Ian M Rountree

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The “Heat Death” of Design and Technology

June 10, 2015 by Ian Leave a Comment

Flickr - chrisyarzab - Mountain of Fire

The universe passes around an awful lot of information – an awful lot of energy – all the time.

Go for a run? Bleed calories as heat into the air. Sun’s warm today! It’s shedding its worth into the ambient area at quite literally the speed of light. Atomic bombs? Self-explanatory.

The mechanics are all the same – physics is wonderfully complex but it’s not complicated. Which brings us to tech and design, weirdly.

It feels like every site on the web (including mine, for which I make little apology) features the same elements – because they’re popular and effective – all at the same time. Hero sliders, big images, stunning typography, literally the entire Material Design playbook in action – on every website it can be – 24/7 this year. Homogeneity at its best.

Why? It’s effective. We know what to expect. We know what a clickable link looks like on a desktop, and we can make simple guesses on mobile as to which regions are touch ready. It’s not bad in and of itself, but it will cause exhaustion, and go out of fashion.

Now tech is doing it too! This should not be a surprise.

This morning, Wired had a piece about everyone having the same plans for tech that’s damned accurate – and damning by way of its accuracy. From the article;

You can prefer one design or another, but that will be the only thing separating iOS from Android and Android from Windows. They’re just skins at this point. You’ll have access to all the same apps, all the same services.

Sounds great, right? And we can admit there’s less animosity between Mac users and PC users lately, just as there’s less ague in consumers over which phone to pick. As Wired says, “There are a few differentiators left, sure […] but they don’t matter to most users. A phone is a phone is a phone.”

Heat Death is at hand.

This is where we get back to physics. The idea of heat death centers on the passing of energies – that, and I’m paraphrasing a really large number of ideas here for the sake of demonstration – eventually, given enough passing, all of that energy will become homogenized. It’ll become the same. Momentum will be lost, among the many processes involved, and we’ll suffer the final doom of the universe; a lack of differentiation across all matter and energy, because there’s nowhere to go that hasn’t been gone before.

I feel like design, and tech, might spiral into a premature heat death situation by way of the hegemony of homogeneity.

Or I could be over thinking it. Maybe, as Wired says, this is what we need. Adoption is hard, and getting people on board with new systems is a challenge. Perhaps – going back to Clay Shirky – all of this stuff will become socially interesting as it becomes technologically boring.

Still, who wants to be bored by design items? Not me. How about you?

Filed Under: Content Strategy Tagged With: android, apple, commentary, design, internet, technology, windows

Kaizen and Application Level Lifestyle Design

August 1, 2011 by Ian Leave a Comment

One of the intensely appealing things about the current app economy is the sense we get of kaizen from the aps we’re downloading – constant, consistent improvement in their features and value propositions.

If we opt in early, we get to see the growth, the longer we use an application. If we opt in late, we get to see a mature version of the thing we’ve heard so much about – often at the same price, as the early adopters finance the enjoyment of the majority.

Strong revisioning practice powers this in software; the idea of taking a feature set basic enough to get a job done, calling that 1.0, and working up toward your dream. Every process in between initial betas and 2.0, or even 3.0 and 10.0 is powered by a simple, 3-4 step iteration process:

  • Describe the function
  • Apply it to the existing features
  • Gather response from users
  • Describe new functions

In this way, application developers can call every choice they make the right choice. Even if a feature fails, or is unpopular, under this model, it counts as an experiment rather than an accomplishment; and experiments only fail if you learn nothing from the doing of them.

What I always wonder is why we haven’t applied this theorem to our lives yet in a conscious way?

I’ve spent the past month working toward getting back in shape. I’ve busted my knee twice, damaged my shoulders by pushing too hard on a workout, and been out of commission with delayed onset muscle pain for nearly a week. I’ve dug out my weights, started eating somewhat differently, and modified my sleep schedule to accommodate for the occasional first-thing-in-the-morning run. It’s been difficult, and injury is not my favorite thing in the world.

But I’m continuing to work at it – why? Because I believe in kaizen as a personal ideal as well as a working ideal.

It’s an iteration process. Every time I make a change, run a little faster, or work a little harder, I mark the results and adjust my course. I make optimization moves – not just to my own process, such as finding the highest-energy points in the day at which to work out, but also finding better routes walking to the office (and shaving 10 extraneous minutes off the trip in the process).

Why is this a big deal?

Because it’s an awareness trap. By not paying attention to when I hit the milestone – when Ian 2.0, or 3.0 appears – I’m making the work of getting each maintenance release out far more easy.

We consider so many things by their end results; weight loss goals, study for degrees, getting that black belt, learning Esperanto, and so on. These goals are ambitious for a reason – they make us want to exercise our need to accomplish, to build ambition toward a goal. However, I’d argue that as we divide our attention more, we’re losing the ability to maintain the salience of these large goals in the face of all the many small steps it takes to achieve them.

What would happen if, instead of broad goals, we began to make the work of improving – the process of kaizen – a central part of our personal planning?

Filed Under: Marketing Strategy Tagged With: design, development, house md, lifestyle, quotes

Why Genesis Framework Rocks

May 27, 2011 by Ian Leave a Comment

I’ve used the Genesis Framework from StudioPress as the basis for my blog for a couple of months now, and am about to finish the fourth site I’ve developed on it. I need to say this: The framework rocks. Everything from the format, to the support from StudioPress, to helpful tools people have published have helped me cut down my modification and theme building time significantly.

Genesis is slick. Genesis is smooth. And, above all, it doesn’t always look the same – even when you’re using the same elements for design.

Here are the sites I’ve now got going, built on either Genesis itself, or one of its child themes.

