Declaration of Independence

For the past 12 years, what I’ve wanted to do more than anything was work independently. The only thing that kept me from doing before was time and money. Now I had plenty of both. And I thought I had an ace up my sleeve with the economy in shambles. I could market myself as a hired gun and a company could bring me in on a per-project basis without the hassle of paying for my benefits or matching my 401(k). It seemed like a win-win in a shaky economy. However, getting your name into the world and getting people to recognize you as a resource takes time. Time takes money. And as I watched my severance money dwindle I would have moments of extreme fear.

Doing What Works

I read an article on Zen Habits about the number one dream killer: Doing What Works. This is so true it hurts. In February I had turned down a job offer at a company where I knew I’d be miserable. I also hadn’t had any freelance work since mid-January. As time passed I started to freak out and I went with what works. I started really looking for full time work in March.

An exciting opportunity came knocking when Amazon flew me out to Seattle to interview me for a Senior User Experience Designer position. I convinced myself that this was a prestigious position and that I would be crazy not to take it if they offered it to me. Freelancing would have to wait. But what happened is that I kind of sunk myself in the interview. I don’t believe I did it intentionally but somewhere I wanted freelancing to work and I wanted to give it a real chance. So during my grueling 6-hour interview I subtly, but surely, sabotaged myself.

A series of interviews with other companies followed. My resume was strong and garnered a lot of interest. But interview after interview failed. I was growing frustrated that I couldn’t seal the deal. The interviewers could see what I was unable to at the time; I did not want to work for anyone.

Let the Freelancing Begin

In mid-April, some freelance work began to trickle in. And then, in the early part of May, the flood gates opened and I had more work than I could handle. I’m not really sure how it happened and I don’t know if I could ever replicate it but I was getting work on a regular basis. I could barely keep up. My dream was finally coming true, and I hated it.

I didn’t like working nights and through the weekends. In the corporate world I would do that occasionally but it was usually rewarded with a little time off or, at the very least, a pat on the back. I felt like freelancing was consuming me and giving me no time to enjoy my life. I had built up freelancing in my mind as a way to take control of life and enjoy things more. But the truth was that I was consumed by my business and I had to constantly worry about what I was working on and where I’d get the next bit of work.

The other problem was that my career wasn’t advancing the way I’d hoped it would. I love graphic design and I think building sites in CSS is fun but I want to move forward and concentrate more on solving usability issues. It’s moving away from the nuts and bolts and more into theory and analysis. But as a freelancer, I was not catching any interest in these skills. I was being hired for my graphic design and coding experience. It was kind of like taking a step backwards.

Chris All Together

Now that I had my priorities sorted I was ready to find the right opportunity. And as luck would have it, there were 2 such opportunities right here in Denver. Both companies needed someone to come in and address usability concerns with systems they design. This was the kind of work I’ve wanted to do. Fortunately for me, both companies liked my resume and both companies wanted a phone interview. Then they both wanted an in-person interview. And now I have 2 offers.

It was never a matter of whether or not I had the right skills. It was about what I wanted and how I presented myself. Until I gave freelancing a real chance I was never going to be happy working at a company again. In my mind, I had to know that I tried and it wasn’t for me.

I hope that my quality of life is going to be better thanks to this whole experience. I know what I want now. I want to solve usability challenges. I want to leave work at work and spend quality time with my family and friends. I want to have happy-hour beers with my co-workers. I guess I’m more of a corporate drone than I thought I was.

A Twitter Thanks

By far, the most useful networking tool I had during my lay off was Twitter and I’d like to give a Twitter shout-out to @corygrunk, @pdpilot, @ElPocho, @jluciano, @bryanzug, @TheBigKlosowski, @pchuck, @dhinman, @heavywinter, @dradclif, @lednine, @ryanisinallofus, @joshclauss, @tugglmatt, @iVolunteer, and @senator_larson.

Thank you for the advice, referrals, and work. You’re all awesome in my book.

