natasha's corner

Recently, Jared Spool and Robert Hoekman, Jr. addressed the question of making a career move from developer to designer on their Userability podcast. I listened to it with great interest, having made this move myself not too long ago. Jared and Robert had some great advice, like to just start observing how people use your software, but I thought I’d add some thoughts from my own experience.

I found there are four things you need to do in parallel: learn, stay current, practice, and evangelize. Sometimes you’ll focus on one more than others, but to be successful, you really need to juggle all four. (And it doesn’t stop after you’ve made the switch, you just have less to learn and more to stay current on.)

Learn

Although a lot of design is common sense, you still need to learn how to recognize what sense is “common” and what is not. To this end, I recommend attending conferences and seminars and reading books.

Depending on where you live, there may be a local SIGCHI, UPA, or IxDA chapter that organizes events and seminars – that would be the first thing to check out because local events are usually less expensive and more intimate than the big national conferences put on by these organizations. Regarding the bigger conferences, I can’t speak for UPA or Interaction, but CHI tends to be more academic, so it may not be the best use of funding (if you’re lucky enough to get it in this economy). I found UIE’s UI conference to be great for a beginner, with great speakers and day-long seminars that cover subjects like design strategy, intro to interaction design, paper prototyping, and many others in full detail.

For books, I recommend Robert’s first book Designing the Obvious and Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug. These are quick reads, but they manage to cover a lot of design basics – definitely enough to get you started. Books like About Face by Alan Cooper, while comprehensive and often recommended, are more useful as references when you need to look up how to solve a particular problem. It’s not something you’ll want to read cover-to-cover (unless you have a lot of time on your hands).

Stay Current

There is a bit of overlap between learning and staying current, but I think they deserve to be called out individually because the resources you use are different.

To get and stay current in the field, you should make Google Reader or another RSS feed aggregator your best friend. Blogs are by far the best way to stay in touch with the design community. Here are a few that I recommend:

• Signal vs. Noise
• UIE Brain Sparks
• Boxes and Arrows
• Seth Godin’s Blog

If you find an author you like, they probably have a blog – look it up. If you do some development, read developer blogs. Subscribe to Gizmodo if you have time to spare. Whatever you’re interested, subscribe to the feed and you’ll be on top of all the latest news, trends, and techniques.

Another fantastic resource for staying current is the SXSW Interactive conference. This will be the best investment you make, guaranteed. You’ll be surrounded by bright and creative people and all the emerging technologies. It’s a great motivator and a great way to meet all those internet ‘celebrities’ like Jared and Robert (not to mention Kathy Sierra, Jason Fried, Jeffrey Zeldman, and many others).

Practice

The only way to become a designer is to design. Even if it’s not in your job description, start incorporating design techniques you read or hear about.

Do some hallway usability tests, make a paper prototype, create some mock-ups before diving into the code. One of the first things I did was create a paper prototype and run some usability tests with people in the office. We got some great feedback this way that led to a much better design. It’s amazing how much a quick and dirty usability test can uncover.

Another thing you can do is start asking questions: Who are the users? Why do they need our tool? How do they currently accomplish their tasks? Why do we need features x, y, and z? What workflow are we trying to support? These are the types of things a designer needs to tackle for every project, so the sooner you start asking questions, the sooner you’ll figure out the right questions to ask. If you’re lucky, you may get to talk to some real users and observe them in their environment.

Find the low-hanging fruit for your project – something that would be easy to improve – and do it. It may not be the most visible thing or lead to impressive results, but at least you’ll get to practice your skills and it’ll give you something to talk about when you need to convince others of the value of design and usability. The more you do, the more people will start to see you as the “expert” in the field.

Evangelize

There’s no getting away from this one. You have to be passionate about great design and usability and you need to talk about it. Make it a point to know all the key decision makers in your company and meet with them on a regular basis. Even if it’s over coffee in the break room, you need to spread the idea that usability is a priority, not a “nice-to-have”. It’s usually not hard to convince people that usability is necessary, but it is hard to get them to act on that belief.

