UX Designer and Front-End Developer. Ottawa, Ontario.
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Be able to keep two completely contradictory ideas alive and well inside of your heart and head at all times. If it doesn’t drive you crazy, it will make you strong.
Never half-ass two things, whole-ass one thing.
Ron Swanson
Once you’re done whole-assing one thing, why not whole-ass two?
via It will be Exhilirating by Studio Neat
Lately, when using Instapaper, I’ve been wishing I could hit a shuffle button and just get the app to suggest a random article out of my pile of unreads.
So this is a prototype of how that experience could turn out on the iPad.
It’s a new mode you enter, which serves your article previews in a deck of cards you flip through.
To get the experience right, there are a bunch of small details to think about:
This works well in most scenarios:
In some cases, however, you may not want to have the Shuffle mode follow you around:
This prototype assumes an experience much like the study cards found in the iBooks app:
Upon pressing the shuffle button, the cards could fly into a pile from the whole length of your reading list, and when turning off Shuffle, you’d see them whiz back to their chronological position. That would likely be an expensive operation and would take too long to fetch the far ones.
One alternative is to animate just a few cards to group into a pile, with the top, randomly-picked card, appearing as though it was just below the fold (or from right in the viewport if that’s where it actually is). The animation would be cursory and brief, just enough to appear like the whole deck is cobbled together, and would therefore save on execution time and complexity. Pulling in the cards this way would reveal the light gray background, which is close to the colour of the light-gray border between the cards in the normal view.
Another alternative would be to pull a sheet over the normal view and have a pre-assembled pile of cards slide down from the top of the screen. This would save on complex animations.
I think this shuffle mode would be a nice addition to a great app.
Ryan Singer:
Remember the web before Movable Type? If you wanted a blog you had to program one. (…) Apps like Marco Arment’s The Magazine give me flashbacks to that time. Wouldn’t it be awesome to publish my own magazine on the iOS Newsstand? (…) Now is a great time for another Movable Type. Writers would love a way to push serialized content straight to tablets, and the experience would be a boon to readers.
Don’t be so eager to adopt the goals of others. They are starting from a different baseline than you. If you adopt ‘shoot for the stars,’ you might well run out of propulsion before you even get to the yard.
In your company, you’re asked to ship this new thing. You’ve got a fixed amount of time, a fixed amount of manpower, and a fixed amount of money. It can be either done well or done on time or done on budget. Pick two. But why? Why not pick all three?
You come at a disagreement with a teammate. You have differing opinions about creating this new thing. Do it like I think or do it like he thinks. But why does it have to be one or the other?
In both of these cases, there seems to be a scarcity problem. There seem to be constraints that are picking a fight with your options. There are tensions, opposing ideas, ends of a spectrum.
It’s either this or it’s that. It can’t be both.
Really? It can’t be both? Only, there’s Apple who can ship high quality in high quantities before everybody else. Only, there are parents who have 6 kids and they all grow up to be well-rounded champions. Only, there are leaders who unfold more productivity out of smaller teams. So surely, some people don’t have a problem with the word ‘both’.
So how do they do it? How do they get to do what others can’t do? They’ve learned something that others don’t know yet:
There is no conflict. There is no ‘either’. They’ve learned to catch themselves putting in an ‘or’ where they can simply change that ‘or’ to an ‘and’: high quality and high quantity; he’s got it right and I’ve got it right.
They’ve learned to see the problem from an entirely new angle. They stop looking at it from the angle everybody else looks at it from and they invent, in their mind, a new angle to see things from. They make up an entirely new possibility. They just don’t give into the trap of the ‘either’ and the ‘or’, the trap that creates conflict where none is required.
So here’s how you can do it too:
Next time you feel conflicted between two options, ask yourself if you’re seeing things with an ‘or’ (this or that). If you are, rephrase that conflict in your head by asking yourself: “Is there any way that we can achieve this and that, that we can do both?”
Maybe you’ll be able to find a new approach you hadn’t thought about when you were sure there was a conflict. Maybe there’s a way for you to step out of the apparent conflict and notice that there’s a constructive third option, right there, at arm’s reach. Maybe you’ll find your relationships to be richer, more mutually beneficial, more engaging, and longer lasting.
“Both”, “and”: those aren’t just words that are the key to doing great things. They’re also the key to getting yourself out of seemingly conflicting situations. That’s why they’re not only an important part of how excellent people, teams, families operate, they’re an important part of how adaptable, agile and always renewed people, teams and families operate.
It’s just a different way of thinking.
‘The best designers are passionate about design, yet dispassionate about their own designs.’ The managers tell us they look for folks who get very excited and curious about creating great designs, but can easily walk away from their own ideas and work when it makes sense to do so. […] Design is a team sport and the managers say the individuals who can do this are better team members.
Aside from the legendary annual Mule Nog, we don’t have officially-dictated fun. You know what builds teams? Doing great work together, and then going home.
Peaceful serenity, unceasing white blanket stretching out as far as the eye can see. Graceful curtain powdering the horizon, you bring me happiness. A nuisance? Not to me. Never to me. You cover the grey and the dying with innocence and purity, almost as if in loving forgiveness. How can one hate that which flutters down so gently and unhurried, caressing and resting on the thinnest branches or children’s eyelashes? You bring brightness and tranquility to both day and night, reflecting sunshine and starlight, and the very essence of my soul…
