If you’re involved in any kind of software development work, I highly recommend the Harvard Business Review article Six Myths of Product Development (it’s paywalled, but keep reading”¦). It details 6 common misconceptions of most product development managers:

1. High utilization of resources will improve performance.
2. Processing work in large batches improves the economics of the development process.
3. Our development plan is great; we just need to stick to it.
4. The sooner the project is started, the sooner it will be finished.
5. The more features we put into a product, the more customers will like it.
6. We will be more successful if we get it right the first time.

The authors detail the effects of and possible solutions to each of these fallacies. Here’s an excerpt from the resource people utilization section:

In both our research and our consulting work, w’ve seen that the vast majority of companies strive to fully employ their product-development resources. The logic seems obvious: Projects take longer when people are not working 100% of the time””and therefore, a busy development organization will be faster and more efficient than one that is not as good at utilizing its people.

But in practice that logic doesn’t hold up. We have seen that projects’ speed, efficiency, and output quality inevitably decrease when managers completely fill the plates of their product-development employees””no matter how skilled those managers may be.

Unfortunately the full article is behind a paywall. You can read the whole thing if you haven’t hit your 3-articles-per-month quota yet (sigh”¦). Or you can download this PDF I made of the print view.

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a long but interesting review of Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Entitled Shift Happens, the article goes through all the misinterpretations of Kuhn’s work, as well as some of the major criticisms his ideas have received over the years. I found this part particularly interesting:

Scientific revolutions, according to [Kuhn’s book], don’t occur when an apple happens to find the head of a genius, or when enough facts have slowly painted a new picture. Rather, in yet another of Kuhn’s inversions, new paradigms emerge to explain the accumulation of anomalies: findings that do not make sense within the current paradigm. For example, if your paradigm tells you that fire consists of the release of phlogiston embedded in flammable materials, then the fact that some metals gain weight when burned is an anomaly. When a new paradigm is conceived that makes sense of the anomalies, science is in for a revolutionary shift.

There is a definite parallel with design work here. We often try to shift users to a new interaction paradigm because we think it works better. That’s fine, and can be successful – tab-based browsing comes to mind. But these are incremental changes/improvements, and they happen whenever designers approach an existing problem in a new way. They’re worthy pursuits, but rarely essential for an application to still fulfill its purpose.

By contrast some interaction changes are absolutely essential, and we need to keep our eyes open to recognize those elusive circumstances. Essential interaction changes need to happen when existing paradigms can’t cope any more, and new ones are needed. For example, clicking with a mouse isn’t a thing on touch devices, so that particular interaction became an anomaly that couldn’t be “explained” by existing paradigms any more. Therefore we are legitimately creating new paradigms for mobile design to accommodate the change from mouse to touch. We’re still navigating our way through this change, as apps like Path and Clear emerge to challenge our views on what we consider good design.

We often spend our time trying to improve existing designs, and we need to do that. But there is always the danger of hitting a local maximum – “a point [where] you’ve hit the limit of the current design”. To fight this danger, let’s remember that our energy is sometimes best spent identifying areas where existing paradigms are bursting at the seams in their ability to accommodate the design status quo. That’s where the opportunities for design revolution truly lie.

I’ve had quite a few questions about my reading/sharing/writing workflow in recent months, so I thought I’d write down what I do just in case it has some broader appeal. In this post I will outline the process and tools I use for reading on the web (and taking action on the good stuff). We all have to find our own way on the web, of course, but maybe there’s something here that resonates.

First, it’s important to say a little bit about why I spend so much time tweaking and improving this workflow. All of the process work is just a means to an end. And the end is to never stop learning new things. I like how Michael Schechter puts it in Finding Your Passion For Learning:

Today, I read more than I ever have before. Today, I crave new topics to dive into. Today, I love learning more than I have any time of my life. While I’m not always the best at learning what I should, I’m continually discovering and constantly seeking new ideas.

I couldn’t agree more with that sentiment. I read so much because I’m incapable of keeping my curiosity at bay. What ultimately drives me is a need to get better at what I do because I know I still have so much to learn.