One of the things I did is establish a Usability Special Interest Group where we review our current products and mock-ups, read and discuss design-related books, and share other interesting information we learn at conferences or read online. We have a group of people interested in usability (developers, managers, interaction designers, and technical writers) who learn together and all now evangelize usability on the projects they’re involved with. In addition to being a support group for like-minded individuals, it’s also a great way to spread the influence.

What you do will depend on your organization and its culture. Just find the right people and talk, talk, talk. This is a great way to establish yourself as a usability expert and to start swaying the company culture in the direction of usability, where they will actually value your work.



Remember, it’s better to ask forgiveness than to ask permission. The best way to make the switch to interaction designer is to start doing the work. As a developer, you are intimately involved in your products, so you have a great chance to influence them. Don’t wait for someone to ask you to design something or run a usability test – just do it and then present the results. Time may be a concern, but if you don’t find the time for design, no one else will either. Learn, stay current, practice, and evangelize and soon enough, people will see you as the designer you want to be.

Then order your new business cards.

I only have 28 years 11 months 17 days 13 hours and 3 minutes to complete my changes and check them in.

There’s nothing quite like a commute home from work in the snow.

It started off with me slipping and sliding along the barely-cleaned sidewalks of Cambridge to get to my T stop. It’s really quite an adrenaline rush as you feel your legs slip in odd directions, anticipating the fall that is sure to follow, only to remain standing a moment later, with a false sense of security at having beaten the ice this time.

Later, having safely arrived at West Natick on the Commuter Rail, I was greeted with the beautiful sight of even more snow than in Cambridge. As I climbed over the mounds of snow piled up by the plows who don’t care about pedestrians, and as I tried (unsuccessfully) to avoid stepping in the deeper puddles of slush that accumulate on the sides of the road, I thought to myself, “Isn’t it great living in New England?”

When I finally waddled over to my car, I found that it was covered in a nice thick layer of pure white snow, waiting for me, challenging me, taunting me. After clearing most of the snow off the car and onto my clothes, I got into the warm car and started the final leg of my journey home.

Although I passed at least six plows along the way, the road was mostly still covered in snow. That’s understandable, of course, since it was only about 1-2″ on the ground and everyone knows that’s child’s play for your average Massachusetts driver. My Honda Accord took full advantage of the situation, sliding to the left and right on a whim, bouncing off of snow banks. What fun!

Finally, I arrived at home. Although I knew it was futile to begin with, I tried to drive up our long, fairly steep, unplowed driveway. I made it about half-way before the car started sliding backwards. Without being in Reverse. I accepted defeat, parked the car at the bottom of the driveway, and walked up the hill toward the house. I’m happy to report that I only almost fell twice. I consider that an accomplishment.

New England winter, I <3 you.

The Boston Herald: Saturday, November 23, 1963

When my parents bought their house, we found a box in the attic full of newspapers and magazines from 1963 and 1964, all about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. All the newspapers are local to the Hartford area, with a few exceptions like The Boston Herald. For me, it’s like a gold mine – you have this snapshot of American history all in one nice package.

Manchester Evening Herald: Friday, November 22, 1963
Daily News: Monday, November 25, 1963
The Hartford Courant: Saturday Morning, November 23, 1963
The Boston Herald: Saturday, November 23, 1963
The Hartford Times: Friday, November 22, 1963

The most interesting thing about such a collection are the visuals. You see photos that are so famous now – like the shot that killed Lee Harvey Oswald, Jackie and the kids watching the funeral procession, John Jr. saluting his father. At the time, these visuals were new and stunning. Now they are still stunning because of their historical significance. Seeing them the way people saw them in 1963 is just amazing.

LIFE magazine: December 3, 1963

Of course the other great thing about this collection are the ads. When I get my hands on a scanner, I will post some of the more amusing ones I’ve found. Maybe eventually I will go through all the newspapers and magazines to pick out the most interesting bits of history and document them somewhere. But that’s a big job, so it’ll have to wait for the time being.

Nothing says “we care about our employees” more than a corporate hairdryer in the ladies’ room.

I counted 13 red lights telling me a train was coming. I guess better
safe than sorry?

