Mark Forscher

Business is all about solving problems for our customers and for our organizations. So whenever an idea pops up that seems to solve a problem, we automatically shut down our critical thinking processes and accept it as the solution. We might take the time to debate how the idea needs to be implemented. But once an idea gets accepted as the solution, we become blind to anything else that might solve the problem in a different, more effective or efficient way.

Unfortunately, good ideas are not necessarily the best ones. To do what’s best for our organizations, we need to open our minds and consider all possible options, not just the first one that looks good. We need to consider that there may be multiple solutions to the same problem and focus on advantages and disadvantages of each or even if more than one solution is called for to meet the needs of differing stakeholders.

How do we stop jumping to solutions?
Start by encouraging divergent points of view during discussion of the problem. If people aren’t offering them, make a point to ask for them. For example, “We all seem to be locked into this one track. Does anyone have a different point of view?” “What if we had to come up with three solutions, what would they be?”

Make it a policy not to automatically accept the first good idea that comes along. Write it down on a flip chart and say, “That sounds good. Before we get into that, let’s see what else we can come up with.”

—Holy Green, “Stop Jumping to Solutions”

Startups need people able and willing of doing the actual work. They need programmers, designers, and eventually folks to do marketing, support, and more. What they don’t need, though, is someone who’s just going to be The Idea Guy.

—David Heinemeier Hansson, There’s no room for The Idea Guy

In an letter to a student, Christopher Fahey articulates the relationship between “web design,” “interaction design,” and “user experience”:

But the meaning of “the web” itself is blurring — when you use an app on your iPhone, or get a DVD from Netflix (or view a streaming NetFlix movie via your DVR), or read a book on a Kindle, are you not, to some degree, interacting with the web? My point is that “interactive systems” are bigger than just the web even if the web is a big part of them: that they involve so much more in terms of physical processes (Netflix had to invent a warehousing system), business models (should Kindle books cost the same, less, or more than physical books?), and that they’re always incorporating new technologies (touchscreen UIs fundamentally change how web design is done, and imagine how Apple’s tablet will shake up “web” design). Interaction design is influenced by entertainment, games… and global concerns like sustainability and digital accessibility.

In my class, we’ve worked on web sites, mobile apps, physical devices, and even just social system design (for example, how does a taxi driver “work” as a planned interactive system?). I think I am typical of SVA’s faculty in my attitude that great web design is just a flavor of great interaction design, which in turn is a flavor of experience design. So we don’t teach web design specifically, but students who want to focus on web design are absolutely free to do so, and we are happy to evaluate, guide, and teach ideas and concepts that advance web-based experiences. But I’d be lying if I told you that the web as we know it now is going to be the dominant interaction design paradigm of 2020. The fundamentals of interaction design aren’t about HTML and CSS, nor even about hard drives and keyboards. It’s about human beings, our relationships with each other (socially, business, culturally), with media, and with technology.

Well said.

Bruce Schneier writes on security and our response to terrorism:

Despite fearful rhetoric to the contrary, terrorism is not a transcendent threat. A terrorist attack cannot possibly destroy a country’s way of life; it’s only our reaction to that attack that can do that kind of damage. The more we undermine our own laws, the more we convert our buildings into fortresses, the more we reduce the freedoms and liberties at the foundation of our societies, the more we’re doing the terrorists’ job for them.

The whole piece is definitely worth a read. Schneier is insightful and as refreshingly candid as usual.

“I’m in no position to hand down any advice,” he said, “but there’s a rule I always follow when I don’t know what to do.”

“A rule?”

“If you have to choose between something that has form and something that doesn’t, go for the one without form. That’s my rule. Whenever I run into a wall I follow that rule, and it always works out. Even if it’s hard going at the time.”

“You made up that rule yourself?”

“I did,” he replied… “From my own experience.”

“If you have to choose between something that has form and something that doesn’t, choose the one without form,” she repeated.

“That’s right.”

She considered this. “But if I had to do that right now I don’t know if I could tell the difference. Between what has form and what doesn’t.”

“Maybe not, but somewhere down the line I’m sure you’ll have to make that kind of choice.”

—Haruki Murakami from Blind Willow, Seeping Woman

I met Momus last night at a small fundraising dinner for culture push, a non-profit arts organization some friends started. A few years ago, a short piece he wrote for Wired on Committing MySpacecide made me reconsider what traces of my life and identity I leave online:

I heard about someone who’d committed “Friendstercide.” He’d killed his Friendster page, announcing that from then on he’d only be contactable by phone and e-mail. So I guess you’d call what I did last November “committing MySpacecide.”

It sounds radically self-destructive, but the opposite situation would be much worse. Imagine dying for real, dying physically, but lingering on as a digital ghost, a presence on a MySpace page collecting obituaries and tributes…

The sad fact is that more and more of us, as we invest ourselves in the web, entrusting intimate personal information to garish pages, are destined to leave hastily-constructed, poorly-designed memorials online when we die, trivial shrines whose guest books and comments sections will continue to grow even as we rot, puffing up slowly with hackneyed, repetitive, ghoulish, unintentionally funny tributes.

Eventually, of course, these pages, too, will follow us into oblivion. Tribute activity will level off, some administrator or relative will delete us, the networking brand itself will fall out of favor, its elderly owner will also die, and even his satirists will stop maintaining their spoof page about him. Out of fashion, replaced by new technologies as yet unimagined on infrastructure as yet unbuilt, the network will change hands a few times and close.”

I didn’t commit MySpacecide (of course), but this piece by Momus was a big influence in my decision to be truly intentional with what I post to the web, recognizing that with a few keystrokes and clicks I’m also broadcasting to the unknown future.