Creating Passionate Users

There are so many opportunities--big and small, trivial and important--that we dismiss out of habit or fear or simply because we didn't slow down long enough to consider how it might feel if we said yes. At the end of my life, I'll have a lot of regrets, but taking the scenic route isn't one of them. But what about taking risks on a job, relationship, move, business, adventure? If I fail, will I regret trying? Or will I regret not trying?

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We can all take a lesson from filmmakers: endings matter. The way we end a conversation, blog post, user experience, presentation, tech support session, chapter, church service, song, whatever... is what they'll remember most. The end can matter more to users than everything we did before. And the feeling they leave with is the one they might have forever.

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The future is not in learning... The future is in how fast you are at unlearning. Dave's PDF on the Lifecycle of Rules got me thinking more about this. Yes, we're under pressure to learn more and to learn quickly, but the future goes to those who can unlearn faster than the rest, because you can't always learn something new until you first let go of something else. And learning to let go of rules is one of the first things we (and our managers) have to learn to be quicker at. Sometimes that means letting go of something that served you well for a long time. And that's the toughest thing.

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* I use only the smallest portion of Photoshop's capabilities
nothing exotic or difficult. Mostly I use the Layer Styles palette to make drop shadows, and then the freehand paintbrush to draw the annotation arrows. The most important part of the process is preparing the graphics for the web, and Photoshop makes this quite easy using the "Save for Web"' dialog box. You want the file sizes as small as possible--I try for under 10k, but some of my graphics may be as big as 20k if they're quite complicated with lots of different colors and subtle shading.

* Charts and Graphs
Most of my graphs come entirely from Photoshop, but for pie-charts or more precise bar charts I use a different app to create the chart, then copy or import it into Photoshop to add annotations or play with the colors, etc. Obviously Excel would work for this, but I use Apple's Keynote which has basic charting capability. Graphs and charts are the one area I really want to develop, and so I'm currently reading:

--Tufte's books including his latest, Beautiful Evidence

-- Steven Few's books (a little more accessible than Tufte) including Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data

--I'm just starting to explore DeltaGraph software, so if you suddenly see over-the-top charts and graphs on the blog, you'll know that the novelty hasn't worn off.

* Stock photography
Stock photos used to be expensive, but thanks to web apps like iStockPhoto, you can get just about anything you can imagine for a couple dollars (if the photos are just for the web, you can get away with the lowest resolution/least expensive version of the photo).

People always ask about the 50's photos I use here and in the books--they're in a stock photography collection we own called Retro Americana from the Getty Images Photodisc collection. The Retro Americana collection is now "retired" (stock photo agencies often take collections out of circulation for a few years to prevent them from being overexposed), but it'll probably be available again in the future. Of course there are about a zillion other stock photo collections, not counting all the one-at-a-time pictures from places like iStockPhoto.

Another source we use (especially for the books) are Hemera's inexpensive PhotoObjects collections, which give you objects on a clear white background. (Like the, um, black lingerie I used in my "I'm not a woman blogger" post)

* Fonts
I use handwriting fonts for my hand-drawn annotations, and the best source for fonts is probably the inexplicably named fonts.com site.

* Find your own style!
Don't copy ours unless it feels like you. 50's people with cartoon thought bubbles, festive fonts, and hand-drawn annotations are what we do because it's what we like to do. (And, oh yes, because it's about the only thing we know how to do given our lack of design/art/illustration skills).

* More Resources
An earlier post of mine

RapidViz

Drawing on the right side of the brain

I'm sure many of you have other tips to add including other software apps, books, and ideas. My favorite tip is to go nowhere without a small notebook and something to draw with. When I have time to kill, I'm always sketching out ideas for graphics for the books or here on the blog. Have fun!

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The future is not in learning... The future is in how fast you are at unlearning. Dave's PDF on the Lifecycle of Rules got me thinking more about this. Yes, we're under pressure to learn more and to learn quickly, but the future goes to those who can unlearn faster than the rest, because you can't always learn something new until you first let go of something else. And learning to let go of rules is one of the first things we (and our managers) have to learn to be quicker at. Sometimes that means letting go of something that served you well for a long time. And that's the toughest thing.

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Whether you're designing a book, a software application, a piece of hardware, or a website... think sexy. And have fun with the research.

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The future is not in learning... The future is in how fast you are at unlearning. Dave's PDF on the Lifecycle of Rules got me thinking more about this. Yes, we're under pressure to learn more and to learn quickly, but the future goes to those who can unlearn faster than the rest, because you can't always learn something new until you first let go of something else. And learning to let go of rules is one of the first things we (and our managers) have to learn to be quicker at. Sometimes that means letting go of something that served you well for a long time. And that's the toughest thing.

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Mosh Pit as Innovation Model Progress "Professionals" in any field come in two flavors: Knowledge Sharers and Knowledge Hoarders. The hoarders believe in the value of their "Intellectual Property"(IP). The products of their mind must be carefully guarded lest anyone steal their precious ideas. But let's face it--if our only "strategic advantage" is our ideas, we're probably screwed. Or as CDBaby's Derek Sivers put in in this post: "It’s so funny when I hear people being so protective of ideas. (People who want me to sign an NDA to tell me the simplest idea.) To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions." Yes, there are some crucial exceptions, but for most of us, It's our implementation, not our idea that matters. Even those who create something revolutionary are still synthesizing... still drawing on the work of others, and making a creative leap. But even a big-ass gravel-hauling leap is still a leap, not a physics-violating idea that shimmered into the universe from nothin' but air. It's how we apply those ideas. How creative we are. How useful we are. How brave we are. How technically skilled we are. How we anticipate what our users will love. How we learn from the ideas and work of others. And from our (my co-authors and myself) perspective, it's not about our ideas, it's about what the ideas can do for our users. Even if we are the only ones to have a specific new and protectable "idea" (unlikely), the moment we reveal it, everyone else will have it too. The barrier to entry today is way too low to use "intellectual property" as a main advantage. And all too often, we think we have a unique idea only to find that others are--independently--doing the same things. I've found some wonderful discussions about this on other blogs (by people willing to share their ideas). The following are some snippets from recent and older posts on the topic: Open Source Creativity from the wonderful-go-read-i

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