Seth's Blog : In search of palliatives

In search of palliatives

A palliative is a treatment that soothes even if it can't cure the illness.

By all means, whenever you can, fix the problem, go to the root cause, come up with a better design...

But when you can't (and that's most of the time, because the straightforward problems have already been solved), the effort you put into providing a palliative will not go unnoticed or unappreciated.

       

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More Recent Articles

• What have we become? (And what are we becoming?)
• "So simple it doesn't need instructions"
• Managing the gap
• "You can not make a spoon that's better than a spoon"
• Singular isn't about scale

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Seth's Blog : What have we become? (And what are we becoming?)

What have we become? (And what are we becoming?)

Every day, we change. We move (slowly) toward the person we'll end up being.

Not just us, but our organizations. Our political systems. Our culture.

Are you more generous than the you of five or ten years ago? More confident? More willing to explore?

Have you become more brittle? Selfish? Afraid?

Grumpy and bitter isn't a place we begin. It's a place we end up.

Do we intentionally choose the optimistic path? Are we eagerly more open to change and possibility?

Every day we make the hard decisions that build a culture, an organization, a life.

Since yesterday, since last week, since you were twelve, have you been making deposits or withdrawals from the circles of supporters around you?

People don't become selfish, hateful and afraid all at once. They do it gradually.

When we see the dystopian worlds depicted in movies and books, are we closer to those outcomes than a generation ago? Do we find ourselves taking actions that make our conversations more considered, our arguments more informed, our engagements more civil? Or precisely the opposite, because it's easier?

Your brand, your company, your community: it has so much, is it still playing the short game? 

When your great-grandfather arrives by time machine, what will you show him? What have you built, what are you building? When your great-grandchildren remember the choices we made, at a moment when we actually had a choice, what will they remember?

We are always becoming, and we can always make the choice to start becoming something else, if we care.

       

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More Recent Articles

• "So simple it doesn't need instructions"
• Managing the gap
• "You can not make a spoon that's better than a spoon"
• Singular isn't about scale
• Living with what happens next

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Seth's Blog : "So simple it doesn't need instructions"

"So simple it doesn't need instructions"

Eager (and less-talented) designers often get confused about this instruction, turning it into: "It doesn't have instructions, therefore it's simple.

Consider a hotel shower. It has 11 things that might be dials, and five that actually are. The alert person, standing under cold water, at 5 in the morning, in a dark hotel room, will probably (???) realize that the bottom dial, all the way near the floor, is actually the one that controls the temperature.

The lack of instructions doesn't make something simple.

I used to write the manuals for the educational software we shipped in the mid 1980s. The goal was clear: write exactly enough that no one would call us on the phone. 

Today, of course, instructions are really cheap to provide. On a shower, all you need is a simple label. But just about anything else you produce ought to come with digital instructions, written or on video.

Don't make us read your mind. 

[Yes, it's true, almost no one reads the instructions... people are so self-absorbed and hurried that they plunge first. One more reason to build something simple. But at least you can post instructions so that after they fail the first time, they have a shot at getting it right the second time.]

PS if you truly care, list your phone number/email address on the instructions. Not an unattended mailbox. You.*

(*the single best way to improve just about any communication...)

Your designs (and your instructions) will get better faster.

[I limit myself to just one post per year about how bad hotel showers are, fwiw. Mostly, they're a symptom of a significant lack of care in the face of the rush to make more stuff faster.]

       

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More Recent Articles

• Managing the gap
• "You can not make a spoon that's better than a spoon"
• Singular isn't about scale
• Living with what happens next
• The very same software

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