Category Archives: Behavior

New York to Nashville and Back Again

Time is a weird phenomenon when you’re holed up in a week-long series of business meetings, as I was this past week in Nashville. On Tuesday evening, it felt as I’d been there for a whole two weeks rather than just two days. Nearly every minute of every day was scheduled; if we weren’t meeting, we were preparing for the next meeting, and by Friday morning it felt like it had been a whole month we’d been there. But now I’m back in New York, and I can’t believe it was almost an entire week ago that I was leaving for the airport; I remember the sandwich I was eating just before walking out the door last Sunday like it was just two hours ago. Very odd.

Though I’m freakin’ exhausted, I have to say though that it was probably one of the most productive kick-offs in which I’ve ever taken part. We met with some forty-odd stakeholders and cranked through a huge requirements and information gathering agenda, led principally by our information architect. We do projects of all kinds of sizes at Behavior, but even the big ones aren’t always as intensive and well-structured as this, so it has me in a pretty positive state of mind about getting started on the design. It makes such a big difference to have properly conducted the necessary research at the beginning of a project. Now comes the hard part. Actually, now I take it easy for a day and a half first.

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The Sheltered Tennessean

I’m spending the week in Nashville, TN, kicking off a project with a brand new client. This happens to mean we’re back at the Opryland Hotel, which is still pretty crazy and great. A colleague likened it to “Bio-Dome” because the hotel is an environment of its own, a self-contained ecosystem of artificial waterfalls and fauna, miniature roadways, restaurants, cafés and even an adjunct convention and business center. And it’s true, since arriving here by airport shuttle on Friday night, we haven’t breathed more than 60 seconds of truly exposed Tennessee air. We’ve eaten, bathed and worked within the confines of this little universe almost exclusively. It’s weird, but oddly reassuring. Except for the fact that I have limited Internet access — there’s a nice high-speed line in my hotel room but it restricts access to unapproved SMTP servers, so sending email is pretty difficult. It’s certainly a case of more work than play, too, which means postings here will be limited this week. Y’all c’mon back now, ya hear?

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Get on My Good Side

It always seems like we could use another designer at Behavior and so we’re continually interviewing candidates, whether for immediate hire or down-the-road gigs. My partners do it more than I do, but it’s not unusual for me to sit in on a few from time to time. I’ve never been a big fan of interviews, though I admit the formal, almost adversarial constraints are a necessary evil of finding qualified designers to join our team.

Anyway, I’ve compiled a short, non-definitive list of things that have made interviews go well — for me. These are things that can improve the emotional temperature of an interview, i.e. they help a candidate ensure I’ll walk away with a positive impression of his or her wherwithal, presence of mind, and ability to interview, at least. These tips won’t necessarily improve someone’s chances for hire if the work is no good — and we’ve met candidates who have flouted one or more of these tips and still interviewed successfully — but every little bit helps.

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Miss Manners Guide to Opening Links in New Windows

New Window IconAt work we had a debate late in the day today about whether the links to projects in our portfolio should, when clicked upon, open up in a new browser window. My feeling is that, no, they should not, citing various usability recommendations against the practice (more here and here), and also the fact that the way the Web is evolving, popping up new windows is a practice most often used in hard-sell situations (insert links to any given hard core pornography site here).

Personally, it annoys the heck out of me when a Web site opens up a new window, as I think it’s bad manners and has the feel of amateurishness. But I admit that viewpoint could be just a combination of a skewed, blog-centric view of the Web (few if any weblogs open links in any new windows, by my count) and my own personal capacity for stubbornness.

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Citizen Daddy

Citizen ChangeA few weeks ago I mentioned that Behavior helped Sean “P. Diddy” Combs launch Citizen Change, his voter registration initiative with an extensive, Flash-based multimedia show that accompanied his press conference. Today, I’m happy to say that we’ve just re-launched CitizenChange.com too. It just went live, like, this morning — after a ton of blood, sweat and tears from our design team (I wasn’t a part of it, but it was easy to see that those folks worked their tails off, and with terrific results). Go check it out.

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No One Likes a Cheat

I’m cheating a little bit this evening, because I had written most of this post before I headed off to dinner and then to the movies to see Michael Mann’s “Collateral” (a review to follow soon) — so I’ve back-dated this a bit. Please don’t sue me. In any event, I wanted to say thanks to the very nice response that’s come over the transom to my post from Monday, “New Boxes, Same Arrows.” I really hadn’t expected it, but I was more than happy to see incoming links from the nice folks at Mezzoblue, Airbag and Waxy.org. The traffic and kind comments are very much appreciated.

Chris FaheyAlso, I wanted to correct one point on which I feel that I’ve been unduly clear or on which I’ve been unintentionally misleading: these comps aren’t mine, at least not in their entirety — they were a joint effort. I’m a hundred percent sure that there wouldn’t have been an entry at all without the help of my good friend and Behavior co-founder, Chris Fahey, who provided at least half the brainpower that went into the comps… and really, I think the brains are what makes them. It was also his idea to enter the contest in the first place… so he’s really the one responsible for that fourteen-hour working stretch of my life that I’ll never get back. Thanks, Chris.

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New Boxes, Same Arrows

Boxes and ArrowsWell-respected online information architecture magazine Boxes and Arrows announced an open redesign contest last month, the deadline for which was extended until just this morning. I found this out last Friday, when my Behavior colleague, Chris Fahey, suggested that we try to put together a submission.

Initially, I resisted the idea of taking part in this, mostly because of all the work that it was going to involve. The I.A. documents they provided were appropriately high-level for an audience of devoted, would-be contestants ready to finesse every little detail for themselves. For me, on the other hand, they were sufficiently lacking in detail that I knew it would take me a huge chunk of my weekend to sift through all the brain challenges required to get a coherent set of comprehensives designed.

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Flirtations with Fame

Two minor flirtations with fame today, one for me and one for my four-legged companion.

First, the prolific Mike Rundle has posted an interview with me at Business Logs, in which you can learn more about my secret origins, recent Web standards stirrings at Behavior and the future of weblogs as we know them (caveat emptor). Combined with a dollar bill, the answers I give to Mike’s questions may not get you more than a cup of coffee, but it’s still worth poking around the Business Logs Web site, where they’re trying to use weblogs to bring real business benefits to the organizations that are forward-thinking enough to capitalize on this still-evolving medium.

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New Work from Work

I’m still looking for that balance between feeling like I’ve accomplished a good day’s work at the office and feeling calm, relaxed and rested. I can’t seem to get there, but they say journey and reward are one and the same. Along the way, we’ve been pretty busy over at Behavior, and while my own head has been down and focusing on my own projects and challenges, I’ve been negligent about posting about some of the other stuff we’ve been doing.

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