“Agile / Lean or Common Sense and Permission To Change?” is an interesting article that examines agile ideas in comparison to Ricardo Semler’s principles.
I have most recently been reading a couple of books by Ricardo Semler, who runs his company in a completely democratic way – doing away with all top down authoritarian management principles and allowing the employees to make decisions on dress, salaries, where they work, when they work, and most importantly, how they work…
It struck me how most of the things that are characterized by “lean” are just common sense principles explained in such a way that they sound like a “process” that manager types can “buy into”. But really, they work because they make sense – and people have the permission to standardize and then change their work rather than having things written down and subsequently treating these processes like they are set in stone. You can’t change them unless you go through an agonizing approval process up the management chain…
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Steve Duenes, graphics director for The Times, recently answered reader questions at the site. In one answer, he talked about striving for “daily graphic excellence” that educates readers without forcing them to skip a beat:
Our criteria for what makes a great graphic varies a little. There are things we attempt, and we hope the result will be spectacular, but we also think there’s such a thing as daily graphic excellence.
It doesn’t do us much good to produce a few splashy graphics but stumble on the smaller, routine things. If a reader can glance at a map or simple chart and quickly orient themselves or understand a statistic, and then continue reading the story without skipping a beat, it means we’ve edited and designed those graphics well.
A nice sentiment all the way around but the part that sticks out to me is the idea that good design makes it easy for people keep the beat.
That seems an especially apt metaphor for web design. By setting expectations, by offering preemptive support (e.g. explanatory text next to a form field), by being consistent, you let your visitors pursue their goals while staying in rhythm.
Some examples…
Keeping type in phase
Rhythm can come from a subtle visual thing, like keeping type in phase so it creates a rhythm up and down the page.
Type that’s in phase.
Punchy copy
Or it can be done through smart, informational text that’s short and punchy so it’s easy to comprehend at a glance. That means users can stay on their path instead of having to bail to get more info.
Quick instructive text keeps customers in flow.
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This is the seventh (and final) in a series of posts showing how we use Campfire as our virtual office. All screenshots from the series are from real usage and were taken during a single week.
To wrap up the series, we’ll take a look at some of the nuts and bolts features of Campfire (e.g. search, transcripts, guests, etc.).
Search previous chat transcripts
It’s easy to search through all of your previous chats and files.
Browse previous conversations
You can also browse transcripts to find specific conversations or files.
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Do you have a good negotiating story? Tell us about it. Leave a comment about how you got a great deal on your house, negotiated a raise, or handled some other transaction. (And feel free to stay anonymous on this one.)
Polaroid frame
A prototype for a digital picture frame that makes sure the familiar look of a Polaroid photo lives on.
Staircase bookshelf
A “secret staircase” made of English oak, lined with books left, right and center, leading to a loft bedroom.
Ice hotel
A selection of images of the Icehotel in Jukkasjärvi, Sweden.
Super Mario mushroom cupcake
This Super Mario mushroom cupcake (below right, from this photoset) looks like it could be one of our logos.
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This is the sixth in a series of posts showing how we use Campfire as our virtual office. All screenshots from the series are from real usage and were taken during a single week.
This time we’ll take a look at some of the miscellaneous ways we use Campfire to share information, communicate, and get things done.
Give a product review for a new piece of hardware
Mark links up his new printer/scanner and talks about its pros and cons.
Work the late shift
Jeremy, a night owl, commits a change at 2:30 am. Everyone else will see it when they login in the morning.
Show progress on a to-do list
Jamis shows his progress by uploading a screenshot of his “Things on my plate” list.
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John Gruber interview
“A Mix of the Technical, the Artful, the Thoughtful, and the Absurd” is an interesting interview with the Daring Fireball writer.
Here Gruber talks about how it’s a challenge to write things with lasting value:
Concentrate on writing things with lasting value. I’m not sure I’ve been doing a good job of this at all lately — I think too much of what I write currently at DF is about stuff that’s only relevant right now. I’m certain that what helped me make a name for myself, what built the DF readership, were the long pieces I did in the first few years, most of which are still relevant, or at least still interesting.
