Hello Little Printer, available 2012 from BERG on Vimeo.

At the core it’s a simple idea (aggregating and printing data form your social landscape), but the beautiful execution makes it amazingly desirable. Compared to how I already consume that info online, it’s not even very practical – in terms of time, cost and the age-old printer burdens of replacing the paper or toner. But the design makes me want one.

The physical design of the product is very slick. I love the Dieter Rams’ish simplicity and little light that beams “Yup, I’ve got new stuff for you.”. But the concept is what’s reeled me in. The idea of a little bit of paper with info that’s relevant to me; that I read while I’m having breakfast and then throw away is so quirky and compelling. True experience design.

I’ve been reading Aarron Walter’s Designing for Emotion and am re-reading Don Norman’s Emotional Design, so I suppose I’m especially susceptible to this kind of quirky, character-filled design right now. Regardless of that, Little Printer is still a very cool, desirable gadget.

The fact that you remotely control it with your smart phone is, well, pretty smart. I’m not a hardcore techie, but from what I gather the BergCloud technology which Little Printer runs on is interesting too. “A new platform for creating, connecting and controlling smart products and infrastructure”. That could be the tip of something very big.

I’m a big fan of productivity and being more organised, and am always on the look out for tips and tricks to turn it into practice. I’ve dabbled with the GTD system for a while though I’ve never fully implemented it. I picked up the Checklist Manifesto in a rail station on the strength of its cover and was interested right away.

I like the idea of building simple processes that handle complexity and applying them to parts of my workflow. I use lists all the time – mainly rough to-do-lists scribbled on scraps of paper, or dropped into Things – but I’ve never been a checklist fan. Reading the Checklist Manifesto has surely changed that.

Atul Gawande is a renowned surgeon, and the book roughly follows his work on an initiative from the World Health Organisation to reduce deaths and serious injuries in surgery around the globe. As a simple solution to the problem he researches, develops and tests a ‘safe surgery checklist’ that is rolled out with remarkable results.

The book is crammed full of in-depth insight into the environments and implementations of checklists which inspired Gawande during his research. These include the pre-flight routines of WWII bomber pilots, the schedules of major construction projects, and the analysis successful financial investors go through when weighing up a major deal.

For me, the real value of this book is how it explains the subtleties of how and when checklists work best:

“They provide a kind of cognitive net. They catch mental flaws in all of us—flaws of memory and attention and thoroughness. And because they do, they raise wide, unexpected possibilities.”

We are besieged by simple problems. In medicine these are the failures to don a mask when putting in a central line or to recall that one of the ten causes of a flat-line cardiac arrest is a potassium overdose. In legal practice, these are the failures to remember all the critical avenues of defense in a tax fraud case or simply the various court deadline. In police work these are the failures to conduct an eyewitness lineup properly, forgetting to tell the witness that the perpetrator of the crime may not be in the lineup, for instance, or having someone present who knows which one the suspect is. Checklists can provide protection against such elementary errors.

It’s easy to make a checklist (i.e. grab a bit of paper and jot down some steps of a procedure), but when reading the Checklist Manifesto I became fascinated with devising good checklists to make my job (or life, even) easier. After all, that’s what systems should do!

The Checklist Manifesto was a quick read, thought-provoking and instantly usable (I’ve already found various areas of my web design process where I’ll benefit from a carefully crafted checklist). Highly recommended from me—even if some of the operating theatre anecdotes are a little hard going if you’re a bit squeamish on the morning commute to work! I’d also say it’s a must-read for project managers and planners.

The return of 24 Ways

The advent calendar for web geeks is back! 24 Ways is an advent calendar for web designers and developers. Each day features a tip or article from a different, and foremost, web celeb. Web standards based design is a recurrent theme with 24 Ways, so it’s a fitting follow up to the 4th annual Blue Beanie Day.

Another very interesting development is that 24Ways from 2010 will be available in print as an annual from 5 Simple Steps. For a pretty good price, and with all proceeds being donated to Unicef, that’s well worth snapping up.

The AdFont Calendar from FontDeck

I saw this doing the rounds on Twitter earlier and had to share the link. The AdFont Calendar from the FontDeck guys is an absolute joy to behold. Excellent design, marvellous typography (as you’d expect) and very slick HTML5 & CSS3 production.

