Viewing Category: Questions
So I'm running through Menu of the Day and am realizing how out-of-touch I am with some of my process. There are some interesting things I'm already noticing:
Schedule Grid is a convenient note-taking area...needs to be bigger. And the damn grid dots need to be aligned better! Some useful emergent task notation happens here too.
As an emergent PLANNING tool, though, this isn't working for me. I ran right back to TextPad and made my simplified ToDo list. What's interesting, though, is that the PROCESS was to list things I needed to do, group the related tasks together, then make a guess at how much time it would take to tackle is task group. The Schedule Grid, though, helps get a sense of the amount of time in ways I didn't expect...cool!
The best way to execute this form, I'm increasingly thinking, is as a smart scheduler / outliner software tool, combining elements of a "thought processor" with tracking and reporting.
Out of curiosity, I'm wondering if anyone out there is willing to share what they're doing today in this post's comment area, describing the steps taken to get the ball moving. I think everyone will find it interesting, and it might give me some insight into why this form isn't working right. Thanks!
A while ago I wrote about the distraction of blogging and personal email. Based on this insight, I separated my workspaces into "separate but equal" area on different floors of the house: my blogging / personal email / instant messaging machine (a laptop) is now upstairs, and the graphics / development / production machine is in the downstairs lair. The theoretical result I projected was increased productivity in the office, and this prediction has held so far.
The only problem is that I seem to be spending somewhat less time in the office in the first place. And this is an interesting insight in itself.
The Obvious Conclusion is Not So Obvious
Ok, let's get it out there: I'm being lazy and am doing fun things instead of being the disciplined worker I should be. However, these are the things I've been doing:
- Writing or researching articles for the blog
- Responding to people who write me with questions
- Meeting people who are interested in talking about similar interests
- Keeping tabs on how people are doing
I don't read many blogs or play games on a daily basis. My only regular read is actually a few online comic strips. Sometimes I daydream a bit, if I'm goofing off, it still feels an awful lot like work. It's just not what I thought I should be doing.
Generally, it seems I'm busy communicating with people, generating a steady stream of ideas and encouragement for whomever seems to want it. In some companies, this is an entire job in itself. And since I've decided that my path is one of independence, this suggests that I should rethink the balance of my activities.
Aligning with My Shifting Values
In the past, I've framed myself in context of what I can make with my two hands and a mouse, which is the reason why "being more productive" at my workstation is such a preoccupation. However, the separation of the communications part of the day from the production part has shown me just how much time I've been spending on what I regarded as "support work". Apparently it's far more compelling to me, at this time, than writing code or slinging pixels.
I keep coming back to a comment that Lauren Muney made on my earlier post on "Purpose": another post, about being in alignment with one's values. This phrase has been haunting me a lot lately, because I'm sensing that I'm on the cusp of yet another directional shift as my values become clearer.
RANDOM ASIDE: Check out this background page on Lauren: she does multimedia motivational presentations using fire, among other things. WOW THAT'S COOL.
The Flip-a-Roo
With the past year's emphasis on productivity, I thought I was just getting myself ready for a concerted push toward being a better designer / developer. Now I'm not so sure.
While I like code, graphics, and working with clients, I've tended to put the tangible production work first. That's the place from which I started, and so that's the way I've tended to understand "my value" with respect to others. I repeat this a lot when talking about products and services: it's what you can tangibly show to people, in a way that shows clear benefit, that matters in a transaction. It's a pretty well-developed personal philosophy toward creating things, and I stand by it. That is the philosophy that drives my desire to be a more productive and efficient worker, creating things that people can readily see. That is the philosophy that drove the separating my workspaces in the first place.
And yet I still spend all this time writing and communicating. Mark, Jeff, and I chatted about being an idea worker over lunch the other day, and I'm starting to think that there might be something to it. If I'm spending so much time communicating and ideating, that indicates that there's a second set of values that speaks more insistently to me. If I can figure out what they are, the flip-a-roo would be to alter the nature of my practice such that I harness that force and be more "naturally productive". I think this is what "being in alignment with my values" would mean to mean, and it may also be my way of following my bliss and doing what I love.
