Monthly Archives: March 2008

Apple’s Design Process

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Came across this really interesting article in Business Week about Apple’s Design Process. It provides a wonderful insight into how Apple consistently create products that delight consumers. What strikes me though is that the process is, on the face of it, very simple in terms of it’s key element – there’s an important lesson there – perhaps their secret is their simplicity?  I just want to touch on three of the stages or activities described in the article:

Pixel Perfect Mockups

From my own experience, I know that producing High Fidelity wire frames or mockups can be extremely time consuming and very costly as an up-front design activity. Which is why many organisation’s don’t do this. Yet it’s hard to argue against the fact that they do remove all ambiguity and do lessen the need to correct mistakes later. We are beginning to realise the value of this at Talis, we have embarked on a couple of projects where we take this approach (although not as far as pixel perfect) up front and so far it has proven invaluable.

10 to 3 to 1

I thought this was really interesting, the notion that the develop ten entirely different mock ups of any new feature – and it really is ten different mockups, not "seven in order to make three look good" if they actually do that then that’s a remarkable. They take ten ideas, whittle those down to three which they then spend time refining until they end up with just one strong design.

Paired Design Meetings

I’m definitely in favour of this – every week the teams have two meetings. In the first meeting they do nothing but brainstorm ideas and disregard any constraints so they can think completely freely – and go crazy! Subsequently they hold a second meeting in which designers and engineers are required to nail everything down in order to figure out how each crazy idea would actually work.

These kinds of activities are incredibly useful. It’s important not to stifle or constrain the creative process which is why we have these kinds of brainstorming sessions – where nothing is considered a bad idea, no matter how ludicrous. Our development group at Talis has used techniques such as these to come up with new an innovative ideas that probably would not have come to fruition unless participants where given the freedom to go crazy (For the record Tom Heath’s ideas are generally the craziest ). The trick though is having the talent and ingenuity to take a crazy idea and turn it into something real .. and believe me it feels great when you do.

 

… if you haven’t experimented with techniques such as these then I suggest you give them a try.

flickrvision is so cool

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I was pair programming with Rob yesterday, at some point during the day he showed me flickrvision running on his machine. I have never used it before but found myself drawn to the new 3d Visualisation it supports. Since I got into work this morning I have had it running on my second screen. I could almost sit here and watch it all day. It is constantly updated with photos uploaded to flickr by users from all over the world. As a new image is posted the map shifts to the user location and the image appears. It really is awesome … somehow makes the world seem closer, as this stream of images shows us whats happening around the world. I love it!

I love suprises …

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As cynical as I am it’s lovely to be suprised. A close friend of mine thought that I might be faltering or struggling with some decisions I needed to make. I don’t see her very often she lives on another continent these days, yet she still finds time to keep in touch and to remind me when I’m “being an ass“.

I was pleasantly suprised when I got home and found she had sent me some poems and quotes that she thought might help me regain my perspective on a few things …I’m familiar with most of them yet I have to admit I laughed out loud reading some of them, and also felt slightly wounded reading others … I want to share a few here for no reason other than that they are inspiring … several are by Ville Valo, who before today I was completely unfamiliar with … 

"Every day is a goal in itself."
              - Ville Valo

"Love is madness, you can't put it in doses, 
     it either surges over or under."
              - Ville Valo

"Silence is more like a spiritual thing: A moment
     when your heart can be at peace. Love is silence.
     The same silence is in reading. When you're doing
     something that demands concentration, all the
     noise in the background vanishes."
              - Ville Valo

"Friendship needs no words - it is solitude delivered
     from the anguish of loneliness."
              - Dag Hammarskjold


"One can be instructed in society, one is inspired 
     only in solitude.
              - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"This quest. This need to solve life's mysteries.
     In the end, what does it matter when the human
     heart can only find meaning in the smallest of
     moments? They're here. Among us. In the shadows.
     In the light. Everywhere. Do they even know yet?"
              - Mohinder Suresh (Sendhil Ramamurthy), Heroes

"Choose a job that you love and you will never
     have to work a day in your life"
              - Confucious


"Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is
     what dies within us while we live."
              - Norman Cousins

"The more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our life, 
     the clearer we should see through it."
              - Niccolo Machiavelli

"The supreme happiness in life is the conviction that we 
     are loved"
              - Victor Hugo

"Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take,
     but by the moments that take our breath away."
              - Anonymous

"The dissenter is every human being at those moments 
     of his life when he resigns momentarily from the
     herd and thinks for himself."
              - Archibald Macleish

"There are only two mistakes one can make along the 
     road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting."
              - Buddha

"Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, 
     concentrate the mind on the present moment."
              - Buddha

"When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives 
     mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who,
     instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen
     rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm
     and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a
     moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an
     hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing,
     not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our
     powerlessness, that is a friend who cares."
              -  Henri Nouwen 

"Riches are not from abundance of worldly goods, but from
     a contented mind."
              - Prophet Mohammed (pbuh)

"It is always important to know when something reaches
     its end. Closing circles, shutting doors, finishing chapters,
     it doesn't matter what we call it; what matters is to leave 
     in the past those moments in life that are over."
              - Paulo Coelho

I’ve only posted up a handful of the ones she sent, and certainly haven’t transcribed the comments she put next to them, which were quite impressive but also made me feel like I was back at school being chided :p .

To the friend who sent me this ( she-who-must-not-be-named but is really called Rachel ), I owe you one! Thank you … I think I know what to do now … 😉

ForcesHospitalCharity.org

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First the good news …

Support for the Forces Hospital Charity site I set up and maintain with help from Richard for our friend Inspector Rob Williams is gaining momentum. So far we have raised £8500 which is phenomenal. I’m really looking forward to the Plane Pull and the 14 mile walk on Saturday, I think it’s going to be memorable. Check out the Sponsor and Donor pages to see how many Oranisations have come out to support this cause and to each of them I offer my thanks.

… then the not so good.

Some people have felt the need to question why I, a Muslim, have chosen to support a charity that attempts to aid the very soldiers that are killing our brothers and sisters abroad. Ordinarily I would respond by saying that its a personal choice, and leave it at that (and tell them where to go – diplomacy isn’t always one of my strong points). Yet some of the vitriol that has been leveled at me by people trying to post comments on this blog has led me to think carefully about a slightly more reasoned response. I don’t seek to justify why I live my life the way that I do … but I do want dispel a few myths I think that a few of you are living under.

The charity that I’m supporting is seeking to build a garden, that’s all! A small recreational place to provide an area where families can visit their wounded sons and daughters in relative comfort. This charity isn’t supporting an ideology, or a political stand point or seeking to justify the presence of British troops in any theater of combat anywhere in the world. It’s seeking to provide comfort for a group of men and women who have, regardless of their personal or political views, tried to perform their duty to their country and in doing so have suffered serious injuries.

The members of our armed forces do not have the luxury of choosing where they fight, or against whom. We don’t live in a society where we allow our soldiers to make those decisions, that’s what governments do. That’s partly why we call it democracy. It’s also why it’s important, during elections, for us to consider who it is we are voting for and whether those individuals will honestly represent our views or whether they’ll charge right in simply because an American President insists that they do. I’d be interested to know how many Labour Muslim Members of Parliament actually voted against the government when the issue of whether we should deploy troops in Iraq was first put before the Commons. Perhaps if some of them had taken a stance more in keeping with the views of their constituents rather than voting in a certain way because they were afraid to incur the wrath of the Party Whip and in doing so limit their own political future – well perhaps then more could have been done to sway the government at the time.

It’s also important to remember that the same troops deployed in Iraq today could be deployed elsewhere in the world tomorrow serving a completely different role, like helping to deliver aid to places devastated by natural disasters or in peace keeping roles as part of UN deployments. From working with troops I know that the vast majority are decent men and women trying to do their best, in what are often very stressful and demanding situations … yet it’s easy for us to sit here and forget that they are still just human beings.

I can’t help but believe that in as much as it was our lack of humanity that has gotten us into the mess we are in … it is only our humanity that can hope to rescue us from it.

