Bookshelf

Design: Show Your Work

December 2, 2014

Design can’t speak for itself any more than a tamale can take off its own husk. You’re presenting a solution to a business problem, and you’re presenting it as an advocate for the end users. The client needs to know that you’ve studied the problem, understood its complexities, and that you’re working from that understanding.

Stop trying to get your clients to “understand design” and instead show them that you understand what they hired you to do. Explain how the choices you’ve made lead to a successful project. This isn’t magic, it’s math. Show your work. Don’t hope someone “gets it,” and don’t blame them if they don’t—convince them.

Mike Monteiro in Design is a Job

Anyone who is the least bit connected to the design world needs to read Design is a Job. Too many people think design is solely the pixels on screen or the ink on paper, ignorant that design is all of the decisions and knowledge that lead to those pixels or ink.

Seriously, go read the book.

Core Concerns & Fair Agreements

June 3, 2014

Here are a couple of my recent highlights from Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, which resonated with me.

Pay attention to “core concerns.” Many emotions in negotiation are driven by a core set of five interests: autonomy, the desire to make your own choices and control your own fate; appreciation, the desire to be recognized and valued; affiliation, the desire to belong as an accepted member of some peer group; role, the desire to have a meaningful purpose; and status, the desire to feel fairly seen and acknowledged.

Any method of negotiation may be fairly judged by three criteria: It should produce a wise agreement if agreement is possible. It should be efficient. And it should improve or at least not damage the relationship between the parties. (A wise agreement can be defined as one that meets the legitimate interests of each side to the extent possible, resolves conflicting interests fairly, is durable, and takes community interests into account.)

The book by Roger Fisher, William L. Ury and Bruce Patton has been an enjoyable read thus far, chock full of insight, while remaining easy to read.

Blame

July 2, 2013

When there’s only God to blame, we forgive him. When it’s our fellow man, we destroy him.

Hugh Howey, Shift Omnibus Edition

Both Wool and Shift are great post-apocalyptic books. On an even better note – both started as Kindle-only books, so it’s great to see talent rising up outside of the old guard publishing systems. Admittedly, Amazon could quickly become the new guard and follow much the same practices as the old.

Being Geek, a Review

January 18, 2011

Michael Lopp, one of my favorite bloggers, has a couple of books out. The first, Managing Humans (Kindle), is a compendium of his blog posts about geeks and software engineering stories. It’s a great read. The second, Being Geek (Kindle), is fresh and insightful material focusing on the career of software engineers, and given the close similarity, I’d say web developers as well. If you’re an engineer, developer or coder, you should buy and enjoy this book.

I’ve read 42% of the book (I love the Kindle for surfacing that info) and I’m taking my time to allow my brain to apply the lessons to my world. I’ve been a geek my entire life, and I’ve managed geeks for over a decade, but I still have a lot to learn. Being Geek has made me better at my job already and I fully expect I will start it over as soon as I’ve finished it to catch details or angles I missed the first time through.

Not a Geek, but You Work or Live with One?

Read his post The Nerd Handbook. I think that’ll show the value of his perspective and provide enough encouragement to pick up a copy of the book. A deeper understanding of your colleagues worldview and motivation is never a bad thing right? Right.

From Chapter 15, “A Deep Breath”:

I admit it. I love it when the sky is falling. There is no more delicious a state of being than the imminent threat of disaster.

During these times, I’ve done great work. I’ve taken teams from “We’re fucked” to “We made it.” Yeah, we had to cancel Christmas that one time, and there was that other time I didn’t leave the building for three days straight, but it was worth it because there’s no more exhilarating place to hang than the edge of chaos. We’re wired to escape danger.

There’s a reputation you get after successfully performing the diving saves. You’re “the Fixer.” You’re the one they call when hope is lost, and while that’s a great merit badge to have, it’s a cover story. It’s spin. See, someone upstream from you fucked up badly. When the sky falls, it means someone, somewhere underestimated the project, didn’t make a decision, or let a small miss turn into a colossal disaster, and while fixing a disaster feels great, you’re not actually fixing anything.

Management by crisis is exhilarating, but it values velocity over completeness; it sacrifices creativity for the illusion of progress.

Michael Lopp, Being Geek

It isn’t easy to choose from the passages I’ve highlighted in the book, but I believe that should provide a glimpse at the content focus and writing style that you’ll find if you pick up a copy of Being Geek. I hope you do. You and your team will be better for it.

jQuery Enlightenment, A Review

March 23, 2010

jQuery Enlightenment by Cody Lindley A few months ago Cody Lindley asked if I would review his new book, jQuery Enlightenment after he saw me tweet about it. I jumped at the chance, but due to many other projects, this review has seen many delays. My apologies to Cody and to you for not posting this review sooner. That said, I’m very happy to share my thoughts now that time permits and I think you’ll find it useful.

The Short Review

jQuery Enlightenment is great for anyone who has some experience with jQuery and wants to step up their game or is familiar with another JavaScript framework like Prototype or Dojo and wants to ramp up on the increasingly popular jQuery framework. The book is not for complete beginners, but if you have a foundation, you’ll be able to jump right in and learn.

