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- <title>Signal vs. Noise</title>
- <link>http://37signals.com/svn/posts</link>
- <language>en-us</language>
- <ttl>40</ttl>
- <description>Signal vs. Noise</description>
- <item>
- <dc:creator>Jamie</dc:creator>
- <title>VIDEO: Inspiring stuff. Related SvN posts: The first…</title>
- <description><iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/ehDAP1OQ9Zw?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
- <p>Inspiring stuff. Related SvN posts: <a href="http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2538-the-first-step-is-to-start">The first step is to start</a> and <a href="http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3014-four-tips-for-learning-how-to-program">Four tips for learning how to program</a></p></description>
- <pubDate>Wed, 16 Nov 2011 12:06:00 +0000</pubDate>
- <guid>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3044-inspiring-stuff-related-svn-posts-the-first</guid>
- <link>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3044-inspiring-stuff-related-svn-posts-the-first</link>
- </item>
- <item>
- <dc:creator>Ryan</dc:creator>
- <title>QUOTE: Designing a product is keeping five thousand…</title>
- <description><p>Designing a product is keeping five thousand things in your brain and fitting them all together in new and different ways to get what you want. And every day you discover something new that is a new problem or a new opportunity to fit these things together a little differently.</p>
- <p>And it’s that process that is the magic.</p>
- <p>&#8212;Steve Jobs (via <a href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/11/15/parable-of-the-stones">Daring Fireball</a>)</p></description>
- <pubDate>Tue, 15 Nov 2011 23:58:00 +0000</pubDate>
- <guid>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3042-designing-a-product-is-keeping-five-thousand</guid>
- <link>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3042-designing-a-product-is-keeping-five-thousand</link>
- </item>
- <item>
- <dc:creator>Joan</dc:creator>
- <title>Welcome Shaun and Emily!</title>
- <description><p>A couple terrific people have joined our team recently: Shaun Hildner and Emily Wilder.</p>
- <p>Jason <a href="http://www.inc.com/magazine/201111/jason-fried-on-telling-your-companys-story-on-film.html">wrote a little bit about him in Inc.</a>, so you might already know that Shaun joined us a little over a month ago as our new videographer. He made both the great logo animation and customer appreciation party video. Shaun is originally from Montana (also known in my area of the country as Western Real America) and now lives in Chicago. His application and <a href="http://vimeo.com/25537367">demo reel</a> really impressed everyone at 37signals and we’re very pleased to have him aboard.</p>
- <p>If you’ve sent in a support ticket or checked out our <a href="http://smiley.37signals.com/">Smiley ratings</a> in the past few weeks, you might have noticed a new face. Emily Wilder has joined our Customer Support team, which means we are seven members strong and finally able to compete in water polo.</p>
- <p>Emily was hired in an effort to replicate qualities from existing support team members: a redhead like Ann, a Northern California transplant to Austin like Merissa, and a passion for helping people like all of us. Emily told me her heroes are people she knows who manage to be brilliant while unfailingly kind, and her superpowers include the ability summon bagpipes with her mind and bake bread without a recipe.</p>
- <p>You can follow <a href="http://twitter.com/wilderemily">Emily</a> and <a href="http://twitter.com/shildner">Shaun</a> on Twitter or help us welcome them here!</p></description>
- <pubDate>Thu, 10 Nov 2011 23:34:00 +0000</pubDate>
- <guid>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3041-welcome-shaun-and-emily</guid>
- <link>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3041-welcome-shaun-and-emily</link>
- </item>
- <item>
- <dc:creator>Jason F.</dc:creator>
- <title>PHOTO: Fisher Price toy.</title>
- <description><img alt="7214820_0_9999_med_v1_m56577569830498825.jpg" height="300" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/37assets/svn/thumb-7214820_0_9999_med_v1_m56577569830498825-0d957b6b97b074202e02b3d94032e9c3.jpg" width="300" />
- <p>Fisher Price toy.</p></description>
- <pubDate>Tue, 08 Nov 2011 18:50:00 +0000</pubDate>
- <guid>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3040-fisher-price-toy</guid>
- <link>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3040-fisher-price-toy</link>
- </item>
- <item>
- <dc:creator>Jason F.</dc:creator>
- <title>PHOTO: Hypercard.</title>
- <description><img alt="hypercard.gif" height="342" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/37assets/svn/thumb-hypercard-784ba42572b818509af64ea72d27e477.gif" width="512" />
