I don’t know what I’m talking about, but I do it anyway

It’s always great to start out an argument by just wishing that realities could be different. Not offering a hint of a solution, really, but just claiming something isn’t ‘good enough.’ Demanding better is a rallying cry of the innovator:

It takes something like 5 years to get a new car designed and built in most large auto companies. That’s too long. I realize that designing and building a new car platform is not like hacking up a new web app. But five years? C’mon. We have to do better than that [sic]
Fred Wilson http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2008/11/bustup-not-bail.html

Why is a five year figure unacceptable? If it’s a shared, industry reality, why is that to be criticized? If a client asks me to bid on a site development project, I quote the work at 100 hours, and he comes back and demands it in 35 — I politely tell him to find another firm. Sometimes realities are just real, and can’t be moved (or at least, not in a dramatic fashion). Forgive me for thinking inside the box.

Happycake ovens for all

I don’t mean to single out Wilson — he’s far from being alone in his opinions and rhetoric (and in the end, it is just a blog post). My beef is with the ‘thought leaders’ and moneymen in our industry treating the idea of ‘innovation’ like it’s some magical happy-creme you just rub on things to achieve success. When we, as an industry, have the illusion that a pile of napkin sketches, a few million dollars worth of someone else’s money, and a cheerful outlook are a substitute for a real business plan, that’s our own problem. It’s when we extrapolate that glee as a cure for the complex problems of established industries that we start looking more than just a little foolish.

Tesla, fail

It’s best to look at an example. Tesla motors, the “upstart”, “green” automaker just a few years ago, was going to teach Detroit a lesson by innovating like madmen. Everything was thrown out the window, and all the mistakes and corporate clumsiness of the Big 3 would be ignored. I remember the flurry of media coverage, and the gleeful hope (which I admired) that a bunch of nerds with passion could do just about anything. Dan Lyon’s recent piece in Newsweek shows how things have been less than rosy:

…five years after its founding, Tesla has shipped about 70 electric roadsters, and the car does in fact turn out to be a classic Silicon Valley product—it’s late and over budget, has gone through loads of redesigns, still has bugs and, at $109,000, costs more than originally planned. Tesla’s first 40 roadsters went out of the factory with a drivetrain that needs to be replaced. (Tesla will do the rip-and-replace for free.) Its second car, a sedan, has been delayed until 2011. Tesla, based in San Carlos, Calif., has raised $150 million and burned through almost all of it, plus millions more put down by customers in the form of deposits (the company won’t give an exact figure). Now, hit by the downturn, Tesla has laid off 20 percent of its staff, closed its Detroit office and borrowed money to stay afloat.
Dan Lyons http://www.newsweek.com/id/169161

Even better, the ousted and current CEO’s have been battling it out publicly, trash-talking each other at every chance (how classy!). Hearing them both speak, it’s pretty clear that there have been serious faults in leadership and strategy — the same mistakes that Tesla, as a hip little upstart, promised never to commit.

It’s scary then, if we start clamoring for failing industries to rub that same hoo-ha happy-creme all over their businesses. Witness Wilson again, in the same article, advocating turning the big three loose, as lean and mean start ups run by visionaries like him (not nerds who look at numbers):

“…One PE firm should buy Volt. Another should buy Buick… This is the best way out of this mess. We have to get the biggest businesses in this country smaller and nimbler, we have to get smart money behind them, builders not spreadsheet pushers, and we must focus on innovation not lobbying.

Yes, if we just ‘trust innovation’ more and more (much like we all trusted the market) things will come up roses — just like they have for Tesla. But you know, these are just the thoughts of a guy who wrote all this “on the eliptical trainer at the gym so no links and prob some typos. [sic]”

The world is not a web-app

The reason I bring all of this up is that I think that believing too much in our own, still incredibly fetal industry is dangerous. Running a Twitter-clone start-up with 5 part-time employees in a loft in NYC is a far different problem set than re-tooling a three decade-old auto fab plant in mid-Michigan, while meeting labor and government regulations.