The Dowager Shadow - Built on Genesis Framework
The Dowager Shadow
Ian M Rountree - Built on Genesis Framework
Ian M Rountree
Hard Refresh Blog - Built on Genesis Framework
Hard Refresh
Jazmine Rhomyk Gallery - Built on Genesis Framework
Jazmine Rhomyk

Yes. I like blue. Don’t judge me.

Why did I switch from Standard Theme to Genesis Framework?

  • SEO options – unless you’re using plugins, it’s the bee’s knees. Seriously – beyond just being able to designate title and meta descriptions, Genesis allows for built in redirects, which is great for link blogs.
  • Ease of design – Spending a lot of time building sites isn’t my goal – I want to get decent looking sites up quickly, so I can start filling them in with content.
  • Ease of modification – The above being said, I want to be able to iterate my work quickly. If there’s a feature I want to add, or a design change I want to make, I want to be able to make it on the fly. Genesis allows for that.
  • Updates and notifications – Really. What other theme tells you, on its own, when it’s ready to get upgraded?
  • The Showcase – totally for bragging rights. There are a lot of awesome examples in the SutioPress showcase of well-built Genesis framework powered websites. Two – and soon, I hope, three – of mine are there.

Genesis Framework can help wordpress become a proper CMS very swiftly.

Many of StudioPress’ turn-key themes make developing non-standard blogs a breeze. One of the troubles most people see with using WordPress in general is that so many WP-based websites look… Well, like WordPress websites. Getting away from the usual columned layout, and adding some flair is one of the many places where Genesis is a viking.

Check Genesis Framework out – it’s well worth it if you spend a lot of time working with wordpress.

Filed Under: Reviews Tagged With: cms development, code, content creation, content marketing, design, development, genesis, information management, presentation, review, seo, software, studiopress, wordpress

Notes From #blogchat – Sidebar Special!

August 22, 2010 by Ian Leave a Comment

Red Bull Sidecar! - FlickrTonight’s #blogchat was set on managing and maximizing sidebars!

Personal note; no one’s appreciated my fun ajax-based sidebar at all – I may end up removing it after all.

Link of the Week – The 5 Types of Blogs – Which One Suits You Best? (Ink Rebels)

Mack Collier made a good point about sidebars: if we accept them as global metadata carriers, they need to reflect the motivation of the blog itself. Monetized blogs are expected to have ads, archival blogs are expected to have massive navigation capabilities. Think of who you’re writing for – friends? Business? Money? Information?

Mack also made another point – widgets from external services increase load times drastically. Consider this when adding your seventh or eighth “Fan This” box.

The general, immediate consensus was that having some very key information above the fold in your sidebars is a big deal. @amydpp and @tsudo, my apparent twin, mentioned the following which NEED to be in the beginning of every sidebar:

  • An RSS button
  • A search box
  • Email subscription box
  • Social networking icons

I agree – this if nothing else will be forcing me to change my current theme.

I asked about 2/3 column testing and left or right handed layouts. @JDEbberly suggested it would make a good topic – I may write about some wireframing things later. @jfavreau suggested hir use of 3-column layouts reduced usability.

Well-designed sidebars act as access points to the archive of the blog – proper cataloguing considerations need to be taken.

@WaynesBNP uses WP Greet Box to make sure the subscribe button is always visible to new visitors.

This led to the great Breath of Inspiration for the night – sidebars really must be global metadata. What you put there is a very good indicator of how you see the reader moving around your space.

This means that post- or page-specific metadata needs its own place, and that has to be respected as well. Author names, categorization, tagging, etc – even related posts, are very important for archival quality Information architecture is a bigger deal than most people give credit for. @erinloechner mentioned, to this point, that related posts in a post’s meta space are a good idea, and can do a far better job than tag clouds.

On that note, tag clouds are so 2008. Give them their own page, with your blogroll, or get rid of both entirely.

What do you think? Are you paying enough attention to the Table of Connections that is your sidebar?

Transcript for the night from WTHashtag, courtesy of Mack Collier.

Also – make sure you join the #blogchat Group on LinkedIn!

this week’s #Blogchat Participants’ List courtesy of Ksenia Coffman.

Image by solo, with others.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: #blogchat, Blogging, blogging, blogs, design, notes from, technical

A Note About Documentation

June 20, 2010 by Ian 2 Comments

There are basically two camps among web developers and designers as regards documentation:

Those who believe it’s pointless, and those who document their work.

Those who do not document don’t understand it’s necessity. If you know the code, they may think, then why do you need cues as to its use? How useful are witty comments in haiku form to getting the darn job done?

How utilitarian. But, the perspective does have its merits. It speaks to knowing your job, knowing your tools and, above all, doing comprehensive and elegant work.

On the other hand, you have the developers and designers who love to document. This ranges from simple cases such as building a readme.txt for every module they build – all the way up to those who create ascii art from their functional notes. It’s fairly varied, because there are no real conventions for software documentation, especially in open source.

And it’s not just in software. Right down to html structure in websites and override hierarchies in CSS files – documentation can be more than just thorough, it can also be elegant.

Documentation may seem frivolous to some, but the point is clear: you need to know where you’ve been to know where you’re going. What happens to your elegant programming if you disappear, or if someone else takes it over? Good documentation can prevent backward engineering, as well as allowing for more efficient forking, revisioning, and repetitive versioning.

By and large, I’ve seen graphic designers like documentation less than functional or application developers. The group I’m seeing lean toward documentation more and more, however, are user experience designers. People building user interfaces, designing the workflows for web sites and applications.

There are benefits to both theories – good documentation can be as helpful as elegant, minimalist code structure. However, as with so many other ventures, coding with future versions in mind is never a bad idea.

Photo by Syntopia.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: code, design, user experience, ux design, web design, web development

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