- <p>Hypercard.</p></description>
- <pubDate>Mon, 07 Nov 2011 15:50:00 +0000</pubDate>
- <guid>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3039-hypercard</guid>
- <link>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3039-hypercard</link>
- </item>
- <item>
- <dc:creator>Jason F.</dc:creator>
- <title>Quick little UI feedback tip</title>
- <description><p>Sometimes when I&#8217;m giving feedback on a UI, and I&#8217;m pointing out a spacing detail, I upload a little screenshot to Basecamp or Campfire to help make sure the feedback is clear.</p>
- <p>I wanted to share a little tweak to the feedback which I think is ultimately more useful. In this example I&#8217;m pointing out that the space above and below an element is not equal (and I think it should be).</p>
- <p>I used to do it like this:</p>
- <p><img src="http://37assets.s3.amazonaws.com/svn/uispace-lines.png" /></p>
- <p>Two lines. One line above the element (text, in this case) extending to the next element above it, and one line below the element extending to the next element below it. The length of the lines shows the different spacing. That works, but the difference &#8211; especially when we&#8217;re talking about small units of pixels &#8211; isn&#8217;t as clear as it could be.</p>
- <p>Then I switched to doing it like this:</p>
- <p><img src="http://37assets.s3.amazonaws.com/svn/uispace-blocks.png" /></p>
- <p>Blocks like this are easier to see than thin one pixels lines. This is an improvement. But it&#8217;s still not as clear as it could be because it&#8217;s not as easy to judge the comparative volume of a rectangle as it is a square. So&#8230;</p>
- <p>This is how I do it now:</p>
- <p><img src="http://37assets.s3.amazonaws.com/svn/uispace-squares.png" /></p>
- <p>The same vertical distance is covered, but now, since both blocks are perfect squares, we have related horizontal distance which helps you see how much bigger the difference is.</p>
- <p>Why not just say 24px vs 35px? Because I want to point out the physical difference, not the exact number of pixels. If we&#8217;re just talking numbers then it&#8217;s easy to assume 24px or 35px is right. But maybe the final size is 27px or 31px. I don&#8217;t want to get stuck on numbers when I provide feedback like this. The final number isn&#8217;t important as long as it&#8217;s the same (and it looks right).</p>
- <p>I hope this was helpful.</p></description>
- <pubDate>Fri, 04 Nov 2011 18:39:00 +0000</pubDate>
- <guid>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3038-quick-little-ui-feedback-tip</guid>
- <link>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3038-quick-little-ui-feedback-tip</link>
- </item>
- <item>
- <dc:creator>David</dc:creator>
- <title>PHOTO: scumbag-jason-2</title>
- <description><img alt="scumbag-jason-2.png" height="675" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/37assets/svn/thumb-scumbag-jason-2-57ace631e7d5f17373e871aa2ea45045.png" width="442" />
- </description>
- <pubDate>Fri, 04 Nov 2011 04:21:00 +0000</pubDate>
- <guid>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3037-scumbag-jason-2</guid>
- <link>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3037-scumbag-jason-2</link>
- </item>
- <item>
- <dc:creator>Shaun</dc:creator>
- <title>Evolution of a Logo Animation</title>
- <description><p>I suppose this is my first SvN post, so by way of an introduction I thought I&#8217;d share a bit about creating the animated 37signals logo.</p>
- <p>When I first came on as &#8220;the video guy,&#8221; I wanted to think about how to brand 37signals&#8217; wide variety of content with an interesting and unifying bumper. We hadn&#8217;t had to deal much with incorporating our logo into video, so it was time we gave it a bit of motion.</p>
- <p>37signals is all about building things&#8212;from building a business to building software. I wanted the logo to &#8220;build&#8221; itself to reveal the design. </p>
- <p>I actually landed on the basic animation that would become the final product early on, but kept trying more and more complicated versions. I spent a week teaching myself new 3D software and countless hours tweaking every frame to get it just right, but as these things often go, we ended up back with a simple, clean design. The way the logo &#8220;builds&#8221; itself feels natural; it&#8217;s hard to imagine it moving any other way.</p>
- <p>Not that it wasn&#8217;t worth it to challenge myself&#8212;I certainly enjoy learning new software and techniques, but it&#8217;s a good lesson to learn. More often than not, the simplest solution is often the best.</p>
- <p>The chimes were a lucky coincidence. I needed some audio to give the animation a little more life. Using GarageBand and hitting four random keys on my keyboard, I came up with the chimes as a placeholder until someone with musical talent could get their ears on it. Like many things around here, it just worked&#8212;so we left it in the final version.</p>
