Good or different?

At my day job I’m working to solve similar problems to those already being solved in some way by Google, Facebook, Quora and Twitter.

 In addition to developing respect for the work these guys have done, I find myself struggling with the similarities between my solutions and theirs. The question I ask myself is: how different should my solutions be? 

I’ve arrived at a similar solution, not by setting out to copy, but by setting out to tackle a similar problem without the luxury of doing it in a bubble where neither myself or more importantly, our users, aren’t familiar with what’s already out there. 

My feeling now is that for me that the desire to come up with something new is driven more by my own ego than any concern for the people using the thing. The only reasonable conclusion I can come to is to leave my ego at the door and acknowledge that innovating is hard, and that users want solutions before they want innovation. I hope that we’ll continue to get there by trying to understand our users, their problems and by refining our solutions. If we end up at a similar place to someone else, we need to challenge ourselves, but we won’t do something different just for the sake of it.

Simply put: “It’s better to be good than different”*

*If anyone can offer me the source of this quote/sentiment I’d appreciate it. 

A designer by any other name…

Dmitry from ZURB is not happy with the term “User Experience Designer”: 

How many of these positions are really web design, IA (information architecture), interaction design or another established craft, but filed under a buzzword name? Frankly, how can you design a user experience? Doesn’t it just happen?

First, I’ll note that I’m complicit for responding to this post, but if our industry put the effort we put into defining our roles or arguing about job titles into something else I’d be a happy man.

Sure, if you take “User Experience Designer” literally it’s not a great description, but if “Interaction Designer” and “Web Designer” are what you’re comparing it to you look a bit silly. I’ve churned out very few “webs” or “interactions” in my time and if I were to try, I feel “webs” would be most difficult to design.

Although not perfect, User Experience as a term is useful because for most it indicates a broader view of what’s being designed than “web” or “interaction” design. 

There’s plenty more here, especially if I drag “Service Design” in the ring, but wouldn’t we rather have a discussion about what we’re doing rather than what we call it?

Standards vs Best Practices

I can do some very inaccessible things in HTML5 that won’t trigger validity warnings, because the standards writers just didn’t think those issues mattered very much.

Marc Drummond is concerned about the progress of HTML5 away from enforcing good accessibility practices. 

So far HTML5 has been aggresively pragmatic to ensure it was a standard that would actually be adopted. See the justification for when Ian Hickson chose not to define a video codec in HTML5 because regardless of what he chose, not all vendors would implement it. 

Wherever it’s possible, HTML5 should not prevent people from writing accessible websites and applications. That said, validators and technical specifications cannot enforce best practices for writing accessible or usable websites. People need to do this. 

Livable = Boring?

This caught my eye a while back but I never got around to posting it, but after a long weekend of enjoying Berlin I’m back to thinking about it:

mid-sized cities in developed countries with relatively low population densities tend to score well by having all the cultural and infrastructural benefits on offer with fewer problems related to crime or congestion

I always see cities that seemed nice enough, but weren’t that exciting, scoring high in these lists. Here they capture why - when you take away all the parts of city living that get on your nerves, you take away most of what excites you at the same time.

Maybe I’m weird but the only measure of “livability” is whether I would actually want to live there, and for most of these places the answer is no. 

Why Do Australia and Canada Have the Most Livable Cities? - GOOD

A Fresh Start

Redesigning blogs and personal sites seems to be a difficult pursuit for designers and it seems I’m no different. It doesn’t help that visuals are not my strong point. So, in the interests of practicing what I’ve preached I’m putting the what I have out there so that I can start work on the next version. 

As a start I wanted this thing to be responsive, HTML5 and to use Typekit. I’d also like add some CSS3 and Javascript shininess, but this will have to wait for the next update because this one is already out.

I’m OK that some stuff won’t work, but if you do spot something let me know on Twitter: @edmacovaz

A new definition of open

From Bloomberg Businessweek:

From now on, companies hoping to receive early access to Google’s most up-to-date software will need approval of their plans. And they will seek that approval from Andy Rubin, the head of Google’s Android group.

Not that I don’t think it’s a bad idea, but it will make it harder criticize Apple from the position of being “open”.

Hoping listeners win

Good for Amazon. I really hope they win this. I you buy a song (or movie, or TV show), it shouldn’t matter where it’s stored.

I’m with John Gruber on this one. I’m tired of the people who distribute music thinking their sole goal is to prevent people listening to it unless they are willing to have every last cent extracted from them.