TNYPXL

Adjustments

I’ve recently acquired a mid-2010 model Macbook Pro and it’s the fourth computer I’ve ever owned. Before now I’ve been accustomed to desktop computers with my first being a Commadore 64 (I’m not kidding), second being a Windows PC and the third being an iMac which has been replaced by the Macbook.

Thanks to desktop computing I’ve been spoiled by large screens and the transition is going to be a tough one especially considering tools like Photoshop. The hardest transition of all is letting go of the mouse and relying mostly on a trackpad. Sure, I can still use a mouse but that option just isn’t as practical anymore now that I’m mobile.

Needless to say, it will change the way I work and I think that is incredibly exciting.

Congratulations. You wrote code no one cares about.

When ever I read a blog post that talks about code to solve a specific problem, you will likely run into a douche bag web developer proclaiming in the comments to have written the same or similar solution some arbitrary amount of years ago and in a programming language no one cares about.

“Hey this is cool stuff, thanks for this! Oh by the way, I wrote a similar solution using fortran in 1976. It was a little different but the same outcome.”

Idiot.

Where is the simple project management app?

Over the years I’ve gained a lot of experience using Basecamp, GoPlan and currently Rule.fm to participate in and manage large and small projects. To this day none of them seem to hit the spot. They all fail in one aspect or another and the failure is often large enough to impede productivity in the long-run.

It appears current PM apps including the ones I mentioned above ask the right questions but eventually grow into the wrong answers. I look at products like twitter and facebook and one thing is constant. They evolve around a single action which in their case is sharing content in the form of text, links, videos and photos. I am never lost.

Sadly getting lost in tools like Basecamp and Rule.fm is very easy. There is no clear discernible ground zero. If I have to ask, “how should this bit of information be communicated?” or “should I upload a file to the app or just email an attachment?”, “Should I comment on the file itself or post a message about it inside the project containing the file?”. It is my belief that a user should never have to ask those questions.

Then you have PM apps that scale back too far. They’re nothing more than a glorified todo application. They champion collaboration over the act of getting things done.

So what is ideal?

Ideally speaking

A user should be able to sit down and know exactly how to communicate effectively without friction. I say reduce friction between the following features.

• Messages/Discussions
• Commenting on individual assets (e.g, todos, files, messages, etc)
• File management

All of the web apps I’ve mentioned claim to be better than email. Yet, many teams and organizations still fall back on it because it does two things well. It shares messages and files very easily. It’s one-to-one collaboration at its best. But where email tends to fall flat is during many-to-many or one-to-many collaboration.

That’s why we have tools like Basecampe, Rule.fm and GoPlan. But they all lose the effective simplicity of email.

I want the friction-lacking simplicity of email and the collaborative effectiveness of web-based tools.

Some day

I tried once to solve this problem with a personal project called “Kindmanage”. It didn’t get too far. But my recent experiences in PM apps have reignited those flames.

“There is no god and that’s the simple truth. If every trace of any single religion died out and nothing were passed on, it would never be created exactly that way again. There might be some other nonsense in its place, but not that exact nonsense. If all of science were wiped out, it would still be true and someone would find a way to figure it all out again.” - Penn Jillette

This can be said about anything. Science is a result of man’s doing. We took chaos and gave it rules and applied math. If all knowledge of math and science were wiped, we would not have the same picture of math and science that we have today. They wouldn’t simply figure it out. It would be entirely different in every sense of the word different.

Science is simply a more complex nonsense. Humanity’s way of coping with things of which they do not the know the origin.

I could be wrong though. :)

What is the simplest thing you can build?

That is a question I constantly have to ask myself. Personally as a web designer, design has always been about managing complexity and presenting simplicity. It’s a process that requires giving up things that are “cool” for the sake of something that is usable and clearly communicable. Anyone can do simple, but can you present simple, beauty and retain 100% usability? Many try and many fail.

When you don’t ask the question

We’ve all seen it in the products we buy. Shoes. They are an article of daily attire that is generally the last thing we put on and the very last thing you notice when looking at someone. Yet, shoe designers go out of their way to create elegant designs but almost implicitly ignoring comfortability and durability.

Modern car dashboards. Test drive any 2011/2012 model vehicle with the works and the dashboard is a tragedy of usability. You’re given screens that you’ll likely spend 15% of your time viewing while in the vehicle. Button labels and purposes aren’t very clear and there are enough buttons on the steering wheel to make a computer keyboard blush. All of these things detract from a simple, usable driving experience.

When you don’t ask the question, what is the simplest thing? The most reasonable response is to add too many things.

The simplest thing is not the final thing

No matter what you’re designing, be they web apps, a chair or a building, they all naturally need to evolve. You can’t be simple forever. But simple can be the foundation on which all other things are built. Adding features should be a response to need and not a response to arbitrary wants.

Console vs. PC: Give it a damn rest, please.

Can we please just stop talking about it. Whenever someone decides to divulge their wisdom about this topic, they always miss the point. To play video games is to have fun. It’s not sit in your awesome chair and troll about hardware specs on Reddit and Twitter all day. Grow up. Stop complaining, bragging or whatever it is you do to make your insignificant opinion appear relevant. Just enjoy gaming and let others do the same in whatever damn flavor they please.