- <p>Here are a few of the different iterations we tossed around.</p>
- <iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/31555416?title=0&amp;byline=0&amp;portrait=0" width="440" height="248" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen allowFullScreen></iframe></description>
- <pubDate>Thu, 03 Nov 2011 20:22:00 +0000</pubDate>
- <guid>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3036-evolution-of-a-logo-animation</guid>
- <link>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3036-evolution-of-a-logo-animation</link>
- </item>
- <item>
- <dc:creator>Jason F.</dc:creator>
- <title>INSIGHT: You break expectations by changing what someone…</title>
- <description><p>You break expectations by changing what someone&#8217;s already used to. You change expectations by giving them something new. Understanding the difference is key to product design.</p></description>
- <pubDate>Thu, 03 Nov 2011 18:11:00 +0000</pubDate>
- <guid>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3035-you-break-expectations-by-changing-what-someone</guid>
- <link>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3035-you-break-expectations-by-changing-what-someone</link>
- </item>
- <item>
- <dc:creator>Ryan</dc:creator>
- <title>QUOTE: Remember, a real engineer doesn&#8217;t want…</title>
- <description><p>Remember, a real engineer doesn&#8217;t want just a religion about how to solve the problem. Like &#8216;object-oriented&#8217;, or &#8216;functional&#8217;, or &#8216;imperative&#8217;, or &#8216;logic programming&#8217;. This piece of the problem wants to be a functional program. This piece of the program wants to be imperative. This piece wants to be object-oriented and guess what&#8212;this piece want to be logic-based. And they all want to work together usefully, because of the way the problem is structured.</p>
- <p>&#8212;Gerald Jay Sussman, <a href="http://www.infoq.com/presentations/We-Really-Dont-Know-How-To-Compute">We Really Don&#8217;t Know How to Compute!</a></p></description>
- <pubDate>Tue, 01 Nov 2011 19:30:00 +0000</pubDate>
- <guid>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3034-remember-a-real-engineer-doesnt-want</guid>
- <link>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3034-remember-a-real-engineer-doesnt-want</link>
- </item>
- <item>
- <dc:creator>Jamie</dc:creator>
- <title>First Round Winners: Basecamp Tell a Friend Contest </title>
- <description><p><img src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/37assets/svn/740-winners.png" align="left" style="margin-top: 30px; margin-right: 20px; margin-bottom: 20px; border: none;" /></p>
- <p>We&#8217;re happy to announce the first round of winners in our <a href="https://tellafriend.37signals.com">Basecamp Tell a Friend Contest</a>:</p>
- <p><strong>iPad Winners:</strong>
- Darren from Victoria, Australia uses Basecamp at all three of his businesses: <a href="http://www.problogger.net/">Pro Blogger</a>, <a href="http://www.digital-photography-school.com/">Digital Photography School</a>, and <a href="http://www.feelgooder.com/">FeelGooder</a>. JoAnne from Smithtown, NY uses Basecamp at <a href="http://www.lighthausdesign.com/">Lighthaus Design, Inc.</a> and <a href="http://www.gettingrealhealth.com/">Getting Real Health</a>.</p>
- <p><strong>MacBook Air Winner:</strong>
- Michael from New Hope, PA is a Basecamp fan, <a href="http://michaelport.com/">best-selling author, professional speaker, and entrepreneur</a>.</p>
- <p><strong>Tell your friends about Basecamp for a chance to win</strong><br />
- We still have 9 more iPads, 2 MacBook Airs, and $5,000 cash to give away. Every friend that you sign up for Basecamp also gets $10 off their first month. Here’s how it works:</p>
- <ul>
- <li>Sign up with your Basecamp account at <a href="https://tellafriend.37signals.com">https://tellafriend.37signals.com</a>.</li>
- <li>We&#8217;ll give you a special link that you can tweet, share on Facebook, or email to your friends.</li>
- <li>Every person that signs up from your link for a paid Basecamp plan will get $10 off their first month.</li>
- <li>Every person you sign up counts as a <a href="https://tellafriend.37signals.com/prizes">chance to win one of our prizes</a>.</li>
- </ul>
- <p>This contest ends on January 2, 2012. <a href="https://tellafriend.37signals.com">Sign up today</a> and start saving your friends $10 off their first month.</p></description>
- <pubDate>Mon, 31 Oct 2011 13:43:00 +0000</pubDate>
- <guid>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3033-first-round-winners-basecamp-tell-a-friend-contest-</guid>
- <link>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3033-first-round-winners-basecamp-tell-a-friend-contest-</link>