In practical terms, I need to make a living from being in alignment with my values for this all to end happily-ever-after. Here's a basic value proposition, from a market perspective:
- What differentiates me from other vendors?
- What are people willing to pay for, given the degree of my differentiation?
It's interesting to note that these perspectives are both cast in the context of providing what other people desire. It doesn't address what I desire. I think this insight is pretty critical; when you're dissatisfied with work, it probably comes down to this basic conflict. Sure it pays the bills, and the clients are pleased, but there's just something's missing.
To reframe the value proposition, I tried the following on for size:
- What do I value MOST?
- How am I making my values VISIBLE?
- Who is responding to me?
- What benefits can people derive from our interaction?
- If I can identify the benefit, what can I charge for it?
Numbers 2 and 5. together form the fundamental reframing of the market perspective, so this list is a superset of my business development strategy.
Redux
I have already had the critical personal realization that I like "making sparks", and I like being around empowered, positive people. I have also already realized all the programming and design skills I have are NOT the source of my identity, but exist in service to my spark-making desires. The new realization is that it may be possible to derive income from just spark-making and communication, not from the creation of tangible things. Don't get me wrong: making tangible things still underpins my value system because I believe in showing over telling, but maybe my best contribution lies in facilitating the creation of sparks. This possibility is a bit clearer to me today thanks to that 9rules interview on Monday, and the lunch discussion on Tuesday.
I find these thoughts exciting---and somewhat unsettling.
Michael Ramm, of the great productivity blog Black Belt Productivity, tossed a question to me the other day about the challenge of creating an Information Technology Version of The Printable CEO. Right now, the standard "design business" version of The Printable CEO uses the following point list:
When Something Is Worth Doing (for my New Media Business)
10: It's life-sustaining billable work!
10: It's signing new business!
5: It's publishable code! Ship it!
5: It's sharp visual design! Show it!
5: It's concrete planning or accounting!
2: It's new self-promotion!
2: It's a new article for the blog!
2: It's social or business development!
1: It's maintaining an old relationship!
1: It's making a new relationship!
Now, this list was tailored specifically for my own design practice, and most importantly, for my philosophy of business. To adapt this for the IT Industry, we need to tailor a list that encourages best practices AND the philosophy behind the work itself. This is a pretty broad question, because it essentially asks the following:
What is the Goal of Information Technology?
To Whom is the Goal of IT Important, Not Counting IT Professionals?
What are the tangible signs that tell us that IT is actually fulfilling its goals?
The basic philosophy behind The Printable CEO, from the productivity perspective, has always been that (1) the things you do matter only if they can be expressed as a benefit to OTHER people and (2) You actually do those things and they are seen. That's the motivation behind the three questions I'm posing.
Instead of making something up, I thought I'd pass along Michael's question and see what people out there thought...an interesting discussion, I hope, will arise. IT is an interesting challenge because it is, oftentimes, invisible to the organization when it works.
I'll have to do some research on current IT practices to get a feel for what it really is these days; the last time I looked at this was probably in 1994, when IT was a sort of "slush major" that combining core programming courses with an interactive design component.
UPDATE:
Michael's made an announcement on his blog as well, so this should be a fun cooperative nut to crack!
» Read Part II of this series
BMW has new television advertising, the first new spots from their new ad agency GSD&M. This article by Bob Garfield snipes it for being "terrible". Interesting quote:
Self-consciousness is not only a warning sign of amateurs at work, it's also a very good indicator of nothing much to say.
My first thought was uh-oh, since self-consciousness is totally me. But then I got a bit angry, because his ad review is tinged with a pointed negativism. You could also call it "constructive criticism" because he does make some good points, for example challenging if BMW is now the "company of ideas" as claimed, name three of them. But it's the tone of the article that gets me; for all the constructive qualities of his critique, Garfield's own article thinly echoes the very whininess he's decrying. I should know, because I often whine in the same way. But I don't try to hide it...perhaps one of the signs of an amateur?
