dojo4

Technology considered harmful

Ara — Thu, 10 May 2012 19:37:00 +0000

My parents are in Boulder from Alaska for a few weeks. I don't get to see them that much. This morning I helped them find a great hike to do in the area at Hall Ranch ( http://www.singletracks.com/bike-trails/hall-ranch.html ) which is about 20 miles away in a town called Lyons. My folks had never been there so my mother asked me for directions. My dad has an iPhone and showed just how cool it is to be able to do a search in maps and get directions just like that - technology to the rescue! On the way to work I had a bit of a bad feeling: did I really just help my mom? Instead of showing her how to use some neat-o bit of technology I could have just taken 30 seconds to give her directions. Why didn't I? Technology is here to help us. It's a tool to make our lives easier and happier. Right? Wrong. Technology is just a tool, like any other - it's the relationship to it's user that makes it helpful or harmful. If we assume for a minute, that what makes people happy is their relationships with other people (a safe assumption - http://www.pbs.org/thisemotionallife/topic/connecting/connection-happiness) then any application that actually reduces human connection may *not be helpful* in the long term. It's true, being able to pull up a map when you are alone and lost is truly helpful. But *actually talking* to your son, or even a stranger, instead of using an 'app' when you need directions is undoubted a more profound experience for both people. Does your technology promote self reliance and less human interaction? If so, it's at risk of being actually harmful to people - regardless of how much it might help the individual in that moment.

Your style is orthodox, and it sucks.

Ara — Tue, 08 May 2012 19:12:00 +0000

Today I put together a gist showing code being transformed from fugly to legible

some nice comments and twitter discussion followed

it's *extremely* unlikely that code that doesn't sit beautifully on your screen is error free - fugly tests only confound the issue.
— Ara T. Howard (@drawohara) May 8, 2012

+1 RT @drawoharayour coding style is everything: gist.github.com/2636430
— Prakash Murthy (@_prakash) May 8, 2012

Agreed…and the refactoring is a quick one. “@drawohara: your coding style is everything: gist.github.com/2636430”
— Mike Gehard (@mikegehard) May 8, 2012

@drawohara an additional advantage is that it's easy to see what changed with diff in your final example.
— Eric Hodel (@drbrain) May 8, 2012

“@drawohara: each grain of cognitive dissonance in the code moves the solution farther away.”. This is so true I want it in a t-shirt
— David Clements (@digidigo) May 8, 2012

How do you think people feel about your coding prose?

ps. this one got some talk too. hesitated to include due to 'hairy' ref. but wtf.

Hubba Hubba

Corey — Fri, 04 May 2012 20:00:00 +0000

Hub Boulder had its first public event this week out at 303 Vodka. It was originally slated to be held downtown but when the number of RSVPs climbed to close to 300, we decided to move it out to the Bartertown neighborhood of Boulder. Despite (or maybe because of) the move, the turnout persisted in being phenomenal and included a whole range of folk, from those who already died-hard members of the Hub to those who came just to find out more. Tim Freundlich was on hand to talk about Hub Ventures' support for Hub Boulder and the vision for the next ten years of having Hubs in every major metropolitan city in the world with a membership of over 2 million change-makers, social innovators, and entrepreneurs cultivating the common good. Hub Boulder a dynamic piece of this movement and dojo4 is thrilled to be one of its founding members and primary supporters.

To become a member or for more info: http://www.hubboulder.com/memberships/

toolbox for a better world: do something simple first & listen deeply

Corey — Thu, 03 May 2012 20:46:00 +0000

We were just invited to be one of the presenters at the ShareLab event the CMKY Festival. The event used open space technology to engage the question: Can we design a world that is workable for 100% of humanity? As a presenter, dojo4 was asked to bring a ‘provocation’ that would address one model or practice that we believe is revolutionizing our work and contributing to a better world.

Hmm, good question! And provocative indeed! I talked to the partners here about it and what easily floated to the top as the most crucial practices we believe are revolutionizing our work and contributing to a better world are: Do Something Simple First and Listen Deeply.

And so this is what I offered as a provocation at the ShareLab:

People often say that at dojo4 we design and build software for the internet. But that’s not actually what we do. What we do is help solve problems for people. Most often we use technology and design as tools for engaging these problems. But really, the most cogent way to describe what we do is that we help solve problems for people by doing something simple first.

Let me break down what I mean by that...

First of all: do! That means taking a can-do attitude. It doesn’t mean sit around and think about it for another week. It means approaching problems with a sense of achieving something. So the next question is what is this “something?”

“Something” is probably what's right in front of you. It’s the thing that’s needed right now. For instance, a prospective client walks into dojo4 with this problem: “We don’t have the salt and we want the salt.” At that point, “do something” is passing them the salt. We don’t need to build them a catapult for vaulting the salt over to their side of the table and we don’t need to develop an algorithm for how long it will take to get the salt to them by various methods of salt passing. What we need to do is use the most basic tools to get them the salt, which is most likely going to mean using our hands and arm muscles to push the salt across to them.

We pass the salt in the most basic way possible, being sure not to elaborate unnecessarily.

Doing something truly simple is the most powerful and elegant work we do. And so this is always the first approach to take.

Avoiding getting lost in the maze, by taking the most straightforward and simple path first, underlies one of the principles of software engineering that serves us well: the steel thread. A steel thread indicates the most important path of execution in a computer system. It focuses on only on what is fundamental to a system and shuns added or auxiliary possibilities and uses.

By doing something simple first we are able to draw the most sturdy steel thread through from the inception of a problem, or entry to a system, all the way to its solution or conclusion.

What we’ve found is that the system that underlies all the technical and design problems that we encounter is the interrelation of people. The essential system is a human framework. And we’ve found that the first thing we can do simply in this system is to try to understand each other more clearly.

A steel thread that we can draw through the problems that arise in the human system is to try to understand people better. And in order to understand clients and users better, we have to understand ourselves and each other better. Unquestionably, this approach has the potential of spinning off many beneficial results, but at the very least it allows us to design and build better web applications.

One of the practices or tools that we use at dojo4 to understand ourselves and each other better is to have a weekly standup that cultivates our ability to ask compelling questions and to listen deeply. We take turns asking one question every week that might allow us to understand ourselves and each other better, and refines our capacity for actually, really listening.

We use a loose circle practice as this tool, but there are many methods and practices that do the trick. The main point is that we’ve found that it’s important to core of our business and our work in the world to understand people better. And we can best do this by sticking to two related fundamentals: do something simple first and listen deeply.

This thanks to Ara and Justin and my other cohorts at dojo4 for conversations about what we can do and already do to make a better world.