- </item>
- <item>
- <dc:creator>Jamis</dc:creator>
- <title>QUOTE: When a friend calls to me from the road
- And…</title>
- <description><p>When a friend calls to me from the road<br />
- And slows his horse to a meaning walk,<br />
- I don&#8217;t stand still and look around<br />
- On all the hills I haven&#8217;t hoed,<br />
- And shout from where I am, What is it?<br />
- No, not as there is a time to talk.<br />
- I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,<br />
- Blade-end up and five feet tall,<br />
- And plod: I go up to the stone wall<br />
- For a friendly visit.</p>
- <p>&#8212;Robert Frost, &#8220;A Time to Talk&#8221;</p></description>
- <pubDate>Fri, 28 Oct 2011 14:40:00 +0000</pubDate>
- <guid>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3032-when-a-friend-calls-to-me-from-the-road-and</guid>
- <link>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3032-when-a-friend-calls-to-me-from-the-road-and</link>
- </item>
- <item>
- <dc:creator>Jason F.</dc:creator>
- <title>A little customer get together in Chicago</title>
- <description><p>Last week our whole company got together. We try to do this a few times a year. We fly everyone in and all spend a few days together in Chicago. We share what we&#8217;re working on, we talk, we debate, we review, we get some work done, and we have some fun.</p>
- <p>Usually we reserve one of the nights to all go out to dinner together, but this time we decided to host some of our Chicago-based customers at a party at our office instead. We invited about 50 customers &#8211; some new, some old &#8211; and all hung out for a few hours. We met, exchanged ideas, fielded feature requests, and just got to know each other. Everyone had a great time. Thanks to everyone who came.</p>
- <p>We put together a little video to share.</p>
- <iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/31097623?title=0&amp;byline=0&amp;portrait=0" width="530" height="298" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen allowFullScreen></iframe>
- <p><br /></p>
- <p>Special thanks to Steve Dale from <a href="http://www.gyro.com/">Gyro</a>, Jimmy Spencer Jr. from <a href="http://www.lovewithoutagenda.com/">Love Without Agenda</a>, Ray Hightower from <a href="http://wisdomgroup.com/">Wisdom Group</a>, Ben Greiner from <a href="http://www.forgetcomputers.com/">Forget Computers</a>, and Michael Carney from <a href="http://mwcaccounting.com/"><span class="caps">MWC</span> Accounting</a> for taking some extra time to be interviewed on camera.</p></description>
- <pubDate>Tue, 25 Oct 2011 21:11:00 +0000</pubDate>
- <guid>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3031-a-little-customer-get-together-in-chicago</guid>
- <link>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3031-a-little-customer-get-together-in-chicago</link>
- </item>
- <item>
- <dc:creator>Jason F.</dc:creator>
- <title>QUOTE: And just as Steve loved ideas, and loved…</title>
- <description><p>And just as Steve loved ideas, and loved making stuff, he treated the process of creativity with a rare and a wonderful reverence. You see, I think he better than anyone understood that while ideas ultimately can be so powerful, they begin as fragile, barely formed thoughts, so easily missed, so easily compromised, so easily just squished.</p>
- <p>&#8212;Jonathan Ive at the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&#38;v=nPUsuY8JZJI">Steve Jobs Tribute</a> on the Apple campus. His talk starts around 47:17 right after Tim Cook introduces him.</p></description>
- <pubDate>Tue, 25 Oct 2011 13:31:00 +0000</pubDate>
- <guid>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3030-and-just-as-steve-loved-ideas-and-loved</guid>
- <link>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3030-and-just-as-steve-loved-ideas-and-loved</link>
- </item>
- <item>
- <dc:creator>Jason Z.</dc:creator>
- <title>INSIGHT: Who is the star of your product? Do you want…</title>
- <description><p>Who is the star of your product? Do you want people to think your product is awesome, or would you rather they felt awesome about themselves because they used your product? Does the UI say &#8220;Look at how beautiful this app is&#8221; or &#8220;Look at how beautiful your content is&#8221;?</p></description>
- <pubDate>Thu, 20 Oct 2011 19:16:00 +0000</pubDate>
- <guid>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3029-who-is-the-star-of-your-product-do-you-want</guid>
- <link>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3029-who-is-the-star-of-your-product-do-you-want</link>
- </item>
- <item>
- <dc:creator>37signals</dc:creator>
- <title>New in Highrise: LinkedIn profiles</title>
- <description><p>Today we’re introducing LinkedIn profiles in <a href="http://highrisehq.com/?source=svn_post">Highrise</a>.