Another paragraph that gets me is where he says the spot is "transparently inspired by the difficulty of getting a campaign sold", "the frustration of advertising creatives who feel their own genius stifled by craven, clueless clients." This may be the case, but it demonstrates the opposite of self-consciousness: a lack of awareness of how one's own experiences can create an interpretation of debatable relevance. His insight is delivered without an explicit point either; is it that the possibility of ad execs whining about their own creative challenges through high-profile advertising is bad? Immoral? Lazy? Maybe all of the above, but it doesn't strike me as particularly relevant, or even demonstrably true. Even if it's an ad inspired in part by the ad pitch experience, does that someone devalue the message? There are two messages: "BMW is a Company of Ideas" is the surface message that Garfield says is not being supported. The second message, as I interpret it, is that "BMW believes as you do, in ideas and of possibilities that can be made real." Every BMW becomes a manifestation of hope. Heck, advertising creatives probably ARE the target market for this ad...how many of them drive BMWs anyway? And for every up-and-coming executive climbing the corporate ladder, the message is just as relevant.
I don't really know why that article set me off...I guess it was the tonal thing, the narrow interpretation, and an underlying assumption that amateur self-consciousness means "bad". Evelyn Rodriguez illuminates the latter point in her inspiring post An Internet Fed Mostly by Amateurs is Fascinating.
[/rant]
Addition!
As I reflect on this, I'm doing some of the things I'm ranting about: not being clear in my point. I just realized that there isn't one...it's more of a reaction/opinion. It's rare that I have strong opinions on anything, so I am looking at this more closely now.
I can't stand passive-aggressiveness. Probably because I used to be that way, and am hyper-sensitive to it now. Followup thought: LEARN TO RELAX :-) I'm not saying this article was passive-aggressive, but certainly I've conditioned myself to look more deeply. One recent insight is that for all the ability I have to look deeply at something, I don't have the discipline/process that makes it effective.
I don't know what is the purpose of Garfield's column from the editorial perspective (unfortunately, the entire adage site is undergoing maintainance), but it does get people to think. A polarized opinion is far easier to react to than an evenly-balanced one, especially if you're looking for some kind of response...perhaps this was by design.
Ok, I'm feeling better now, if not very exciting :-)
One of my relatives IM'd me earlier today to chat about productivity tools. By coincidence, I was about to IM her about a bunch of questions I had regarding research in motivation and learning; she happens to have a Ph.D. in those areas.
So I asked, "If I wanted to get an overview of what the current theories / categories are in this field, who should I read?" In about 2 minutes she gave me the names of seminal researchers and some papers, no doubt saving me from weeks of floundering on the Internet. I should contact scholarly friends and relations to get the "101" on their fields, just for the hell of it.
Getting that high-level, guided introduction to a topic is invaluable. I am reminded of an old project to collect Tables of Contents and Curricula. The theory is that you can actually learn something abou the field from the way its education is structured:
The Table of Contents is the first thing I scan when evaluating non-fiction books in the bookstore. While a casual flip through a book itself tells you something about the writing style, level of detail, and technical level, it's the Table of Contents that tells you how the author's mind is organized. You can think of it as a powerpoint presentation of the book, what the author considers important. I think of it as getting a good look at a roller coaster before you decide to get in line: even from a distance you can get a good idea of what you're in store for, like what parts will be tame and which will scare the living bejesus out of you. You'll know whether it's worth riding at all.
There are a lot of fields of study that I wish I'd known about when I was in college: industrial design and cognitive science are two that I found out about only after I graduated. I've been thinking that by collecting curricula for the courses, I might get an idea of the "shape" of what they learn. The content of a course tends to follow certain patterns: there is foundation, theory, both quantitative and qualitiative components, hands-on, presentation, and some kind of crowning project. While you might not gain much practical knowledge from identifying these parts, you may learn enough to ask the right questions, or to frame the materials you are reading in the right mental context. When I was in college, I wasn't aware that mental context was the key to getting through a lot of what I thought was lame; I just couldn't make the connection with what we were studying with something tangible and useful in the real world, so my interest waned. Studying the curriculum, from the list of required courses to the course descriptions down to the reading lists and course outlines will tell you a lot about the meta-patterns around the field, without bogging your mind down with the little details. Understand the grand arc of the field, and maybe the busywork will make more sense. That's my theory, anyway.