It turns out this is simply a pain. None of the switches for the radios are in the same place, hierarchically speaking. The Airplane Mode is a switch that turns off all radios and is located in the first level of the Settings application. The WiFi switch is located on the 2nd-level under the Wi-Fi menu. And the 3G radio is located on the 3rd level under the General > Network menus. The only one that is really easy to get to is the one I use the least which is Airplane Mode.

I believe there is a rather elegant solution already in use on the iPhone that could be applied to help ease this pain.

When you’re typing in an email address or URL on the iPhone and it properly detects the field, the keyboard switches to help make typing that format easier. At the bottom of the virtual keypad is a dot (.) key to help expedite typing the dot in .com or other domain extension. But if you tap that key and hold for a second, a sub menu pops up with some of the more popular domain extensions such as .com, .net and .org.

People either know about this or they don’t. If they don’t know, there’s nothing about it to get in their way. They go about their business. But if they do know about it then it helps save a little time finishing email addresses and URLs. This same user interface could be applied to the top bar of the iPhone screen with the same kind of results. If you know about it then it’s useful but if you don’t it doesn’t get in your way. The only thing the top bar is currently used for is clicking to bring you back to the top of any page whether it’s a web page or an email message. But the only clickable area is the area between the radio-signal label and the system icons and time. By making the radio signal button a clickable area the iPhone UI designers could add a sub menu with the different kinds of radio options and allow you to make a quick choice.

The one issue with doing it this way is with the nature of how the iPhone works. Apple clearly wanted to make this as user-friendly as possible so they created a way to have the iPhone automatically detect, and switch to, the appropriate network radio. This worked well when it was just Edge and WiFi but when 3G was introduced this became more of a hassle than it was worth. The problem is that 3G has to shut down and the phone has to find the Edge signal in order to make the switch. So when I’m on a call at my house and I forget to turn off the 3G radio, the phone ultimately drops the call because it can’t switch from 3G to Edge midstream. In order to use the system I’m proposing there would have to be a new preference menu under the Settings application that would allow you to toggle whether or not you wanted the iPhone to automatically detect the appropriate radio or if you would like to do it manually. If you choose the manual option then the iPhone no longer attempts to connect to any network unless you specifically ask it to. The default state of the iPhone in manual mode would be Edge. And you would have to use the sub menu navigation to switch to 3G, WiFi, or Airplane Mode. If you want to turn those off you simply choose the E for Edge and all other options are disabled. This would help with making the quick switch from radio to radio and also help conserve battery life since the other radios are being turned off.

I believe in making a user interface that is easy for the most basic user. But you should also enable ways to allow more advanced users to customize the experience to their liking. It’s a delicate balance but can certainly be achieved.

The Requirements

The most important requirement for me was getting my portfolio online. Many of the clients I’ve done work for the past few months have been through word of mouth. That’s probably the best way to get a client because you’re already starting out with a recommendation by the person who told the client about you in the first place. But for all of those freelance and consulting positions I was seeing online I knew I had to have a professional looking site and portfolio before they would even consider talking to me.

I wanted a site that was more dynamic than the sites I’ve had in the past. Not just a blog but other information streaming in as well. I wanted to try and show the whole picture of who I am. If a person reads my blog, sees the kinds of articles I’m reading, and follows me on social sites then they are going to get a much better understanding about the kind of person I am and what really drives me in web design. This overall picture was important to me.

And on the list of “wants” was to use some javascript to give the site some interactive appeal. I’m not trying to make my site “sticky” or anything like that. I just wanted to be able to provide an interesting way to view my information without forcing the user to click through a complex navigation scheme. Javascript would allow me to provide a much more simple user interface.

My Audience

According to Google Analytics, I don’t have an audience. I suppose that’s to be expected when my focus hasn’t been very clear. So I had to put some thought into this. I couldn’t try and create a site for the audience I wanted to have but for the audience I was probably going to have. When I looked at my site from a visitor’s perspective I could see only one of two reasons a person would visit creativefriday.com; 1) they were here to read an article I wrote or 2) they were a potential client here to review my portfolio. Everything else would have to be secondary.