Treating the excitement we have for web-apps and internet culture as a template for how everyone else should run their business is foolish to the point of total absurdity. Sure, the world needs forward thinkers and innovators, but reality demands that we address complex issues (i.e. solving the auto crisis) with a greater sense of humility, patience, respect and a desire to look for functional, long-term solutions.

Anyone in the business of doing anything acknowledges there are limits on what’s possible. The sooner we stop pretending we can all make ponies by dreaming fluffy dreams, the sooner real innovation — working well given constraints — can happen.

I was kindly asked a few months ago to write a short piece for .net magazine (Practical Web Design in the US), a great industry publication that covers the convergence of interaction design and site development technology. My mini article is about how small design changes (link hit states, hover interactivity) can have a big positive impact on usability.

I’d like to say thanks to Oliver Lindberg for reaching out to me to write the piece. He was a great help during the entire process. Also, I’m really impressed with the quality of articles in the magazine in general — it’s a wonderful, high quality summary of the best design, process, and technology writing in the biz.

I’m in the November issue #182 of Practical Web Design, which is out on newsstands this week in the US.

What’s wrong, dude?

For one, my current site horribly out of date — I’ve launched much stronger work that what’s up there currently. While my tagline of “A web design studio” is to the point, it’s so impossibly vague it’s nearly useless (imagine Coke using a new slogan, “a soda beverage”). Lastly, the CMS that manages my portfolio is a clumsy, and I’ve always wanted to make the site dead simple to maintain.

Yourself, a terrible client

Looking at it, all of these issues are straightforward, easily solvable problems, and yet I’ve been the only hold up. Acting as a client, I’ve been incredibly demanding, picky, and selfish. I keep insisting that everything ‘be perfect,’ while not establishing goals that I can meet. Specifically, I’m not approaching this as a solvable problem, one that can be tackled with a solid process. Rather, I’m just designing, willy-nilly, to get inspired and excited about my work. I’m letting my subjective tastes and poor planning ruin my chances of coming up with something successful.

Being honest – it doesn’t matter

The most revealing and frustrating part of working on and thinking about my own portfolio is that, when I’m thinking clearly, very little needs to be done. The current problems have nothing to do with design or technology — really, the gaping issues are 1) meaningful copy, 2) showing my best and newest work, 3) listing the services I actually provide. These are simple changes that can be done without a full re-design.

Even with this more focused strategy though, an unfortunate point keeps coming up — it still just doesn’t matter. At this point, I’m nearly convinced that my portfolio is a very small part of how I sell my services and secure new work (even if it’s one of my only marketing tools) — it’s really all about traditional marketing — writing and promoting this blog, making friends in the business, doing great work and getting referrals, handing out business cards at events, networking, blah, blah, etc.

Time spent writing, speaking, and being active about my company and firm is far more valuable than falling into the stereotype of the self-obsessed, “continual portfolio re-designer.” In the end, all the designing, thinking, and stress wasn’t due to just the lack of a great process — it just wasn’t really necessary at all.

What makes you feel less bored soon makes you into an addict. What makes you feel less vulnerable can easily turn you into a dick. And the things that are meant to make you feel more connected today often turn out to be insubstantial time sinks - empty, programmatic encouragements to groom and refine your personality while sitting alone at a screen.
…
What worries me are the consequences of a diet comprised mostly of fake-connectedness, makebelieve insight, and unedited first drafts of everything. I think it’s making us small. I know that whenever I become aware of it, I realize how small it can make me. So, I’ve come to despise it.
 http://www.kungfugrippe.com/post/48588149/better

Making us small

Finally, a dissenting voice against the non-stop caterwauling of all the twitters, flickrs, facebooks, myspaces, and virbs. It seems that these days I spend a sizable chunk of my time just trying to ignore what seems like the entire world’s autobiographical self-help essay — a mammoth feed of everyone’s ‘little details.’ Not only is there a pressure to keep up on the flow information, there’s the pressure to participate in the mess too. How many friends will I loose if I stay off of facebook? How many professional networking opportunities will I miss if I don’t ‘tweet’ with some frequency?

I read a good amount of technology culture writing, and I find it strange that so much of what’s written about this new wave of social connectedness never gives enough exposure to the ugliest reality of maintaining a comprehensive digital life — you end up sacrificing much of the ‘real’ one.

