Story-Based Design II

In the last thread, Tim Beadle wrote:

I may be missing something (and I am in no way an expert!), but isn’t story-based design the same as persona-based design?

I realize there's a namespace collision here, and I'm glad Tim bring it up. There's a distinction I'm trying to make between the "usability" notion of story-based design and what I'm trying to define. The distinction lies with how I think of the application of story to design.

One thing that bugs me slightly about "usability" (and I admittedly have not worked directly with many experts or professional firms) is that the approach is rather depersonalized and dry. For all the talk of "story" and "personas", reaching as far back as the early 90s...there just hasn't been much passion in them. If I were to describe the stereotypical "usability expert", I think of an insightful, quiet person with the uncanny ability to make perpective-shaking adjustments in a product or process by asking a simple question: "how do people really interact?" And then they would produce a wonderfully-written document that states the newfound principles of design with such clarity that it takes my breath away. My eyes would widen in appreciation of the accompanying diagrams, visually designed with such power that I can't help but absorb the concepts I had just read about. I immediately put it up on my wall, circling one particularly-glorious info-blob and writing YES!!! next to it in bold red Sharpie.

Then I go have lunch, and forget about it.

The usability expert wonders what the hell happened, but as a consultant he's already on to the next gig, hoping that maybe his ground-breaking insights will actually take root in more fertile soil. The problem is that for all the work that went into clarifying those important, business-altering insights, the expert has failed to engage us. In the worst case scenario, the usability expert becomes a prophet, crying out warnings of the Coming Infocalypse that is already upon us, Web 2.0 methodologies already dangerously swaying out of control. But no one cares, because the prophet is still making the mistake of addressing people in the abstract, as personas. They're not engaging me or my reality as an individual. They're talking about someone like me, but not me. There is no feeling of personal relationship, and I think that's pretty important.

Let's look at this another way: you've written some kick-ass user stories for your software product! High five, guys! With these documents, the development process finally has real focus and guidance. In fact, these user stories are SO GOOD that you're submitting them as-is to a number of literary short story competitions!

Oh wait...they're not that good, at least not in that way. If I were to take off my usability goggles, in what way are these personas useful outside the context of software development?

Stories go far beyond software development and is at the crux of several trends I've been watching: Kathy Sierra's Creating Passionate Users, Joel Spolsky's Best of Software Writing, Donald Norman's Emotional Design, the Experience Design movement, even online comics, the Clue Train and leadership... all of these center around story, emotion, heroism, and visualization. Story is a lot more than just personas and models. Stories are what motivate and connect people with action, set examples to follow, and are most importantly personally relevant.

That is what I am interested in. I think it's a given that passionate users are empowered users. What I want to figure out is how to be a passionate creator, and how to leverage my newly rediscovered passions for writing, teaching, and community building in a way that is approachable by people who intuitively understand this, but can't quite put it yet into words. "Story Based Design" isn't the phrase...it's something else.

More in this series:

• Storytelling By Design Master Page

Story-Based Design

I've been mulling over the idea of story-based design as a way to describe my design process. What I'm interested in is finding and telling stories that are engaging, uplifting, helpful, and inspiring. I can't design anything until I can find that angle. To me, design is all about communicating that message through whatever media I can get my hands on.

I think there's a similarity between what I'm doing with Experience Design, a growing multidisciplinary subset of graphic design. However, a lot of the materials I see on this are less than inspiring. Take this copy, for example, from the AIGA Experience Design page:

What is experience design?

Experience design strives to create experiences beyond products and services. Its boundaries extend beyond traditional design.

The prose sounds very clear and insightful, but ironically none of it provides any meaningful experience that I can latch on to. Where's the relevance to me? Where's the story? The words are nicely crafted and fit together; any respectable design agency would be proud to have copy like that on their "Our Process" page. What's missing is a sense of engagement.

The "story-based design" term is also referenced in a few online articles related to usability and human-centered design practice, but this isn't what I'm talking about either. I can appreciate the value of such practice, and I recognize the importance of focusing on the (duh) user when you're making things for them. What's most important, though, is imparting the sense that you're doing it for them, not around them. That is a critical distinction. It's nice to know that someone's doing something to make your work more productive, but really...I want to feel that sense of rapport as well.

The name "story based design" sounds very clunky to me, so it's just a working title for a philosophy-under-development (PUD). So far, there are four steps:

1. Get to know a person and his/her world.
2. Tell that person how he/she is relevant to the world.
3. Create a story about that person.
4. Tell the story to the audience that wants to hear it

I'm not naturally a visual person; before I can lay pixels down, I have to have a pretty clear idea of what is being said, why, and how. Essentially, I compose an essay or a story in my head first. I often write my thoughts down too. This becomes the script for the visual design, when I draw upon my associative memory to pick what audiovisual elements will communicate in the best way. Laying out a page for me is like directing a short film. I know I can control the order of how people look on things on the page through composition and contrast, which gives me tremendous expressive power.

It's not exactly an artistic process, but it's one that I'm realizing is just as valid. Many designers I talk to are far more talented in the visual realm than I; I'm primarily a word person that just happens to like graphics and programming, and in the past I've thought I was somehow not "doing it right". I no longer believe that's the case, so here I am making up new terminology again :-)

More in this series:

• Storytelling By Design Master Page

The Fundamentals

I just read Kathy Sierra's latest post Don't Forget Square One which is a very fine reminder. Go read the article, and then ask yourself, "Hey, self! Do I even know what my fundamentals are?".

I thought I did, but in hindsight I don't think I really do. Like a lot of people I'm in that odd zone of mediocrity. I don't say that as a self put-down, mind you. With the finish of the Olympics recently, this is a particularly appropriate observation to make. If my professional activities were sports, do I know what would make me an Olympic-caliber designer / developer? I could imagine the trappings surrounding it, but not the minute details that eke out that 1/100th of a second difference between silver and gold.

Ordinarily I would write what I think those minute details are, but I have to get ready for SXSW and I'm flippin' out finishing some project work, packing, anwering last-minute emails, and backing up all my data. Erk! See what I'm talking about? Not smooth! I'll never get to endorse anything at this rate!