- You can now add LinkedIn URLs to your contacts to see their profiles in Highrise instantly.
- You’ll have easy access to all the specialties and qualifications listed in their LinkedIn profiles.</p>
- <p><img src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/37assets/svn/705-taylor-linkedin-profile.png" /></p>
- <h2>How to set it up</h2>
- <p>It&#8217;s simple: Just go to a contact, click the &#8220;Edit&#8221; link in the top right corner, then scroll down to the &#8220;Social media&#8221; section on the edit screen. Enter the person&#8217;s public LinkedIn profile <span class="caps">URL</span> and click save. Then you&#8217;ll see a &#8220;LinkedIn&#8221; tab at the top of their contact page. Click that link and you&#8217;ll have access to their LinkedIn profile.</p>
- <p>To make the most of this feature you’ll need to have an account on LinkedIn.
- Highrise uses your LinkedIn account to grab the latest profile each time you view one of your contacts.
- This ensures the profile information you see is always up to date.</p>
- <p>Integration with LinkedIn has been a popular customer request since we launched Highrise.
- We’re pleased to make it a reality today and we hope it makes Highrise more useful to you everyday.</p></description>
- <pubDate>Tue, 18 Oct 2011 12:40:00 +0000</pubDate>
- <guid>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2985-new-in-highrise-linkedin-profiles</guid>
- <link>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2985-new-in-highrise-linkedin-profiles</link>
- </item>
- <item>
- <dc:creator>Ryan</dc:creator>
- <title>Watch Ryan sketch and code a UI from scratch on PeepCode</title>
- <description><p>Last month the folks from PeepCode visited our office and asked to record my design process. Geoffrey told me not to prepare anything. He said he&#8217;d show up with a sample problem and simply record whatever I did with it. The result is two 75-minute videos (<a href="https://peepcode.com/products/ryan-singer-ux">Part One</a>, <a href="http://peepcode.com/products/ryan-singer-ii">Part Two</a>) that show my thought process step-by-step, starting with paper sketches and then moving on to <span class="caps">HTML</span>/CSS.</p>
- <p>The hard thing about demonstrating design is the sample problem. The problem should be simple enough that the details don&#8217;t bog down the audience, but complicated enough that you run into real-life conflicts and constraints.</p>
- <p>Fortunately Geoffrey picked a really good sample domain. He asked me to design a UI for picking the top five finishers out of 200 participants in a pro bicycling race. The task was rich and interesting enough that we spent the first 75 minutes purely sketching and analyzing the approach.</p>
- <p>The first video, <a href="https://peepcode.com/products/ryan-singer-ux">Part One</a>, covers the sketching process. A lot of good material came out of this section, including:</p>
- <ul>
- <li>How to tackle a UI problem by dividing it into tasks that each have a beginning, middle and end</li>
- <li>How to use sketching as a response to uncertainty, and when to stop sketching and move on to <span class="caps">HTML</span></li>
- <li>How to focus on the most natural solution so that people will intuitively grasp a design</li>
- <li>How to focus your design process on conflicts and friction points, attacking them one by one until the design works</li>
- </ul>
- <p>This video also gave me a chance to explain the UI design process through an analogy to software testing. Kent Beck&#8217;s <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Test-Driven-Development-Kent-Beck/dp/0321146530">Test-Driven Development</a> had a huge influence on me, and I&#8217;ve always had trouble explaining the connection. In both videos I continually refer to setting up &#8220;tests&#8221; &mdash; specific things in the design that aren&#8217;t working or aren&#8217;t resolved &mdash; and then design against those tests until they &#8220;pass&#8221; (that is, until the problem goes away). This loose analogy articulates that tricky and hard-to-pin-down process where a designer continually moves their focus among pieces of a problem and along the way settles conflicts step-by-step in a constructive sequence.</p>
- <p>I think the process will be interesting to both designers and coders. Designers can compare the process to their own, while coders can use the analogies to software testing to see design as an extension of concepts they already know.</p>