There are a lot of people writing for the web today; but there aren’t that many at all who are trying to do great writing for the web.
After a while, the style part of the equation comes naturally:
That’s hard to put into words. Early on, I had to think about my “voice”. I was conscious of my style. Now, not so much — I “just write”, and the style seems to come naturally. Part of that is that you get used to anything over time, but a bigger part is that the style changed slowly over time — I kept tweaking it until I found the perfect pitch, at which point it became something I didn’t have to think about to achieve.
Put another way: early on, I had to concentrate both on what I was saying and how was I saying it. Now I just concentrate on what I’m saying.
I also find it much easier to write now that I have a regular audience. The hardest thing for me starting out at the very beginning was trying to shake the feeling that I was writing something no one would read. It felt like delivering a speech in an empty auditorium.
Create a narrative:
For me, much of the effort in writing, especially on technical topics, is in creating a narrative. By that I mean writing a piece that reads straight through, pulling the reader along. A perfect example of this is the way John Siracusa writes his epic-length reviews of major new Mac OS X releases for Ars Technica. What makes them so substantial, and so good, is that he crafts them into a narrative. Most reviews of something like Leopard read like bullet lists — a list of features and what the reviewer thinks about them.
What graphic design is to a visual idea, writing is to a verbal idea. My goal is to craft my writing in such a way that makes it as easy and obvious as possible for the reader to “get” exactly what it is I’m hoping they get.
On finding the truth of a thing:
One of my favorite quotes of all time, probably my very favorite, is this one from Stanley Kubrick: “Sometimes the truth of a thing is not so much in the think of it, as in the feel of it.” A lot of times when I’m reviewing something, what I’m trying to do is capture the feel of it, rather than the think of it.
It’s never the right time to start:
It would seem like a missed opportunity never to write a book. Most novels are just dreadful; I don’t know if I could do a good one, but I know I could do better than most. But it never seems like the right time to start. I just stumbled across an apt quote from Emerson last week: “We postpone our literary work until we have more ripeness and skill to write, and we one day discover that our literary talent was a youthful effervescence which we have now lost.”
Paul Graham on “The Art of the Essay”
In that interview, Gruber references this Paul Graham essay which is full of meaty thinking on writing.
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Virtual Gallery of Origamic Architecture features 3-D pop-ups and paper sculptures hand-cut using an X-acto knife and a ruler.
MOO.com takes a look at Kirigami, the art of folding and cutting paper.
And here’s a photoset on Flickr of snowflake-like Kirigami.
Click the images to see these sliding sites in action…
Netflix
Click an arrow on Netflix’ New Releases page [membership required] and the site slides in a new slew of movies.
Beanstalk
Beanstalk is a hosted Subversion system that integrates with Basecamp and Campfire. The home page fits in a complete tour by sliding in information horizontally. Click a link and a new screenshot and caption slide in.
MacBook Air
At Apple’s MacBook Air intro, you can click a thumbnail image and a new full size image slides in from the right.
In “Maverick: The Success Story Behind the World’s Most Unusual Workplace” [Amazon], Ricardo Semler talks about the red/green tag system workers used at one of his Brazilian company’s plants.
The factory committee spun off groups that studied the plants products and how the workers made them, looking for ways to save time and make improvements…One group came up with a system in which all the parts for the dishwashers were stocked in open racks in the middle of the factory. Metal tags, green on one side and red on the other, hung on each rack, and the workers would flip the tags when they saw it was time to reorder, ensuring a steady supply.
Reminds me of dining at Fogo de Chão, a Brazilian steakhouse (aka churrascaria) with locations here in the USA.
Each guest uses a two-sided disk to control the pace of their meal. The green side signals the Gaucho chefs to bring out skewers of sizzling fire-roasted meats to carve at the table. The red side indicates a stopping point. Turning back to green lets the Gaucho chefs know to start offering the meats again.
