You may have seen a sponsored post here last Monday, and wondered what’s going on… Well, that was a test we ran with the good folks at The Syndicate ad network. And I can now announce that as of this week I’m officially joining the network, which includes many sites I read every day — like Shawn Blanc, TightWind, and Behind Companies.

What this means is that you’ll see one sponsored post per week, usually on a Tuesday. These posts will be clearly marked with the [Sponsor] signifier so you can tell ad content from other articles. They are high quality ads, so I also hope that you’ll find the sponsored posts useful, and visit their sites when you find something that interests you. For example, the sponsor this coming week is Wufoo — the company that I already happen to use as the contact form on Elezea.

I’m happy to answer any questions or comments you might have about this. I can assure you that being part of this network will push me to work even harder to produce good content throughout the week, to make it all worth your while.

As always, thank you for reading, and enabling my writing habit.

Jason Kottke once said that The Onion is often the most emotionally honest media source we have, and that was proven once again with David Ferguson’s recent article there called Find The Thing You’re Most Passionate About, Then Do It On Nights And Weekends For The Rest Of Your Life:

Because when you get right down to it, everyone has dreams, and you deserve the chance—hell, you owe it to yourself—to pursue those dreams when you only have enough energy to change out of your work clothes and make yourself a half-assed dinner before passing out.

But what I really want to talk about is Kevin Fanning’s excellent follow-up post where he tries to figure out why that Onion article struck a chord with so many people:

I think the reason this article is painful is because culturally we define success in such a weird and outdated way. There’s this idea that if you’re not doing what you’re most passionate about all the time, you’re a failure. If you aren’t making a living at it, you’re a failure. If you’re not Stephen King or Christina Aguilera, you’re a failure.

Kevin’s conclusion (among other things, that “maybe eventually we get to a place where we see that books and music and art are created by us, people who have school and day jobs and other shit we care about”) is a call to relax a bit, and be much less hard on ourselves. Read it and feel better!

Frank Chimero talks about the misuse of the word “timeless” as it relates to design in Let’s talk about timeless design. Here’s one of his complaints:

Why is timeless design always the goal? What’s wrong with making something look like it was made when it was made? Why do designers all of a sudden want to exist outside of time, like Scott Bakula in Quantum Leap? […]

Other people: can you help me understand what is happening in this world of ours? I want to know what technology is doing to my brain. How do I stay human in a digital world? I want to understand what all this technology does to my expectations of myself, other people, and the world. None of this is timeless. These problems are right now.

I agree with Frank on this point (and the others), so it’s a little embarrassing to admit that I wrote in favour of timeless design about a year ago in The elusive goal of lasting beauty in web design. But having just read that post again, and in keeping with Frank’s point that words matter, I think it’s important to make a distinction between design that is timeless and design that lasts. I concluded my piece with the following:

I wonder what would happen if we felt the weight of responsibility a little more when we’re designing. What if we go into each project as if the design will be around for 100 years or more? Would we make it fit into the web environment better, aim to give it a timeless aesthetic, and spend more time considering the consequences of our design decisions? Would we try to design something that “makes life worth living”?

Sure, I use the word “timeless” there (probably incorrectly), but the point I’m trying to make is slightly different. I’m trying to say that the ephemeral and fickle nature of digital products shouldn’t be used as an excuse to put out unconsidered, throwaway work. Our designs don’t have to be timeless — and they should solve the problems we have now — but we should go into each project with the care and attention needed to make things last for a long time.

I recently wrote about the value of exposing kids to technology, so I really enjoyed reading Hanna Rosin’s The touch-screen generation:

To date, no body of research has definitively proved that the iPad will make your preschooler smarter or teach her to speak Chinese, or alternatively that it will rust her neural circuitry—the device has been out for only three years, not much more than the time it takes some academics to find funding and gather research subjects. So what’s a parent to do?

Articles about how technology affects child development generally tend to take extreme views on the topic — it’s either horrible to let kids use iPads, or it doesn’t matter. In contrast, Hanna has a very thoughtful, measured approach to the topic. She discusses a bunch of research, looks at all the pros and cons, and ends with the conclusion that most parents have already realized: it depends, because no one knows your child as well as you do. It’s a long article, but well worth your time.

(link via Kottke)

I know there are more important things in the world to get annoyed with, but I completely agree with Matthew J.X. Malady’s rant about email signoffs:

After 10 or 15 more “Regards” of varying magnitudes, I could take no more. I finally realized the ridiculousness of spending even one second thinking about the totally unnecessary words that we tack on to the end of emails. And I came to the following conclusion: It’s time to eliminate email signoffs completely. Henceforth, I do not want—nay, I will not accept—any manner of regards. Nor will I offer any. And I urge you to do the same.

And while I’m complaining about things that shouldn’t bother me, is there a way to make airlines stop telling us to “disembark the plane” instead of just asking us to get off the thing? Here’s an idea: the next time an airline announcer asks you to “commence boarding procedures”, launch into the following speech:

The ideal situation for any qualitative research project is for the facilitator to rely on someone else to take notes. That way the facilitator can focus all their attention on the participant. This holds true for contextual inquiries, in-depth interviews (IDIs), as well as usability tests. However, sometimes it’s just not possible to have a separate note-taker on a project. In those cases the interviewer has to take their own notes — but that can be distracting and terribly inefficient.

So, what’s the best way to be your own note-taker?

I’ve seen interviewers taking their own notes in a variety of ways, but the inherent flaws in each approach has always made me uncomfortable. Some interviewers use their laptops to make notes while the interview is going on. This is very efficient (there’s no transcribing afterwards), but the clicking of the keyboard can be distracting and off-putting to the participant.