- <p>In the second video, <a href="http://peepcode.com/products/ryan-singer-ii">Part Two</a>, I take the sketches and ideas from the first session and build them out in <span class="caps">HTML</span> and <span class="caps">CSS</span>. Along the way I dip in and out of Photoshop, explaining the time and place for each tool.</p>
- <p>Part Two especially focuses on getting quick results in the browser. I sketch out dom elements, give them classes to communicate their purpose, and gradually decorate them with inline styles until the design comes together in the browser.</p>
- <p>I would prefer videos like this to be free. But Geoffrey had the idea to begin with and his PeepCode team did all the hard work. I just showed up one Friday morning for a couple hours of design practice. So if the material is useful to you I hope you&#8217;ll support their effort and buy the videos at $12/each.</p>
- <p>Here are the links:</p>
- <ol>
- <li><a href="https://peepcode.com/products/ryan-singer-ux">PeepCode Play by Play: Ryan Singer Part One</a></li>
- <li><a href="http://peepcode.com/products/ryan-singer-ii">PeepCode Play by Play: Ryan Singer Part Two</a></li>
- </ol>
- <p>There&#8217;s also a <a href="https://peepcode.com/products/ryan-singer-ux">10 minute preview</a> on the Part One page.</p>
- <p>I hope they&#8217;re useful!</p></description>
- <pubDate>Sun, 16 Oct 2011 22:35:00 +0000</pubDate>
- <guid>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3028-watch-ryan-sketch-and-code-a-ui-from-scratch-on-peepcode</guid>
- <link>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3028-watch-ryan-sketch-and-code-a-ui-from-scratch-on-peepcode</link>
- </item>
- <item>
- <dc:creator>Jason F.</dc:creator>
- <title>INSIGHT: Some designs are evil &#8211; you know they…</title>
- <description><p>Some designs are evil &#8211; you know they&#8217;re bad right away. Others are like love at first sight. And some you just need to live with for a while before making up your mind.</p></description>
- <pubDate>Sat, 15 Oct 2011 15:45:00 +0000</pubDate>
- <guid>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3027-some-designs-are-evil-you-know-they</guid>
- <link>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3027-some-designs-are-evil-you-know-they</link>
- </item>
- <item>
- <dc:creator>37signals</dc:creator>
- <title>Fast and great support from the 37signals team</title>
- <description><p>Our support team works hard every day to make our customers happy, and we&#8217;re always proud to <a href="http://smiley.37signals.com/">show how great a job they do</a>.</p>
- <p>In addition to making customers happy, our fantastic team also answers questions <b><i>fast</i></b>. Across the last 500 new cases we&#8217;ve received during our normal hours, we&#8217;ve responded to 97% in less than hour, with the average case answered in 14 minutes and solved in 25 minutes.</p>
- <p>Our team has been steadily improving at this too. Over the last few months, we&#8217;ve steadily cut down response times, all while maintaining or improving customer happiness.</p>
- <p><a href = "http://s3.amazonaws.com/37assets/svn/739-support_last_3_months.png " target="_blank"><img src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/37assets/svn/739-support_last_3_months.png" width="530" style="border:none" /></a></p>
- <p>Congratulations to Michael, Ann, Kristin, Merissa, Joan, and Chase!</p></description>
- <pubDate>Thu, 13 Oct 2011 16:35:00 +0000</pubDate>
- <guid>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3026-fast-and-great-support-from-the-37signals-team</guid>
- <link>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3026-fast-and-great-support-from-the-37signals-team</link>
- </item>
- <item>
- <dc:creator>Jason F.</dc:creator>
- <title>Questions I ask when reviewing a design</title>
- <description><p>I&#8217;ve been thinking more about how I review a design &#8211; both my own and someone else&#8217;s. So over the past couple days I&#8217;ve been writing down every question I&#8217;ve been asking when I look at a design-in-progress. Some of these I say out loud, some just go through my head, some are in person, others are posted to Basecamp or Campfire.</p>
- <p>These are in no particular order, and I don&#8217;t ask all of them every time.</p>
- <ul>
- <li>What does it say?</li>
- <li>What does it mean?</li>
- <li>Is what it says and what it means the same thing?</li>
- <li>Do we want that?</li>
- <li>Why do we need to say that here?</li>