In the meantime, read Kathy Sierra's post How to Be an Expert. This might be a good break the ice, a lot question at SXSW..."So, what are the fundamental habits of our respective field?"

On a side note, I'm looking forward to Kathy Sierra's presence at SXSW; she is one of the most optimistic and insightful writers I've ever come across. I am just awestruck. I am hoping that her session attracts a lot of passionate creators...the energy would be incredible.

New Media Group Manifesto

Our New Media User Group turned 1 year old in February, and in that year it's grown far beyond my initial expectations. We're still tiny, of course, but I've learned a lot about how to start a group up. It's a lot easier than I thought, so if any of you out there are going through the I wish there was a group of people I could hang out with, take heart! It is doable!

The first step was to realize what it is I wanted from a group: an experience that felt like the kind of gathering I would like. While the group's actual membership has grown more diverse, I find that our core values have remained largely unchanged. I just wrote the following on our group Basecamp welcome page:

So how do you know you belong in the New Media Group?

You want to share stories about your work and life experiences with a group of interested and diverse people. Although we started with art and interactive media as a base, our discussions include technology and other professional practice. If you enjoy learning, you’ll fit right in no matter what your background.

You are seeking other creative people who are passionate about something, in a supportive environment. We do our best to avoid the “uh, I don’t know anyone here, and everyone already knows each other” effect.

You are not interested in traditional “business networking”. When we’re at the table, the talk is about what we do. Bring us your story, not your resume! Of course, after you get to know people, business tends to happen naturally :)

This has been, I think, the base of what makes the group comfortable for me. And since I say it up front, the people who show up tend to also be comfortable with it. It creates a sort of inner harmony.

If you're interested in trying this yourself, come up with your own list of "important things". You get to design the group! As the organizer, though, you need to consider these other factors:

• You have to be truly interested in communicating what's going on to your group membership. I don't think of myself as an organizer. Instead, I consider my role to be host of an ongoing party. I want to make sure that people are introduced to each other properly, know about what's going on, and feel right at home. As the group has matured, other people have naturally taken over some hosting duties too, and the result is a good group energy. So if you like throwing parties and inviting friends over, this is an approach that could work for you. And remember...you can dictate the kind of party you are throwing. That's basically all I'm doing. Organizationally, there's all the pre-party stuff that you do, and also the post-party storytelling. You want people to come to your next party? Let them know what they missed!

  I have had to put quite a bit of time into communication (the project management side of me finally pays off). The main tools I use are mailing list software (with email addresses scrubbed), our group wiki, and a laptop to keep notes during meetings. I also post fairly regularly and try to have a call to gather every 2-3 weeks. I post the after-meeting notes as often as I can, so people know what we talked about, and archive them on the Wiki. I'm giving Basecamp a try too, so we can have a more private discussion area than the mailing list (I am sensitive to spammers harvesting our addresses).

• Meeting strangers. That was a lot less frightening than I thought because of a lucky accident---I had to meet people one-on-one first because of scheduling. In the 1-on-1 scenario, I just talked about what I was interested in and asked what they were interested in. I asked them about their backgrounds, what their dreams were, how they got to be a designer/artist/etc. And that was enough. By the time we actually met in a group, I could effectively play the host role because I knew who they were. It also helps to know that if someone has responded to your call for action, they are already interested in meeting you. So don't feel awkward. Just ask questions and share some stories about yourself. That's all people are looking for.

• Getting people to come. This is the one that a lot of user groups thrash around with, and they often feel that they need a "headliner" to get people out of their houses. Our group is a little different because the draw is "hosted conversation", and for whatever reason people understood that. It's not really targeted at the general population, but then again what is important to me is making good quality contacts, not size. And I'd say that in that regard it's been successful.

  Promotion I haven't worried about yet; we've grown organically through personal introductions. I'm considering bookstore cafe bulletin boards, Craig's List, Upcoming.org, and direct contact with companies to see what interest there is. For now, I have my hands full enough.

I haven't actually ended up meeting many more new media designers, which was my original motivation. Instead, I've made a lot of friends and met people who I otherwise might not have, and this has energized and enriched my own sense of purpose. And it just started with a couple of people I had never met before.

Anyone else have some user group tips or stories to share? Please post a comment! :-)

Decoupling My Assumptions

I was reflecting about the amount of work I have coming in the days ahead, and had a minor brainstorm. The coming work is cool and I am jazzed about starting! However, I found myself going through a familiar train of thought:

It's going to be a lot of work, and the rewards will be delayed; I hope the work is worth it.

I felt a little of the energy ooze out of my step. Why was that?

Well, it's understandable...work is work, and takes away from the "fun" things I might otherwise be doing. I've been trying to get my work and my fun to be the same thing, and that's been about 20% successful. The other 80% of the time I'm thinking of other things that I could be doing, and use think of the completion of the project as the reward. Yay!

On the other hand, spending most of my time thinking about how I'd rather be doing something else...that blows. It then occured to me that decoupling work from reward was a mental strategy with potential productivity benefits.

Codependent Expectations

There is the tendency to expect a reward from work, and this expectation is what's causing my negative thinking. Had Kindergarten, with its clever cupcake-based reward system, been the first phase of an institutionalized program of conditioning to mold my generation into willing laborers for the societal machine? Maybe not intentionally, but let's think about that.

Consider this statement:

Work should be followed by Reward.

I automatically agree with it. It's a fundamental assumption that's been ingrained into me from an early age. "If you work hard", we're told, "you will be rewarded." As we grow older, it becomes a feeling of entitlement. The statement, in our minds, becomes "Work is followed by Reward." This is a limiting attitude to have, unless you happen to be in an environment where that's what you do to make a living. However, outside of the contrived environment of school, home, and office, it's not guaranteed.

I'm going to decouple "work" from "reward" from now on, because if I justify the work in terms of the reward, that is a form of codependency. It all started so innocently with those cupcakes; I'm shocked how deeply ingrained this expectation is in my psyche.

Applying this back to my project situation:

• There's work.
• There's reward.
• There's satisfaction.