If you can't tell, I've been in a mood to learn something new. It strikes every few years, but I am not in the mood for any more grad school at this time. Subjects I'm interested in:
- psychology
- education & learning
- cognitive science
- mathematics (never really clicked with me, but I am feeling lucky this year :-)
- industrial design
- music composition
Maybe continuing education is an option...no idea how it works, but there's LOTS of it all around. On the other hand, I want to avoid situations like this, despite how hiliarious it sounds when it's not my money being wasted.
UPDATE: Article significantly expanded after reading comments.
I've never been to South-by-Southwest...I just heard about it it a couple of months ago while on the 9rules forums. No idea what to expect. But people are telling me I must go, so I'm thinking about it.
I'm not very big on crowds, so the idea of going to something like this is mildly terrifying and exciting at the same time. However, it would be great to meet the people in 9rules that I've been chatting with for the past few months. It's been incredibly inspiring overall; I attribute a great deal of my lift in spirit to finding a bunch of independently-minded content creators. I never knew that this was what I was missing.
Meeting actual people might give me a huge boost of energy...so yeah, I'm thinking it could have unforseeable benefits.
On the other hand, it'll probably cost be $1500 to go, with hotel, airfare, eats, and registration. It's a deductable junket, which takes some of the sting off. I don't really know anyone going, other than names that I can assign to websites, and I'm wondering if the crowd is, like, way younger than my 38 years. And when did that happen anyway, getting old? My colon still feels pretty spry! Must be all the vegetables I've been eating lately, making up for my 20s and early 30s.
As my Mom used to say, "We'll see." Let the convincing begin!
The Essential Conflict
Earlier this year, one of my new year's resolution was to be frugal and pay down the debt that I've accrued during the boom times. Stupid, yeah. What I've been doing:
At home, I've been buying only the essentials. I'm learning how cooking cheaper foods so they taste good, and I'm not buying books or toys. I'm also eliminating entertainment-related services slowly (Battlestar Galactica is proving to be a difficult one to shake).
Business-related expenses I've been limited only generally to directly-expensible items and essential subscriptions/services.
Everything left over goes to paying down debt.
There is a class of business expense, however, that I've continued to indulge in. For example, I recently subscribed to Basecamp because I wanted a polished client extranet. I strictly didn't need to pay for something like this, as I could have installed some open source solution. However, Basecamp is great user experience and I don't have to worry about maintaining the server. I made a bet that the extra $12/month was worth not having to deal with all that crap. As an additional benefit, the clients I have shown it to have been very impressed; 37Signal's excellence in software has reflected very well on my operation. I think it's worth it.
I have the sneaking suspicion that the $1500 bucks that it would cost me to attend SXSW is in the same category. While I really want to just pay off more debt with the money, this might be an example of being "penny-wise but pound-foolish".
Here's my reasoning:
Energy. The past year has been great personally because I've met a lot more people that have inspired me. In essence, I have started to find my community among people who are doing cool things, and this more than anything has contributed to my general feeling of progress. And from that has come increased productivity and opportunity; this feels like it's starting to pay off this year in terms of actual work.
People. When I first wrote this, I thought I really didn't know anyone who was going, as in personal friends. However, I realized that actually I should be going to make new friends. Even if I come away with one or two really good connections, that could be the basis of an empire. Finding people is really hard. Just within the 9rules network alone I'll probably meet twenty. Heck, AOL used to spend an average of $100 to acquire a subscriber in 1997, and it's way higher now with broadband. By that metric, $1500 is a deal.
Inspiration. I know from experience that whenever I travel, I get new ideas and see new opportunities. I have never been to any content-oriented shows like SXSW or even FlashForward. I've been to E3, but I think it's probably a different experience. Seeing something new like this, seeing people doing awesome stuff, and just being in a new place will be one of those life experiences that I can probably draw on for years afterwards, and I'll be a better person for it.