- <li>If you stopped reading here, what&#8217;s the message?</li>
- <li>What&#8217;s the take away after 8 seconds?</li>
- <li>How does this make you feel?</li>
- <li>What&#8217;s down below?</li>
- <li>How else can we say this?</li>
- <li>What&#8217;s memorable about this?</li>
- <li>What&#8217;s that for?</li>
- <li>Who needs to know that?</li>
- <li>Who needs to see that?</li>
- <li>How does that change behavior?</li>
- <li>What&#8217;s the payoff?</li>
- <li>What does someone know now that they didn&#8217;t know before?</li>
- <li>How does that work?</li>
- <li>Why is that worth a click?</li>
- <li>Is that worth scrolling?</li>
- <li>What&#8217;s the simpler version of this?</li>
- <li>Are we assuming too much?</li>
- <li>Why that order?</li>
- <li>Why would this make them choose that?</li>
- <li>What does a more polished version of this look like?</li>
- <li>Why would someone leave at this point?</li>
- <li>What&#8217;s missing?</li>
- <li>Why are we saying this twice?</li>
- <li>Is it worth pulling attention away from that?</li>
- <li>Does that make it clearer?</li>
- <li>What&#8217;s the obvious next step?</li>
- <li>How would someone know that?</li>
- <li>Would it matter if someone missed that?</li>
- <li>Does that make it easier or harder?</li>
- <li>Would this be better as a sentence or a picture?</li>
- <li>Where&#8217;s the verb?</li>
- <li>Why is that there?</li>
- <li>What matters here?</li>
- <li>What would happen if we got rid of that?</li>
- <li>Why isn&#8217;t that clear?</li>
- <li>Why is this better?</li>
- <li>How can we make this more obvious?</li>
- <li>What happens when this expands?</li>
- <li>If we got rid of this, does that still work?</li>
- <li>Is it obvious what happens next?</li>
- <li>What just happened?</li>
- <li>Where&#8217;s the idea?</li>
- <li>What problem is that solving?</li>
- <li>How does this change someone&#8217;s mind?</li>
- <li>What makes this a must have?</li>
- </ul></description>
- <pubDate>Tue, 11 Oct 2011 16:20:00 +0000</pubDate>
- <guid>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3024-questions-i-ask-when-reviewing-a-design</guid>
- <link>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3024-questions-i-ask-when-reviewing-a-design</link>
- </item>
- <item>
- <dc:creator>David</dc:creator>
- <title>Why programs become territorial</title>
- <description><p>&#8220;Can you ask Sam about that? Stacker is his domain&#8221;, &#8220;I&#8217;d rather let Josh look at the router, he wrote it&#8221;, &#8220;Jon is better versed in associations, send it to him&#8221;.</p>
- <p>The natural progression of programs is towards the territorial. When a programmer has weaved an intricate web of considerable complexity, others are loathe to enter his lair and he is loathe for them to do so.</p>
- <p>This is despite the fact that we all agree that it&#8217;s bad for programs to become territorial. When only one or a few people know how to work on something, you get bottlenecks where progress is stunted until the master is ready. You risk the hit-by-a-bus factor where nobody knows how the system works if the master leaves. You ensure the annoyance of stakeholders who can&#8217;t understand why another minion can&#8217;t fix his urgent problem.</p>
- <p>But this problem can&#8217;t be solved with a slogan. You can proclaim that &#8220;we shouldn&#8217;t have territorial parts of our program&#8221; until you turn blue, but nothing is going to change until you accept the cost of avoidance.</p>
- <p>The first step of acceptance is to recognize that sending someone fresh in to fix a single issue in a complex part of the code is expensive. It&#8217;s going to take Pratik five to ten times the effort to fix a single issue in Stacker that it&#8217;s going to take Sam. And the odds are that even that is not enough to appreciate the internal coherency of the system, which means that the fix is likely to be a butcher&#8217;s job, and Sam will have to rewrite it afterwards anyway.</p>
- <p>To broaden the base of knowledge, you&#8217;re going to have to let someone else not only spend considerable effort getting up to speed. Then you&#8217;re going to have them deal with more than just a quick fix. Let them deal with a raft of issues and let them spend the time of the original creator to learn it all.</p>
- <p>To do all that, they can&#8217;t do anything else at the same time. That feature you want do is now going to be pushed a few days or a a week out. Until you&#8217;re ready to delay things you really want done, it&#8217;s fruitless to bemoan that parts of the code base territorial.</p></description>