These are all related, but it would be ideal if I think of them as independent factors in my life. In other words, when I work, I shouldn't automatically expect reward as my self-appointed metric for success. I should look instead at what I accomplished, and see where it fits into my overall personal plan. The reward is the accomplishment, not the present I buy in "recognition" of how hard I worked. This is an essential attitude to have as an entrepreneur/freelancer. I occassionally meet "fresh from the cube farm" freelancers that are filled with moral outrage because their prospective clients didn't recognize the hours they've "put into" the project as having monetary value. That's because you haven't generated value, guys...you've just burned some hours. It's an entirely different game! Having something of value to the client is leverage you can count on. The expectation that someone will automatically reward you when you waggle your mouse is not.

Just to be clear, rewards do have their place, but I would cast them as genuine acknowledgement of services performed. Harder said than done, on both the rewarder's and receiver's side; usually they are seen as perks or automatic benefits that lack real emotional value.

Other Decouplets

The reason I even thought of decoupling work from reward was because I've done it with other assumptions. Here's some of the ones that come to mind:

Need for verification implies lack of trust

Nope, not necessarily! A lot of people really believe, at the time of making a promise, that they will actually follow through. We also know through experience that, on average, people have a less-than-perfect record at keeping them. I think it was Richard M. Nixon that said that while he could believe that someone had a genuine intention at the negotiating table; he could also believe that the person wouldn't be able to deliver for any number of reasons. This isn't purposeful deceit...it's just that some people can't follow through as much as they really truly intend to.

Many people think the two concepts are inextricably linked, and that if you don't believe one you must not believe the other. This isn't necessarily the case. When a 6-year old child enthusiastically makes a public promise, we think it's adorable but we don't necessarily count on it happening. Should the promise come in danger of not being fulfilled, that's when we step in to help the child carry through to completion (hopefully in a way that's empowering). It's not that much different with other adults who are distracted, stressed, overworked, or doing something for the first time...they may not be able to deliver on their promise despite their honest desire to. "Trust but verify" isn't negative unless you really lack trust. It may be prudent to just whisper "but verify" to yourself in polite company :-)

Lack of immediate affirmation means you disagree

This isn't always true, unless you're in a passive-aggressive meeting. People often assume that if you don't affirm what they're saying, that must mean you disagree with them. I get stuck in meetings all the time where people go back and forth about some issue that they really do agree on; they're just talking about different aspects of the same thing. A skilled mediator will recognize that the "disagreement" is really a manifestation of one of the following:

• Someone wants acknowledgement that what they're saying is important to them. They seek affirmation that their input is valued, have said something of usefulness, and that it will be taken into consideration. Note it, move on, followthrough later with the stakeholders: "That's an excellent point; let me write that down on the whiteboard so we can come back to it when we're finished discussing this particular piece."

• Someone is raising an additional complication that needs to be taken into consideration, but it doesn't invalidate the entire point of view. Much agony can be avoided by prefacing the statement with "I agree; here's something else though that we need to consider..."

• Two parties have different working perspectives of the same thing, but are using confusing jargon to express their ideas. The result is that neither party makes sense to the other. You see this happen between management, executives, designers, and programmers; they all have different ways of looking at a problem, with goals that make sense only within their job context.

Of course, sometimes people really are disagreeing :-) This is tricky to resolve unless you can use a common external focal point as a metric. Someone outside of the group, preferably. This can be the end-user, the client, or the audience. For example, does having a "well-normalized database" really matter to the end user as much as the database admin? Ask the database admin what it ultimately does for the end-user, and figure it out together.

You're not with us, therefore you're against us

A pretty common attitude, because we're sometimes fearful and don't even know it. People sometimes assume that if you're not in agreement, you must be the enemy. Cliques form for the sense of mutual affirmation, so if you're not affirming the values of the group, you are by definition not part of it. I think that's unfortunate, but it's pretty common.

It even strikes with people you may already know well, especially when the issue is related to something socially controversial. For example, a couple years ago I took a class to learn how to shoot a handgun, and found that I liked it. I mentioned this to a few friends, and the reaction was interesting; the automatic response was guns are used only by criminals and crazy people, that somehow I had become part of that group. Yet they knew I *wasn't. I've had a lot of interesting discussions based on this experience, figuring out what we knew and what biases, if any, existed in our beliefs about guns, gun control, the Constitution, and self-defense. What usually happens is that we come to an agreement to disagree, while acknowledging the other's perspective. We've learned something about our own ignorance, and we are the better for it. It's worthwhile to note that the only reason that the conflict was resolved was because of emotional conflict: loathing/fear versus friendship, and rational discourse followed to resolve it. With a stranger, however, I probably would not have gotten the chance to discuss these issues should it come out in casual conversation; loathing/fear would have a much greater chance of winning out in the absense of other context.

We both are agreeing, therefore we understand each other

Until you've worked together, this isn't necessarily true. Agreement is to intention as understanding is to action. In other words, the act of creating /sharing something tangible will confirm that you really did understand each other; I would never assume otherwise. A better way of phrasing this would be "we agree to develop a working understanding of each other". That is, perhaps, the foundation of true friendship; acceptance of the working differences is what makes it last.

In Summary

From the productivity perspective, I'm going to try to think of work as separate from reward. In fact I don't even want to think of reward as the motivator (you know, as in cupcakes). Instead, I want to think of the work itself producing something of long term value. This is one of the tricks of The Printable CEO: by scoring only thing you can see and touch, you create long-term value. The points are just a way of measuring relative effectiveness on a week-by-week basis.

The points could be used to determine a level of reward...in this case I think that's OK because the points are tied to tangible accomplishment. That is, if your point value list has retained focus on producing tangible things; if not, then you probably should have another look at it.

The Ferengi Rules of Acquisition

I believe in exploring the extremes as much as possible, as this can provoke unexpected reactions that lead toward insight. One thing that's been on my mind has been making money, so this reference to The Ferengi Rules of Acquisition was particularly ripe for the linking (via vowe.net).