Feels good at first

I think what’s great about Merlin’s piece is how he underlines the initial pull of all these services. We all, at times, get incredibly bored at work in front of a computer. It’s just what happens after eight hours of sitting in front of a glowing box. These tools feel exciting when we first use them, because they give us a momentary escape, putting us in touch with friends we’re not physically around.

Yet like any short-lived drug, what’s new and fun at first can quickly turn into an addiction, giving constantly diminishing returns. Feeding this compulsion is that in publicly sharing your life, on some level you’re showing off to the world. What is the point of public self-documentation if not to get some response from others? Once you start to care enough to maintain and prune your self-image, it’s nearly impossible to stop.

When you mix the compulsive behavior to maintain your social profile with the subconscious desire to make the world just a little jealous, you get a cycle of constant attention that’s amazingly hard to break.

Continuous partial attention

I read a piece a few days ago that mentioned the concept of “continuous partial attention.” It’s a pretty self-explanatory idea — you’re both constantly aware, yet never fully focused. You’re aware that you’re missing information and dialogues you might want to be a part of, yet only half paying attention anyway. Fear keeps you looking, but only a little because you really need to do other things.

Sadly, this describes the majority of my mental state while I work. It’s just far too easy, working on the internet, to have both a clouded and anxious temperament. Talking to others, I get the feeling that I’m not entirely alone, either.

What’s interesting about this state of mind is that the mix of so much intimate, artistic, and useful information being fed through the ‘tubes creates an intense amount of personal fear that by turning away from things, you’ll miss out on something. Will you fall behind on your job knowledge if you stop reading tech blogs? Will you forget your friend’s birthday if you stop checking Facebook? Will you miss out on a great conference because you turned off twitter?

Unfounded fear

These last few weeks I’ve been trying harder and harder to ignore as much of the internet as I can.
Strangely, what I’ve found is that the fear of falling behind is utterly unfounded — I haven’t missed a thing. In fact, I have far more time to focus and enjoy engaging myself in things I actually care about, and reading works I’m really interested in.

Also, it’s important not to throw the baby out with the bath water — I don’t have a huge hate-on for everything that’s social, or for those who do want to be up on everything. There’s lots to like. I enjoy connecting with friends and colleagues on facebook, finding great econ articles through my friend’s shared feeds, putting up photos of my friend’s kid up on flickr, bullshitting on twitter, and pretending like I have something to say here on this blog.

However, my brain just can’t handle everything, all at once. I find it better to pick my battles, and get engaged in what I do.

In short, I find the best strategy is to ‘reset’ often — to turn off the feeds, twitter, IM, and everything for a while. Step back, and ask yourself what you really care about, and reconnect only with that which makes you happy, calm, and excited.

This may be the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves; finally just lay back and say it — that we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable. The tragedy of all this is that George McGovern, for all his mistakes… understands what a fantastic monument to all the best instincts of the human race this country might have been, if we could have kept it out of the hands of greedy little hustlers like Richard Nixon.

Hunter S. Thompson
“September,” from FEAR AND LOATHING ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL ‘72 (Warner Books, 1973), pp 413–414

Please remember to vote.

However, when you’re first developing those styles, it’s a pain to have to keep multiple files open at once, constantly paging back and forth between both documents. And it’s more than just an annoyance — the time you end up wasting time going back and forth all day adds up.

Whistle while you work

I found a very simple solution to the two file problem. Do it all in the html file. Just add a style block directly above the block you’re applying new style to. You save yourself from constantly switching back and forth between files — it’s all there in one screen. Here’s an example:

When you’ve completed a certain section, you can grab the block of css and cut and paste it into a formal style sheet. An added benefit is that it forces you to bind your styles more closely to the ids and classes in your code*.

*While it’s good practice to keep shared styles to the core html entities like p, a, h1, and so forth, I find that scoping style tightly to logical blocks of html (with divs and classes) makes things easier to understand later, even if you end up repeating a few similar styles). YMMV.

