"Don’t ask for critique if you only want validation. If you want a hug, just ask." via @kakennedy #yam

"software development needs more people who know how to define better solutions than the ones we have now"

"I’m not even sure a “culture of change” is a meaningful concept or one that could be sustained over an extended period. Experimenters are driven by the desire to try things out and see what works, to collect data, to learn from the results. They are open to possibilities."

"As I reflected on the previous 20 years of product design and development it was pretty clear that the successes were the result of tacit user observation and the failures were the result of expert centered design or market research demographic design."

"tell me a story about your idea that matters to me"

"This is all your app is: a collection of tiny details.
This is still one of my favorite quotes about software. It's something we internalized heavily when building Stack Overflow. Getting the details right is the difference between something that delights, and something customers tolerate.

Your software, your product, is nothing more than a collection of tiny details. If you don't obsess over all those details, if you think it's OK to concentrate on the "important" parts and continue to ignore the other umpteen dozen tiny little ways your product annoys the people who use it on a daily basis – you're not creating great software. Someone else is. I hope for your sake they aren't your competitor.

The details are hard. Everyone screws up the details at first, just like Petmate did with the first version of this automatic feeder. And it's OK to screw up the details initially, provided …

you're getting the primary function more or less right.
you're listening to feedback from the people who use your product, and actively refining the details of your product based on their feedback every day."

"Who are the product storytellers? Part matchmaker, marketer, technologist, and artist, the product storytellers ask questions, find answers, and figure out how to distill a vision or idea into a product story. They develop a plot, identify the people, and shape the product around the specific values it should offer consumers. Product storytellers think about the whole, and they see the big picture. But they also can go deep because they understand that the product's true value lies in the details of its interactions and every touchpoint that a consumer has with it."

"The product vision paints a picture of the future that draws people in. It describes who the customers are, what customers need, and how these needs will be met. It captures the essence of the product – the critical information we must know to develop and launch a winning product."

"creating a product vision statement helps teams remain focused on the critical aspects of the product, even when details are changing rapidly"

"The more critical the delivery schedule and the more volatile the project, the more important it is that the team have a good vision of the final desired outcome. Minus this vision, iterative development projects are likely to become oscillating projects -- going round and round in circles because everyone is looking at the minutia rather than the big picture."

"Most companies obsess about the details too early and too often. They have trouble breaking away and questioning the purpose of the product and its features, and they lose sight of the big picture. When you see products that are perennially mired in incrementalism and features wars, this is what is going on."

Tap, tap. Yes, the blog is still on. New post: We're all responsible for the awesome:

Added a few new photos to my light experiments set:

The risk of being real RT@sashadichter: Why have we so quickly and easily abandoned the notion that work can be joyful?

Apparently it is abandoned seating day in my neighborhood

"The gap between what you already know and what you're exploring is often where the best ideas pop up" - John Hunt

It's Small Press Saturday at Newtonville Books. Of course we went.

I have never once been asked, “How hard will my team have to think to develop this project?” Clients, bosses, customers, and stakeholders care about how long a project will take. They don’t care about how hard we have to think to deliver the project, except to the extent that the need to think hard implies schedule or cost risk.

See the loops MT@babs26: what people think success looks like vs what it really looks like //pic by @DemetriMartin #yam

You have to get back on the horse.  Somehow, and I don’t know how this kind of thing starts, we have started to lionize horseback-not-getting-on:  these casual, a priori assertions of inevitable failure, which is nothing more than a gauze draped over your own pulsing terror.  Every creative act is open war against The Way It Is.  What you are saying when you make something is that the universe is not sufficient, and what it really needs is more you.  And it does, actually; it does.  Go look outside.  You can’t tell me that we are done making the world.

“If this project goes wrong, what’s the most likely thing we would have done to make it go that way?”

The impact of airport security on dinner

My dinner companion

For some, it is always windows down weather

"Are they annoyed? Do they want to punch you? Are their eyes glazing over?"

I think there's a law: must test new photo things on a cat. (Instagram came to Android.)

"The dynamic the kids have when putting all things aside and just being creative is completely different than the Punch Buggy game. In theory, they could argue that the car isn’t really a car, because it doesn’t really look like a car, and the door isn’t a door at all, and that it really should be used for a window. But they don’t. They just create. They don’t criticize. They don’t try and convince each other that the other person is wrong. They don’t make assumptions about what the other person’s intentions were, or how they are feeling. They just create. They encourage, they discuss, and they create."