The Ferengi are one of the fictional races from the Star Trek universe, and are portrayed as ruthless mysogonistic profiteers. There are 299 rules that are the basis of Ferengi society, which is to make as much money as possible. These were the sayings that I thought were applicable to my experience:

• Never spend more for an acquisition than you have to.
• Always keep your ears open.
• Opportunity plus instinct equals profit.
• Wise men can hear profit in the wind.
• Good customers are as rare as latinum — treasure them.
• Free advice is seldom cheap.
• Knowledge equals profit.
• Dignity and an empty sack is worth the sack.
• Buy, sell, or get out of the way.
• You can't make a deal if you're dead.
• Never begin a business transaction on an empty stomach.
• You can't free a fish from water

There are more of course, of increasing levels of nastiness; the ones I picked are the nice ones. While I don't necessarily agree with the full implications of these particular statements, there's a lot of truth in them. Worth considering.

Better Living through Borscht

[yes, I rewrote this article almost entirely...that's what I get for posting laaate at night when I was too tired to think straight]

A Russian-born friend of mine sent me a simple recipe for the beet soup known as Borscht. I've been very interested in cooking lately as a money-saving measure, and have been seeking out hearty soups as an inexpensive way to eat well. Borscht is one of those ethnic foods I haven't tried, and I've never seen it or tasted it. My curiosity was piqued!

Here's what it looked like (this is right out of the fridge, btw):

It's interesting to make a dish that you've never tasted or seen before, especially if you're also unfamiliar with the soup-making process. About halfway through burning my borscht, I was struck by how similar this was to creating an innovative software product. For the vast majority of development work, we can point to an existing product and say "it's going to be like that." Pre-existing patterns are a big time-saver. With the borscht, I only had a vague vision of a soup, but really no idea how it would come out. I knew intuitively that the combination of root vegetables in the "soup" form factor was appealing, but would it really work? While it's true I had a recipe, I was following it rather loosely, discovering key steps a little after I messed them up. It was invigorating!

Borscht has a lot of root vegetables in it: beets, potatoes, carrots, and onions form the base. First you boil the beets for an hour so they get soft, then take them out to cool. You cook the potatoes and carrots next in the red beet liquid in the second phase. After that, the final phase is to add the sliced beats back in with a few bay leaves with some onion and cabbage. In retrospect, it's an easy recipe.

Of course, while I was cooking it for the first time, I made all kinds of mistakes. I didn't know how to cook beets, so I just dumped them in and didn't wash them first. I figured I could toss the beet water afterwards, but then I read later that you keep it. So I had to separate the sand from it using another pot. I also discovered that beets are really easy to peel with your hands after you boil them, and they make an incredible red-purple stain on everthing they touch. I also added the onions way too early and they mushified. I added more onions later, and then I ran out of liquid while I was watching TV and the whole pot almost burned. Exciting! Then there were a dozen small details: how much water do you need to cook a given volume of beets? How much salt and pepper, added when? What shape do I need to cut the beets in for that authentic look? And really...am I making anything that resembles borscht, or am I opening myself up to ridicule by connisseurs of eastern european cuisine? I have certainly experienced that in the Asian realm, when I tried to cook pork belly stew for the father of a friend of mine who was from Shanghai in the old days. He had been very excited, but when served my made-up version, he was visibly disappointed. In his eyes, I had done the equivalent of buying a Del Monico steak and boiling it. Quel horreur! I remember once getting some lunch from the small independent cafeteria in our building, where they were serving "Asian Stir Fry". As I read this aloud off the menu in a slightly amused tone, I noticed that the chef couldn't quite meet my eye.

On the other hand, I had made something new, and it was good. The next day I tried the borscht again, my friend having said that borscht is really good when it's a day old. I was warned not to re-boil it because it loses the red color if you do. The flavors had mellowed out a bit, and a new tanginess was present. It's true...day-old borscht is better!

At this point, I looked on the Internet to see what borscht was supposed to look like, and was relieved to see that mine looked similar. There were variations in viscosity, in how the beets were cut, in the amount of cabbage, and whether the dollop of yogurt was on top (I forgotten to add that). But the color was right, and that was affirming. The beets have a very strong red dye that makes everything look the way it sorta should. Ah...closure!

The process of making borscht for the first time triggered a few thoughts:

• I need to be seeking this kind of experience more often. Not just in the kitchen, but in everything. A lot of the time we're afraid of messing up or looking stupid. One huge advantage that children have is that they aren't self-conscious about it until they hit a certain age. I think this is what contributes to their ease in learning new languages; I suspect that if I was completely unselfconscious about imitating noises and repeating them over and over again, I could learn a languages well. The two languages I formally studied, French and Mandarin Chinese, were in atmospheres that were authoritarian and judgmental, and I had felt highly self-conscious and stupid. Next time, I am going to really immerse myself in the silly wonder of making noises and imitatating accents over and over. In an adult class I would get some funny looks. Maybe the best thing to do would be to find some 6-9 year-old kids to teach me language basics.

• I have two "making" mindsets: invention and production. In my day-to-day business thinking for 2006, I've been thinking about production and process: that's knowing how to make something and making it. This is the skill I think of as being worth money and that's what I charge for.

• I never thought of invention as something I could be paid for directly. My thinking before: would you hire someone to learn how to make borscht, or would you hire someone who already knew and could serve you up a tasty bowl at their interview? I had always assumed the later, and have tended to view my contribution to the workforce as being production-oriented. However, I just realized that a lot of my shifts this year are toward building credibility as an Inventor. That's not limited to making things like The Printable CEO either; my obsession with creating original content is related to it, as is my entire design process. I'll be keeping track of which billable activities are invention and which are production. I'd like to be getting more gigs based on my inventive credentials. My marketing efforts should follow.

Now that I think about it, the Production side of me is something I learned to value through work. Invention, however, has the deeper personal history:

• When I was in the 10th grade, I vowed that I would do everything I could to develop a powerful associative memory. My theory was this: the more connections I could make between disparate topics, the more inventive I could be, and therefore fewer obstacles would truly block me. I haven't thought about that vow in years, but it has colored my way of looking at things strongly. I like the idea of outflanking things, of figuring out alternative and novel ways to hard problems. I find essential patterns and make connections that didn't exist before. This is at the root of my inventive powers; I developed the production side because I couldn't figure out how to really sell that.