- <pubDate>Tue, 11 Oct 2011 15:49:00 +0000</pubDate>
- <guid>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3023-why-programs-become-territorial</guid>
- <link>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3023-why-programs-become-territorial</link>
- </item>
- <item>
- <dc:creator>David</dc:creator>
- <title>QUESTION: The home button on the iPhone 4 stopped working…</title>
- <description><p>The home button on the iPhone 4 stopped working properly for both Jason and I recently. Requiring hard presses or multiple tries to work. It appears that lots of people have this problem. Has it happened to you yet? Let&#8217;s track this.</p></description>
- <pubDate>Fri, 07 Oct 2011 21:07:00 +0000</pubDate>
- <guid>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3022-the-home-button-on-the-iphone-4-stopped-working</guid>
- <link>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3022-the-home-button-on-the-iphone-4-stopped-working</link>
- </item>
- <item>
- <dc:creator>Jason F.</dc:creator>
- <title>Steve Jobs changed</title>
- <description><p>He changed computers.<br />
- He changed software.<br />
- He changed design.<br />
- He changed publishing.<br />
- He changed film.<br />
- He changed music.<br />
- He changed advertising.<br />
- He changed retail.<br />
- He changed business.</p>
- <p>He changed beige.</p>
- <p>He changed expectations.<br />
- He changed our minds.<br /></p>
- <p>He changed them.<br />
- He changed us.<br />
- He changed you.</p>
- <p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t be sad because it&#8217;s over. Smile because it happened.&#8221; &#8211; Dr. Seuss</p>
- <p><em>Now what are you going to change?</em></p></description>
- <pubDate>Thu, 06 Oct 2011 14:02:00 +0000</pubDate>
- <guid>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3021-steve-jobs-changed</guid>
- <link>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3021-steve-jobs-changed</link>
- </item>
- <item>
- <dc:creator>Ann</dc:creator>
- <title>37colors</title>
- <description><p>This weekend during the Ravenswood Art Walk, I visited <a href="http://www.lornaslaces.net/">Lorna&#8217;s Laces</a>. They hand-dye yarns in some really beautiful color combinations. I took some photos to share, because sometimes it&#8217;s nice to look at pretty things!</p>
- <p>Designers, how do you put colors together? Where do you find inspiration?</p>
- <p><img src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/37assets/svn/736-IMG_1391.JPG" /></p>
- <p><a href="http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3020-37colors">More...</a></p></description>
- <pubDate>Mon, 03 Oct 2011 22:42:00 +0000</pubDate>
- <guid>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3020-37colors</guid>
- <link>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3020-37colors</link>
- </item>
- <item>
- <dc:creator>Noah</dc:creator>
- <title>The rhythms of 37signals</title>
- <description><p>I was thinking this morning about what I perceived to be my normal working pattern&#8212;lots in the morning, then tapering out from mid-day on with an occasional bump in the evenings. I wanted to see if this was quantifiable through git logs, and I decided to look across a wide range of our repositories.</p>
- <p>The chart below shows the portion of each person&#8217;s commits that occur within a given hour of the day in their local time.</p>
- <p><a href="http://s3.amazonaws.com/37assets/svn/729-rhythms_for_svn_anon.png" target="_blank"><img src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/37assets/svn/729-rhythms_for_svn_anon.png" width='550' style="border: none;"/></a></p>
- <p>As you can see, there&#8217;s a wide range in preferred working hours &#8211; one of the great advantages of working in <a href="http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2888-real-time-vs-slow-time-and-a-defense-of-sane-work-hours">slow time</a> is that this is absolutely fine. There&#8217;s enough overlap in hours for people to be able to work together, but enough flexibility to work when you want to.</p></description>
- <pubDate>Thu, 29 Sep 2011 20:47:00 +0000</pubDate>
- <guid>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3019-the-rhythms-of-37signals</guid>
- <link>http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3019-the-rhythms-of-37signals</link>
- </item>
- </channel>
- </rss>
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