While it’s a bit more of restaurant & bar than a cafe, Café Presse does also live up to it’s name. It offers a great, open atmosphere for remote working (a big, naturally lit space), great coffee (from Cafe Vita), and wonderful breakfast and lunch food of the French sort. The wait staff is friendly and courteous of you working, as long as it’s on off-peak hours.

Staying sane

Being an independent freelancer is a very solitary occupation, one that requires vigilance and determination to avoid losing your creative edge and  sanity. While there are tons of upsides to working independently, being physically isolated from others day in and day out is enough to dull your spirt and work ethic to near non-existence. I find that I physically need a bit of interaction IRL to keep from going all Jack Nicholson (in The Shining) crazy.

Coffee, beards, and Macbooks

Enter coffee shops. Seattle teems with them. Hell, there are three coffee roasters withing walking distance of my house. It’s insane.

I’ve gone to coffee shops and cafes with the pretense of working before, but usually it feels like I’m not really getting much work done — Like I’m “working” but not Actually Working™. For me, the trick is the type of work you set out to do. Running a small business, I’ve always got a healthy helping of project management, emailing, billing, accounting, banking, blogging, etc — rote tasks that are easy and straightforward on a laptop. I go out with a big ‘ole to-do list and I don’t leave until it’s all done.

Clean slate

The best part about doing all the procedural work out of the office is that when you return, all you have left is the “real work” — design and development. I find that I’m vastly more productive designing when I know that all the business details have been taken care of. All it takes is a few hours, a cup of coffee and I return to my office with the luxury of no distractions.

The bestest place?

I think the best remote work strategy is to keep things fresh and rotate through a number of different places, so I’m going to write up a few mini-reviews of local coffee shops around Seattle. Hopefully these will be useful to some other freelancers looking to mix up their work environment.

We hear this tack always mentioned in the realm of software development. Companies like 37signals have turned the advice into a traveling lecture circuit at their speaking events. However, I want to address what the idea holds for traditional, corporate website design and development. Brochure-ware, if you will.

For the last few months, I’ve been consciously talking my clients down from ambitious overhauls, expensive CMS solutions, and large scale site re-designs. I’ve found that less I do (put more professionally, the “less I scope”), the more time I have to focus on providing and refining only the most valuable and salient aspects of the website. Doing less leads to:

• Smaller budgets

  A tighter scope leads to a more modest budget. Smaller budgets are less risky, and easier to get approval and sign-off on. From my perspective, smaller projects allow me to book more work, thereby getting exposed to a wider range of projects. This, in turn, keeps me feeling creative and inspired — especially when I have the luxury of time to focus on details and create the most polished work possible.

• Shorter timelines

  Doing less condenses the timeframe into a schedule that moves much faster. A website that’s actually live, is infinitely more valuable than one that’s still in limbo, not quite ready to launch. From my own experience and that of others, it’s not uncommon for design projects to linger uncompleted for months, even years. Keep it simple and you stand a far better chance of shipping on schedule.

• Less development

  One thing I go out of my way to avoid is complex development. I advise against offering CMS solutions unless the client has a demonstrable need to manage their content. Just because CMS’s are flexible, scalable, and exciting pieces of software doesn’t mean that they’re appropriate for small, mostly static websites. For all development projects, the ‘hidden’ costs like client education, installation, content publication workflows, and security can often eclipse the cost of development itself.

As a small design freelance shop, I’ve found that my niche is being able to provide high quality, tightly scoped projects that address only the most important and useful design features. Yet I don’t think that this is a function of my situation — it’s a strategy that can work for both small and large agencies, and on all personal projects. Do less, do it well, and find out how much it helps your work.

Apple 24” iMac (w/ second 24” monitor)

http://apple.com/imac/
I can’t really say anything that hasn’t already been said about Mac’s / OSX. As a PC user since I was 12 years old, I wish I could come up with clever anecdote about the switch, but I can’t. Really, it was just the right move, at the right time and it’s been a pleasure to work with an operating system that’s reliable, elegant, has wonderful UNIX support, and has a great line of software for web design / site development.

Macbook

http://apple.com/macbook/
Easily the best laptop I’ve ever used. Wonderful size and build — it just feels very easy to use, physically. It’s nice that the base option, with a RAM upgrade to 4GB is priced pretty competitively to PC laptops. Great to take everything I have with me on the road and not feel like I’m actually on a laptop.