• I never liked chess because it is a bounded problem set. Sure, it's a very large set, but never mind that. The real game, which occurs on the psychological level, requires years of study and memorization. It's fascinating and very cool, but there are other things I would rather spend my time doing. Chess, in the long run, is a game for nimble pattern-minded individuals, and I can't compete on that level without investing a lot of time. However, I know just enough about the psychology of chess playing that I can enjoy it: I draw upon my readings of non-chess strategy and body language to make moves that have high dramatic potential, then I see how the other person reacts. I don't make stupid moves, so the opponent is kept on his/her toes. Over the course of the game I learn a lot about my opponent, which for me is a much more interesting activity than shifting pieces around on a grid. I lose, but I also win :-)

• One of my favorite movies: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn. Some of you out there will nod, "of course."

• Another friend was telling me about a sport in which you draw a straight line on a map, and then you must follow that line through any means necessary. Giant mountain in the way? Sorry, you've got to go over it. It's an extreme real-world obstacle course. I can't remember the name of the sport at the moment, but it struck me that this is so opposite of how I would ordinarily deal with a situation. I can think of a million ways to get around something, but I haven't developed my direct confrontation methodology to the same degree. I believe I've known this subconsciously; studying competitive activities and training regimens has been one of my pastimes in the past few years. I've also been a lot more willing to go into an unknown situation to test my ability to deal. I like training with this in mind now; in the past I haven't appreciated it.

I didn't expect borscht to be so intellectually nourishing. Highly recommended if you've never made it before.

Passion Turn Me Round and Round

For the past six years, I've been trying to figure out the nature of my passion: What can I do will bring me joy and fulfillment? Assuming I even had a passion, I imagined it would be like unlocking a dormant super power that was capable of transforming the very nature of my work. I would explode with productivity and carve out a comfortable lifestyle! Follow your bliss, and good fortune will follow.

Until very recently, I was positive that computer games were my passion; I just needed to figure out how to remove the obstacles in my way. After a few years of inaction, I've come to the conclusion that, as much as I knew about making games, they're not my passion. If they were, I would have done something about it long ago, instead of letting other distractions get in the way...

Hm. Maybe the distractions themselves are the key?

Mirror, Mirror

My search has been going on for more than for six years, of course. I've been pursuing computer game development for most of my adult life, zig-zagging mightily between engineering and art, finally landing in the video game industry professionally. Once I was in, however, I found that either I had changed or the games business wasn't where I wanted to be after all. Oh crap!

I've since stopped to reflect many times why I was looking for passion in the first place. Wasn't having a steady job with excellent prospects good enough? I could have a nice house, maybe even buy a Camry! Looking back, I can't explain it either, except I knew that the entire prospect made me miserable. For whatever reason, I was doomed to keep looking.

Fast forward to September 2004, when I started this blog to methodically discover patterns in my interests. I have an obsessive desire to write what I observe and think, so focusing that energy into an extended self-documentation project seemed like a good idea. Writing for me is one of the distractions that seems productive, but it tends to get in the way of immediate action. But since I couldn't stop doing it anyway, I figured it wouldn't hurt to see what might happen when channeled. This experiment proved fruitful: after about a year I noticed that there were four overarching themes: design, development, inspiration, and empowerment. And more importantly, I rediscovered the joy of writing for an audience of my friends. The last time I felt this very strongly was probably in the 5th grade, when for creative writing I'd stay up late writing space operas featuring my classmates. They were popular, I recall, if not exactly literature.

The blogging initiative also coincided with another 2005 resolution: meet more people. As a freelancer I was feeling creatively isolated, and my gut told me that finding new creative partners would help resolve my motivational problems. I just had to find the right people.

Between the New Media Group, 9rules, and new friends I've made through business contacts, it's been a tremendous year for expanding my social net. I started the New Media Group out of necessity, and discovered that I enjoyed it. I'm a horrible introvert most of the time, but in the role of seeker, you get to make the rules of contact. That's easy if you're comfortable being yourself. For the first time in years, I'm in regular contact with people who get it. They're not clock-watchers letting the world happen to them; they're people who want to make their own future. And that kicks ass! I am energized anew, and I love being around them!

Bingo.

Passion Isn't Necessarily a Vector

Until now, I was hunting for skills that "fit me like a glove", which I assumed would be my passion. I expected to experience naturally high levels of motivation and fulfillment once I found "it". In retrospect, this limited the field to skills that had market definitions: New Media, Interactivity, Game Development, and so on...actual professions that could bring in revenue. As I acquired and clarified complementary skills like Project Management, Graphic Design, and Information Architecture, my definition began to broaden. Now I was a "Designer" or "New Media Architect". Three years ago, I began to position myself more as a developer, choosing coding projects to rebalance my atrophied programming side with the my art side, waiting for the Passion Stick to beat some enlightenment into my skull.

Dum dum de dum deedle deedle dum...

Ok, so nothing was happening. One day I was talking with my good friend Scott, and we chatted about "putting the vibe" out there. The theory is that "the vibe" you put out is what you get back, so if you're in a cruddy mood all the time, all you'll get back is crud. Conversely, if you put out a happy vibe, you should get back happy. To put the vibe in terms of business, I want to work with competent, passionate, good-hearted people. Therefore, the vibe I must broadcast is precisely that. And the amazing thing is that it actually works! If you are broadcasting an authentic vibe, that is...people will smell the rat if you aren't.

Now, when I first started doing this, I thought strictly in terms of business credibility:

"Dave, your skillset is impressive on paper, but there are thousands of people who can legitimately claim to possess the exact same abilities as you. Paper credibility means nothing to the kind of discerning people you want to work with. You must demonstrate and you must write...lasting credibility will come from tangible accomplishment."

What surprised me was how many of my friends started reading regularly, even ones I hadn't talked to in years. As a result, I think I've gotten closer to a lot of great people I should have kept in touch with more regularity...and now I am! Community is restored! I've also gotten to talk to regular people who have written just say hi. It's a source of good cheer and energy, and it reinforces the vibe I want to maintain. What goes out, comes back!

The Insight of the Passion

What it comes down to---and I'm very surprised, as I'm used to thinking of myself as a technology-hugging introvert:

I like people

More specifically:

I like empowered, passionate, conscientious people.

