The history of innovation has many crazy tales - the patent office is involved in many. In 1836 the first U.S. patent office burned to the ground: despite all the great ideas in the building, they didn’t get around to fireproofing the building itself (An ivory tower lesson if ever there was one).

Anyway, the fist 10,000 or so U.S. Patents were lost in the fire - about 2000 were recovered but the rest were lost.

After the fire the Patent office began its numerical numbering system (giving up on the prior name and date system) - U.S. Patent #1 was granted to Senator John Ruggle of Maine.

The invention? Comically enough, a reinvention of the wheel. Ruggle designed a new train wheel that yielded more traction and prevented sliding.

The true first U.S. patent was for pot ash (no, not that kind) and granted in 1790. However patents in Europe date back hundreds of years earlier - but that’s another story.

(From NPR star John Lienhard’s new book, How invention begins. Review coming soon)

Posted in Innovation | 4 Comments »

This week in the ux-clinic discussion group:

We’re a pair of UX folks (a designer and a usability engineer). We’ve teamed up to turn our team around, but despite our awesome talent combo, we’re spinning our wheels. The team had the good sense to hire both of us, but is fixated on tiny, short term, miniature UI developments. Big architecture work is added to the schedule easily, but all the UI bits are “tweak this”, “improve that”, or “provide a basic UI for new feature blah”.

Our team is smart and leaders are good - but they’ve never taken, or witnessed, a big bet on UI, despite the customer centric project goals. How do we use our powers, design or usability, to change our leadership psychology so that sizable UI/UX investments are part of the game?

– Superhero UX vs. the conservatives

Posted in UX-Clinic | 3 Comments »

This week in the pm-clinic discussion forum:

I’m a project leader in a research organization - as in a hard core blue sky R&D future thinking lab. We loosely organize around projects but our goals are the inverse of typical software: it’s the IP and the concepts we invent that people pay us for, not feature sets or code quality. Our releases to clients are vehicles for our concepts and research, but nothing more.

What I’m looking for are ways to apply project management skills to blue-sky, big think, projects. Can we improve the quality of our process and scheduling, or get more mileage out of the concepts we invent, but with a minimum impact on our ability to experiment, change directions, and go after big powerful ideas? What do things like specs, exit criteria and status meetings mean for a 100% proof of concept project?

- Flying in the blue sky

Posted in PM-Clinic | 1 Comment »

Back at the Emerging technology conference I presented a quick and dirty makeover of several popular web 2.0 sites and UI idioms (See slides for my talk: data vs. design). The fun and much loved Del.icio.us was one and here’s a makeover recap.

Step 1. The popular page

Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site, and the /popular page shows which bookmarks in the del.icio.us system are most popular - but the layout uses open flow, blue on pink text (eek), and sloppy columns which all contribute to making the page hard to scan.

Step 2. Make a grid

The most basic layout trick in the world is the grid - throw down some columns and check how the stuff in the design lines up. The more things that don’t line up, the more work people’s eyes have to do. In this first photo, look at how the del.icio.us design compares against a simple 3 column layout. Not well.

In the next screen I’ve marked every visual column that the existing layout creates - each one of these lines is a point in horizontal space people’s eyes are forced to track to each time they try to read the next line - that’s a lot of wasted energy (and time).

Step 3. First pass

As a first pass, I’ve aligned all text into 3 columns. I killed the blue on pink, switching to black. I’ve also trimmed all the extra text from the pink brick, trimming its size by half.

Step 4. Second pass

After 15 minutes of experimentation, I was able to pull the data down into two complete, easily scannable columns. I brough back slim color bricks, but forced them into three buckets (light pink = low, pink = medium, intense pink= high) as that’s enough to indicate how popular they are, but keeping them easily distinguishable (And yes, there are better color choices to go with blue/black but I’m lazy in no-frills makeovers).

