Steamwheel Blog

"The details are not the details. They make the design."

Wed, 06 Oct 2010 11:27:58 -0400

“The details are not the details. They make the design.”

- Charles Eames

Photo

Wed, 06 Oct 2010 10:52:49 -0400

"Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."

Tue, 05 Oct 2010 17:09:50 -0400

“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”

- William Morris

"As the material furnished him is often inadequate, vague, uninteresting, or otherwise unsuitable for..."

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 09:00:00 -0400

“As the material furnished him is often inadequate, vague, uninteresting, or otherwise unsuitable for visual interpretation, the designer’s task is to restate the problem. By analysis (breaking down the complex material into its simplest components - the how, why, when, and where) the designer is able to begin to state the problem.”

- Paul Rand, A Designer’s Art

"It is important that the workmen should not have to watch his instrument, that his whole attention..."

Wed, 04 Aug 2010 10:00:00 -0400

“It is important that the workmen should not have to watch his instrument, that his whole attention should be given to his work.”

- Eric Gill

"Some consider it noble to have a method; others consider it noble not to have a method. Not to have..."

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 09:00:00 -0400

“Some consider it noble to have a method; others consider it noble not to have a method. Not to have a method is bad; to stop entirely at method is worse still. One should at first observe rules severely, then change them in an intelligent way. The aim of possessing method is to seem finally as if one has no method.”

- Lou Tch’Ai Che

"The world of business could function without benefit of art. But should it? I think not, if only for..."

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 08:00:00 -0400

“The world of business could function without benefit of art. But should it? I think not, if only for the simple reason that the world would be a poorer place if it did.”

- Paul Rand, A Designer’s Art

I think about this quote whenever I come across a disappointing company blog. It’s surprising how many web-based companies have blogs where they simply post press releases. It’s almost as bad when the blog has no clear, consistent content direction. 99% of company blogs are like this. If your company has a great blog you are the exception.

A great blog is something that a company doesn’t absolutely require but it’s wonderful if you have one. It’s hard to imagine 37signals without thinking of their great blog Signal vs. Noise. They aren’t just a great company with great products; they have a great blog too. That’s something worth doing.

"When I’m working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the..."

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 10:00:00 -0400

“When I’m working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it’s wrong.”

- R. Buckminster Fuller

Applying Metrics

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 15:43:00 -0400

In December of 2008 I decided that I needed to start exercising every day. I had previously been exercising only when it was convenient for me without a set schedule. This lead to inconsistent results. Also, I had spent the summer working at a startup in NYC with amazing cookies nearby. I also realized that fitness is an area where you need to build a foundation in order to keep getting better results which requires discipline, planning and sustained effort.

Luckily, this process appealed to me so I decided to go the the gym every day from Monday to Friday at 7am no matter what. I chose this schedule because it was easy to remember and track. If it was a weekday I knew I had to go to the gym first thing in the morning. The fact that I would have to walk to the gym during the intensely cold, snowy Montreal winter (which is where I was) was oddly encouraging. I told myself that if I could make it to the gym in the winter then it would be even easier in the spring and summer. I imagined myself as Rocky.

The exercise routine I followed was to run on the treadmill and time myself to track my progress. I started at one mile with the intention of not pushing myself too hard. Pretty soon I was up to three miles. I stayed at three miles and focused on improving my time and running speed rather than distance. This was actually when it got the most interesting. My speed kept increasing roughly every week. I didn’t have any particular goal in mind except to consistently be at the gym and run. I have a theory that a natural motivation to beat my previous time started set in and work in my favor. The fact that I was at the gym so often made it easy to remember my times. This created the ideal context for growth and improvement.

In addition to running, I also did some type of muscle exercise (that’s the technical term) like pushups, sit-ups or weight lifting every day.

After about four months of doing this I had some interesting results. I had unintentionally lost some weight and become slightly leaner. I may have lost some muscle built-up in previous years of athletic activities and weight-lifting stints. Even though I could run three miles quickly, I decided that I was exercising too much.

Fast-forward to July 2009 and I was out of University and starting an iPhone app business. I moved back into my parent’s home and prepared to spend a lot of time writing software. I kept up my daily running but stopped during the winter since I had been running outside. In October of 2009 I lost my exercise focus. With a lot of work to do and no car to drive to the gym I decided I would start exercising again in the spring.

When Spring came around, I tried to grab convenient opportunities to work-out. In a way I was back where I started. Remembering some of the lessons I had learned about discipline and planning, I created a simple way to track my progress. I call such a system an accountability framework because it helps me set goals and track my progress.

With the accountability framework in place, I had started to gather metrics about my work-outs. Looking back to my previous daily schedule, I can say that I was doing about 40 units of exercise per month (running plus a muscle exercise every week day, or 10 exercises per week). Now, I am doing about 12 exercises per month. 40 was too much, and I’m finding that 12 is too little. 20 should be ideal.

The point is that the metrics give me a range of values to consider that can be mapped to a set of outcomes. Knowing this makes it easier to figure out what I should do to get what I want with minimum effort.

"That the separation of form and function, of concept and execution, is not likely to produce objects..."

