do a “rough version one” and if it looks promising I do “iterative cycles” polishing the procedure.”