Adobe CS3 Standard

http://adobe.com/
It works, and I need it. Kind note to John Nack at Adobe — get rid of the 3-15 second freezes/pinwheels in ‘Save for Web’ and I’ll gladly pay ~$300 for an upgrade. I can live w/ everything else as-is.

Textmate

http://macromates.com/
An absolutely indispensable tool. I’ve used a number of other text editors over the years, and this is one that I can be a true fanboi about — it’s as close to perfect as any piece of software I’ve ever used. The tab completion and bundles for just about any language, super smart brace editing, slick project creation, and incredibly useful column editing mode, make it a joy to use daily. I’d say that it probably shaves about 20% off my site development projects. Also, out of the box, it just looks very elegant and it’s syntax highlighting is easy on the eyes. Text editors are personal choices, but you’d be missing out if you didn’t at least demo the software for a week.

Basecamp

http://basecamphq.com/
I actually just started using this tool again for project management. Before, when I was working largely on side projects and never seemed to have more than one or two going at any given moment, Basecamp felt like overkill. Now, working fulltime on client work, the power and beauty of this app is so much clearer. It’s just incredibly targeted on solving the needs of design project management — it maintains the fidelity of conversations / discussions with clients much better than email (it’s a more ‘professional’ space and encourages thoughtful response). Also, it provides for easy and powerful file and deliverable management, has simple but effective milestone management, and delivers the one thing an independent freelancer needs more than anything — piece of mind that anything you need to know about a project is in one, easy to access location. It’s professional stress relief in the form of a web-app.

Blinksale

http://blinksale.com/
Insanely simple invoicing. For a design freelancer, there’s no reason that invoicing should be difficult and this Blinksale makes sure it isn’t. Simple, straightforward filtering (to keep you on top of yearly/monthly/weekly cash flows) and it’s great to have a central place for all your records. If you do a lot of purchasing or subcontracting though, you’ll probably need something like Quickbooks.

Wordpress

http://wordpress.org/
I use Wordpress primarily as a CMS for my client projects. I find it to be infinitely flexible for a wide variety of uses — it can handle small, mostly static sites as well as manage larger sites with custom data types. It’s admin interface is attractive and easy enough for most clients to jump right in and use it as a quick way to keep their site fresh, and up to date.

Most importantly, the WP developer community is incredibly productive and helpful — I would guess that 95% of all of Wordpress’ shortcomings can be fixed by dropping in a ready to use plugin. When you inevitably hit that rare situation where you need to extend the system on your own, the system is transparent enough that someone with laughable programming skills (yours truly) can find a workable solution. In the even rarer event you can’t create a solution yourself, there’s a legion of wonderful WP developers, ready and willing to help. I’ve never hit a snag that I couldn’t find an easy way around.

Of course, your milage may vary — ExpressionEngine appears to be a great choice too, as a client ready CMS. From what I’ve seen, it too has a solid developer network, a polished UI, and clean and extendable PHP code. There are dozens of other options too, so take your time to learn and understand whatever option you move forward with.

NOTE: Freelancers offering CMS’s of any kind to clients — be very, very careful. I’ve nearly always under-budgeted the scope when of developing a site that’s powered by a CMS. Things that must be accounted for — template development, plugin installation, custom code, deployment, content import, defensive designing (404, search errors, .htaccess re-directs, etc.), server deployment, backup strategy, client education, content workflow planning, as well as security and upgrade strategies. Be very, very careful setting a budget or contract for client work that needs a CMS and always set expectations lower than your gut tells you. Undersell and you’ll be safe, anything else and you’ll be sorry (and your clients frustrated).

Webfaction

http://webfaction.org/
Blisteringly fast web host. I swear they serve pages and images over the web faster than my local Apache dev setup on my workstation. Also, their plans are very generous, offering unlimited domains, subversion hosting, huge bandwith limits, etc. Probably the best shared hosting plan out right now. The major downside is their frustrating, inelegant admin interface — it definitely takes some getting used to.