Mon, 05 Jul 2010 12:23:10 -0400

“That the separation of form and function, of concept and execution, is not likely to produce objects of aesthetic value has been repeatedly demonstrated.”

- Paul Rand, A Designer’s Art

Twitter neurons

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 11:00:00 -0400

I’ve noticed a pattern in my mind since I started to use Twitter. When I have a funny or interesting thought my mind starts to package it into a a short message. If I need more than a sentence or two to express the idea I start writing a blog post in my head.

Why startups will be less productive in 2010

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 11:50:00 -0400

StarCraft 2 comes out on July 27th, 2010. Using a completely unscientific method, I am forecasting that the American economy will lose millions, no, tens of millions of dollars in economic value from the release of this game.

There are a few key factors that create this situation. First, the typical startup is equipped with multiple high performance computers within close proximity of one another. Add fast internet and nerd culture and you have created the perfect storm for gaming madness.

What can you do to stop the hazardous effects of such an awesome game? I’ve got some bad news for you, there isn’t much. As a manager, the best thing you can do is to go with it. You can’t fight this power because it is too strong.

Here’s what you can do:

Give your team dedicated play time
Organize a company tournament
Pizza is never a bad idea
Reward the top player with a small trophy
Set up a competition with other startups

Give it a few weeks (or months) and things will be back to normal. Right now, time would be best spent preparing for StarCraft 2. Fortify your computers with RAM and faster processors. Fix those nagging network problems and upgrade your internet connection. Clear space on the white board. Buy those larger monitors and that sound system that seems totally unnecessary. Even better, pre-order the game. Do these things and you will be well prepared.

Not Today Productivity Strategy

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 10:00:00 -0400

I came up with this technique one day when I had a lot of new ideas for projects I could be working on in addition to my current projects. I felt overwhelmed so I came up with this idea to help me figure out what to do.

1. Make a big list of all your projects and all the things you should or could do.

2. Create two new lists: TODAY and NOT TODAY.

3. Move one day worth of work into the TODAY list. Everything else goes into the NOT TODAY list.

4. Start working on the TODAY list.

5. Abandon this technique as soon as you no longer need it. I only used it for a few days.

How to learn a new technology - Basic Training

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 09:00:00 -0400

What’s the best way to approach learning a new technology? For example, say you want to learn how to program iPhone apps. How do you begin?

When I decide I’m going to learn something new I approach it by making a “basic training” guide. This is simply a document where I list things I should do that I think will help me learn the topic the fastest.

Usually a good place to start is with official documents. For iPhone programming, there is a document called “iPhone Programming Guide” which gives a general overview so it makes sense to start there. Next, I might decide to read the first two chapters and skim the rest to get an overview. After doing that it will be easier to see what I still need to know so I’ll add relevant chapters to the basic training list.

There is more training material on the web than you could possibly read so it’s important to think about what you need to read and why. Without a plan you could be reading for weeks and never get anywhere. Having the list makes it easier to make decisions upfront and justify why it’s important to spend time on something.

Depending on what I’m doing, I’ll search around and find other specific training documents and add them to my list. For example, when I was making my iPhone notepad app, I realized that CoreData resources would be valuable so I added them. I also made sure to add “make a simple core data application” to keep my learning focused in the right direction. Ultimately I want all the documents I’m reading to help me make something.

If you still don’t know where to start, a good tip is to read the first two or three chapters of a book. If you feel you are on the right track you can continue and if not you can decide to do something else.

Here’s a generic, basic training guide sample:

Read the first 3 chapters of Programming Whatever Apps
Skim chapter 5 about recording audio
Read chapter 8 to learn about audio mixing
Review and understand the audio mixing sample app

Creating a basic training guide is a great way to get started and to stay focused.

The way I use Tumblr

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 10:00:00 -0400

I use Tumblr for a bunch of different things.

First, I have a personal site. It serves as place to hold links to things I am working on online and contact information for whatever the hot social networking thing is. It’s set up as a blog but I don’t blog there other than posting a photo once per month. I like this setup because it keeps the page fresh without me having to redesign it. Posting once per month also avoids the dreaded “abandoned blog” look. The “publish on” feature in Tumblr makes it possible to schedule posts months in advance.

Next, I have a few product pages. I use these as informational pages about my iPhone apps that include a blog in the sidebar where I can post news or related content. The Tumblr theme engine is super flexible so you are pretty much only limited by your design skills. I don’t suggest creating a product page like this because Tumblr has since introduced a new Pages feature. That’s what I use now when I make something new. Being able to use your own domain names and sub-domains is a great feature too.

The Pages features does what you’d expect. It lets you add a stand-alone page with a nice url (ie. http://parislemon.com/about).

Another thing I started recently is a Tumblr blog where I keep track of HTML5 resources. I’m excited by the possibilities of HTML5 and would like to incorporate some of it’s features into a web app so I keep track of the cool links I find. I use the Tumblr bookmarklet which makes it fast and easy to post links.