Step 5. Side by side comparison

Here are the two designs side by side, original on left and my quick makeover on right. My makeover fits more data into the same space, is faster to scan, easier to read, and slightly more attractive. It’s both easier to scan titles and which items are most popular.

Summary

• If you’re a data centric site, be fast, clean and lean.
• Use a grid or basic columns to frame the layout, and speed user eye movement.
• Trim extra text - especially if you’re repeating things every line.
• Use colors to signify and speed understanding, grouping data together (high / medium / low) to speed comprehension.
• (And yes I cheated in some screenshots as the examples don’t match perfectly - but you got the idea, didn’t you?)

What’s next?

Have a popular site you’d like me to throw some design mojo at? Name it.

Posted in Design, Web 2.0 / social software | 5 Comments »

Copyblogger offers good advice on writing blog and other headlines with 10 sure-fire headline formulas that work.

And athough the post is a top ten list, it doesn’t list top ten lists among its suggestions, giving you a bonus 11th tip. How nice. And if you count the “..that work” ending, that’s #12. Lucky day.

Purely for entertainment purposes, here is a blog title I made based on applying all 12 suggestions to a single title:

The top ten surefire things everyone ought to know about how you can discover who else wants the secrets of little known quick methods that work for getting rid of something so you can be proud of yourself like a rock star.

Lets not try that at home please.

If you liked this, you’ll be happy to know it’s part 7 of a 10 part series on magnetic headlines.

Posted in On writing | 2 Comments »

CHI 2007 , in San Jose, CA 4/28-5/3 2007, is the big dog of UI conferences - it’s one of the oldest, largest and most comprehensive ways to learn about what’s happening in the HCI / interface design world.

The big challenge is quality presenters - finding qualified people willing to get up there and teach. It’s all too easy to get rejected at CHI as so many folks want to participate. But this year something is different: I’m one of the gatekeepers.

So if you have good ideas for sessions - we want you.

I’m the co-chair for both the management and education communities - so if you’ve been waiting to contribute in these areas, and waiting for a crazy person to be at the controls, now is your chance to make a run for it.

Here’s the run down:

Courses: these are 90 minute or longer tutorials. If accepted you’ll recieve a $700 stipend per 90 minute segment you teach. We’re in big need of qualified folks interested in teaching.

Panels: Run a debate or reality tv show inspired session involving multiple presenters. I’m hoping someone will improve on the panel format - better speakers, more challenging topics - and remember we did the live competition Interactionary as a panel session.

Workshops: Full day discussions for small groups.

Reports: short, less formal papers on developments you’ve made in design, methods or other topics.

There are other session types, and Deadline for most things is Sept 1st, 2006 but check here for details.

Contact me if you have ideas, especially if you’re interested in submitting something related to UX management or HCI education.

Posted in Design, Management | 2 Comments »

This week in the ux-clinic discussion group:

I work for a large medical software company that attempts to follow a strict engineering process (partly for ISO certification). All logged bugs are supposed to be tied to a requirement (we use ReqPro), but managers aren’t sure what to do with “visual” bugs because visuals aren’t included in the official requirements docs.

So the big question is: What is the best way to fit the visual/UI deliverables into the engineering process?

Specifically:

• How best to deliver visuals? PDF? HTML?
• If designers don’t write the req documents, even if we wanted to, how do we get the designs into the requirements?
• How should visuals relate to the written requirements?

Posted in Design, UX-Clinic | 1 Comment »

This week in the pm-clinic discussion forum:

I’m a lead programmer on a web 2.0′ish startup. Our team of 7 released an alpha version last week and we’re planning the final release, and need to make partner date commitments for launch.