The Complex Simple Solution

I read such a great article by John Gruber titled Ronco Spray-On Usability a few months ago. If you haven’t read it I would highly recommend it, especially if you find it difficult to understand why the world needs usability experts. But the gist of it, the essence of the article, is that simple is difficult to achieve. When you nail simple and you got it right, most people don’t even notice because it’s simple and easy to use and gets out of their way. It’s kind of a thankless task. Get it wrong and people hate you, get it right and no one notices.

When I first started thinking about my requirements and my audience I had come up with a fairly simple navigation scheme; Home, Blog, Portfolio, Social, and About Me. When I looked at that solution it seemed like it would probably work. Especially since that’s a common theme throughout the web. But as I was creating my site map and then the wireframe I started to see that there was a problem. There were just too many clicks for a person that was here to either read a blog post or view my portfolio. Those other tabs would likely fall into the ether never to be heard from again. The answer had to be simpler. But when I set up the very simple navigation Blog and Portfolio, I thought that some of my requirements were going to get lost. And then I looked at jQuery for a client project and while working on their site realized that this could be the answer for my site. Once I got the expandable footer element working with jQuery I knew I had solved the problem.

An Agile Approach, A Work in Progress

This site is meeting all of my needs right now, as it is. But I do have additional elements I would like to add. Without the need to make any changes to the main navigation I am going to add a “Hire Me” page with my schedule and a form. I would also like to create a breadcrumb at the top of each page. Search isn’t here now because there’s barely any content to search for but I would like to add search and a search results page. These things can all be built later using the Agile Software Development approach. The site was structured in a way that would allow me to add the necessary pieces later without altering the look and feel of what you see today.

All in all, I’m very happy with the end result. At least for now anyway.

Without further ado:

• Acquisition – Xtorrent killed it for me. At one time I used it like crazy though. – No Regret
• Adobe Design Premium CS4 – I use Photoshop, Illustrator and occassionaly Flash. Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Acrobat and InDesign sit dormant. There’s a slight chance I bust out InDesign but Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Acrobat are dead to me. The bundle was more cost efficient than buying those 3 programs 1 by 1. – Moderate Regret
• Apple Remote Desktop 3 – I bought this to help my Mom and my Grandmother with their Mac issues. When Leopard was released it kind of killed the need. – Moderate Regret
• Coda – I think Panic is one of the best app developers in the world. I loved Audion and I still love Transmit. But Coda wasn’t good enough to take me away from TextMate, CSSedit, and Transmit. I never use it. – Deep Regret
• Connect 360 – I still have it connected and I did use it a lot when I first had it. But when I bought an Apple TV that was the end of that. – No Regret
• DigiTunnel – I bought it to help me VPN into an ex-employer’s network. Why did I buy it on my own? Didn’t work anyway. – Deep Regret
• Disco – Ooh it makes smoke when burning a disc. That is all. – Deep Regret
• Fitness Brain – I used it to track calories for about a week but it was cheap. Developer abandoned project. – Mild Regret
• Intego Internet Security – STUPID, STUPID, STUPID. – As Deep of Regret as you get
• iTunes Catalog It sounded cool at the time. I bought this pre-Last.fm or pre-Twitter or any other social site. And I never used it anyway. – Mild Regret
• Memtest – My iMac RAM wasn’t the problem. Super cheap though. – No Regret
• Missing Sync for Blackberry – It worked better than Blackberry’s own Mac sync piece of crap software. But it was no iTunes/iPhone. – Moderate Regret
• NewsFire – I think I used it for a day or so before I realized that without the ability to sync, it was worthless. Moved to Google Reader and never looked back. Plus it became free after I bought it. – Deep Regret
• OmniPlan – I think Microsoft Project is a total waste of time for project management. Why did I think Omni’s version of the same software would be any better? I love OmniGroup and most of their products but this is too middle-management for me. – Deep Regret
• PandoraJam – It worked and I got some cool songs. But I just don’t use it anymore. – No Regret
• Pixelmator – Here was the thought: “I’ll get rid of all of the bloat and only run Cocoa apps!” Didn’t work. – Deep Regret
• Salling Clicker – This is still better than Apple’s own iPhone and iTunes sync. It was the bomb. I loved everything about it. I wish it worked with the iPhone like it did my Sony Ericsson K790a. Best bluetooth syncing software on the planet. – No Regret (none, zip, zero)
• Suitcase Fusion – Fat, bloated software. Having thousands of fonts was a necessity in the print design world but I’ve since simplified. A lot. – Mild Regret
• Taskpaper – Awesome and quick “Getting Things Done” task list. But it was too simplified. And OmniFocus worked better for me. Still cool software though. – No Regret
• Vector Designer – Same purchase date as Pixelmator and for the same reasons. – Deep Regret

