So I bit the (small) bullet and upgraded to the Basic plan on Backpack ($5/month). Hopefully 25 pages will be enough; we’ll see. The five that come with the free plan certainly weren’t, and things started getting crammed and I didn’t even use Backpack for several weeks because of it. But I think with more pages I’ll have enough room to stretch. We’ll see…

Technorati Tags: Backpack, 37signals

Garrett Dimon’s got a good post today, on interface design:

For me, I’ve found that by writing a paragraph or some bullet points, I come up with ideas I wouldn’t have otherwise. It also helps to expose oversights and logic errors. This only takes me about 30 seconds per feature, but it dramatically increases the amount of quality thought I put into its implementation. Any more than 30 seconds or a minute, and it’s a waste of time. Once it’s implemented, chances are you’re going to need to make other changes.

From the comments, I found this 37signals paper, An Introduction to Using Patterns in Web Design:

The biggest challenge for web designers is the unthinkably huge number of possible ways to solve any given problem. We usually don’t think of this because we have our habits and traditions to fall back on, but there are literally billions of possible pixel combinations for each page we make.

There is a better way to manage this vast complexity than by making big decisions up front and hoping for the best. To make better sites — sites that are functional, beautiful, and “usable” — we have to break our design problems up into small independent chunks based on the real issues within our requirements. Christopher Alexander, who came up with this stuff, calls these chunks patterns.

And finally, Adobe Design Center has an interview with Jason Fried of 37signals on Getting Real:

Another thing I find interesting is that when big groups really want to get things done, they don’t make the group bigger, they make the group smaller. For example, when Lockheed wanted to design the Stealth [bomber], they didn’t scale up the team, they scaled the team down. When Congress really needs to consider something important, they form committees. When the military needs to conduct an operation with absolute precision, they usually call on the best small team they have. I think there’s a lot corporate America can learn from that.

For me, the main reminder I got was that you have to go to HTML (i.e., real stuff) as soon as possible, not getting caught up in mockups like I’ve done:

Yes, seeing and interacting with the real thing is the key. It’s not about seeing, it’s about using. You can see an Adobe® Photoshop® mockup of a site or application, but you can’t use a Photoshop mockup. That’s the point of Getting Real. To experience the real thing early and often. That’s the best way to improve the real thing. You can improve a Photoshop mockup all day long, but your customers don’t buy products or search or make a to-do list in a Photoshop mockup.

Granted, I’ve been doing HTML mockups as well, but I still think I’ve been spending way too much time on paper and in Photoshop. It’s about time to read Getting Real again…

Technorati Tags: Getting Real

Finally got a Mac at work. Mmm. :) It’s really, really, really nice to be back on a real computer. We still haven’t figured out the network situation yet (they kind of don’t want us to put a hub in), so I have to switch the Ethernet cable between my Windows box and my G4. It’s a pain, yes. But my joy at being able to use a Mac again has overflowed enough that I don’t care quite so much (yet).

Isn’t that what software design is about? Making users happy? And yet all too often software doesn’t do that. It can, but it doesn’t. ‘Tis a pity. Whatever they do, I want the software I write to make people as happy as OS X and WordPress make me. (And vi, for that matter.) For me, this is what Getting Real is about, at its center: more user-focused development by paring away unnecessary features and getting the core things right. It’s the Right Thing. And it matters. It really, really matters.

Technorati Tags: Mac, OS X, WordPress, vi