I never intended for it to happen, but it did. This has become yet another blog that has been neglected for far too long and now it is time for the clichéd "sorry for the lack of updates!" post.

Well, that's the sort of post I initially set out to write. As I organized my thoughts, I realized that the core of this topic is quite a bit deeper.

Let's start with the mundane. Almost exactly a year ago, I got fed up with Tumblr's excessive downtime and moved this blog to Posterous. Instantly, I felt like I was on an island. Tumblr has a great community and, if you're careful with who you choose to follow, the social interaction is actually pretty great. I "met" a lot of new people and got involved in a few projects because of these relationships. On Posterous, there's a slightly less Internet-meme feel, but the social elements are almost nonexistent and it feels like a very lonely place (especially when you're starting from scratch).

Not too long after moving to Posterous, I also started to get frustrated with the their platform and the limited customization I could do to my site. I found a great micro-blogging engine called toto. I began migrating my old posts over to toto, but never began using it full-time because I was thinking through how (and if) I wanted to integrate my blog into my professional site. I put blogging on the back burner.

Before I knew it, it was autumn, I still hadn't updated my blog, and I'd been to busy to think about restructuring my site and/or blog. I was also falling into a rut. I've always been fortunate to work with great people, but I was starting to feel less interested in the projects I was involved in. Like everyone else, I have my ups and downs, but this time I just couldn't get back up.

After I ran a half marathon in October, I began having pain in my right knee. Knee pain and running often go hand in hand, but easing up on the running usually improves things. Not this time. I completely stopped running and the pain continued to get worse. Long story short: MRI revealed that I have an arthritic defect (not running-related) on the backside of my patella (big chunk of cartilage missing) and the best (but not guaranteed) way to fix it is with microfracture surgery (40 min. procedure, followed by 6-8 months of physical therapy.

While deciding if and when to do this, I was dealing with two other persistent issues: 1) a chronic cough and 2) chronic back pain. Every single time I get a common cold, I end up with post-nasal drip that keep my coughing for months. I've also had back pain that varies between tolerable and excruciating. Both of these have been issues for over 10 years. The cough remains unsolved by my doctor and I'm scheduled to see a back specialist this month.

Last week, I went for a physical (first time since 9th grade) and found out I have a hernia and need to get an opinion from a surgeon (to see when, not if, to have surgery). I didn't even know what a hernia was, but when I looked it up I found that they can be caused by persistent coughing. Bingo.

Needless to say, these health problems have compounded my funk and I've somewhat withdrawn from a social life (in the online and physical sense).

I'm not big on New Year's resolutions, but it does feel like a new beginning and I get to decide how all of this affects me. Getting my body repaired is my top priority, but I also need to rethink my career goals. My professional (though not professional-sounding) goal has always been to simply "make cool shit". Sometimes I truly get excited about a client project, but  more and more I'm feeling a need to zero in on a project that is mine (or partially mine) that I'm so excited about that I loose sleep. I've had these moments, but they are too few and far between. This is what people mean when they say "if you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life". If I had a New Year's resolution, this would be it: to not "work" many days this year.

I'm sure this all sounds like I'm feeling sorry for myself and I probably am to some degree. But don't think for a moment that I don't know how lucky I am. I have an amazing wife and two beautiful kids. Unlike a lot of people, my wife and I have jobs and we can pay the mortgage. I have some health problems, but I know damn well that a lot of people are much worse off than I am. I didn't fear for my life waiting for a bone marrow donor like Amit Gupta did. My 8 year old daughter doesn't have leukemia like her classmate does. These sorts of things put a "funk" into perspective. 

We all have ups and downs. I've been in a gentle decent for a while, but it's time to start climbing again. I may be hobbling on one leg, holding my back, nursing my hernia stitches, and coughing the whole way, but I've always enjoyed a good challenge. Bring it on!

 

Design means different things to different people. I wholeheartedly endorse Steve Jobs' philosophy:

Design isn't the outer skin of the product. It's not the Photoshop layer effects, the trendy noise and linen textures, or WebKit CSS image masks. Those things are tactical tools that can be used to stylize a product, but design is a holistic concept that defines how the product works.