Aside from the aesthetic qualities of the site there’s freebies on offer! As the site states:

In the spirit of advent calendars the world over, the Adfont Calendar offers a small gift every day in the run up to Christmas. There’s a new font every day, so be sure to come back each morning for more type goodness. You’ll also want to explore the rest of the calendar, as there’s plenty of other surprises behind the doors, with more being added every day.

Update 02.12.2010: HTML5 Adventure Calendar

A late tip-off from @netmag brought this HTML5 Calendar to my attention. Billed as “24 days of killer demos, tutorials, community buzz, and other stuff that Steve Jobs would love.” there’s some interesting ideas on offer.

Bookmark these or you’ll be sorely missing out in the run up to Christmas.

I had previously used Rockwell for headings, as I’ve loved the geometric forms and sharp slab serifs. Being a font bundled with Microsoft Office and in widespread use it also felt close enough to the ‘web-safe list’ to avoid the need for SIfR or @font-face. However using Rockwell here always felt like style over substance, and in my opinion didn’t quite fit.

For headings and nav-bar labels I’ve moved to Centro Sans Pro (specimen shown in the image above) with FontDeck to serve it. It’s clean, smooth and readable with a subtly unusual shape in places, which makes it stand out – rather than jump out.

I’ll stay with Verdana as the font for body text, as it’s hard to find more readable screen font. I’m sure I’ll revisit these decisions at some point in the future, but for now I’m very happy.

They’re all mobile versions of desktop applications or webapps I use often and that’s probably why I’m so taken by them. Rather than attempting to be standalone applications they add value to a bigger experience, focussing on the interactions you need when on the go, and not toiling with the more complicated interactions which would typically be a struggle on a handheld, touchscreen device.

There are other apps that I use regularly, but in terms of productivity and usefulness, here’s my top five…

1. Evernote

I’m constantly on the look out for inspiration and it never ceases to amaze me where the spark of an idea can come from. Whether it’s a URL for a useful article, an interesting colour scheme used in a billboard poster or a clever turn of phrase in a news story, I like to capture them for future use. I’m a big GTD fan, and couldn’t live without the “I write it down so I don’t have to remember it” philosophy. Enter Evernote…

Evernote is a free desktop application for capturing ideas as text, photos, links, web snippets. To access your notes from any other computer you can synch your desktop Evernote with your online account and access it from anywhere. There is a premium option for heavy-duty users (at time of writing, priced $45 a year), but I haven’t found myself pushing the boundary of the free service yet.

The Evernote iPhone app brings the “Remember everything” experience to mobile, giving me the speed and convenience of capturing ideas wherever I am, or whatever I’m doing. If I’m waiting for a train and want to knock-up a rough to-do-list after a meeting — dump it into Evernote and copy it up when I’m back at my desk. If I walk past a poster and see an idea for a current project — take a snapshot and file it later. Simple, powerful and hugely useful.

iTunes link to Evernote

2. Mindmeister

I was introduced to mind mapping years ago through reading a book by the inventor Tony Buzan. Since then I was strictly of the opinion that mind mapping was a pencil and paper exercise and loved the freeflowing feeling of pouring ideas out onto the page. The downside of the paper-based approach is the difficulty in sharing the ideas with the rest of a virtual team or remote clients without scanning the image or passing the paper on. I’ve dabbled with mind mapping software in the past but didn’t like the idea of being constrained by working on screen. However, just recently I’ve been using the webapp Mindmeister as a quick and easy way of creating mindmaps online where they can be shared and developed with others collaborating on a project.

Mindmeister is becoming an essential tool in my toolbox for thinking out projects, concepts, blog posts and even client proposals. As a lot of my work is done remotely the iPhone app gives me easier access to view and edit maps I’m collaborating on with others. Building a large map on a small screen is a bit like looking at an elephant through a microscope, but for roughing out quick ideas and concepts on the go this app is great.

iTunes link to Mindmeister

3. MiniBooks

This app accompanies Freshbooks, the online billing service for freelancers (and a service I use a lot). It offers handy client and invoice management and if you’re caught without an wi-fi or 3G connection it will store your data for synching when you get online. The time tracking facility is very solid (I actually prefer it to the official Freshbooks app which kept dropping timers anytime I received a call). You simply choose a project and task, start the timer and get on with your work. Stop the timer when you’re done it logs the time into your timesheet, ready to be applied to an invoice.

