#heather austin

[dozydawn]

Spend The Night by The Cool Notes, 1985.

[dozydawn]

you’re never too young by the cool notes, 1984.

i don’t need nobody new, only you… that makes me come whenever you call me to.

[balderdashdesigner]

7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Habit #02 - Begin with the end in mind

(photo credit to Anton Egorov)

A few weeks ago I posted an article on this book entitled "7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Habit #01 - Be Proactive" This article is a continuation of that one - but this time discussing the second Habit - beginning with the end in mind.

Habit #02: Begin with the end in mind

When someone decides a city needs to build another skyscraper to dominate the skyline, engineers and architects don't just start slapping steel down and start building upwards - there's a huge planning stage where architects pour over blueprints, engineers tweak angles and material, and then discussions of budget come into play along with a projected completion date.

Once everything is signed off on and approved, the actual physical entity that is the skyscraper can finally begin to take form.

That's what this habit is all about - the idea that in order for you to become the best person you can possibly be, you first need to define who that person is. After all, how can you make sure you're on the right track if you haven't defined the finish line? Your compass is pointless if you don't know which direction to head.

Creating a personal mission statement

(photo credit to Artua)

This book suggests we accomplish this by creating our very own personal mission statement. Now, if this seems difficult and a bit overwhelming - that's because it is! A mission statement is essentially defining what life means to you - it's giving yourself a purpose, a goal, something to strive for. It involves defining your principles - your black and white morals that stay constant throughout your lifetime - and essentially sketches out your life with hard black and white lines so you have a guide when you begin to paint your masterpiece :).

In a world where everyone is quick to say what's right and what's not, isn't the idea of knowing what you stand for refreshing? Isn't that the best place to start? Turns out school may have had it right with the whole "who do you want to be when you grow up?" question huh?

Let's put it another way

(photo credit to Julien Renvoye)

When we're kids, we don't have the cognitive capacity to decide definitively what's right and what's wrong, so we depend on our parents rules to help us get through life. But as we get older and start branching out into the world, we have the ability to evaluate our morals and decide what we agree with and what we don't. In other words - you realize that your life is in your hands - you decide your future!

So if you look at it that way, defining your personal mission statement seems completely logical: no longer are you depending on others to tell you what's correct and what's not - you decide who you want to be, how you want to go through life, and what's important to you. Plus, it gives you the ability to keep on track - something to constantly reference when you feel lost or out of sync with the world. When you're driving down the road and realize you don't recognize the scenery, you can check your map (your personal mission statement) and steer yourself back onto the right road :).

OK cool, I'm in! Now how do I go about doing this?

(photo credit to  The Fox And King)

This process isn't supposed to take an hour. Be patient with yourself, but begin working on it - as we discussed, this is a necessary pillar in recreating yourself! Honestly, even if you don't know what you stand for, it's still better to start and treat it like play-doh: it can always be touched up and edited as you grow and figure out what you want! Here are a couple steps I'd suggest:

A mission statement can look like anything. It can be a list of moral todos and todonts, or it can be one line representing what you stand for. I recommend starting off with a free service just to get you started. I personally went to this site to get mine up and running.

Save a draft you're happy with somewhere you can come back to and reference. Having it somewhere you will actually look at it from time to time is best.

Continue to reference this statement often - revisit it yearly, monthly, weekly, or even daily if you want - and keep tweaking it as you see fit. After all, this is YOUR mission statement - as unique as you are, and no one can tell you if it's perfect for you but yourself :).

Use it. Begin to use this document as your outline for your life's goals - follow what's dear to your heart and you'll find yourself living life to the best of your ability!

In Conclusion

This Habit is a great one, but also a great example of how deep this book really is. Habit 2 requires a major change in how we do things in life, and it can be jarring to mix things up to this degree. But honestly, doing something as simple as creating a mission statement can create a paradigm shift in how we view the world. And it's all in your control.

Pretty neat if you think about it :).

Until next time friends! Keep learning and remember that life is awesome :)

[balderdashdesigner]

There's an App for that: Empathy

(photo - credit to  Alexey Chistyakov)

Just read this article about facial feature recognition and wonder what the implications of this really are...

The article talks about how subtle facial changes tend to be universal, yet also very subtle at the same time. That said, there are companies currently working on algorithms that actually detect your facial features and essentially read your emotions based on their findings. Pretty neat right?

So my question is - what does this mean? Especially for those professional poker players out there ;)! Will this help the world understand each other better, or better reveal how pissed off everyone really is all the time? I'm not sure I want people to know how I'm feeling all the time. What about you?