Others print out their interview scripts, and leave blank spaces for writing notes about each question. The problem here is that scripts are fluid. You sometimes skip over questions, while other times you go off on an important tangent that isn’t covered in the script. So you tend to end up with empty spaces and cramped notes, all spanning multiple pages. Not ideal.

I am currently working on a project to make it easier for talk radio producers to do their jobs. As a first phase we’re doing a bunch of IDIs with producers — and I have to take my own notes. So I decided to try a new approach, and I like it so far.

I started the project with a long, free-form interview with one of the project leads to develop a generic user journey for producers. I looked for common elements that remain constant regardless of the process each producer might use to perform their tasks, and used that to build a basic journey model for talk radio production. It’s not a full-on journey map, just a list of steps that all producers have to complete when they put on a show.

I then created an A3 sheet (6.5 x 11.7 in) for each interview, consisting of the participant’s name, time slot, and the headings for each of the steps in the journey. While conducting the interview I filled out any insights that came out for each of the steps — as we worked our way through the script. Here’s an example of what a sheet looked like after an interview:

I discovered that this approach has several advantages over other note-taking methods I’ve tried:

• It’s script-agnostic. The interview questions address each of the steps in the journey, but I don’t have to stick to it religiously — it’s ok to jump around and make notes in a different column if needed.
• Everything is on one page. This not only makes note-taking more efficient, but it’s also going to make the analysis phase easier. I’ll be able to lay out the sheets on a table and see all the data in one place as I start the affinity diagram process.
• It makes me a better listener. I was worried that the note-taking would be distracting to participants, but I found the opposite to be true. By taking notes while we talk (and looking them in the eyes when I’m not writing), participants could tell that I’m really listening to them — not just pretending. And this made for much better interviews.

I’m sure this method of note-taking isn’t perfect, but I’m quite happy with how it turned out. Please let me know if you have any suggestions to improved this process — or if you have a different method that works well for you.

I never used to like interview articles — I felt they lacked substance. Too much backstory, not enough useful information to help me do my job better. But over the past few years I’ve realised the error of my ways. It became clear that by getting to know the people who make the things we use every day, we keep being reminded that we’re defined by more than the jobs we do. And we find that we have more in common with people than we might think.

This week I read two great interviews with designers I’ve admired for a long time. The Great Discontent interviewed Trent Walton, and Industry Web Conference interviewed Josh Brewer. Both interviews are worth reading all the way through, but I want to mention something specific that stood out for me.

Once you become a parent you start looking at everything through that lens — from grocery shopping to restaurant menus to the work you decide to devote your life to. There’s no getting around it. Non-parents usually find it annoying, while fellow parents are drawn to each other and can’t help but discuss how the parenting lens affects every single decision they make every day.

So, my favourite parts of these two interviews were their reflections on parenting. Here’s Trent:

It’s insanity [at work] until 5pm and then I go back inside and it’s all hands on deck. I’m feeding the kids, changing diapers, reading books, and bathing them—I love it because there’s no time to answer email or think about anything work related. It’s a really great transition for me. What I would have thought I would see as a pain in the ass is the best part of my day and it helps me to shift gears.

And here’s Josh, saying something similar:

Keeping things in balance was (and is) a constant challenge and something that my wife and I work hard at. I tried to be home in time for dinner and reading to my daughter and tucking her into bed. Weekends were definitely reserved for family time. I was lucky enough to walk to and from work which gave me a little time to decompress.

It’s hard to explain how comforting it is to read those paragraphs. To realise that these extremely successful designers — people I look up to and learn from every day — generally don’t work 12 hours a day. They work hard, of course, but as any parent knows, 5:30pm – 7:30pm is chaos. And the people we look up to aren’t immune to that. They don’t have superpowers that allow them to fly through that time, and the ones I really admire don’t push those responsibilities to their partners or someone else. They show up, every day, and they pursue the challenges of being a parent with every bit of passion that they throw into their design work.

This is really obvious stuff, I know, but I also think (hope?) I’m not alone in the struggle to find a balance between pursuing my career goals and learning to become a good parent. So reading Trent and Josh’s stories gave me comfort that it is possible to excel at what you do without losing your soul to your work.

And that’s why I like interview articles.

Cap Watkins is switching from RSS to Twitter, and so far he is very happy:

Now that I’ve started using Twitter for feeds, I’m unlikely to ever go back. The ease of sharing, Favoriting, Retweeting, sending to Instapaper, etc. not only match, but at times surpass even Reeder in terms of ease and simplicity. One less app to deal with is a win, not to mention that the links are ordered exactly as I like them (and holy crap, Tweetbot iCloud sync. So good).

Cap goes over the pros and cons of his decision, but I think there’s one major con that he left out: Twitter is a river, RSS is a filing cabinet. Ok, I apologize for the mixed metaphor, but hear me out.

Twitter updates flow by you in a never-ending stream of links. This means that if you choose to follow RSS feeds in this way, all the separate article feeds flow into that one river, and there’s no stopping it. If you happen to be offline for a day or two, it’s extremely likely that you’ll miss an update from an infrequently-updated website you love.

With RSS, that problem doesn’t exist. Since article feeds are separate, there isn’t one giant river (you can choose to view “All feeds” in most readers, but that’s optional). So, I just open the filing cabinet whenever I want, and I can immediately see how many updates my favourite sites have received. I can decide to nuke the unread counts on a site with 50 new items. I can seek out the content I really want. I don’t have to worry that the river will keep flowing and I’ll miss the boat completely (ok, now I’ve really killed this metaphor).

So, although I agree with the pros Cap highlights in his post, and I’m glad he found a reading flow that works for him, I’m not ready to give up RSS. It’s still my favorite way to discover good content.