So, let’s get to it. My workflow has two main phases, and I’ll discuss each in detail:

1. Inflow is about the process of finding and reading good articles on the web.
2. Outflow is about choosing the most appropriate ways to save and/or share the good stuff.

Inflow

As the old saying goes: Garbage In, Garbage Out. We are in a period of constant content bombardment, and unless we find ways to focus only on things that are worth our time, we’re going to be lost at sea. The process for disseminating good content is actually pretty easy once you get into a groove. It’s finding the right things to read that is the constant struggle. I use two main sources for finding things to read, and both requires continuous tweaking.

RSS feeds

RSS is dead, apparently. Well, maybe if you have 80,000 followers on Twitter and only care about major tech stories that’s true. But I don’t have that many sources following me, and I care about too many off-the-highway things to be able to rely solely on Twitter for news. If I only relied on Twitter, I most likely wouldn’t see posts from authors I love who only post infrequently.

I use Reeder on Mac and iOS devices to keep up with the feeds I subscribe to. I spend quite a bit of time adding new feeds and removing feeds I’m no longer interested in. I organize feeds in folders like Design, User Experience, and Coding. I also have two folders with must-read blogs that are always at the top: Favorite tech and Favorite Design and UX. These are the folders I make sure I check in on if I don’t have a lot of time. There’s a lot of churn as I learn more about what I like and read – I add and remove feeds in these two folders all the time.

Twitter

I envy people who treat Twitter like a river they can just dip their toes into every once in a while. I get nervous if I miss a few tweets, so I’m not able to follow more than about 250 people. This isn’t personal, it’s just how I choose to use the service. I like the way Chris Bowler puts it:

One fact that I do my best to keep in mind is this: there are two very different ways to use Twitter. Option A is as a social tool to interact and joke around with others, to connect. Option B is to use it as a source of sharing information, usually in the form of links to content or pithy blurbs of opinion.

Some people like the service for one, but not the other. Some people manage to strike a lovely, harmonious balance between the two. The catch is that “” in my opinion “” we mostly want to follow folks who use the service in the same way we do.

I use Twitter mostly for Option B, so those are the kind of people I follow. So, even though I do a little less shuffling on Twitter than I do on my RSS feeds, I do make some changes once in a while to adjust the type of content that comes into my stream. I also use Twitter lists extensively, mostly to keep up with people who are Option B users but extremely frequent updaters (and therefore too noisy for my main stream).

I use the official Twitter app on Mac, and Tweetbot on iOS devices.

Outflow

Once I see an article in RSS or on Twitter that might be interesting, a very specific workflow kicks into gear as I decide what to do next.

Read it later

If I don’t have time to read an article right away, I use Instapaper to save it for later reading. From RSS, Reeder has easy shortcuts to send articles to Instapaper. On Twitter I just favorite the tweet, and then there’s an If This Then That Recipe that automatically sends the link in the tweet to Instapaper. I could send the link directly to Instapaper from within the app, but I like to save the entire tweet so that I can credit the source if I end up doing something with that content. Attribution is really important to me.

Read it now

I usually spend about 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes at night just reading and catching up. This happens either in Reeder, or in Instapaper.

Save permanently

Whenever I read something I like, I save it to Pinboard immediately. Both Reeder and Instapaper have Pinboard integration, so this is a really easy process.

I have a paid archive account on Pinboard that enables additional features like full-text search and cached copies of articles. Seriously, everything in this workflow revolves around Pinboard. I’d be lost without it. It’s a safety net of epic proportions. I go there to look for articles I vaguely remember reading and suddenly need, and it’s constantly in use when I’m writing longform pieces (like this one). If there is such a thing as a hub in this little process of mine, Pinboard would be it.

(Yes, I’m a fan.)

Do something

Once an article is in Pinboard, I do one of four things with it.

1. Do nothing

If it’s just an article I’m saving for reference, or a new method I want to try at work, I move on and don’t do anything else with the article. I might come back to it later when I’m writing something or in need of a refresher on a new design technique, but I’d say I do nothing more for about 50% of the articles I save to Pinboard.

