White Screen of Death
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
The Medium is Nothing, or, Why I Stopped Being a Tool and Embraced Powerpoint.
Tufte has this rant he loves. He hates PowerPoint. Ok, I get it. That program blows! I can't even begin to describe to you the horrible Six Sigma slides I have endured as we have run through an "Analyze Tollgate", one of the fun little steps in the DMAIC methodology embraced by my greater organization. I can't stand them on so many levels that it is not even fun to enumerate them.
Here's the thing, though. PowerPoint is the standard communication tool used at an organization the scale of mine ([UPDATED] ~176,600 employees!) That's big, and the executives... they don't have time on a day to day basis to really look at detail. Sure, they will stop and smell the roses. They'll micro-manage as good as the next guy! The fact is, though, that in order for them to do their job effectively, they need broad brushstrokes. They need to have the confidence that their staff is going to tell them what matters. Nothing more.
There is a joke I use all the time, when someone asks me what I will be using for my presentation. I state very matter of factly that I will be doing an interpretive dance. Imagine my surprise when yesterday in a meeting with our executive, a member of the team suggested writing narrative presentations. Thanks a lot Ed!
Very often, I will use a PDF. But my team has gone to great lengths to actually design a Visio template that outputs as if it were a PPT! Why? Because it is what people consider the de facto medium. Nothing else will garner respect or attention. If I follow Tufte's advice and hand out a datasheet for my presentation (which, in theory, I think is a fabulous idea!), I have one word: round-file. That thing is going to be left on the conference room floor with a bunch of doodles on it, or in the recycle bin (in California), or it will end up in a stratified pile of detritus on a desk somewhere.
So, it all comes down to Information Architecture. You have an audience and a message as variables. You have a medium as a constant. Actually... this is freakin' great! One of the major sets of decisions in your work has already been done for you. Now all you need to do is craft your message.
Jon Winet, a great professor I had at UC Davis -- now a great friend, told me this joke once that I think is highly relevant in this case: a printmaker is an artist without many ideas. Maybe that is a crappy metaphor here. Dunno. What I find is often the case with people who loooove to bash PowerPoint is that they are either unable or unwilling to craft a message. They are focusing on the medium, not the message. But the medium is nothing. So shut up and use PowerPoint.
Some fab PowerPoint and PowerPoint-inspired works:
Lawrence Lessig: Google Book Search: The Argument
Dick Hardt: OSCON 2005 Keynote: Identity 2.0
Clemens Kogler & Karo Szmit: Le Grand Content
Clay Newton: Muny (requires IE, unfortunately)
Here's the thing, though. PowerPoint is the standard communication tool used at an organization the scale of mine ([UPDATED] ~176,600 employees!) That's big, and the executives... they don't have time on a day to day basis to really look at detail. Sure, they will stop and smell the roses. They'll micro-manage as good as the next guy! The fact is, though, that in order for them to do their job effectively, they need broad brushstrokes. They need to have the confidence that their staff is going to tell them what matters. Nothing more.
There is a joke I use all the time, when someone asks me what I will be using for my presentation. I state very matter of factly that I will be doing an interpretive dance. Imagine my surprise when yesterday in a meeting with our executive, a member of the team suggested writing narrative presentations. Thanks a lot Ed!
Very often, I will use a PDF. But my team has gone to great lengths to actually design a Visio template that outputs as if it were a PPT! Why? Because it is what people consider the de facto medium. Nothing else will garner respect or attention. If I follow Tufte's advice and hand out a datasheet for my presentation (which, in theory, I think is a fabulous idea!), I have one word: round-file. That thing is going to be left on the conference room floor with a bunch of doodles on it, or in the recycle bin (in California), or it will end up in a stratified pile of detritus on a desk somewhere.
So, it all comes down to Information Architecture. You have an audience and a message as variables. You have a medium as a constant. Actually... this is freakin' great! One of the major sets of decisions in your work has already been done for you. Now all you need to do is craft your message.
Jon Winet, a great professor I had at UC Davis -- now a great friend, told me this joke once that I think is highly relevant in this case: a printmaker is an artist without many ideas. Maybe that is a crappy metaphor here. Dunno. What I find is often the case with people who loooove to bash PowerPoint is that they are either unable or unwilling to craft a message. They are focusing on the medium, not the message. But the medium is nothing. So shut up and use PowerPoint.
