Corey Waldin of Internet Simplicity, a Silicon Valley web dev firm, wrote in to tell us about the firm’s “no talking time.”

We have our own “no talking time” during the afternoon where every just designs, programs, works. No talking at all (unless there’s a client meeting). We even made a little sign that goes up during this time so when people come into the office they don’t forget.

But in his review of REWORK, software developer Henrik Paul worries about taking the idea that “interruption is the enemy of productivity” too far.

If you abolish all kinds of interruptions, you would effectively seal everyone to their own small little soundproof, locked-door cell, and nobody may talk to each other directly. The piece does mention that passive communication is ok (e.g. email), while active is not (talk, meetings, phone, IM.)

The key to a successful project, in my mind, is good communication. Communication should be open, and there shouldn’t be any protocol to do that. Once you put obstacles in front of communication within your project, people will slowly just stop asking about those little “meaningless” things. It turns out, those meaningless things are often not that meaningless after all, but those nuances that take your product from merely good to excellent.

Sure, nobody likes interruptions. But I like to communicate with my collagues. Consider a good compromise. My suggestion (as if I would have any weight) is to cut unnecessary interruptions. Allow people to opt-out from interruptions, don’t interrupt people with out-of-topic things. But don’t discourage communication. That’s not a workplace I want to work at.

It’s all about striking the right balance. You don’t want to discourage necessary communication – do that and you’ve thrown out the baby with the bathwater. But you do want to move away from a de facto “tap on the shoulder” environment that constantly breaks up the workday.

Every interruption comes with a tax. There’s a slight price you’re paying. And that adds up.

Make sure what you want to discuss is worth that cost. Whatever you’re about to tell a colleague needs to be worth taking them away from what they’re doing. If it’s not, take it to an email or some other way that won’t take that person out of the zone.

A couple weeks ago I gave a talk at the MFA in Interaction Design program at the School of Visual Arts in NYC. The video for the talk and Q&A session is online now. When Liz Danzico invited me to speak at the SVA, I thought it would fit the university setting to share some theory behind our design process at 37signals.

One book that heavily influenced my approach to design is Christopher Alexander’s Notes on the Synthesis of Form. Many designers cite the book as an influence, but few really explain what it’s about or teach how to apply the ideas in everyday work. So I took the opportunity to explain the key points of the book and show how we use Alexander’s model to do design at 37signals.

Here’s the video of the talk:

Some of the screenshots are hard to see around 38:30. Check the images below if you’d like to see those screens more clearly.

Highrise history	Options behind a link	A new link to notify	Embedded notification form

The talk was followed by a Q&A session. The Q&A touches on customer feedback, design vs. evolutionary selection and trusting your intuition.

Here are some things to check out if you liked the talk.

• Notes on the Synthesis of Form – The book by Christopher Alexander.
• An Introduction to Using Patterns in Web Design – An early article I wrote on Alexander’s technique when I first ran into it in 2004.
• Domain-Driven Design by Eric Evans – Mentioned at the end of the talk.
• UI Fundamentals for Programmers – A talk I gave at WindyCityRails in Chicago.

I’d love to know if people are interested in this material. Post a comment here or write me at ryan at 37signals dot com with your thoughts.

(Note: The ideal measurement would use profit instead of revenue and payroll instead of employee headcount. But those are tougher numbers to find for obvious reasons.)

After the jump: The story behind this chart.

Sometimes convention is just inertia. Something’s done a certain way just because that’s the way everyone else is doing it. And that’s an opportunity for a business willing to go against the grain.

Example: TBS’ use of “stacks” of programs (mentioned in this article). Running blocks of the same show helps the network stand out among the hundreds of cable channels out there.

On Mondays, for example, TBS fills the three-hour prime-time block from 8 to 11 p.m. with six reruns of “Family Guy.” On Tuesdays, it repeats the pattern with “The Office.” Wednesday is Tyler Perry night, with three hours of original comedies from that producer, who has a large following among black viewers.

“We kind of fly against the convention of traditional television,” Mr. Koonin said. “We don’t program horizontally, looking for shows that flow into one another. We program vertical stacks of programs.”

Clever. Anyone who’s sat down with a DVD of Family Guy, Mad Men, or Lost knows that watching multiple episodes in a row leads to a different type of viewing experience. We’ve all got that one friend who disappears for an entire weekend when a new season of 24 comes out on DVD.

So while every other networks assumes there’s just one “right” way to program, TBS has ignored convention and reached out to a different kind of viewer. Great example of zagging when everyone else is zigging. It’s working too: TBS is the No. 1 cable channel among viewers ages 18 to 34.