My Pinboard saved links are all private, but if you’re interested you can get access to the private RSS feed by becoming a member of Elezea.

2. Share on Twitter

If I think an article will have broad appeal I share it on Twitter. I usually do this with Buffer. The main use case for Buffer is to queue tweets for sending at specified times, but I use it mostly with the handy “Post now” link in the Chrome bookmarklet as well as the iPhone app.

I use Buffer as my tweet app of choice because it’s the only one I’ve found that allows me to send an article’s title and custom bitly-shortened URL from Chrome or mobile Safari directly to the app for easy posting.

The only exception to this is when I read something right away in Reeder and want to share it. Reeder has really good Twitter integration with custom bitly links as well (only on iOS though – for some reason the Desktop app doesn’t allow you to use your bitly Pro account, so you can’t track your links easily).

3. Share on Tumblr

If I want to share a short quote or photo that’s not directly related to what I write about on this blog, it goes to the B-sides. I use the standard Tumblr browser bookmarklet for sharing.

4. Share on Elezea

If it’s something I’d like to add some thoughts to it goes on this blog. There’s probably an 80/20 split between quick link posts and more substantive articles like this one. I don’t know if that’s the right split, so I’d love to get some feedback – let me know if you’d like to see more/less of something.

My writing workflow is probably worthy of a post on its own, but in short, here are the apps I use:

• I use MarsEdit to post to WordPress. For link posts there’s a very handy browser bookmarklet that grabs the currently highlighted text and adds all the information you need to just start writing.
• Instapaper recently added support for Simplenote, which in turn syncs with nvALT on the Mac. So more and more I find myself highlighting something in Instapaper on iOS, creating a new Simplenote text note, and then completing the post in nvALT on the Mac.
• I use iA Writer for longer posts.
• I write exclusively in Markdown. I use MarsEdit to post Markdown directly to WordPress, and the PHP Markdown plugin converts it to HMTL on the site. This means that I almost never see the WordPress Dashboard. Which is awesome.

And that’s it. Reading through this again, it suddenly looks complicated. So if you have any suggestions to improve the process, please let me know via email or on Twitter.

Here’s to learning.

Andrew Chen wrote a very interesting piece called The Law of Sh-tty Clickthroughs. I recommend you read the whole thing before continuing here. Chen goes into great detail to explain just how ineffective banner ads and other marketing methods have become, and he gives some very astute reasons for why it’s happening:

Customers respond to novelty, which inevitably fades.

First-to-market never lasts.

More scale means less qualified customers.

In short, I loved the article. All the way to the last section. Here is Chen’s proposed solution to the problem:

The real solution: Discover the next untapped marketing channel

The 10X solution to solving the Law of Sh-tty Clickthroughs, even momentarily, is to discover the next untapped marketing channel. In addition to doubling down on traditional forms of online advertising like banners, search, and email, it’s important to work hard to get to the next marketing channel while it’s uncontested.

This is certainly a solution to the problem, but I think there’s a better one: Make an excellent product, and then support the crap out of it. I guess I’m suggesting that we’re entering a post-marketing world where people don’t care about how companies tell them they should feel. In response, we need to shift our focus away from traditional channels to focus on what’s really important: the thing we’re making.

Instapaper is famous for doing no marketing, and yet it’s an enormously successful app. The popularity of Sparrow seems largely due to unsolicited reviews and good word of mouth. Amazon.com has become the de facto place to get user reviews and do price comparison shopping – I’d argue that keeps them top-of-mind more than traditional marketing does.

The lasting benefits of “Word of Mouth” have long been acknowledged, but recently that worthy goal has been derailed by a frantic quest for the short-term benefits of “going viral”. The term “viral marketing” is presumably used without realizing the irony that viruses”¦ you know”¦ kill people.

So I’m not saying that you should try to make a video that millions of people watch on YouTube. I’m saying that there is indeed a formula for effective marketing, and it relies on an unending supply of good will from customers. The formula is quite simple, but unfortunately there are no shortcuts. It looks like this: make great products, sell it to people, support it well, and be patient.

