Ninnunännu

Quiet refusals - (37signals): "And it is the authentic human being who matters most, the viable, elastic organism which can bounce back, absorb, and deal with the new…"

Solving big problems by paying attention to small things - (37signals): "The Broken Windows theory was the catalyst for solving NYC’s crime wave in the 80’s and 90’s. NYC’s administration had been focusing on major crimes, like murder, and overlooking smaller crimes along the way. But it wasn’t working. So the city started going after petty crime that it had been overlooking: turnstyle jumpers, squeegee men, public drunks, etc. The result: All crime rates fell suddenly and continued to drop for the next ten years."

The Old New Thing : It's not surprising at all that people search for Yahoo: "'You-are-what? Look, I don't care about your fancy propeller-beanie acronyms. You computer types are always talking about how computers are so easy to use, and then you make up these arbitrary rules about where I'm supposed to type things. If I want something, I type into this box and click 'Search'. And it finds it. Watch. I want Yahoo, so I type 'yahoo' into the box, and boom, there it is. I have a system that works. Why are you trying to make my life more confusing?' "

Creating Passionate Users: Rhythm method: "Even physical activities go from 'I can't' to 'I can' to 'I can better'."

Creating Passionate Users: Rhythm method: "rhythm adds predictability"

Strobist: The Lighting Journey: Where Are You?: "Twenty photos of you girlfriend in a week? No prob.

Macro shot of a bug? Yessir.

Skater boyz at dusk in every photo you post? Keep 'em coming.

I absolutely love seeing the ways new-found lighting enthusiasm expresses itself in people's images. I see every single Strobist pool photo, and look forward to picking a shot out for POTW each Friday.

I think the kick, for me, is not about where you happen to be on your personal lighting journey, but how hard you are crashing up against your ceiling as you try to get better."

Creating Passionate Users: How to make something amazing, right now: "The Web site you seek
cannot be located but
endless others exist"

Creative Think: "Remember: every right idea is eventually the wrong idea."

Creative Think: “Look for the Second Right Answer.”


I find that this strategy informs a lot of what I do.
When I'm looking for information, it tells me to go beyond the right answers that have worked in the past and to dig for others.
When I'm trying to be creative, it playfully advises me to put my ideas in unusual contexts to give them new meanings.
When I'm evaluating concepts, it implores me not to get stuck in the negative and to not fall in love with one particular approach.
And, when I'm implementing ideas, it reminds me that if one way doesn't work, a different one just might and to act accordingly.

The Laws of Simplicity » laws: "Simplicity and complexity need each other"

We close when the bread runs out - (37signals): "She said “Yeah. We get our bread from the bakery down the street early in the morning when it’s the freshest. Once we run out (usually around 2 or 3) then we close up shop. We could get more bread later in the day, but it’s not as good as the fresh baked bread in the morning. There’s no point in selling a few more sandwiches if the bread isn’t good. A few bucks isn’t going to make up for selling food we can’t be proud of.”
I just loved that. Authentic, genuine, passionate, opinionated. Freshness determines when they lock the door, not a little plastic sign with some numbers on it."

Project collaboration, management, and task software: Basecamp: "Projects don't fail from a lack of charts, graphs, or reports, they fail from a lack of communication and collaboration"

Jensen Harris: An Office User Interface Blog : It's All About Context: "I had a trivial but instructive example of context based learning yesterday. A user dragged a deleted file from the recycle bin, to an open folder. Er, howzat? I never knew you could do that. I only knew about the Restore option. I said this to the user, who replied: 'It never occurred to me that you could NOT do that.' So, I - the expert - made assumptions that the reccyle bin would be a special case. The user - nonexpert - just saw the folder paradigm & assumed that it would work the same as any & every other folder."

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - Brain Channels Thinker of the Year - 2000: "Mr. Csikszentmihalyi describes flow as 'being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you're using your skills to the utmost.'"

All about flow - (37signals): "All about flow "

Palju nippe ja linke flow saavutamise kohta

Creating Passionate Users: Better Beginnings: how to start a presentation, book, article...: "Trying to establish credibility is backwards. Don't try to get the reader to respect YOU... the reader wants to know that you respect HIM!"

Creating Passionate Users: "Oops... we forgot about the users.": "... what they really mean is, 'Of COURSE we care what the customers think of us' when they should care about what the customer thinks of himself in relation to the product"

Airbag - Boxes.: "As to the craft aspect, there was a sort of scrapbooky quality to early web design (and I mean that as a compliment)"

Why Software Sucks « Chris Stewart: "Ship something your customer loves, even if it’s not cool to you."

Why Software Sucks « Chris Stewart: "So what can you do? Step one is focusing on your customer. They often don’t know what they want, which is fine. Sit down, listen to them, and I mean listen. Don’t talk, don’t formulate your next question or “solution” while they’re speaking. Sit down, turn off your geek, and listen to your customer."

Why Software Sucks « Chris Stewart: "Developers need to see the forest, not just the trees. We need to solve customer problems and deliver functionality. Developers shouldn’t spend days building component after component, abstracting to the point where the next developer is clueless, and ignoring simple deliverables as functionality. All too often it’s more about how rather than what."

The power of rough edges - (37signals): "What he disavows is inauthentic simplicity. From his perspective, no one should go out and buy drawer dividers to better organize their socks; they should have fewer socks and throw them in a drawer with enough room to distinguish the black ones from the navy ones."

The power of rough edges - (37signals): "The goal is attaining authentic simplicity, not the veneer of simplicity"

The power of rough edges - (37signals): "less stuff to be organized is a better solution than an organizing system"

Get off - (37signals): "When you go offline, that equation changes. You have to be active. Since you can’t input, you output. If you don’t do something, nothing happens. "