Edge of Chaos | Agile Development Blog

Books by Edward Tufte are a piece of art. I’ve been savoring them to myself for a while, and now I decided to share some sketches and criticism inspired by Tufte’s high art visual designs.

Commonly, designers represent visual information by scarce means of 2D realm: screen and paper. Our universe is 3D (if not 5D, 6D or whatever more dimensions), but people got used to squeezing  images into 2D flatland.  Even rock paintings of pre-historic humans have their touch of 2-D abstraction and symbolism.

Our universe is not just 3D. It’s dynamic 3D. Paper is static (paper planes are exceptions). That’s another limitation of 2D.

Limitations are great. They motivate designers to find solutions. The more limitations - the harder it is to find a solution. Good designers love difficult tasks, since they view them as great opportunities to put their brains to use. Bad designers do not want to use their brains - they want to use templates.

The image below is a template solution for a weather map. View from above.  Let alone template thinking, the representation of this template is poor.

The appalling hint of white shade is a helpless attempt to compensate inadequate color selection for numbers.  What do you think of blue numbers on blue background? You hate that, to say the least of it. What’s the message of these pseudo-3D grey circles? Are they some grey moons? Or cavities  in the designer’s brain?

Now let’s take a look at the Euronews channel weather map.  One may think that this map represents the effects of global warming and Australia is completely hidden under water now. Also, what do those bold numbers show? Probably the depth of the ocean in this area. In meters. Or in miles? But the area is still lit by sunshine, which instills some hope.

As a contrast, here’s a weather map from a Japanese daily, beautiful in its simplicity.  This is the same Japan as on the first weather map above, only from the ocean perspective.  This map provides 0°C и 10°C  isotherms.  You see fine clouds on this map. The map shows sun movement.  OMG, it shows stratosphere! And it’s nothing more than just a weather map from a daily newspaper  - but created by a good visual designer.

Of course, Japan is well-suited for such a nice graphical representation. But you gotta have guts to catch and use this ocean perspective, instead of helplessly surrendering to boilerplate view-from-above weather maps imposed by paper sheet or screen limitations.

Overall the recent Agile 2009 Conf. in Chicago was a good event. Unfortunately, the first two days were not quite what I expected. Combination of just “OK” sessions and jet lag left me wondering whether the trip was worth it. However, the following two days were much better, but the very last, Jared Spool’s keynote, left no doubts that Agile 2009 was totally worth coming to! An absolute killer presentation on User Experience with an excellent steak on the side (yes, Americans know good steak) – what else could you ask for?  A lightning bolt, a hit, all of the above - I can hardly express how enlightened and inspired I felt walking out of the ballroom where the speech took place. And that’s when reality hit me, and I suddenly understood how bad we suck with our User Experience… I got depressed for about 2 days, but then I started to act.

I read several books about User Experience. I read countless articles, forum threads, blog posts on the same subject and finally started a process of searching for UX specialist to add to our development team (and we hired him already). I’ve dug through all the information about UX, UI, Design and thought about how we could integrate it into our development process.

In one month I came up with a vision. I created interesting presentation and shared my vision with the team and inspired them. They applauded (thank you, folks!). I believe Agile and UX is a great mix. Definitely it is not easy, but I think it is a right path to follow. We want to create the best agile PM software in the world, and it is just impossible without outstanding user experience.

We want to share all the new experience about the journey. I’ll post more about process changes, mindset changes, education and whole team involvement. Here is our first try, see how we are re-designing ToDo list in TargetProcess:

• Personas
• Scenarios
• Wireframes - part I (part II, part III)
• Prototype and Usability testing results
• Improved prototype
• New ToDo list in TargetProcess

• In Defense of Eye Candy. Nice article. It discusses why aesthetics is important in a design: “when we talk about how emotions influence interactions, it’s closer to the truth to say things that are enjoyable will be easy to use and efficient.” And another fantastic quote “how we ‘think’ cannot be separated from how we ‘feel’“.
• Discovery-driven Growth: The Only Plan Is to Learn as You Go. Quite lengthy, but interesting interview about business development in a current economy. Discovery-driven growth is a way to go.
• Kanban and Time-boxes. Does Kanban compatible with iterations and time-boxes?
• Wanted/Needed: UX Design for Collaboration 2.0. Designing collaboration software has some specifics. Can we create a framework that help with it?

• Distinguishing decorative from meaningful elements in UI design. Ryan from 37signals shows how small decorative elements may influence usability.
• 10 Useful Techniques To Improve Your User Interface Designs. I am not a big fan of articles like “99 advices to web design”, however this article is really useful. I especially like number 3 “Using contrast to manage focus”, number 8 “Custom input focus” and 9 “Hover controls”. We are going to use hover controls in v.3.0 design.
• Konigi.com is a great resource for UI developers. Many very useful links and examples.
• 2008 - The Year In Pictures. Nice photos. Nice atmosphere. Taste the last year as a good wine…

99% of web applications have add forms. Most of them have edit forms as well. It is really hard to imagine how you can add/store something without a form. OK, there are some ways like: import something from CSV file or another format, create something from incoming email/SMS/etc., capture image and create something from this image

Still if you need to add something quickly, in most cases you will use a web form. Obviously, if you need to edit something you will use web form as well. Is it the best solution? Can we get rid of edit forms? I bet we can.

Most applications has View page. It represents information in a more readable and usable format than a form. And to change one property you:

• Click Edit link and wait for new page to load.
• Change the property.
• Find and click Save button.
• Wait for previous View page to load.

That’s quite time consuming process. I think the better way will be:

• Double click property you want to change.
• Type new value.
• Push Enter to save the new value using AJAX.

This way has several advantages. First, you don’t need to create edit forms (ok, but you need to implement inline edit). Second, you provide much better user experience. Third, you get rid of Edit links everywhere, which is good (less complexity and less links is always good). That is something we are going to try in TargetProcess v.3.0.

I’m working on new lists in v.3.0 already and wondering how 37signals managed to create several web applications with no traditional lists. OK, there is one list that shows time records in Basecamp, but as far as I know there are no other such lists. All the other lists are very simple and well formatted. All 37signal’s applications look simple, with fresh air and the first expression is very good.

Typical list in Basecamp:

The only traditional list I found in Basecamp:

Now I wonder why that happened. Maybe data volume in Basecamp is low? Maybe they are just super-smart folks (well, no doubt here)? Also I wonder whether it is possible to get rid of traditional lists in TargetProcess. Is it possible at all when people want to prioritize 300 user stories in the backlog (yes, we have such requests from customers!). Is it possible to get rid of usual lists when you receive dozens of support requests daily?