If I were to admit it out loud, without worrying about people thinking I was a nutcase, I really believe that everyone can be what they want to be. In hindsight, everything I've ever done in my life has been firmly anchored by that belief; for one, I wouldn't have made so many career-altering U-turns if I didn't believe I could do it myself. By extension, I must believe that other people can too, because I'm just a regular guy. And the reason I believe it in the first place...actually, I don't know. I just do. Sometimes, passion may just come down to having faith.

My working theory:

For passion to be self-sustaining, it must flow naturally outward, react with the outside world, and then flow back in. It is a self-generating cycle of positive energy.

I've talked about cycles before in the context of productivity, and I think it's applicable to passion as well. Before, I thought that finding my passion would be like discovering an infinite energy source, and this restricted the scope of my search. Finding a regeneration cycle is a much easier task: find something that makes you feel good, find something you do that somehow generates the thing that makes you feel good, plug 'em together and BOOM! You've got it. Make it as simple as possible. Maybe this is a kind of engineered passion, sort of like when you can't afford a real hardware floor and you have to buy that Pergo stuff. Almost as good, in some ways better!

So here's my cycle:

• I do something that empowers people in some way!
• Happy, empowered people are drawn to me, give me feedback and we hang out!
• I am energized, so I do it again!
• Everything is Awesome!

The cool thing: this decouples actual skills (and by extension professions) from the source of passion. My passion is not defined by craft or talent. It is defined by the roles I love to play; skill and talent are merely tools that help me play my role well.

Alloying Passion with Skill

My mix of skills, I can now see, were all acquired due to some formative inspirational moment followed by the impulse to share. The reason I went into computer engineering? When I was a kid, I was deeply moved by the Infocom series of adventure games, liked shooting space invaders, liked graphics, and thought I needed to build a better graphics computers. Before then, I considered myself a writer, because I got good grades on my essays and it was the thing I was good at. I also liked writing because it helped clarify my own thoughts and ideas, to which other people sometimes responded. Years later, recognizing that being a computer engineer was not the way I wanted to go, I jumped ship and went to art school. Then, armed with complementary masters degrees, I was ready to jump into the serious business of making games...so I thought. The realities of making money from game work, with short development cycles and increasingly homogenized expectations from the people with development dollars, leave little room for ideas. And discussion of ideas don't help ship that milestone. Ideas, theories, and meaningful dialog are luxuries that slow down the pace of production when you're on a tight deadline.

To be successful in the game industry, you absolutely have to be passionate about making games above all else. At the time I thought my lack of consuming passion was due to the particular way things are done in larger companies, and under my own banner I would naturally resume my pursuit of game development. But alas...I have to admit I'm not passionate enough about making games. I'm not even passionate about playing them to the end. This was masked for years by my intense interest in the how of making games, from the technology to the psychology behind them.

Fortunately, that interest in the how of things was very transferrable to the early Internet. Bandwidth was precious still, and the game industry / computer engineering education gave me the ability to see computer graphics on an almost molecular level. Translation: I knew how to make graphics really small and still look good. Very handy. I also discovered that I liked working with clients directly to solve their problems, which was totally unexpected. I loved representing myself and my own capabilities to clients, making a personal guarantee, and then delivering something great. Most of the time, anyway :-)

As I gained more experience with clients, I began to see the patterns in interpersonal interactions and became better at anticipating the needs of clients. It became important to me that clients not only felt that things were being taken care of, but that they also felt good about how things were getting done. If I did my job right, then they would feel great, and I would feel great too. On the flip side, the constant desire to maintain high-quality customer relations made me an insufferable asshole when dealing with people on my production team. I also did not react well to bullshit and double-standards, and was incredibly blunt when dealing with them. It's when I noticed that people tended to not want to work directly with me anymore that I realized what I'd become, and decided that high-quality relations with everyone was the way to go. I've been much happier since then.

This pattern---observation of human motivation followed by application of skill---has been constant. I hate not knowing how to do something, or be told that something is not possible. For as long as I can remember I've tried to develop the adaptability to do anything that I thought was "in my area of interest". When I lacked the adaptability or talent, I would perform a flanking manuever and get around the obstacle. About half the time, the obstacle is me, so I spend a lot of time introspecting strategies around myself---The Printable CEO is an artifact of this very process.

The strategic acquisition of know-how and critical insight is my perennial hobby/career. I'm not sure I would call it a passion, but it is a strong part of my personality. What I am passionate about is the application of those skills on the behalf of other passionate, empowered, kind, conscientious, positive, upbeat people who are trying their best to make a little headway in the world. And you know what else? Having finally discovered this, I can graciously accept that I'm not super-passionate about graphic design and game development. Which paradoxically means I can start doing it for real...no more wondering why? why?. It's now as simple as getting the work done and making it awesome, so I can keep shipping the happy.

I'll write about that more some day. All I know is at this moment, I am remarkably at peace with myself. I have actually fooled myself into thinking I know what role I want to play for the rest of my life. I hope I'm as lucky tomorrow!

And with that, a Happy Holiday to all! :)

Learning by Fermentation

Last night I started---finally---entering in all my QuickBooks data. It took a few hours to figure out the best way for me to enter the financial data, but once I figured out how QuickBooks was architected beneath the layers and layers of GUI, it became a lot simpler to understand. Starting over also helped, and knowing I'll be able to do some pretty cool reporting is very exciting. It's about time I got my crap together.

As I entered the various accounts, vendors, and items on-the-fly, I realized that part of the reason I'm able to deal with QuickBooks now is that I've been doing my own business taxes for about 8 years now. As a result, I have a good idea of the various expenses are, and I have a basic "My First Book of Accounting, For Ages 4-7" level of understanding regarding AP, AR, cashflow, etc. And the Tax Code starts to make a weird kind of sense when you realize that it's driven by one basic principle: if you receive a benefit, through any means, above and beyond what the government deems as the baseline, they want a piece of the action. And unless you have something to do with churches or babies, they will take their piece. Reminds me a bit of the Mafia.