At the start of 2009, I launched a mini-project called 365 days of music. I put this together in about a month and it’s not nearly complete, but there it is for now (maybe forever).

The idea was that I wanted to share songs I like on the go and have an easy way to keep track of what I recommended. Initially, I wanted the website to play the songs from an embedded player, but I didn’t find any good APIs to accomplish what I needed. Instead I settled for linking to Rhapsody, where you can play the songs for free if you’re in the US and other websites if you’re not.

Here is how it works:

• I send an e-mail to a super-secret special address with the following format:

  Subject: Song Title
  Body:
  by Artist
  from Album
  rating 1-5
  Notes

  Everything but the name of the song is optional.

• A PHP script that I wrote fetches the e-mail, parses it, formats it for the website by inserting the HTML and links for downloading the song, and sends the formatted post to WordPress via the Postie plugin.

  I have the script set up to fetch only one message at a time and I have a cron job set up that runs the script once each day. This lets me queue up songs and have one posted each day.

And that’s all there is to it. The best part is that all I had to learn was how to get and send e-mail through PHP.

Here is the code (with my secret account and formatting details removed):

// connection info
$host = "{imap.gmail.com:993/imap/ssl/novalidate-cert}INBOX";
$user = "account@gmail.com";
$pass = "password";

// open the connection
$mbox = imap_open ($host, $user, $pass)
    or die("Can't connect: " . imap_last_error());

// get the headers
$headers = imap_headers($mbox);
$found_new_post = false;

if ($headers == false) {
    // no headers in mailbox, so don't send anything
    echo "No new messages to process.";
}
else {
    for ($i = 1; $i <= count($headers); $i++) {
        // get the header
        $header = imap_headerinfo($mbox, $i);
        // get the text of the body
        // -- note: hard-coded for messages without attachments
        $body = imap_fetchbody($mbox, $i, "1");
        // only process oldest unseen message
        if ($header->Unseen == "U") {
            // message parsing and set-up goes here -->
            $post_title = trim($header->subject);
            $post_info = explode("\n", $body);
            $song = $post_title;
            $artist = "";
            $album = "";
            $rating = "";
            $comments = "";

            for ($j = 0; $j < count($post_info); $j++) {
                $line = $post_info[$j];
                if ($line == ":end") break;
                list($keyword, $value) = split(" ", $line, 2);
                if ($keyword == "by") $artist = trim($value);
                else if ($keyword == "from") $album = trim($value);
                else if ($keyword == "rating") $rating = trim($value);
                else if ($keyword != "")
                    $comments = $comments." ".trim($line);
            }

            $post_body = "";
            // etc...
            // <-- end message set-up

            // mark message as read
            imap_setflag_full($mbox, $i, "\\Seen");
            $found_new_post = true;
            break;
        }
    }
    if (!$found_new_post) echo "No new messages to process.";

}

// message processing goes here -->

// send email, to be processed by postie
$to = "another-account@gmail.com";
mail($to, $subject, $post_body, null, "-faccount@gmail.com");

// <-- end message processing

imap_expunge($mbox);
imap_close($mbox);

There may be a better way to accomplish this, but my goal was to get something set up as quickly as possible. Customizing the WordPress theme took longer than writing the script, which makes me happy.

So there we go. A quick little project, up and running. I’ll probably add things to the website if I have time, but for now, I’m happy with it.

Oh yeah, there’s also a special iPhone version of the website. Check it out on your iPhone.

The drive to the train station was beautiful this morning. It snowed on Sunday morning and then snowed even more overnight.

It got me thinking that one of the things I love about living in New England is that we get the beauty and colors of all seasons. Winter is a pristine white, spring is the bright colors of new growth and flowers, summer is a lush green, and fall is a bright palette of reds, yellows, and oranges. Why would I want to live anywhere else?

A couple weeks ago, we decided to remodel our master closet because the old one just wasn’t doing it for us. It had two high shelves that neither of us could reach easily and the hanger rod was totally warped from the weight of the clothes. So, we went to The Container Store and designed an Elfa closet for ourselves.

The unassembled Elfa closet parts.

