Personal Horoscopes

My friend S. had this great idea about writing your own horoscopes. I didn't get it at first...it seemed that writing your horoscope was cheating, but actually it makes a lot of sense. You end up seeding your day for things you want to think about, or intuitively think might have some value. There's also the sense of mystery and anticipation, plus it's actually fun to throw something out there crazy to mix things up. Who knows, maybe it will lead to a new line of work. I like how it takes narrative concepts and puts them in the real world so that "Life Imitates Art".

Here are my first three:

• Dave, on January 19, something you see through glass will trigger a childhood memory, remininding you of dreams past! Pay particular attention to sales clerks, and mind their wisdom!

• Dave, you will gaze upon the winter sky and call to mind a challenge that you must face. You will appreciate smell in a way you haven't before. Search your refrigerator, and be amazed.

• Dave, you are by nature introspective. Tomorrow, Jan 21st, the external world beckons! Something you watch on TV tonight will relate to you in an unexpected, yet familiar manner. Try drawing something...you may be delighted by what happens. Oh, and don't forget to take out the garbage.

Highly recommended! Already, we've synthesized some rules:

• A good horoscope should have one thing you will be likely to experience, one thing to evoke some kind of reaction, and something completely nuts :-)

• A good horoscope should have something that makes you introspective, look inside your self, extraspective, look outside yourself, and relational, look at the relationships between things!

I think it goes without saying that you shouldn't be too literal in fabricating your own horoscope. Give yourself some wiggle room! But don't make it too easy to fulfill...what's the point then? You're probably the kind of person who steals from the bank in Monopoly when you're the Banker and builds hotels everywhere...you're missing the point of playing.

Stupidless Computing

The idea of "stupidless computing" came to me in the car this morning while returning Diane's PC. Has a certain ring to it, doesn't it? I felt a tremendous desire to do something about this.

Areas of stupidness that come to mind:

• spyware It's very easy for an ActiveX Browser Help Object (BHO) to insert itself into your PC's startup routine in several difficult-to-detect ways. People are used to clicking "OK" whenever a dialog box pops up, assured that the computer is trying to be helpful rather than malicious. You need special software to find them all (I use Spybot Search and Destroy in Advanced Mode for this).

• fragile operating systems Though Windows XP is pretty stable overall, it's not easy to maintain once things go wrong. System Restore goes a long way toward fixing this, but it's still somewhat cumbersome. It would be nice if the user could easily monitor what's being loaded and running that's definitely "not part of the original installation". Or, configuring a system so a system restore doesn't immediately wipe out all your user data like email and the like.

• unclear concept A lot of software has the problem of not having a clear purpose. The result is that its visual interface (the GUI) is also unclear. Microsoft's Windows Media Player series has this problem, in my opinion. A lot of productivity software that I introduced to my Dad have so many buttons and controls that he didn't know where to look. Is it so much to ask that a piece of software present its main conceptual objects in an obvious manner?

• verbose-yet-ambiguous description A lot of the help text in software tends to run long and unhelpfully. I think it's because the copy tends to describe a process of clicks that require memorization as opposed to understanding the underlying concept. Or the concept is inherently at-odds with the user's understanding and desires. There's some name for this in the User Interaction literature that escapes my mind.

For my stupidless computing initiative, there are a couple areas I want to explore.

• For OS-related stuff, I'm curious about exploring the Microsoft OEM System Builder tools to see what it would take to build an easier XP install. Or just being able to monitor the "who's running when" chain would be nice. The number of secret programs that check the Internet for updates is getting annoying, especially when they break.
• As far as software goes, it might be fun to design some productivity applications like photo browsers, email, etc.

Reinventing the wheel, one application at a time! Maybe not one of my best ideas :-)

Methodologizing

A few days ago, Sunil gave me some advice on starting up a business, based on his own experiences in Taiwan. The piece that stuck out was his emphasis on developing a methodology--how the business will get things done, if I understand correctly. This is different from the usual "make a business plan" advice you usually see, and it reflects Sunil's emphasis on good execution. So I might as well start making stuff up:

As I start to write this, I'm finding that I want to establish some baseline principles about the kind of company culture I want. My gut tells me that this is not the point of this exercise, so I'm going to focus on process.

Ooops, I forgot I didn't know what kind of company I want! Um, let's say it's the Screen Designers Guild, a company that specializes in designing graphical user interfaces (GUIs) for products that are yet to be developed. In other words, a concept design company for screen-based applications. The focus is on developing visual concepts, not hardcore development. For most types of software, the development aspect is fairly trivial compared to getting the design of the application right.

The hypothetical process of doing this kind of work:

1. Identify areas where an enabling software technology has surged far ahead of good design. These are fertile areas of exploration. Instant Messaging, for example, has been hot for quite some time, with dozens of IM clients being built every year. However, while the feature sets and GUIs have improved considerably, the emergent uses of IM haven't yet been addressed and defined. The features end up crashing onto themselves in a confused jumble. There are many other such areas: Media Library management, Photo Management, etc. Apple, actually, is doing a good job of clarifying the actual uses of technology, and developing software to that end. This hasn't happened yet on the PC side, though, so there may be some opportunity in that market.

2. Brainstorm possible "use models" that apply to the emerging technology hybrids. Clarify the essence behind each movement, and identify what emotional/rational triggers are in play for users.

3. Keeping the essence of the application in mind, develop a simple, orthogonal set of operators and concepts that will form the basis for the new software tool.

4. Design something visually kick ass, with a full set of screen mockups suitable for making into a prototype.

5. Publish, and move on. Optionally find a developer who can flesh out the product.

There are other methodologies that would cover how to deal with client relationships, how to put together a proposal, etc, but I'll skip those for now. What I want to define first is some background methodology:

• I want the team to remember how weird GUIs are for most people. A good GUI should be pretty up-front about what does what. The difficulty is that neophyte users have no idea what computers can do in the first place, so it's something of a catch-22. Developing a GUI concept bible for the company would be necessary.

• There are some ubiquitous GUI concepts that can nevertheless be refined. Assembling a practical library of these concepts would be useful, along with the supporting code for both Windows and Macintosh.

• Aesthetically, there may be some rules of thumb that come to dominate the work. I'd want these preserved for future reference, with the rationale behind it.

• The team should be familar with the breadth of visualization technique, from Tufte to XBox to The Lord of the Rings. The team should also be familiar with trends in ALL media: illustration, graphic design, motion graphics, animation, film, sound design, photography...

• The team should be familiar with the history of interactive computing, computer languages and graphics libraries.

• The team should be kickass in computer graphic designers and information architects, consumate craftspeople who push toward improving their skills. They should feel it, man!

I'm getting sleepy, so I'll leave off here and pick it up later.