Our biggest debate is buffer. All of our experienced programmers have pet philsoophies about buffer and I’m looking for someone to dispell the myths and give real advice on: Should buffer be used at all? When? why? Where do you put it in the schedule? Do you tell the team? And what are common stupid things arrogant leads do with buffer that shoot themselves in the foot and how can we avoid?

thanks,

- Wannabe buffermaster (WB)

Posted in PM-Clinic, Software/Web development | 5 Comments »

When Steve McConnell asks you to speak somewhere, it’s hard to say no. I’ve been invited to round out the stellar speaking ticket of Joel Spolsky, Watts Humprhey, Steve McConnell and Ed Yordon at Construx software’s annual executive software summit in Seattle, October 16-18.

Paraphrasing from their website:

The Construx Software-Executive Summit is a forum for top software executives to share, analyze, evaluate, and improve their experiences at the enterprise level. Participants develop new insights into their own organizations and explore challenges and opportunities with a select group of peers. Last year’s event was a huge success: 100% of attendies would return again.

At the 2005 Summit, 98% of participants held titles of VP, CTO, Director, or higher. The main criteria for attendence is multi-project responsibility for software development.

It’s an exclusive event - I don’t qualify myself - and there are only 60 seats for the whole thing. It’s a rare opportunity for executive level managers to experience a peer focused conference. The $3k fee includes a voucher for $1195 in free training from Construx for anyone in your org - so check out the agenda and registration info.

Posted in On Tour | No Comments »

There are several thousand ways to complete the sentence “There are two kinds of people, those that…” And in case the universe wouldn’t be complete without another, here’s one more.

There are two kinds of people: people that make things complex and people that simplify.

Complexifiers are averse to reduction. Their instincts are to turn simple assignments into quagmires, and to reject simple ideas until they’re buried (or asphyxiated) in layers of abstraction. These are the people who write 25 page specifications when a picture will do and send long e-mails to the entire team when one phone call would suffice. When they see x=y, they want to play with it and show their talents, taking pleasure in creating the unneccesary (23x*z = 23y*z). They take pride in consuming more bandwith, time, and paitence than needed, and expect rewards for it.

Simplifiers thrive on concision. They look for the 6x=6y in the world, and happily turn it into x=y. They never let their ego get in the way of the short path. When you give them seemingly complicated tasks they simplify, consolidate and re-interpret on instinct, naturally seeking the simplest way to achieve what needs to be done. They find ways to communicate complex ideas in simple terms without losing the idea’s essense or power.

I don’t know what makes a person fall into either pile (genetics, habit, experience?), but I do know I’d much rather spend my time with the simplifiers than the complexifiers. Don’t you think all the good designers, programmers, writers, philosophers and teachers you’ve known fit into the simplifer group?

Posted in Management, philosophy | 64 Comments »

In the unexplainable department: I have a copy of the artofpm in my office that’s already been personally signed for someone named Edward. I have no idea at this point who Edward was or why I signed a copy for him.

As it’s not much good to the largely non-Edward named population I don’t really know what to do with it. So:

The first person named Edward that leaves a comment gets it sent to them.

Posted in The Art of PM book | 6 Comments »

For years I was a notorious corner folder. I’d mark corners of passages I needed for research with a fold, making bibliophiles cringe and scream. I do hate prestine books and book preservers: these things are made to be used and I love nothing more than to see good books marked up, post-it noted and coffee stained, signs the book has lived and not sat for eternity on a shelf.

But then, I love books and it’s really not nice to mark up books that aren’t yours (friends, libraries, etc). If I had a better way I’d use it, I just didn’t know of one. So when I showed my brother-in-law a particular good book (with my folds on every other page) his eyes lit up. That Christmas I was gifted a set of book darts.

Book darts are small arrow shaped strips of metal that you can place on pages to mark a passage. They are easy to use, easy to remove, and do zero damage to books. It’s a great paper clip-esque design: minimal and clever.

I use these things so much in my research that I own several hundred of them (I’m faster at marking pages than I am at reviewing the marks later).

They’re sold in various quantities at bookdarts.com and some bookstores sell them too. If you are student or writer and spend your days making notes in books, I highly recommend them.

Posted in On writing | 18 Comments »