The Internet is the Ultimate Mind Sharing Tool

What I discovered was that people, not algorithms, provided answers and content that was more useful, entertaining, and enlightening than anything I’d ever discovered before. In the fantastic article “We Travel in Tribes” by Rands, he perfectly describes why Twitter works on such a fundamental level. After reading that article and participating in so many other failed social web sites I started to realize that most people simply don’t understand the power of the internet. Even though many people have been using the internet for over a decade, it hasn’t helped them understand the incredible potential of what they’re using.

Some of the early names for the internet were spot on. The “www” in web site addresses stands for World Wide Web, a name given by the internet creators to help describe what the internet was. Another name, albeit cheesy, was The Information Super Highway. The early users of the internet understood the potential and usefulness of sharing the vast amounts of information around the world. The internet was a web of information that was not defined by your geographic location.

Unfortunately businesses started looking at the internet as an extension of their brick-and-mortar stores which required an extension of their print and television advertising campaigns. To marketers and advertisers it represented an “always-on” connection to their customers that could be marketed and advertised to on a constant basis. According to this view, if you could find a way to drive people to your web domain you could hit them with your marketing message and the customers would buy. This ushered in the rush for online advertising dollars. The internet was the next big medium after radio and television. But this view of the internet was flawed. Unlike radio and television the internet was not there solely for entertainment. The audience wasn’t an audience.

The Internet Deserves it’s Own Category

The internet can’t be lumped in with newspapers, magazines, radio, and television. It can’t be lumped in with encyclopedias, dictionaries, and educational books. It also can’t be lumped in with business-to-customer or business-to-business sales. It’s in a category all by itself because the world has never seen anything like this before. And very few marketers and businesses understand what to do. They continue to use old measuring sticks for success. “Please fill out this form” is the online equivalent to “for more information write to” from television and mailer marketing from years past. Page hits are like counting the number of people who enter your store. Web addresses with special character strings are the online version of 800 numbers with special numbers to indicate if an ad is working or not. This has all been done before in the world before the internet and so few have made any adjustments at all, they just continue to do what they did before.

The biggest misconception is that customers, or anyone for that matter, will come to your website and consume your content in the manner you want it consumed. This can be seen all over the internet at company websites where the content doesn’t change much, there’s no way to subscribe to the content, and no way to easily share what you’ve found. It all boils down to the idea that the customer (or researcher or whatever) has to come to you to get what they want. They have to come to your web site address and your little spot on the web just like they would have to go to a store or a library in the physical world.

Put Your Message in the Hands of the People

Something I keep coming back to in my thoughts is that web sites should think of themselves as a broadcast rather than the pages of a newspaper. Instead of requiring people come to you and absorb your content, broadcast your content to the right places and allow people to tune into you. As the internet matures and younger generations grow up with the technology, they are going to abandon the old model of “you produce content and I come absorb it.” That movement has already begun with the more tech-savvy users.