It’s not the full Freshbooks experience in the palm of your hand, but once again, it offers the features you need the most when you’re out of the office. Another GTD principle I live by is “If you discover a task that takes 2min to complete, do it and forget about it.” If I’ve just banked a cheque from a client, rather than making a note to update their account, I’ll fire up MiniBooks and add the payment right there. Job done, and one less thing to think about.

iTunes link to MiniBooks

4. Sherpa

Like many of web professionals out there BaseCamp from 37Signals makes parts of my job possible. In my opinion, online project management doesn’t get much better. So, bringing the simplicity of BaseCamp to mobile is a tough task, but Sherpa nails it. Similar to Evernote, the developers have thought deeply about the most useful features to offer as a mobile experience. Reading and replying to messages, managing milestones and to-do-lists, they all work well on the small screen and the design is clean and uncluttered.

Sherpa lets you manage multiple BaseCamp accounts and integrates beautifully with other iPhone features (one-touch calling, SMS messaging or emailing clients and colleagues is a nice feature). As well as being a very solid and handy app, Sherpa is also free!

iTunes link to Sherpa

5. Things

I’d love to claim that I’m incredibly organised and efficient, but the truth is I’m prone to getting sidetracked or muddled at times. Due to this I get a lot of value from Things, the task manager from Cultured Code. It’s a very well thought out desktop application for organising to-do-lists and is the best I’ve ever used. I haven’t used many but this one seems like it will do everything I ever need it to.

Things is based on the Getting Things Done system. It uses the model of tasks, projects and schedules, and has a great tagging system for browsing tasks by keyword. It’s super-simple to enter tasks and track lists. The iCal integration is pretty good too.

Things For iPhone is the perfect extension to the desktop version and they synch beautifully (wirelessly too, if you’re within range) to keep your lists updated. The complex interactions like building up projects and schedules are best carried out on the desktop, and list management works great on the mobile.

iTunes link to Things for iPhone

So that’s my top five. What are yours?

The blue beanie theme is a reference to the cover of Jeffrey Zeldman’s industry-changing guidebook from 2003, ‘Designing With Web Standards‘ (Third edition cover shown left).

The Web standards movement has the goal of making Web sites easier to access (for people and machines), easier to manage and update, more stable and ‘futureproof’. It is commonly misinterpreted as trying to standardise Web sites and make them all the same, which really isn’t the case.

I’ve had Web standards at the core of my work for the past four or five years. From a selfish standpoint I can really say it has made my job as a Web designer easier, faster, reliable, efficient and more valuable. Aside from how I benefit, I like to think that my clients get that value in the work I do for them. I also like to think their customers or users, in turn, enjoy the fact that sites do what they expect them to do, and just work properly.

Why Web standards are good for you

If you’re reading this as someone who doesn’t design Web sites—maybe someone who owns/manages a site, or sometimes has to buy Web design services—you might be thinking “what’s the business case for all this”?

Well, you should understand or request Web standards if you want a site and content that:

• is accessible to the greatest amount of visitors as possible
• is understandable by the greatest amount of visitors as possible
• is more usable
• gets better search engine placement
• is easier and quicker to maintain or update
• has a higher resale value (should you have that as an priority)
• works better with other sites
• loads faster in a user’s browser
• is cheaper to host

Further reading

So what are Web standards? I’ll be writing more about them in the coming months as there’s too much cover in one post. For now, though, here’s some useful links to get you started…

First of all, I’d recommend buying and reading DWWD. It’s not just for techies!

For a great primer on Web standards read The Web Standards Project FAQ.

If you use Facebook, attend the Facebook event.

If you want an in-depth look and tutorials the browser makers, Opera, have a great curriculum on Web Standards.

As you might have seen on my homepage, I’m a freelance designer who specialises in user-experience and online business strategy. Leaving the jargon aside, I help businesses research their customers and build Web sites that will help, satisfy or entertain them.

This blog is the place where I share my thoughts about the work I do. That could be useful links, product and book reviews, tips and tutorials or any other nuggets of useful, and I hope thought-provoking, information.

My articles will be aimed at anyone involved in managing a web site or marketing a business. Whether you are a business owner, content author, marketer or sales manager I hope there will be something in here for you.