And here’s the beauty of this strategy. This “marketing” method isn’t susceptible to all the issues that give traditional marketing channels such a short shelf-life of effectiveness:

• The novelty of a good product that keeps getting better doesn’t fade.
• There is no first-to-market messaging advantage to lose, because your focus is on the product, not the message.
• And finally, more scale means more and more people to talk about your product.

The other benefit? If the product fails, it will fail for the right reason: it’s just not good enough. Which gives you more time to focus on the next product that will be good enough.

I really want to disagree with Tobias Ahlin’s defense of skeuomorphism, but he does actually have a point in Skeuomorphism & Storytelling:

Skeuomorphism is about communicating and reinforcing feelings ““ getting an application to become a memorable experience, not just a tool. It’s about communicating the purpose of a UI, not only the functions it enables.

He gives some good examples of appropriate (and inappropriate) uses.

The danger of creating a path instead of following one is far more important than the feeling you get resting at the apex.

AJ Leon

I’ve been thinking about the process of getting better at the things we do, the shortcuts we trick ourselves into taking to get there, and how those shortcuts inevitably lead us down the wrong paths.

This week another new service launched to “help you build an engaging online reputation” by letting individuals and brands buy followers on whatever social networks float their boats. Step 2 in their process is describes as follows: “Relax and watch your reputation grow.” Let’s skip some of the obvious gaps in this story, like what it means to have an “engaging reputation”, or the fact that number of followers is not the biggest driver of online influence. Let’s skip all that to talk about a deeper question: why are we so unwilling to work hard for the things that we want?

Think about a time when you learned to do something really difficult. Maybe it was learning to ride a skateboard, figuring out a new math equation, or debugging your first piece of code. Do you remember the strain, the frustration, and the countless failures? And do you also remember the enormous satisfaction you felt as you slowly mastered that task? Do you remember how doing it the hard way carried with it not only the benefits of learning that skill, but also many tangential thoughts or experiences that sparked new passions or interests?

When we do things the hard way, we invest in ourselves in the best possible way. We kick off an endless cycle of learning and mastery that helps us grow and lead fulfilling lives of purpose. When we take shortcuts, we become mere pretenders. We learn how to play the part, but there is no substance or continued growth. The instant gratification makes us build the house of cards ever higher, which brings anxiety about the whole thing coming tumbling down. Why would we shortchange ourselves like that?

Cal Newport nailed it when he said, “There is no avoiding the deliberate strain of real improvement.” If you want to become a better writer, read more and publish more. If you want to learn to design/code/fly, watch fewer episodes of Downton Abbey and practice the things that don’t come easy. And if you really want more Twitter followers, make and share things that are awesome, and be patient.

In short, to quote Frank Chimero, do things the long, hard, stupid way.

The Heavy Chef asked me some questions about design (and a little bit about this site). If you’re interested, you can read the interview here. Here’s a tiny excerpt:

I think the biggest epidemic in the design world right now is that we open our design software too early in the process. We have to spend time understanding the problem and user needs first, before we grab the mouse. There are so many products out there that look great, but don’t really solve a user need.

Instead, designers should raise their voices much earlier in the strategy discussion, and bring their design thinking skills to the essential practice of finding what Marc Andreesen calls product/market fit. Oh, and we need to use more paper to share those ideas. Sketches are fantastic low-fidelity prototyping tools, and it’s cheap to test and iterate on.

Matt Gemmell posted some interesting reflections on the difficulties of translating paper-based media to digital devices. It includes another reason (not that we need any more reasons, mind you) why skeuomorphic design practices are so problematic. From Augmented Paper:

It’s so easy to saturate electronic representations of paper with what I call “digital artifice”; the gratuitous and ultimately heavy and objectionable skeuomorphisms and decorations that betray a simplistic thinking process: let’s just make this look the same. That’s a damaging frame of mind, because it enforces a false dichotomy between the real and the virtual. Software should be an enhancement, not a replication.