So I can think of SXSW as an investment into my future. There isn't a hard number I can quantify in terms of ROI, but I think that it's true that I need to go. My life is at a point now that I intuitively sense that this is the time to do it.
Or, I can pay down $1500 of debt and stick to my new year's resolution. I suspect, though, that the contacts and experiences I have at SXSW would indirectly bring me more than $1500 of new business in the long run.
I was looking around for a graphic of the aol running man icon when I came upon one of those pop-under ads for Smiley Central, which provides "thousands of free icons" for use in your online communications: IM, email, etc. The catch is that you install their toolbar, which "Isn't spyware...trust us! By clicking this button you agree that..."
Regardless of that dubious proposition, I was impressed by the slickness of the artwork. Was it was the work of a single artist or illustration group, making their own fortune and glory? Or was it the work of corporate profiteers, luring unsuspecting people into demographic slavery with the promise of "free" eye-candy?
There was no information on the Smiley Central website itself, but a google search revealed a listing on paidcontent.org from the Ask Jeeves people, seeking a marketing manager for their "business applications business unit". So I'm guessing it's all art-directed in a department wherever Ask Jeeves is located. Oh well. But now my attention turned to paidcontent.org itself...what was this?
As usual, I'm late to the party...this site has been around for a long time. This Wired News 2003 interview with the site's creator, Rafat Ali is an interesting read. Apparently everyone knows about this guy except me :-)
A journalist tired of working for the man, Ali started up his blog in 1999 and started reporting on the deals and behind-the-scenes goings-on of Digital Media: The Business. I found the site quite eye-opening. The site crackles with the energy of businesses, dealmaking, and markets in a way that your typical "CNet"-level feed just doesn't capture. This site appears to provide actual information, not reportery fluffiness. I like it.
I usually see Digital Media from the perspective of the small-time (or as we like to say: independent) content creator, which is driven by love and passion for the craft, especially as it impacts individuals. But at some point, if you want to make a living from it, you've got to start considering, to again paraphrase Paid Content's byline, the economics of what you do; are you a provider or a distributor or are you both?
I've started following the Zen of Design blog, which strikes me as an intelligent repository of commentary on the world of game design and development. What I like about it and other developer-driven blogs is that there's a purpose to the writing: making progress toward better game development and game experiences.
On the surface, this kind of writing is similar to the kind of inquiry you see in serious academic study (think "film studies"). Though I'm all for serious acadmic study, I'm sometimes frustrated with their encroachment game design. They still somehow miss the point...they're not necessarily creators, and they may even get in the way.
A discussion of one Mark Barrett's response to this essay can be seen on Intelligent Artifice. It's kind of an interesting essay from a theoretical, categorical perspective. But the Barrett response cuts to the chase:
If academics are going to be helpful in solving the interactive storytelling problem, they need to be explicit about their intent, exhaustive in their historical analysis and rigorous with their language. The danger in failing to do so is not simply that confusion will arise, but that academia will perpetuate the reinvention of the wheel among the transient student populations in the same way these issues have reappeared a number of times in the transient commercial industry. And from where I sit, as a creator, the last thing any of us needs is another generation of designers thinking they're getting in on the ground floor of the interactive storytelling problem when they're not.
We have seen this happen over and over again, but from the perspective of fun video game experiences, not the academically-acclaimed ones. We saw the old play mechanic of Dragon's Lair return 20 years later in the CD-ROM game Johnny Mnemonic... and it wasn't. Here's a quote from the 1995 Wired feature:
"In a traditional adventure game, the user is mainly presented with a static screen and controls what happens to a sprite," says Norris, an MIT Media Lab graduate with several productions under her belt. But Norris points out that most full-motion videogames, like Trilobyte Inc.'s 7th Guest, are stuck in "explore mode": you can look around, but heaven help you if you want to fight because the technology isn't really there to help you. Thanks to some nifty video-compression hacks, you can do both in Johnny Mnemonic, where, Norris says, "the video forces the action and you must react in a real-time manner."