Anyway, I've noticed a learning pattern in myself: I can be introduced to a new process and set of ideas once, and even if I don't do anything directly related to them, in about five years something seems to ripen and the task is easier. I actually first tried to use QuickBooks about 5 years ago, and found it confusing and lame. In the five years since, I became more familiar with relational database concepts, the idea of categorizing expenses, and the tax filing process. All these experiences have percolated together for a long time, creating a rich base that made my 2005 QuickBooks Initiative more successful. Of course, the product itself may have also improved in terms of user interface. To me, though, it still acts like two separate pieces of software: the database-driven accounting engine, and the wizards-based GUI. They don't quite mesh, because the overall principles that drive the system aren't expressed in a system view that clearly relates the two activities. But I digress...what's interesting is how some kinds of learning are akin to fermentation of concepts over a long period of time. Suddenly, you just get it.

I've experienced the inexplicable ripening of ideas in several areas. For example, my understanding of low-level computer programming (that is, assembly language) is entirely shaped by an old Apple II book called Beneath Apple DOS, a classic tome which detailed the inner workings of the core disk drive read/write/track/sector routines: RWTS. I was particularly interested in the inner workings of disk drives because they allowed me to copy game disks, back when software had protection schemes. The process of deprotecting the games was sometimes more rewarding than the game itself...very clever programming on both sides of the fence.

Initially, none of Beneath Apple DOS made any sense at all to me, and no one I knew could explain it to me. As I started to read more about computer hardware, I realized that digital electronics was similar to the children's game MouseTrap; that laid some foundation. Additional programming gave me the experience to understand how systems of data storage were implemented (data structures). Then one day, I was trying to figure out how one of Electronic Art's Apple II games loaded SO FAST---EA's games were unique in that they showed a graphics image as soon as the disk was booted, almost before you could blink. Imagine if you booted your computer and it was just ready for you with no waiting...it was on that level of amazement. I wanted to make my own version, so I started "boot-tracing" the disk. This is a technique of interrupting the computer at the moment it has loaded the first sector of the floppy disk (which always contained code for Apple II bootable floppies). Then, you can inspect the code to see what it does; on the Apple II, it was always code that loaded MORE code from the disk (hence the term "boot"...it's short for "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps"). When you understand that, you modify the process so it interrupts a little later so you can

To make a long story shorter, I got to a part where there was a lot of looping and tricky memory lookups. It eventually dawned on me that this was actually reading data from the disk drive, and it was in fact a highly-tweaked RWTS. And then at that moment, everything about disk drives came together in an enormous flash of insight...five years of study and confusion. For the first time, I really understood the genius of Wozniak.

What I'm trying to say is there are certain moments in learning that are the culmination of a long process of percolation over time. When people think of learning, usually it's in the form of a class or a concentrated burst of activity. Not necessarily, I think. Can this be actually formalized and applied consciously in day-to-day life?

Fermentation comes to mind because I am reminded of the cheesemaking process: The cheese maker starts with raw materials, which are processed under controlled conditions to guide the fermentation process until the final product is ready, ripe, and delicious. Any fact, any controlled process that takes place over a few months or longer---wine making, coffee roasting, tea making come to mind---are very much dependent on human judgment and perception. You can't automate these processes and maintain the same level of quality...when it comes to judging peak ripeness for human consumption, it takes human guidance. Our best sensors are our noses, our eyes, and our brains.

The two personal examples I gave aren't the result of a controlled process...they just happened. I'm sure that's how cheesemaking got started in the first place, then someone had the bright idea that this could be systemized into a process. So the question is: How can I take this to the next step in long term learning? Is it a viable technique? Here's my thoughts so far:

• What I'm calling "long term learning" (to coin a silly phrase: "fermentative learning") is a process of acquisition. New ideas, relations, some practical real-world know-how, and time come together to create a proto-insight. This I'm defining as a collection of ideas/relations/experience that is not quite a full insight. but may be able to link with other proto-insights that spontaneously arise. This is, I think, also an element of "the school of life".
• Everyone possesses a number of these proto-insights, but they are unable to combine because of compartmentalized thinking across social and functional lines. We've been conditioned this way from the 7th grade and up, at least here in the U.S, and it continues in our work lives. However, ideas are transportable, with adaptation as needed, across all lines. This allows more proto-insights to mingle, making the possibility for a critical-mass insight reaction to occur far more likely. And I don't mean just "assessing" or "considering" a proto-insight. You've got to really experience it for it to be useful, to see how things fit together spontaneously. Assessment causes a delay in action, which can be an experience-limiting factor. If it won't kill you just try it.
• Continuity is essential. As we live our lives, we weave a narrative about ourselves. As I grow older, I find this is more important that "what I do" or "who I am". The narrative of our experience becomes the context for our thoughts and actions, which drive the creative impulses that we all share. In the formation of proto-insights, continuity is an essential nutrient. This is my gut feeling right now; I can't otherwise justify it.

You know, continuity tends to get shattered in the educational context, at least here in the States. Up to the 9th grade, we have a single teacher who gets to know us over the year. In high school and college that officially goes away. The remaining sources of continuity are, of course, family and best friends. Then there are the special teachers you admire, mentors in real life, and so on. If you are lacking in any of these sources of continuity, it's that much tougher to self-motivate. One exception is when your OWN sense of personal continuity is so strong that it requires nothing else. Even in that case, I think alloying personal continuity with other sources makes the individual less "brittle" if something traumatic happend.

If I were to think of standard education as cheesemaking, it seems designed to make, on average, mediocre cheese because the process doesn't take the type of raw material you're getting. The raw materials are individuals of different backgrounds, interests, and talents. You now proceed to put them all through the same process. The ones that thrive on the educational system will become fine cheeses. The ones that don't mesh don't turn out so well. Now bear in mind that there are thousands of kinds of cheese, all of them delicious, that are made from different kinds of milk with different additive ingredients and aging procedures. You can't transplant the process for making aged gouda to cottage cheese. You can't substitute goat's milk for cow's milk. Even the region matters, as do available local resources. If you're not keeping an eye on your cheese as it ages, turning it every so often and brining it appropriately, you also might get a bad cheese. But still, the potential for creating great cheese no matter where you are exists.