Over the course of the past few days I’ve been driven to videos, photos, web pages, store sales, and more by the people I follow. Either through Twitter or Digg or my RSS feeds I’m finding content that I never would have found before. The very idea that I’m going to waste my time to come to your web site and comb through your pages of marketing material as I scan for what I’m looking for is absurd. There was a time I used to do that but those days are over. If your content isn’t out there and people can’t find it and share it then that means your content is being overlooked. You are officially missing the boat.

I don’t have the answers to the marketing conundrum presented by the internet. But I know that the old model is the wrong approach. Feeding your information to the right sources is one aspect of a successful online presence but there’s more to it than that. And that’s where I get a little stuck. I know I’m onto something, I just don’t have all of the pieces yet.

I have few visitors and very few comments but I still miss the opportunity for debate. But the only way for someone to disagree with me was to take the time to write me via email or Twitter. And no one else would know that someone else had something to say and that made the content even less compelling. My content was all over the board since I could just share everything I read or saw on Tumblr. If anyone was subscribed to my feed for a specific article I’d written in the past then they would have been disappointed with what I was sharing. I need to focus.

This blog is going to be about web design, information architecture, usability, and the overall web trends that are happening. Every time I write a new post I will ask myself if it fits within those topics. If it doesn’t then I’ll use Tumblr. I will be creating my own custom theme and I will try to populate some of my tweets and tumbles here. But this site is going to be dedicated to the progression of my craft.

I think that all sounds well and good. But the truth is that the mobile version was actually better because it wrapped the original article in javascript and stripped out everything but the text and pertinent graphics. This was useful on EDGE and made it easy to keep up with my RSS feeds while away from my computer. I’ve been happily using the mobile version since I bought my iPhone almost a year ago and I wasn’t even asking for a change. The mobile version was such a great iPhone application. You just got the text, perfectly presented in your browser.

My biggest gripe about the new version is that they actually took features away. The mobile version has a Settings link that allows you to “Reformat linked web pages for mobile browsers.” You can turn that on or off as you see fit. I could choose to display 5, 10, or 20 articles at a time on the old version. The new iPhone version doesn’t even give you settings at all.

On both versions, there are 2 links at the bottom of your feed list: “Load More” and “Mark These Items as Read.” On the mobile version these links are stacked on top of one another and take up the same amount of screen space. Clicking either link is easy. But on the iPhone version the “Load More” link is left-aligned and significantly larger than the “Mark These Items as Read” link which is right justified. The first time I tried to click the mark-as-read link I actually clicked the load more link because that link spans the width of the iPhone’s screen. It’s awesome that they do that so I don’t have to be so specific with my touch but the mark items as read link doesn’t span the width of the iPhone and you must be very specific with your touch on that link. And the space it takes up is so much smaller than the load more link that it’s too easy to accidentaly touch the load more link.

Obviously the iPhone version is still in beta and these things can be easily fixed. But I wish more developers would remember that it’s never a good user experience to take features away (unless it’s proven that the feature is little-used and gets in the way of completing tasks). You should start with you already have and then add functionality to improve the user experience. I just hope they add those settings back. I won’t be able to use the iPhone-specific version until they do. Luckily for me, the mobile version was already an awesome iPhone app to begin with.

If you’re ever concerned about moving to a Mac because you fear that the software will be different or you won’t be able to share files with PC users, I’m here to put that fear to rest. Here’s a list of software I use that keeps me working with PC users:

• Microsoft Office 2008 – Written specifically for the Mac and is completely interoperable with Microsoft Office for the PC. It has Entourage instead of Outlook but they are pretty much the same applications. I am on an exchange server, my calendar is in sync, I have access to the corporate directory, etc.
• Keynote 08 – This gem just kicks Powerpoint’s booty and there’s no sense in using Powerpoint. I do my own presentations anyway so I don’t need to share my files with someone else. On the rare occasion I do need to share my presentation with another person I just export my Keynote file as a .ppt file. I usually lose some of the nifty animations but the presentation is still better than anything you can produce with Powerpoint.
• Omnigraffle Pro 5 – Superior to Microsoft Visio 2007 in almost every way. The beauty of it is that I get to use such a great program for all of my diagrams and PC users never know the difference because I can open and save in the Visio format. I’ve shown other IA’s Omnigraffle and how you can quickly create a site map using the outline mode and they’re always blown away.
• OmniPlan 1.5 – I’ve never used Microsoft Project so I can’t make a direct comparison but OmniPlan does the job nicely and no one has any problems opening and viewing my files. The Omni Group is on the ball. They just make killer software with real-world business uses. I also use OmniOutliner (which is never closed) and OmniFocus to help me keep my thoughts and tasks in order.
• Adobe Creative Suite – No one outside of myself has any need to open a Photoshop document or Illustrator document but they could if they had the software. Just like Microsoft Office, Adobe created their software to be completely interoperable between Macs and PCs. Just don’t use PostScript fonts and you should be fine.
• Parallels – When push comes to shove and I have to use a PC because some business application requires Active X or I’m working with Sharepoint I can open Windows XP and work with Windows applications just like they were installed on my Mac. The move to Intel was one of the smartest moves Apple has made and the architecture allows me to use Windows at almost native speed in a virtual world. It works so much better than Virtual PC ever did.

In addition to these titles that allow me to work with PC users I also use Mac-only software that I couldn’t imagine living without. Programs like 1Password, Coda, CSSedit, Delicious Library, MarsEdit, Skitch, TextMate, and VisualHub. I use .Mac to keep my Address Book, Calendar, Bookmarks, Mail Accounts, and FTP sites in sync but that service has finally gotten a Windows counterpart with Microsoft’s announcement of the Live Mesh service. Even though .Mac has it’s problems (and it does) I still find it incredibly useful, especially the online disk space.

One of the biggest myths is that you don’t get good software on the Mac. There may not be as many applications produced for the Mac but the software that is produced is almost always superior to anything you can find on Windows. I’m trying to say that without sounding like a fanboy but I know I come across that way. I just think the Mac software developers take a lot of pride in their work and it shows.

The Mac is definitely making a comeback and it’ll be showing up in more and more businesses. There’s no reason it should be excluded anymore. I work on a Mac every day and I’m able to access our network, use Cisco VPN to log in remotely, share files, and open and save PC documents. It’s truly a business machine.

UPDATE: My friend Pat Charles pointed me to this article on InfoWorld that has real-world data to support my claim that Macs will be showing up in more and more businesses.

UPDATE 2: It looks like this is a timely blog post as there are many more articles coming out about this very subject. Check out Business Week’s The Mac in the Gray Flannel Suit.

UPDATE 3: This will be my last update on this post but this has never happened to me before. Clearly I was on to something. Please check out MacUser’s “Macs in business: Making the case” for their perspective.

I understand that both school’s primary color is a shade of blue. But it should have been instantly recognizable to the person creating this graphic that the 2 shades of blue were much, much too close together for this chart to be meaningful. My first thought would be to add each school’s secondary color and make each line thicker so the user could quickly see the difference between the blue/yellow line and the blue/white line. But the chart doesn’t only fail in its color presentation. It also crams a lot of data into a small column while keeping detail off of the chart. In order to get more detail the user needs to hover over the graphic which they would only know to do if they hovered over the graphic by chance. In this regard I think of the words of the great Edward Tufte when he says “to add clarity, add detail.”

So I hope that this plan the Financial Times is reporting isn’t a mandatory thing. I hope they keep pushing for more songs to be in the non-DRM iTunes Plus format for purchase. I don’t ever want my music hijacked by a company because I don’t want to pay the monthly extortion for their subscription anymore.

UPDATED: 3/24/07: According to CNet, sources say it’s Universal who is putting this on the table. I seriously should have know that, after all Doug Morris would love nothing more than to put his hand in every music buyer’s pocket every month for the rest of their lives. Here’s my favorite quote:

“These guys at Universal,” said one music insider, “are so obsessed with this subscription thing…but there are publishing issues involved with bundling and I don’t think they make much money off it.”