At $15 for the PDF ebook, it’s a no-brainer. Buy a copy.

Two Quick Notes

First: when Cody released this book, jQuery was at 1.3.2. Between then and the time of this writing, jQuery 1.4 has been released. While there are some key differences introduced in 1.4, I don’t think they detract from Cody’s work.

Second: Cody gave me a copy of the book in return for this review. Luckily, I really like the book, so I feel confident in staking my reputation on the recommendation. I’m not receiving any form of affiliate payment for encouraging you to buy the book.

A Longer Review

So, obviously I like it. Here’s why.

It’s Accessible

Cody’s writing style is friendly and he has a knack for transforming complex concepts into understandable knowledge that you can quickly apply. He’s included a wealth of code, even better, he’s posted all the samples on JS Bin for easy access.

Additionally, as the file is a PDF, it is easy to take it with you on your phone, or using my favorite method – DropBox, which maintains the file across multiple machines. Keeping your copy open makes it easy to search for a particular event, effect or method while you’re working.

It Covers What You Need to Know

jQuery Enlightenment starts by explaining core jQuery concepts, quickly moving into more detailed and advanced topics. While I won’t reiterate everything (check out the table of contents on the site), I think it’s important to list some of the key concepts he does cover to show the breadth of the book:

Traversing the DOM
HTML manipulation, including a chapter on forms
Events and Effects
AJAX
Performance Best Practices
Writing a jQuery plugin

Yeah, Cody covers a lot in this book. While I’m by no means an expert, I’m comfortable with jQuery and I learned a lot. For example, I had somehow missed the existence of preventDefault() and stopPropogation(), so I’ve relied on return: false. This works most of the time, but now I know that there’s extra granularity available to me should I need it. Nice.

Oh and don’t miss the gems in Chapter 12 (Miscellaneous Concepts) as he’s thrown in some very useful knowledge there at the end.

Wrapping Up

So, as I noted at the beginning, I think this is a great book and an easy purchase decision if you are familiar with JavaScript and are interested in jQuery.

Grab a Copy and Tell Us What You Think

I’d love to hear your opinion on the book. Would you recommend it too? Let me know in the comments.

Inspirational Business Books

February 2, 2010

One of favorite benefits of Refresh Austin is the chance to learn from the wide array of members and their experiences. Occasionally someone posts a question or suggestion that pulls together many different experiences and ideas as the thread grows. This post is basically a straight up rip-off of one of those threads, but it’s stolen out of love. I hate to see great information and suggestions lost amongst the mailing list – a flare of light that fades into the shadows.

Jan Triplett originally posted this to the group: “I would like to know what business books inspire you – new or old. I would also like to know why you singled them out.” Even better, she kicked it off with three recommendations of her own (Small Is Beautiful, Neanderthals at Work, Big-Box Swindle), which she has also blogged on her site in the post 3 Older Business Books That Inspire, providing a great write-up of each.

Many of my picks match those of other Refreshers who responded, but I’ll include a couple unique suggestions at the end of this post after you’ve had a chance to see all of the other recommendations. There were also several recommendations that are now in my list of books to read.

Norman Harman recommended Presentation Zen, which is one of my favorite books covering how to make the normally boring corporate PowerPoint presentation interesting. He noted that it may not qualify as a business book, but “it applies because so much of business is presenting and selling your project/ideas/product/etc to clients/customers/management/etc.” I’m in full agreement.

Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow was recommended by Marcus Irven.

Dimitri Lundquist, an Information Architect, recommended Making Things Happen: Mastering Project Management, which he described as “a super pragmatic, and really smart, guide to software and web project management”, Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, that teaches you to treat “negotiations not as a zero sum game but as a process of collaborative problem solving in order to arrive at a mutually satisfactory outcome” and The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies and Tools for Building a Learning Organization, which “presents a series of tools and exercises in problem solving and communication.” The latter is based on The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization, which is currently in my stack of “to read “books on my nightstand. So now I have a follow-up.

Dan Brown included The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It, which he said he was not “too fond of the author’s conversational style of writing, but he does a wonderful job of identifying the traps most small-business owners get caught in and explaining how to get out of them.”

Holly Fortenberry pointed the group to Small Giants: Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big which she said is “about choosing not to grow your business beyond a certain point, the point at which you tend to lose your mojo.”

The Design of Everyday Things is easily one of the most recommended books, both on the list and in general among this crowd. Dan Brown noted that “this book will seriously mess up the way you look at things. Not only will you start to notice all the poorly designed objects around you, you’ll gain a deep appreciation for the effort it takes to really design something well.”

Lorin Rivers suggested Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, another one of my favorites as well. He noted it as being “inspiring in a similar way to Small Giants.”

In addition to the books above, I really like slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations as a companion to Presentation Zen for anyone who wants to be engaging instead of reading off of slides. I also recommend Crossing the Chasm and Thriving on Chaos: Handbook for a Management Revolution, which sadly appears to be out of print, though it is old enough to pre-date wide-adoption of the Web. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion is great companion to Getting to Yes.

I hope this is useful and would love to hear your recommendations. Please leave a comment with your thoughts on these books and others you’d recommend.