A simple exercise management lifehack

Mon, 24 May 2010 09:00:00 -0400

If I’m working at a computer all day on a regular basis I find it necessary to plan an exercise schedule. If I don’t I feel awful about not exercising and it becomes a distraction. I’m inspired by this description of novelist Haruki Murakami’s daily schedule while writing a novel:

I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind. But to hold to such repetition for so long — six months to a year — requires a good amount of mental and physical strength. In that sense, writing a long novel is like survival training. Physical strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity.

I like to have a sense of how close I am to reaching a destination so I use a simple accounting tool to keep track of how much I exercise. Here’s what you do: take a clean sheet of paper and write the month on the top line along with a goal of how many exercises you want to aim for. Skip a line then write an exercise per line.

It looks like this:

May (goal: 10 exercises)

1 Mile Running

30+ Pushups

Make a tick mark every time you complete a set of an exercise. Keep the paper and a pen on your desk or somewhere you can see it everyday. Review at the end of the month and customize as necessary.

Lessons from the Appointment Reminder Launch

Tue, 18 May 2010 09:21:00 -0400

Patrick McKenzie recently launched a new product called Appointment Reminder. Actually, it’s just a demo but this was done intentionally. Let me explain.

There is a “lean startup” movement that includes a concept called the MVP, or minimum viable product. The MVP is the first “product” (in quotes because it doesn’t actually need to be a working application as you’d expect for a software product) that you show potential customers with the intention of gathering feedback to determine what to do next. The key is to spend the least amount of your resources (time, money, etc) until you are sure you have a product worth investing in. The main thing you want to find out with the MVP is if there is a market need for your product.

The Appointment Reminder MVP consists of a website and a demo that will call you (your phone will ring) to give you a taste of what the service will be like. Patrick mentioned on Twitter that he started getting messages from people who couldn’t find the “Sign up” button. The thing is, you can’t sign up yet because the product isn’t finished. It’s a great sign though and it perfectly illustrates how the MVP can be used to gauge market demand. It can also be used for getting product feedback or collecting emails.

The lesson is that I had previously thought that the MVP should be a finished, minimal product with core features. Now I realize it’s value is in what you can learn with it, not what it does. I had seen the same lesson illustrated in Dropbox Startup Lessons Learned but it didn’t sink in completely until I saw Patrick’s MVP.

Some other blogs by software developers that I like

Mon, 17 May 2010 14:51:00 -0400

I like Marco’s blog. He’s the lead developer of Tumblr. I ask myself why I like it and I’m not really sure. Sometimes the posts are pretty random and don’t have anything to do with software. The thing is, I don’t really care and I still like it. It’s proof that a good blog can go off topic sometimes. I conclude that it’s okay to go off topic as long as you keep your main focus central.

Another blog I like is Patrick McKenzie’s blog. He’s a software developer that worked for a large company as a Japanese Salaryman. This means he was working sixty to eighty hour weeks and frequently sleeping at a hotel near his work on long days. He spent close to one hundred days sleeping at the hotel in a typical year. Anyway, Patrick started an online business (a Bingo software application) on five hours a week. In April of 2010 he switched to working on his business full time. Interesting story, interesting blog.

New iPhone App Coming May 18th

Fri, 14 May 2010 15:14:52 -0400

I’m about to release a new iPhone app on May 18th. I made this one in about a month which is the time frame I was aiming for. Given the hit-based nature of the App Store, I would rather create three apps in three months than one app in three months. With three apps in the store I can evaluate which idea is doing best and focus on it or just make another app.

The inspiration for my new app, Song Library Scanner, is the fact that the music playlists on the iPod and iPhone suck for telling you about what you listened to or rated recently. There is a My Top Rated playlist but it doesn’t show you the ratings. There is a Recently Played playlist but it doesn’t show when you played the songs. There is Top 25 Most Played playlist but it doesn’t give you the play count.

The data in the playlists that you’d want to share is missing. The real purpose of Song Library Scanner is to find the songs that you’d want to share (recently played, most played, rated 5 stars, etc) and let you tell your friends about them. After you find the songs you can post a message on Facebook. Your friends can see what great music you’ve found.

I’m also trying out a feedback form on the app site to make it easier to get feature requests, comments, etc. It’s powered by Wufoo in case you’re curious. The app is going to be free with ads. I’ve got at least one month worth of ideas about how to make the app better but I want to see what people think before I add anything.

Going to the extreme points

Wed, 12 May 2010 10:00:00 -0400

Here’s a long term strategy I use to figure out what I should be doing.

When I made my first iPhone app it took about three months to do all the design, graphics and programming. I was aiming to make something quickly and three months seemed quick.

Next I decided that what I would really like to do is make a music game that I could add music to every few months. It took about four months to finish the first release. I was aiming to make something that wouldn’t take long but my definition of long was still around eight to twelve months.

In retrospect, three to four months is a long time to spend on one app. That is now my extreme point for development time. To experiment, I’m going to go in the opposite direction and make an app in a week. A week probably means a few weeks if I include making the icon, testing, surprises, improving the design, etc but that’s fine too. A month is still much shorter than three or four months.

When I’m done with that app I’ll have established two reference points in my mind: shortest development time and longest development time. With that information I can determine which strategy works best and I’ll know the direction to go in next.