That’s why I’m supporting my friends on Saturday … for no reason other than that Hope.

I hope you can understand that.

I hope you can respect that.

Khayyam’s Quatrain: an Interpretation

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The original:

This Universal wheel, this merry-go-round
In our imagination we have found
The sun a flame, in the Cosmic lantern bound
We are mere ghosts, revolving, the flame surround.

                  -- Omar Khayyam

An interpretation by Shahriar Shahriari:

In our imagination, the Cosmic Wheel
Will cause us pain and cause us heal
We find our source give life and steal
We are phantoms that think and feel.

                  --  Shahriar Shahriari

… both are beautiful, and inspired.

IE5 more compliant than IE7? on ACID3?

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Steve Noonan maintains a page where he collects and publishes results for various browsers tested against the newly released ACID3 Standards. Unsurprisingly no browser currently scores 100%, and it’s not surprising to me that Internet Explorer is way down the bottom of the list for compliance … but how the hell did IE5 score more than IE6 and IE7?

Personalising my MacBooK Pro

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Rob has been telling me for ages to personalise my Mac somehow ever since he put some Le Manns stripes on his – which look really cool. I finally gave in and here’s what I’ve done … click the image to enlarge:

I chose the dragon because in both Chinese and Japanese mythology they represent celestial and terrestrial power, wisdom and strength … but mostly because it looks cool 😉 and kind of works wrapped around the Apple logo.

Yin and Yang represent a unity of opposites. A friend of mine was joking today that I had a lot of that going on, she was right … and so it seemed apt.

Finally my VirtualChaos Logo, I just had to get the ‘fairy’ on it somehow 😉

Ae Fond Kiss, and then We Sever

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          Ae Fond Kiss, and then We Sever


Ae fond kiss, and then we sever;
Ae fareweel, and then for ever!
Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,
Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee.

Who shall say that Fortune grieves him
While the star of hope she leaves him?
Me, nae cheerful twinkle lights me,
Dark despair around benights me.

I'll ne'er blame my partial fancy;
Naething could resist my Nancy;
But to see her was to love her,
Love but her, and love for ever.

Had we never loved sae kindly,
Had we never loved sae blindly,
Never met -or never parted,
We had ne'er been broken-hearted.

Fare thee weel, thou first and fairest!
Fare thee weel, thou best and dearest!
Thine be ilka joy and treasure,
Peace, enjoyment, love, and pleasure!

Ae fond kiss, and then we sever;
Ae fareweel, alas, for ever!
Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,
Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee.

                       by Robert Burns

Why is 37 signals so arrogant?

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If your going to say things like:

“Arrogant is usually something you hurl at somebody as an insult … But when I actually looked it up — having an aggravated sense of one’s own importance or abilities’ — I thought, sure … Call it arrogance or idealism, but they would rather fail than adapt. I’m not designing software for other people, I’m designing it for me.”

– David Heinemeier Hansson, 37 Signals

… then your probably going to get upset people … like Don Norman, who lambastes 37 Signals in his latest blog post.

I have used some of 37 Signal’s products and I have to agree with Norman when he says that:

I’ve tried their products and although they have admirable qualities, they have never quite met my needs: Close is not good enough.

I’ve always struggled with BaseCamp for example, it almost there but just not quite … I always put my frustrations down to the fact the tool was designed to be simple, but after reading some of Hansson’ statements I begin to see things slightly differently.

When your designing products for a large user base you can’t ignore the users. I find myself agreeing with Norman’s final observation:

Understanding the true needs of customers is essential for business success. Making sure the product is elegant, functional and understandable is also essential. The disdain for customers shown by Hansson of 37signals is an arrogance bound to fail. As long as 37signals is a hobby, where programmers code for themselves, it may very well succeed as a small enterprise with its current size of 10 employees. I’m happy for them, and for the numerous small developers and small companies that find their products useful. But their attitude is a symbol: a symbol of eventual failure. Too bad. In fact, that attitude is not so much arrogance as it is selfishness: they are selfish. A little less arrogance and a lot more empathy would turn these brilliant programmers into a brilliant company, a brilliant success.