I don't think it's controversial these days to state that successful product development must begin with design first. The way the product looks, feels, and behaves is the product as far as the user is concerned. Defining these things is the role of the designer. Bringing them to life is (usually) the role of the engineer.

Like many people, I'm inspired by all sorts of physical objects — automobiles, watches, bicycles, mobile phones, etc. I'd wager that most or all of these things — the ones that have the most passionate and loyal customers — originated from a design-centric initial phase.

We can be pretty certain that Apple products aren't conceived by engineers initially. In fact, a recent Reddit comment by an ex-Apple employee sheds light on the fact that the Industrial Design department's decisions trump all other decisions by other divisions. In my head, I envision meetings between Jonathan Ive and the engineers going something like this:

Then the engineers raise their eyebrows, let out a sigh, and get to work. The constraints that feel nearly crippling at the beginning gradually become challenging, but achievable goals.

Contrast this to my vision of product development at any PC manufacturer. Note that the meeting is now led by engineering:

Ok, I know it's not really that segregated at either company, but I the point stands. Which company do you think has engineers that are getting pushed outside their comfort zones, solving incredibly challenging problems, and finishing a project with a huge sense of pride? Who do you think is attracting more high-caliber designers? Which engineers are disgruntled because they're making decisions based on constraints that having nothing to do with the user experience? This disgruntlement then trickles down to the designers who have to polish a turd and ship a compromised product.

That's great, you say, but I'm a web developer - what does this have to do with me? Generally speaking, engineers are not great at making decisions based on what's best for users. This isn't because they can't. It's just that engineers are usually completely focused on what they're good at - writing clean and elegant code, refactoring fugly code, building robust test suites, and growing neckbeards. A completely different mental calibration is needed for making design decisions that are in the best interest of the end user. And trust me, switching contexts on the fly is extremely challenging — I try all the time.

For example, it's great that your app exposes an elegant RESTful API interface, but is your site best served by the typical index/show/edit/update screens? A good designer (or a great developer) might realize that the use cases for the app's target audience would prefer a more efficient workflow. Perhaps some (or all) of app's functionality could be exposed on a single screen with AJAX calls handling the server requests. Sure, these sorts of design decisions will probably make for more dev work, but the designer's job is not to make life easy (or harder) for the engineer. It is to design the best product possible for the user.

Lousy engineers will get upset because they have an us-against-them attitude. Good engineers won't complain and will find a way to get the job done. Great engineers will appreciate the constraints and embrace the challenge. They'll also have a much more impressive technical toolbox and enviable portfolio to boot.

The line between video game and in-car displays continues to blur. (via materialiste.com)

(via spinninghat.com)

Ching-Lan Huang points out that the radical architectural plans for Apple's new headquarters isn't that new afterall. Fujian Tulou  (福建土樓) is a Chinese dwelling design that was "closed outside, open inside" with a common courtyard in the center. Steve and his minions get full credit for integrating curved glass on a massive scale though.

"Choose things in your life that will endure, that are a pleasure to use. Classic clothes never go out of style. Furniture should get better with age. Choose things because they delight you, not because they impress others."

- Marney Morris, founder and president of Animatrix

The plugin jQuery.tablesorter is handy for allowing users to dynamically sort tables by clicking the column headings. Out of the box, the plugin assigns a class to the <th> that is currently being sorted upon, but <td>s are not marked in any way. I wanted to add a subtle visual cue to the entire column on a recent project - something like this:

A few lines of Javascript will handle this scenario. If you find yourself needing a similar effect, you can use (and perhaps improve upon) the following code:

via Reddit

UISketcher is a nicely-implemented iPad tool built around the concept of sketchboarding. Box UK has a nice introduction to the practice.

The display perspective is handled automatically by dropping your image into the Smart Object. A nice touch by designer Mikael Eidenberg. Download a copy.