When I was at college (drinking beer and making some effort at that degree in design) all the professors told me the same thing : keep a reference book.

Yes, the reference book. A book of work that others had done that would someday inspire and inform future work. Or, as I called it, the copycat folder.

Don’t get me wrong, I love to be inspired, and when I see something that’s really cool or innovative, I will certainly swipe it for future use, but to maintain a book of crutches never made sense to me.

It does to some… I know designers and creative directors who have made a career of aping the latest thing. I’ve probly got some tooth damage from all the gritting done when I used to go to design reviews and heard “Did you guys all see this thing that VW did….”

Now, it’s doubtful these people go home and flog themselves relentlessly while chanting “mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maximus culpa…” They seem to be fine with what they’ve done, and that’s cool… it’s never lonely in the middle and they all seem happy enough.

But not me. And to some degree, it’s a big ‘fuck you’ to all the hacks I see in the world, but I do the opposite of a reference book. I keep IdeaBooks.

Everything I’ve ever done is stored somewhere in one of these books (PDFs really). I’ve got IdeaBooks for pretty much every topic out there. My favorite is the “Cute Orphan” book, all my favorite ideas that never got used.

Some ideas are tiny (a tidy ‘what do you want to do’ widget that turns Navigation nouns into user verbs) some are bizarre (The tiny site/control panel that acts as a guide to related topics… Modernista, you owe me $20 for that one) and some are giant sprawling concepts for sites that may never exist (I name these things like “Fluid Louis” “Uncle Nodey” and “Crusty Bob”).

It’s really less the output of the books and more the effort taken to take a small idea and see if you can play it out a bit. Tinker with something that’s uniquely yours, not a copy of something you just saw. Explain it and put some basic requirements together, see if it’s a real idea, or just a cheap parlor trick.

I think everyone should give it a try, I’m guessing you’d be surprised how many cute orphans you’ve left untended.

I was talking with a friend about car configurators, which is a topic I spend a lot of time on.

He was discussing this idea about inline config, having a small window open at specific times and ask the user to add or select an option.

In essence, a very good idea, I have several prototype screens for this sort of thing.

The problem became that the designers were struggling to figure out how the window operated, how it minimized, how the user re-activated it, and so on.

Here’s the root of the problem : They devised a Method that did not support the Object or the Action.

The super-duper Tigerstripe Approach tells us every task-based design problem has three main components. In this case they were The Car (The Object), letting users do partial configs (The Action) and the small floating window (The Method).

When one starts with a method, as many people like to do (“Dude, what if it just popped up there randomly!”), problems usually arrive.

Similar problems arise when a site-based method or set of rules is used inflexibly for all manner of data display or user interaction.

Here’s a tip, go in the right order :
Q: What are we talking about?
A: The Object

Q: What is the user response we want to promote?
A: The Action

Q: What is the best way for the user to interact with the system?
A: The Method

Save yourself some grief, there’s a reason UX is a different discipline that UI.

Working on a rich flash timeline piece for a client, found some good inspiration here and here

The best kind of sideways for me is really taking a step back. The trick is how to take a step back effectively to strip the interaction model/design out of your top-of-mind. Here are a couple approaches I do, in order:

1. Think what else you want to accomplish that day that is leisure oriented and gratifying
2. Spend a couple minutes following some RSS subject lines from various sources till you feel removed from where you are…(eg. in front of your monitor)
3. After at least 5 to 7 minutes of this mode, get back to task and keep your head empty so as design loads up you need to orient yourself
4. This is the cream part, figure out how you’re orienting yourself to the design, that should provide mucho insight

Of course there are so many other styles but the best is always getting as many eyeballs on it without cultivating that “too many cooks in the kitchen” effect where the account guy is busting out design tweaks when nobody is saying anything…and the mood has been a little silent for more than a few minutes because everybody wants to go do #2 (see above) instead of tweaking the design before the client presentation tomorrow! lol