General – Page 18 – Chris Koerner

Ive Got Some Feedback

Jobs’s taste for merciless criticism was notorious; Ive recalled that, years ago, after seeing colleagues crushed, he protested. Jobs replied, “Why would you be vague?,” arguing that ambiguity was a form of selfishness: “You don’t care about how they feel! You’re being vain, you want them to like you.” Ive was furious, but came to agree. “It’s really demeaning to think that, in this deep desire to be liked, you’ve compromised giving clear, unambiguous feedback,” he said. He lamented that there were “so many anecdotes” about Jobs’s acerbity: “His intention, and motivation, wasn’t to be hurtful.”

This incredibly in-depth piece on Jonny Ive, the Senior Vice President of Design at Apple, reminds me a lot of the lessons and insights learned from Mike Monterio’s book Design is a Job.

To do good design work is to relish in good feedback. Don’t think designers or developers want you to say, “I like it!” when you really don’t. We all need to be honest – brutally and politely so – with one another to make better design.

Silence in Open Source Projects

If you contribute to open source projects, or are the sole creator of an open source project, you need to keep talking about that status of what you’re working on. Never stop.

Silence will deter people. Even if your code is super stable. Even if all features have been added. If I see that the last update on your blog/twitter/etc. was a year ago, I’ll assume the project is not actively maintained. That you’ve moved on. That OS updates and/or browser updates will render upon me issues and bugs that will never be addressed. That I should find something else to use.

In a world where OS updates are yearly and mobile apps are updated without interaction, it’s maddening to see open source projects – good, solid, useful projects – go into a sort of hermit state.

Quicksilver went through a period where it wasn’t actively being developed. Now that it’s seen some love, updates are frequent and communication is constant. I know that it’s a living project and something that is being worked on. I can rely on it and treat it as something that is solid and tactile – not infirm or fragile. A feeling I often felt during the ‘dark times’ where it lacked leadership.

Most recently I’ve seen this with the Sequel Pro application. An application I love and use frequently¹. Sequel Pro hasn’t updated in over a year ². Devs say it’s still active, but aren’t communicating that.

I’m not advocating for point release updates just for the sake of appearance. I’m advocating for putting effort into your communication.

If you’re part of an open source project that is actively being developed – even by just a few contributors – make sure it is kept alive. Make sure new users, and existing users returning to see what’s new, know the status of things. Clearly and plainly. If the project is still active, communicate that. If the project is done and mothballed – let us know that as well.

The result is more people using your thing. More people making it better. That’s worth your time.

Tony Hawk on Selling Out

“Remember, you’re not selling out,” Jonah Peretti, a co-founder of the Huffington Post, told Denton. “You’re blowing up. Think in terms of hip-hop, not indie rock.”

(via Devour and Kottke.org)

Björk on Working With Men

After being the only girl in bands for 10 years, I learned—the hard way—that if I was going to get my ideas through, I was going to have to pretend that they—men—had the ideas. I became really good at this and I don’t even notice it myself. I don’t really have an ego. I’m not that bothered. I just want the whole thing to be good. And I’m not saying one bad thing about the guys who were with me in the bands, because they’re all amazing and creative, and they’re doing incredible things now. But I come from a generation where that was the only way to get things done. So I have to play stupid and just do everything with five times the amount of energy, and then it will come through.

From this Pitchfork interview with Björk (via Waxy.org)

A Teenager ≠ All Teenagers

View at Medium.com

This article from Andrew Watts, a 19-year-old student at the University of Austin, contains some interesting insights on teenage usage of social media. He speaks from a particular perspective³ and provides some unique thoughts on the various networks in use.

Did you know the first use of the phrase “teenager” to describe a group of people was in 1944? That’s only 60 years ago.

Shortly after reading Andrew’s post, I noticed that danah boyd wrote a great response to Andrew’s post. Her biggest insight ⁴ is that we mustn’t forget that Andrew doesn’t speak for all teenagers.

Andrew is very visible about where he stands. He’s very clear about his passion for technology (and his love of blogging on Medium should be a big ole hint to anyone who missed his byline). He’s also a college student and talks about his peers as being obviously on path to college. But as readers, let’s not forget that only about half of US 19-year-olds are in college.

If you work with young people and are interested in understanding the complex nature of how they approach the same tools you may use (like Facebook, Twitter) then read both. Andrew provides insight into one perspective of social media usage and danah reminds us to keep the keel even. Let me know what you think with a comment below.