"It doesn’t map to my understanding of the universe" Old, still good. RT@berkun: Why software sucks:

"Simultaneously, and in a time of supposed religious revival, and among those especially inclined to feel religiously revived, we have a society increasingly defined by economics, and an economics increasingly reminiscent of my experience with that rat, so-called rational-choice economics, which assumes that we will all find the shortest way to the reward, and that this is basically what we should ask of ourselves and—this is at the center of it all—of one another. After all these years of rational choice, brother rat might like to take a look at the packaging just to see if there might be a little melamine in the inducements he was being offered, hoping, of course, that the vendor considered it rational to provide that kind of information. We do not deal with one another as soul to soul, and the churches are as answerable for this as anyone."

Power of the web, upside: print as marker of prestige dying. Downside: disengaged reposting loops via @Explorer

Boris Savelev's photography

sturdy, plain waxed canvas backpack

Many corporations test products during the development cycle but not early or often enough with actual customers. R&D is the most expensive step in the innovation process. If you wait until you have something close to a finished product before getting user feedback, large sunk costs will make your team reluctant to employ significant changes.

Design instinct is about viewing world around you as a place filled w/opportunities to add more thoughtfulness & care

"in our current system, we have no right to be forgotten; we only have a right not to be reminded"

"doing the wrong thing righter"- this description applies to too many attempts to solve problems

“You shouldn’t get attached to a feature set. You should get attached to a problem you’re solving.”

What is a meaningful set of features for customers?
How do we produce meaningful lessons learned from what we put in front of customers?
What does this concept mean for how we go about defining a product strategy?

The Department of Urban Betterment is real: How New York Pay Phones Became Guerrilla Libraries

Just when you thought squid couldn't be more awesome: Squid can fly to save energy

"The problem with trying to measure productivity is that it measures only how well people can do the wrong jobs"

diy tiltshift lens

It isn't all wedding planning and home decor on @pinterest, there's dinosaur hunting, too

Twinkling lights are infinitely better than blinking lights

Thank you, Onion: Miranda July Called Before Congress To Explain Exactly What Her Whole Thing Is via @zite

I hope Lego (and anyone making toys "for girls") is listening RT @Storybird: More of this, please.

Memory works by consistent story not nec accurate RT@chrisflanagan: Fascinating: Storytelling derails Process Discovery

Of course MPAA thinks protest is abuse of power. They think no one else should make decisions about content and access

Creepy, even for clowns:

"By concentrating our curiosity where it matters, we can build on it more effectively, exchanging the infinite world of wandering and wondering for a more useful one where we get things done."

“We cannot expand our self, and our collective self, without making holes in our heart.”

Enjoying the stories on @cowbird and starting to contribute my own

The variety I'm drinking is called mind, body & soul. Oh yes.

"You can’t possibly predict where you’re going. All you can do is tell stories once you get there."

Inspired by @The_Millions I posted my own #yir2011: Glowing, obsession, performance art, and a dead duck

"Accountability is something that is left when responsibility has been subtracted."

I've been a bit puzzled by book trailers, but some of the children's picture book ones make more sense

There really is no end to wonderful strangeness on the internet: People and Their Fish Doppelgängers

"Traditional frameworks for production are evolving into interactive activities where the consumer participates in creation. While traditionally a passive role, consumers are more frequently introducing their own stories, values and content into the production process. One-to-one works have become many-to-many works, and the do-it-yourself (DIY) culture is giving way to a do-it-with-others (DIWO) movement."

Noticed a lot of holiday lights in my neighborhood. Christmacy effort is here, just need some snow.

Now that's cold: 'Brinicle' ice finger of death filmed in Antarctic via @zite

It's ok, teddy bear knows those other people are assholes

“Never assume that some­thing you find utter­ly creepy today will not be the norm tomorrow” - @janchip

Winterson is writer I'd like to see answer "Why be happy when you could be normal?" so looking forward to her memoir

If social graph = oil, "our friends and colleagues [are] the little animals that get crushed and buried underground"

If today's Google doodle has you curious, I recommend the beautiful Radioactive

No Light, No Light is my favorite on new Florence + The Machine album Digital music is so easy to play repeatedly

“What "future of" tech/design videos need is a little less Minority Report and a little more Alien”

This level of cuteness is why she still lives here, despite predawn howler monkey antics for food

Didn't see book trailer until after I read book, so I can say it does fit, packing a lot destruction into 1 minute

Do you think before you hit the button? RT @bymattruff: RT @nicolasnova: George Orwell on Newspeak and "like":

It really does RT @ohmgee: Decades Old Calvin and Hobbes Strip Succinctly Explains Occupy Wall Street Movement

Gorgeous fall day #gooutside