The first thing we had to do to begin our remodeling was remove all the old closet shelving. It turned out that whoever put the closet together did a really crappy job. There were random boards nailed to the wall for support, there were plastic ties holding the shelves together, and there were screws and nails all over the walls. I got the impression that they put the closet together, it collapsed because it couldn’t handle the weight, and they patched it up as best they could (you know, instead of redoing it the right way).

The closet after we took out the old shelves and removed the support boards.

Close-up showing the condition of the walls.

The original plan was just to install the new closet stuff after removing the old parts. However, after we saw the condition of the walls, we decided to spackle and paint (thus turning this from a day-long project into a week-long one). We still had all the paint stuff left from when we painted the master bedroom and office before moving in, so all we needed to get was spackling materials and fresh paint.

Spackling helped a lot, and the paint made a huge difference! Since we were painting anyway, we decided to paint the walls the same color as the master bedroom rather than keeping them white.

The closet with freshly painted walls.

Once the paint was dry, we started installing the Elfa components. Almost immediately we ran into a problem: they had given us the wrong sized dry wall anchors. There are at least two different dry wall anchor sizes, depending on the thickness of your dry wall. Ours turned out to be 1″ thick, but the ones they gave us were for 1/2″ thick walls. It’s important to get the right sized anchors because all the weight rests on the top bar that you screw into the wall and if you’re installing on dry wall, you need to be careful that it doesn’t break from the weight. In our case, we didn’t hit any studs when installing the top bar, so we were especially concerned about having the right dry wall anchors. Luckily, exchanging the anchors just took a quick trip back to The Container Store (although we did have to pay for them since we didn’t bring back the other ones we had).

Top bar installed.

The remainder of the process was pretty straight-forward, except for a few minor problems:

First, we had some trouble getting the placement of the hanging standards (the vertical bars) right. We had one long shelf in the middle and short ones on the sides. When we placed the hanging standards for the long shelf, we guesstimated where the middle bar should go and figured it was “good enough”. Although the shelves fit fine, we ran into a problem when we installed the facia (that’s the wooden front on the shelves). The facia pieces all came in small sizes and to make them fit we had to take apart the big shelf and place the bar exactly in the middle.

So, if you’re ever installing an Elfa closet, make sure all your hanging standards are exactly 24″ apart, no matter how long your shelves are. It’ll save you the headache of fixing it later.

Hanging standards approximately in place.

Second, the instructions for installing the shelves were not clear enough. You have to put the back end of the shelf into the notches first, then push down in the middle.

Also, although the shelves will install on brackets spaced less than 24″ apart, there is only one right way to install them. You have to get the outsides completely inside the shelf brackets or none of the “decorative” pieces will fit correctly. This is also necessary if you have two shelves right next to each other, sharing one bracket.

All in all, installing the shelves was one of the hardest and most time consuming parts of the process. The three lines dedicated to this in the instruction booklet seems very inadequate.

Shelves installed.

Finally, the installation instructions make no mention of “niceties” like the top bar cover, the shelf bracket side covers, or the shelf liners (optional) that you need to install.

The top bar cover is basically a piece of plastic that you slide into the top bar to cover up the screws and make it look nicer. Make sure you install this before installing shelves! We didn’t realize we had to install it until after all the shelves were in place, and we had some high ones that were really hard to reach around.

The side covers for shelf brackets are also missing from the install guide. It’s not a big deal if you forget about these until the end, though, since they go on the outside.

The shelf liners are kind of a mystery. I’m not sure if you’re supposed to put them in before you put on the facia or after. We put them in last, but they basically just lie on top of the shelves and there is nothing holding them in place. I suspect that if you put them in before installing the facia, they would actually be held in place by the facia. Instructions would be really helpful here.

Despite these minor problems, the process was actually very easy to follow and rewarding to know that you did it yourself.

Empty closet with everything installed.

We are extremely happy with our new closet. It fits so much more than before and we can comfortably access everything we need. The wall color makes it look way better as well, and I’m glad we were forced to paint it. We also put in GE Reveal light bulbs, which provide a cleaner, more neutral light for the closet.

I never thought I’d get excited about a closet, but I love it!

Our new closet in use.