[balderdashdesigner]

Why great storytelling is the key to designing great products

When you first take on a job, they hire you for you skillset and the work/programs you've dabbled in thus far. The part of a job that always seems to vary is the process one follows with those skills/program expertise.  This is especially true in application development, when there are so many different teams with so many different skillsets, and so many different projects coming in - each with different requirements. How can you stick to one process for each project?? This is a problem we've been dabbling with at Balderdash since I started the company almost 2 years go. How can we make sure our deliverables are kissed with perfection while at the same time completing the project in a reasonable timeframe? It's the infamous holy triangle - where the consumer must choose two of the three: fast, cheap, and great. 

So what have we come up with?

Know the user

Create personas and user stories that better explain what the application is going to be doing. This is the stage where you essentially create use cases in a written-out format (no design whatsoever). This allows you to critique what works, what doesn't, and evaluate every step in between. This also makes it easier for the designer to create an effective blueprint because they're pulled away from the pixel perfection binoculars they put on when design elements get involved. In plain english - this step makes it easier to see the science of the application.

Create blueprints

Now that you've gone through the user's needs and evaluated the requirements that must exist in the application, a designer can go in and actually draw out (sketchbook or a vector tool - whatever your preference) the experience and giving it a GUI. Note the word "blueprint" in the title: GUI at this stage still means no design. Yes, you are taking a sentence and drawing out a screen that represents this action, however keep anything specific out of this stage - blueprints (also called wireframes) are meant to take the content we've harvested and place them in a format that works for the user. Keeping design out of the picture better allows us to make sure our user is achieving what they need to achieve rather than getting hung up on whether we like the rounded corners or the navy blue versus the baby blue.

Create mockups

Now the designers get to roll up their sleeves and add a little magic to the screens. Now that the experience is agreed to, designers are free to do what they're best at - get immersed in their right brain! A key difference between our process and the other guys is that we create mockups in pixel perfection - why spend hours on a mockup if it's only going to get tweaked in development? Details matter. As you're creating, please please make notes on things like rounded corner radii, hex code color choices, fonts, font-sizes, etc. Having a designer who understands enough implementation to be able to accurately hand all necessary information to the developer is an AMAZING asset and can make all the difference when you're handing over your deliverables.

The design/implementation hand-off

This is a critical juncture. As mentioned above, designers can't just hand over a mockup to a developer and expect them to match pixel perfection. The handoff requires creating an internal deliverable that breaks down the design scientifically - you need to make your design speak developer. Do you have every page you need? Are there any empty states/error states/loading states/overflow states that need to be taken into consideration and mocked up? When do these happen? Are there any transitions? What happens when you click here? What happens when you do this? Having all these questions answered allows the developer to do what he/she does best - get immersed in the code! 

Front-end implementation

This is the step where you take your beautiful designs and recreate them in a living, dynamic window on your computer (or phone, or tablet, or watch, or whatever). This is a step where you can get your application living and looking great in it's natural environment, however doesn't quite have all the necessary components hooked up yet. This is a great stage to have a QA with the client.

Back-end implementation

Here is where you hook up the API and actually give your application end points to reach and pull from. Back end is when the development titans come in and make sure the application can handle real data in real time and you can test loading times, error states, empty states, overflow states, etc. and figure out what needs to be optimized further. Unfortunately this step can vary the most with each project depending upon the scope and agreement.

QA QA QA

Now that your teams are done, it's time to pull off your binoculars and stand back from the screen again. Go back through the original use cases you went through in the beginning and make sure everything works. Now go through and test each of the use cases. Break it. Be the user you can't stand ("how in the world did he get THAT error???") Do it now so you can fix it now. QA is essential.

Deliver the product

Boom. Give the client what you agreed to give him/her and go through the project in detail with him/her. After all, you know the project better than the client at this point - but you need to make sure you get him/her on the same page and show off all the work your team has done. Be proud of your project but honest about what it took to build - hard work is not something to hide - it justifies the price and time it takes, clients appreciate this (note that explaining your hard work is not the same thing as COMPLAINING about it.)

So there you have it - a Balderdash process break-down. The article that inspired this can be found here: http://gigaom.com/2013/04/14/why-good-storytelling-helps-you-design-great-products/#!

[bodylonging]

He sets her on top of the dishwasher and opens her robe. This is the last time, she thinks. She wraps her legs around him and hooks her feet together, pulling him in. June wonders if she will miss him. She makes a list in her head while he moans. These are the plusses: Vic smells like cherry lozenges—her favorite kind. His body is firm. He always stops talking once they get started. These are the minuses: Vic already has Lila. He goes to the bathroom with the door open. One night he rubbed his finger over the cigarette burn on her thigh and asked, “Someone do this to you?” and when she said, “Yes,” she felt him get hard against her back. She decides she will not miss him.

[dreamsensitive]