I have to tell you to stop it.

You really need to realize there is no distinction between your brand and your product.

if you’re serious about changing your brand, start by making a better product.

I’ve always known my image and reputation depend on the quality of my work. You are no different.

When I hear the phrase “we want to be the (apple/google/nike) of our industry” it just makes me shake my head in disbelief.

Make better decisions and you will improve your brand. Spend some time improving your products and you’ll improve your brand.

Spend some time with the word Innovation. It’s good for you.

No one believes your crap advertising any more. You are transparent, get used to it.

Apparently it makes kids cry.

With a Dave Eggers’ penned first half detailing a lousy family life for Max, and a Spike Jonze 2nd half with Max becoming King of the Wild Things, this looked like the movie of the year.

I remember the book being a bit scary. I remember Max being a bit dicky and mean as kids tend to be. I remember monsters wanting to eat him if he dared leave.

It’s not really a “kiddie” book, but it’s doomed to be a “kiddie” movie.

The studio (you know, the guys who give us crap like Norbit and Bee Movie) have decided to send it back and have it re-written and re-shot. Link Here

If you’ve not heard about the recent Maxim / Black Crowes feud, I’ll attempt to summarize.

Our players :
The Black Crowes, a southern rock band who are famous for 2 amazing records and a slew that followed of diminishing quality.
Maxim, the tits and ass magazine you look at in the airport magazine rack that’s full of instructional articles on how to maintain your lifestyle as a douchebag.

The Crowes have a new LP coming out, which is heralded as “a return to form.” Maxim ran a review of the album, giving it 2.5 stars.

The reason for the hubbub is that no one from Maxim has heard the album.

Here’s my .02….

If you are in the business of hype… fabricating emotion from ether, don’t be surprised when it backfires.

There is a lot of hype about the new Crowes album. I’ve heard all about a “return to form,” comparisons to The Southern Harmony and “the sonic majesty” or some other shit. I like the Crowes, I find their first 2 albums the be amazingly good… their second to be one of the better albums of the 90s, but like anything, I’m leery when I see so much bullshit built up over something that’s doesn’t exist yet.

Maxim wrote a review based on a combination of a few things : Response to massive hype, the Crowes reputation, and the quality of their last 3-5 albums which were also surrounded by the same type of hype.

Fair? Not at all, but if the Crowes PR can tell me it’s the best album they’ve ever released, why can’t a rag like Maxim tell me it’s just not that good with the same amount of credibility?

I was thinking back to an older project from a few years ago.

Based on the issues that large-scale sites have around content, navigation and user understanding, a radical approach was needed.

The tree had failed. I realized it’s just basic growth theory… when one part of something gets too large to sustain, it begins to decay.

Or maybe it was like the rat king, and it got so intertwined it became an abomination. (Thank you 30 Rock: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_king).

So I found my approach:

An ambitious piece that was based on chapter 11 of the Tao Te Ching.

We join spokes together in a wheel,
but it is the center hole
that makes the wagon move.
(The site can be formless, provided it has a strong center.)

We shape clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside
that holds whatever we want.
(The site is nothing but an empty structure, it is only as good as what it contains.)

We hammer wood for a house,
but it is the inner space
that makes it livable.
(The technologies we use exist to drive the site, they are not the reason the user is there.)

We work with being,
but non-being is what we use.
(The site works only provided others find their success within.)

Needless to say, it was overly-ambitious for the Automotive industry, but I still love it.

“Without Brains, you are a fiasco. Without Means, you are an amateur. Without Heart, you are a machine… It has dangers, this occupation.”

- Vladimir Horowitz on playing piano.

Boxes and arrows are fascist statements.

They indicate a herd mentality that we wish to push on our visitors. They show the world segmented into a series of non-contextual areas, but vaguely related spaces touted as an “experience”

Mark Rothko had it right… there is no edge to the box, no line connecting them.

the contents of the box should be a spectrum of interest as defined by the user. the path is an effort by the user of venturing further into each area.

Content should be sculped around a user’s position.

Simply, wherever they are is the best place they can be.

If current position is the best context, every item becomes a promising tipping point, or positive next step.

So what does this mean?

It means what most of us have come to find:

• Most navigation is junk
• All content should be multi-faceted
• Top-Down Tree-ing is dead

Some things we can do now

• Draw content maps instead of page maps
• Stop starting with navigation, and start thinking about how to indicate a story
• At each expected user point, think about what questions would stem from that content
• Stop aiming for the lowest common user
• Try for understandability over usability

Lately, in my work, I’ve been coming full circle back to Bushido tactics, but on a different scale than before.

Back in the nineties, my approach was based on Hagakure, but the focus was on the unstoppable force.

It was the beginning of the bubble. It was better to accelerate than slow down, and I expected everyone around me to keep pace.

Fans of Ayn Rand have told me that I followed her Pragmatist ideals. I think Ayn Rand didn’t account for my rock star tendencies.

Anyways…

I’ve found my work to be centered on striving for a singular purpose… or at least a solid tiering of goals.

Do one thing, do it very well, go to the next. Basing very complex interactions in this model has led to some fantastic results.

It’s been a hard sell to the backwards UX people who are still counting clicks and using phrases like “well, it could go there”

“We could…” means “We’re not going to” in my vocab. If you have to debate, yoink it out. You’ll be much better off without it.

“You are neither cold nor hot, so because you are lukewarm, I will spew you from my mouth”

Bill ‘The Butcher’ Cutting

The singlemindedness of an idea is what will propel it.

When the idea takes on additional weight, it falls apart, or changes to something it was not meant to be.

The Approach someone takes to solving a problem is very much like a signature song.

If you don’t have your own approach, you repeat the actions of those around you, typically to a lesser degree.

Much like a central theme or ethos, the approach is what forms the essence of the project.

The Approach is the way the mind looks at a problem, creates a framework for decision-making and produces outcomes.

Every decision made, or design created needs to be validated by the approach. If you keep changing as you go along, you are working like evolution in reverse… every revision will be one step further from remarkable.

Most UX pros have no approach, or use a very generic approach, based on past successes and the general web-at-hand. It’s very likely that they have never stopped to consider developing a series of approaches for different clients or problems.

If you can’t define your approach, you don’t have one. If you say your approach is “enhanced usability” or “common sense” you don’t have one.

If all you know is how to do is construct your concepts according to rules or standards (written, explicit or not) you have lost.

Have a good time in the middle, I guarantee you won’t be lonely.

By Alan Fletcher.

Buy at Amazon

It’s a book. A big fkn book.

It’s the kind of book that is pretty much impossible to read cover to cover. It’s not meant for that.

But, if you need some thoughts, inspirations, oddly zen quotes from non-zen peeps, this is your book.

I’ve had it for years, and constantly open to an unknown page and find something enlightening. Such as this quote from Bertolt Brecht :

“The sharks I dodged, The tigers I slew, what ate me up was the bedbugs.”

In other words, the things you don’t look for are usually the things the create problems.

Pick up the book, you will enjoy it.

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