I know I'm not saying anything new about education here...I just happen to have some nice gourmet cheese in my refrigerator right now, so I have it on the brain. But I am thinking that creating the conditions for fruitful learning can occur over the long term if you design a process to:

1. Seed experience with proto-insights. This is like getting the ingredients for your cheesemaking.

2. Remove boundaries of experience and function, at least experimentally, so the proto-insights can mingle and form new ones. As time goes by, they will start to produce significant insights. This is akin to providing the environment in which your cheeses age.

3. Provide continuous lifelong continuity, relevant to what you want to learn. The cheesemaker watches the cheeses develop under a careful eye...I bet the artisan cheese makers get to know each wheel of cheese under their care.

This idea seems a bit raw...I think it needs to sit for another week :-)

My Separate Management Space: Early Impressions

Last Sunday I instituted a separate space for my planning, based on a rambling analysis I did on my production workspace. I can summarize the main points as follows:

• I am working inefficiently because my workspace tends to get cluttered.
• My workspace is cluttered because too many tasks (and cats) compete for the same space.
• There are three types of tasks that overlap: management (big picture), production (detail), and personal (food, magazines, etc).
• The places where things get done are the computer screen and the desk space closest to my keyboards.
• These surfaces are very dynamic, with new content switching in and out constantly. When either space is unable to simultaneously display all the pieces needed to complete a task, efficiency suffers because I have to root around to find what I was using, and this also burdens my limited short term memory (very quickly overloaded, leading to frustration).
• Walls and other vertical surfaces can provide secondary information of a static nature.
• Filing cabinets, shelves, and floor space provide useful secondary storage if the task doesn't need them just at a particular moment. They are still relatively easy to retrieve and use, but you must clear your desk off first.
• All this reminded me of designing an efficient memory system in computer architecture, so therefore the optimization strategies from this field could have analogies in the real world.

A second insight is that big picture tasks (management of all kinds for business, production, and personal) tend to be more stable, and it is useful to be able to see it all at once. That's because it's a map to what's going on in your life. I hate having to fold and unfold maps...I'd rather have it nice and big on a wall, with a nice you are here pin showing where you are relative to your goals. And to me, that implies an area that doesn't get overriden by short-term tasks, one that stands on its own and maintains its continuity separately.

The Management Space (First Pass)

My first pass at creating this space involved clearing off my drafting table and using that. At first this didn't seem ideal, since it's actually some distance away from my chair and I thought I needed a "faster" surface. You can get an idea of where the table is from the photo, just keep in mind it's a wide-angle shot that makes distances appear a bit farther than they really are; in actuality, the table is about two steps away from my chair. I found that I tended to go to this space between production tasks anyway, and it was relaxing to get away from the computer to reframe and reprioritize my tasks: an unexpected benefit.

The table itself currently serves as a place where I keep several lists. Right now they're all done by hand, as I'm finding that this is fine for prototyping. And I was inspired by Phil Newton and his drawn task-tracking forms. Drawing rocks! Eventually I'll create some interesting printable forms if that makes sense. Anyway, here's what I have currently on the table:

• A general daily schedule, which lists the times that I should be doing things, and has reminders to take 15 minutes periodically to do chores. I work at home, and I find it a challenge to work all day and keep up the house. It's been depressing me for a long time, but I finally have realized that it doesn't take all that much to keep things in order thanks to Dad's recent visit. Also, I have been trying to regularize my schedule, so I use this to dictate what I ought to be doing around what time. I'm trying to get to sleep by 11PM these days, which seems ridiculously early to someone who likes to hit the sack around 4AM. This schedule will help form the habit (I hope :-)

• A list of chores that I should do. This is not a list of specific chores, but just things I should be thinking of doing. I periodically scan the list to see if there's something I'm forgetting perhaps a little too conveniently.

• A list of electives that I can do if I have some free time. After 6PM, I've found that this time tends to get eaten up with dinner, socializing, and TV watching so it's a bit unstructured. I'm calling this "Elective Time", and I scan the electives list to see if anything piques my interest.

• The Menu of the Day, which is sort of a ToDo list but more high-level. On the top of the page are listed things I need to get done, with the "first simplest step" to take to kick the task off. I allow no more than 3 to 5 items. On the bottom, I keep notes specific to the day. On the right side, I keep lists of tangential tasks that pop into my head, but aren't related to the day's work. I should probably do what fellow 9ruler Beth does and keep them all in one notebook, but for now I'll just punch holes in them and put them in a binder for archiving.

On the wall is a clipboard with a Printable CEO form; sadly, I haven't been keeping up with this because I kept losing the current form under the pile of desk crap. I plan to augment the wall with several shelves that can hold other planning material and clipboards, as vertical space is very handy for displaying continuity-related information like timelines and calendars, if you don't need to change it too often.

I also keep a pile of process notebooks (not shown in the close-up, but you can see them in the wide-angle) to the right side of the table. I'm using metal clips to hold them open to the right place, so when the cats knock them down they stay open to the right page. This is somewhat reassuring for some reason.

Impressions

So far I like it. I feel like I have a place I can go to that will re-orient myself with respect to work, career, and life. It's nice to have a distinct production area and planning area. It's only been 3 days, but I think there's something here.

John Zeratsky made an insightful comment on my original post: planning is an essential part of production; having separate spaces is a potentially bad idea. Agreed! Not all planning material is confined to the management area:

• The "Menu of the Day" form moves from the planning area to the production area. It's the only piece of paper I keep on my desk now related to overall planning. At the end of the day, I move it back to the management area.

• For actual production task tracking, I'm still using TextPad, detailed To Do lists, Excel, and so forth on my docked notebook computer. I also maintain detailed "to do notes" on my production desktop machine, in the form of text files that live inside each project folder. They aren't particularly organized, but it helps me maintain continuity on projects. They also help keep track of the decision tree; I'm careful to enter a timestamp before I make a critical decision. I'm not sure yet what parts of the project management will make it to the management area...probably gannt charts and deadline information, timelines, and other "big picture" tracking things.

In the meantime, I'll be continuing to refine and test this idea and see if it has staying power. It could very well be that the novelty of having a clean drafting table is the source of my buzz :-)