Uh huh. To be fair, it was 1995, about a year before iD released Quake and 3D hardware acceleration was yet to be firmly entrenched. It seems like a good market decision, leveraging the quality of streaming video and CD-ROM that could support them. What we didn't know was that even Hollywood production values could not make a film-based "interactive experience" fun. Just look at Rocket Science Games, who churned out highly polished 3D rendered CD-ROM games...I still have a cherished copy of LodeStar's somewhere. Great looking stuff. Just not very fun.
Perhaps the split is fundamentally based in the mindset. Academics tend to be observers. Film people are focused on passive viewing that leads to suspension of disbelief. Game Developers are something else: part dictator, part squad leader, and part crack dealer. But above all, they want you to have a good time doing things in their world, suspension of disbelief occurs because you're too busy doing things to question the logic of it all. That's a different approach vector from film, though both game developer and movie director have to carefully consider setting expectation before the audience sits down.
As for me, these articles have helped clarify what's important to me in pursuing game development again: advancement of the interactive experience through practice, not theory. I am incredibly out of shape with regard to the practice, but knowing that there are others on the same path is encouraging.
Stumbled upon a collection of Microsoft interview questions. Microsoft's interview process is renown for being difficult and challenging, so it's interesting to see what they've asked in the past. In addition to the usual riddles, algorithms, and application questions, there's a "thinker" section. Excerpts:
- How would you explain how to use Microsoft Excel to your grandma?
- You have been assigned to design Bill Gates bathroom. Naturally, cost is not a consideration. You may not speak to Bill.
- Interviewer hands you a black pen and says nothing but "This pen is red."
- Why is it that when you turn on the hot water in any hotel, for example, the hot water comes pouring out almost instantaneously?
The main interviewing page covers broader topics relating to interviewing...interesting stuff.
There's a lot I take for granted these days with interactive design. The sheer ubiquity of interactive design online has been helped by the surge in talent availability. On the flip side, it's led to the commoditization of the market, which has pushed rates lower; my own random client polling suggests that they're expecting to pay no more than $20/hour for contract "flash work". Because of this, I've been angling myself more toward pure programming / original content creation.
There's probably still room for an information architect / interactive designer who knows the ins and outs of digital media production. Here's two must-have skills:
the gift of true understanding - Some people try to "get" what you're trying to do, others just shove your stuff into the most convenient box that's on hand. You'll appreciate someone who takes the time to try to understand what you're doing and provide useful structuring principles...especially if you're trying to figure it all out yourself.
the gift of narrative - Understanding is great, but if you can't express it clearly you're still up the creek. An expert interactive designer / animator knows how to pace things out so they make sense.
Then there's the bits that a good animator knows:
the gift of timing & sequencing - A good animation has rhythm, bounce, and the uncanny power of keeping you in the moment. Too slow, and the audience can see the gags coming through stifled yawns. Too fast, and they'll be left wondering what's going on and uninterested.
the gift of motion - Sensitivity to how things move and through that contributes to the emotional and dramatic tone of the animation is a rare and wonderful thing. Being able to command it is rarer still. It's closely related to timing.
And finally there's all the 2D design skills that go into making a great screen:
- the gift of typograpy - how to lay out a block of type so it sings
- the gift of 2d composition - how to control contrast, position, tone, color in support of what you want to communicate
- the gift of 3d composition - how to control layers of overlapping information
- the gift of cheese - that bag of tricks that gets your screen design through to the end
- the gift of color harmony - the ability to taste and smell color, and bend it to your will
And technical things one ought to know:
- the gift of programming - being able to program without totally relying on code snippets you've snipped from FlashKit
- the gift of sound & music - being able to layer, process, and edit audio streams for use in interactives, construct interactive soundscapes, and time things out to music certainly helps the animator
- the eye - the ability to see what works, what doesn't, and why...instantaneously
- the user model - knowing how a user will perceive and react to the presentation of information on a screen.
- the history of the medium - knowing what's been done, what's worked and what's failed in interactive media.
So there's a lot of stuff here to know, and I haven't even touched upon storyboarding, project management, script writing, and the rest of the skills that go into making a good concept in the first place.
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