“A mongrel form of communication”

A mentor once said that to me. He was talking about this sort of thing:

That is, a huge wall of text standing behind a speaker. It violates a ton of communication principles. Here are a few.

The literate mind automatically begins to process words as soon as it sees them. Why would a speaker want to split the audience’s attention? Too often, these sort of distractions just hang in the background, allowing audience members to fake interest by staring behind the speaker. Ever wonder why all speakers that do this are unable to move a crowd? This is because the critical feedback loop of adjusting a speech to the audience in real time is broken.

The text is disrespectfully dense. When we are faced with dense text in our normal lived—a book, a memo, a computer screen—we automatically adjust the text to a comfortable distance. When it is projected on a screen, we are stuck with squinting. This is why all movies project text in giant, single lines, or are Star Wars, and give you the text in all possible sizes. Why would you want your audience to struggle with your message?

Documents composed as a deck are necessarily half thoughts and incomplete sentences. Those are the only things that fit. Therefore, plans and actions that come from decks are incomplete. The better model is a strongly visual presentation, accompanied by a memo with an executive summary and details following that.

Betrays the medium. A speech with a projection is a profoundly visual medium. Every slide that fails to honor that fact weakens the whole message.

Physically difficult to hold. Printed decks are in landscape, and never seem to fit into our muscle memory, which is tuned to paper in portrait. If landscape was so great, why wasn’t it adopted by book and newspapers ages ago?

I could go on. Maybe in a separate post?

Micro-parenting and helicopter management

Some time ago, I was sitting under the eaves of this building:

image

It’s the Duomo in Siena which is, if you can believe it, an also-ran when compared to the Duomo in Florence.

Anyhow, I was sitting there, avoiding the rain, and watching the people issue out. The English with their marvelous umbrellas that opened like a cannon shot, the Italians with their fashionable disdain for rain-wear, and the Germans by the horde.

Most folks had kids. I watched a lot of little kids do what I remember doing as a little kid — go stand in the rain. Look up. Jump in a puddle. And none of the Europeans seemed to care. If they wanted to get dry, they came back to their parents’ umbrellas, or asked their bigger sister to share with them. I didn’t see one squabble or fight. When the adults left the square, the kids followed, without having to be told. If the kids wanted to be wet, then so be it. They’d learn what it meant to be wet all day. It was pretty neat.

As if on cue, an American family with three kids walked out of the Duomo. While mom talked with dad, the kids stood around in the rain. mom, turned around and scolded them, telling the oldest to use her umbrella. The oldest lifted it slowly, and mom took it from her hands, sprung it open, grabbed her kid’s hand, and put the umbrella in it. She grabbed the other two, roughly, and placed them under the umbrella. Mom turned back to dad.

While her back was turned, the oldest sister pushed her siblings out from under the umbrella. A squabble ensued.

Mom, turned, yelled at, and yanked the kids back into place. She lectured. She pointed. She wagged her finger and threatened.

As soon as their mother turned, the kids’ affect changed. They dulled, like stone, and submitted to being roughly led around.

I’ve seen the same sort of thing in workplaces.

The parent-child and boss-worker relationship are similar enough that we often map our family relationships onto our workplace; the boss is mom or dad, the coworkers are your siblings, and inferiors are that younger cousin you saw once ever year or so.

I’d cite a study, but I’d rather you look at your own experience. Or just google it yourself. It’s healthier that way.

The lesson: if an authority turns out to be a micromanager, they’d better be ready to always micromanage. *Once someone with authority stakes out a task, or a position, or a job, it’s natural to let the heavy have their way.*

Bang

Periscopic has a new infographic out about guns, and gun deaths. It’ll knock your socks off.

Go watch it, and come back here.

There are a few things that elevate this from a simple plot, which could have been simply powerful.

  • Representing each life as an arc—-a proxy for a narrative. This choice automatically helps us see the data points as people, with a beginning, middle, and end.
  • The teardrop. What better way could you symbolize a sudden, and permanent diversion from a person’s narrative path?
  • Starting slow. By starting slow, the authors let us take in the motion of the thing; human life as cannon shot, and the mechanic of estimated years taken.
  • And then the pile on. This serves to really underline the tragedy. I wanted it to stop, and it was only May.

And to those that question the estimated year of life lost for each person—-that sort of thing can always be debated, but the aggregate effect can be know with precision. It’s what actuaries do.

A little design …

… can save a ton of pain. Apple has moved their headphone jack to the bottom of the new phone. Behold:

I have watch tons of people do the following.

  1. Get a message on their iPhone.
  2. Pull it out of their pocket.
  3. Oops, it’s upside down.
  4. Try to turn the iPhone 180 degrees, one handed, annnnd …
  5. Concrete.

By eliminating the problem at step three (the iPhone is already in the correct position when you grab it), I’m guessing that Apple will have fewer glass panels to replace.

Design matters.

A million little bugs. (Android fragmentation. h/t Ars Technica) Can you remember a time when iPhones didn’t have apps? I barely can. Now, they’re arguably one of the leading reasons to buy Apple hardware. They make it easy — mod of the iOS market is is 3 phones, 3 tablets (double the resolution!), and the odd iPod. All largely similar, all running the same operating system. 6 or 7 devices, one OS. And then you have Android. 10,000s of devices, nearly 4,000 OS versions. Design isn’t just aluminum and glass.
Pop-upView Separately

A million little bugs. (Android fragmentation. h/t Ars Technica)

Can you remember a time when iPhones didn’t have apps? I barely can. Now, they’re arguably one of the leading reasons to buy Apple hardware. They make it easy — mod of the iOS market is is 3 phones, 3 tablets (double the resolution!), and the odd iPod. All largely similar, all running the same operating system. 6 or 7 devices, one OS.

And then you have Android. 10,000s of devices, nearly 4,000 OS versions.

Design isn’t just aluminum and glass.

The things they carry

Andrew Sullivan rounds up a few articles on why we love denim.

Any idea, any product, any design that people can act with, through, or on will be carried forward by those people; and they will love it when it is gone.

This is because a narrative starts with our actions, and is repeated back to ourselves.

Why do I wear jeans? Because I am the kind of person that wears jeans. What kind of person is that? A cool, comfortable American person. 

Top