Any challenge worth perusing will be difficult. The economics of supply and demand rule that the prize at the end of the fight would be worthless if it was easy to attain.
Gently exceeding expectations
Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas’s The Pragmatic Programmer is a bible of sorts when it comes to effective programming. One of the strongest take home points from the book was their advice to gently exceed expectations.
No identity left behind
Twitter has caused quite a storm lately by dishing-out Twitter usernames to anyone who asks. If you use the Twitter web interface, you’ve lost a large part of your anonymity. It’s the web equivalent of a military dog-tag, worn at all times by all ranks.
Killing distractions
In 2008, I was busier in my average day than ever before. But I’ve got less to show for my effort. I wrote less posts, produced less design, met less people, worked less, lived less and even smiled less.
Fail early, Fail often, and Learn
The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left hand side of the studio would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced. All those on the right hand side would be graded solely on quality. We can learn a lot from what happened next…
The power of the screencast
We’ve been building an app recently for a client based in Paris. There’s a natural communication issue here: meeting in person is tough. I’ve been recording screencasts every couple of days to keep him up to date on the progress of his project. I’ve found that delivering screencasts has been an effective way not only of being able to demonstrate where we’re at, but it has actually helped me to improve the quality of my work.
The client experience
User experience is all the rage. First impressions, consistent quality, matching online with offline, all that good stuff. Every year the same design conferences are full of the same talks. The slides might get shinier each year, but it’s the same guys making the same comparisons. Zunes with iPods, and Zappos with Walmart. The beloved sages take to the stage to preach to their choir. “User Experience is all that matters. Look at Apple. Look at NetFlix. Look at Amazon.”
Five hidden TaskFive features
We launched TaskFive a few weeks ago after five days of intense development. It was a simple app, and we focussed on getting the simple things absolutely right. Others have written that we did a good job. But in building TaskFive, we wanted to flex our creative development muscles a bit… think of it as exhibition web app development. In the spirit of the app, I want to highlight five things that we managed to pack into the app wthin the week that we didn’t publicise.
The problem with striptease
Striptease works because you want to see everything. It’s human nature, curiousity, lust, call it what you like. It’s incredibly engaging to have something slowly revealed, but it can also be frustrating. Especially when you’re being teased by a web app, as opposed to, say, something you’re actually interested in.