Some fab PowerPoint and PowerPoint-inspired works:
Lawrence Lessig: Google Book Search: The Argument
Dick Hardt: OSCON 2005 Keynote: Identity 2.0
Clemens Kogler & Karo Szmit: Le Grand Content
Clay Newton: Muny (requires IE, unfortunately)
Labels: design, documentation, interaction, rant
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Snap! Annoying or hecka cool?
Oh, Snap! Not like this is the most amazing, rare conceptually mind-altering thing I have seen in a while, but I do think it prods out a good question: Is this really a good idea?
I like the idea of providing additional context. Frankly, I must admit that I don't know exactly how Snap works. I am curious as to whether it grabs a preview of the exact page to which you are linking, or if it just pulls the homepage, and if you can control what it pulls. From reading their FAQ, it looks like it uses a CSS class to bind the methods to, which is the right way to do stuff such as this, IMO.
Anyway, here is my bet: this type of popup is going to become extremely prevalent in the next 6 months. We are already deploying something of this nature at The Bank. There have been plugins for Firefox that added this functionality to Google for a while now. Yahoo uses similar kinds of functionality both in YM and on their news pages.
Oh, Snap! Not like this is the most amazing, rare conceptually mind-altering thing I have seen in a while, but I do think it prods out a good question: Is this really a good idea?
I like the idea of providing additional context. Frankly, I must admit that I don't know exactly how Snap works. I am curious as to whether it grabs a preview of the exact page to which you are linking, or if it just pulls the homepage, and if you can control what it pulls. From reading their FAQ, it looks like it uses a CSS class to bind the methods to, which is the right way to do stuff such as this, IMO.
Anyway, here is my bet: this type of popup is going to become extremely prevalent in the next 6 months. We are already deploying something of this nature at The Bank. There have been plugins for Firefox that added this functionality to Google for a while now. Yahoo uses similar kinds of functionality both in YM and on their news pages.
Labels: dhtml, interaction, interesting, ux
Friday, January 26, 2007
Open the Future: The Footprint of a Cheeseburger
Open the Future: The Footprint of a Cheeseburger: "the carbon footprint of a hamburger"
This is an amazing factoid:
This is an amazing factoid:
If each of the 300 million Americans hit that "average" burger consumption, we're looking at 75,000-150,000 tonnes of atmospheric carbon annually from burger consumption alone -- that's the equivalent of the annual carbon output from 7,500-15,000 SUVs.That is incredible, I wonder if it is less for standard hamburgers? What about Chicken McNuggets®? Oh, and this is probably a single patty burger, right? What about Big Macs®, or that other crazy arse piece of meat, the Big 'N Tasty® (w/ cheese)?
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
My Fave new term
T9onym
I am a constant victim of T9onism, wherein I am afflicted by the sending of texts with flawed T9 chunkers. But I love the idea of using the T9 mistake intentionally. "In" becomes "go", "me" becomes "of", and as Kottke mentions, "cool" becomes "book."
I am a constant victim of T9onism, wherein I am afflicted by the sending of texts with flawed T9 chunkers. But I love the idea of using the T9 mistake intentionally. "In" becomes "go", "me" becomes "of", and as Kottke mentions, "cool" becomes "book."
Monday, January 08, 2007
Top 10 Movies: 2006
Here is an aggregated view of the Top 10 lists of all the major papers...
I am looking forward to updating my Netflix queue!
I am looking forward to updating my Netflix queue!
Thursday, January 04, 2007
Interview with Ben Schott
Here is an interesting interview with Ben Schott. This guy blows my mind. I first heard of Mr Schott via the Kottke link to his Five Years of Consequence, a graphic that is so data dense and fan-tab-u-licious it makes Edward Tufte whip out a laser pointer.
This guy is so great, and the interview is fab.
This guy is so great, and the interview is fab.
Labels: data, information, interesting, interview
FINALLY. new Blogger.
Last I logged in, I was trying like hell to switch over to the new Blogger. I guess I am not enough on my game to get an early invite, so I had to wait with the hordes.
Now I am in, and looking forward to investigating the new features.
Now I am in, and looking forward to investigating the new features.
Labels: blog, fun, interesting
