The Net Neutrality Fight Is Set to Drive onto American Roads

THE NET NEUTRALITY FIGHT IS SET TO DRIVE ONTO AMERICAN ROADS

Remember Tron?

Depending on your age you’ll say, “Yes” and still maybe mean a different movie. It doesn’t matter, whichever Tron you remember opened on a lovely visualization of data moving through an integrated circuit. Abstracted pulses of light running along circuit traces which then gracefully morphed into, wait for it… cars driving on city streets.

TRON opening sequence: the same metaphor, 2010 & 1982

That metaphor. I was 19, a film student, a complete sci-fi nerd from planet 10, in awe of the artistry and technology in that film, but I still thought that metaphor was stupid in 1982.

And I have subsequently thought it was stupid in every movie ever since that tried to make that same tired metaphor work.

On the one hand, you have the complex perfection of billions of instantaneous electrical pulses optimized, coordinated and controlled by a central brain with a single programatic mission. And on the other you have a bunch of dumb, disconnected, meat-eaters, steering boxes of plastic and metal in lurching, uncoordinated congestion, independently randomized by a near-infinity of irrelevant, abstract priorities, one of which is “oh…I gotta ‘member ta pick up that second can of Cheez Whiz for Dave,” totally unaware of what’s happening around them.

As a metaphor it’s got all the intellectual gravitas of every stoner’s dawning wonderment: “…soooo…wait… that means that our whole solar system could be like one tiny atom in the fingernail of some other giant being?”

Animal House: Pinto discovers the metaphorical power of weed.

No, it couldn’t actually, because planets aren’t atoms and... forget it, just eat your Cheez Whiz.

But that was then.

And everything is about to change.

With self-driving cars that metaphor is not just better, it will be nearly exact. I mean — it practically won’t even be a metaphor anymore.

With self-driving cars, we suddenly jump from a crude, object-oriented environment where every car is controlled independent of all the others in haphazard chaos, to a perfect, centrally controlled paradigm where every car is issued instructions in graceful coordination with all the others. Suddenly, this act of controlling the flow of traffic on our streets is not just “like” controlling the flow of data in a computer or across the internet, it will be controlled exactly the same way — just a lot slower. Algorithms that control traffic in one can essentially control the other. Speed of transfer aside, the fact that each data-packet happens to have wheels and some human meat inside is largely irrelevant. The entire process operates in a nearly identical fashion.

A great piece by Fernando Livschitz

IP addresses are street addresses, application protocols signify main categories of road use (daily commuting, shipping, emergency, etc.), routers are intersections & roadsigns, NSPs (Network Service Providers) are the cities that build and maintain roads, cars are packets, and so I guess we’re the data.

Ok, the metaphor is getting stretched thin, but there is one more factor. Many have reasonably speculated the end of car ownership, with “peak car ownership” happening sometime around the next 3 years. Following that is the expectation that ownership demand will drop precipitously as increasingly convenient, and less expensive on-demand services take over.

So with central control and the likely provision of cars on-demand, access to city road-transportation will become a complete, end-to-end B2C service, nearly identical to that of Internet and Mobile service providers who bundle hardware and services on NSP backbones.

As a business model for such a system, many have contemplated the expansion of the Uber/Lyft on-demand, pay as you go approach. But I don’t buy it. There are few digital services today that rely on pay as you go. Especially when you factor in ongoing maintenance and unexpected traffic surges resulting in cost/ride increases. It makes the cost/ride inconsistent, and as an approach for commuters to work, school, daycare or the other daily requirements of life, I think most regular users of such a system will seek predictability. And let’s face it, service providers love it when customers pay for things they don’t use.

So instead, ride providers will be incentivized to offer (cue ominous music)

…subscription plans.

There are few things more despised, that trigger more cynicism, annoyance or confusion — by design it seems — than choosing a new mobile service subscription.

And make no mistake — you’ll feel exactly the same way when it comes time to sign up for a new ride subscription.

Come on, you know how this is going to play out. You’ll have to choose from countless contrived tiers and features relative to your number of family members, regular destinations and requirements such as: number of included rides and miles per month before overage fees kick in, trips to “city-zones 1 through 6”, number of “Fast Rides®” which will temporarily prioritize your ride and make room through traffic along optimum routes. There will also be the choice of cars of varying quality, style and form-factor, single rider commuters, ride-share, family vans, and luxury models, those with refreshment services, entertainment and work stations.

“Fast Rides®” which will temporarily prioritize your ride and make room through traffic along optimum routes.

With central control we will also have something new to factor in: guaranteed arrival times. Valuable that, especially for commuters. In short, you’ll have to choose from priority services of all kinds that each potentially compete with one another in such indecipherable, convoluted ways that we consumers will be incentivized to spend as much as we can afford so our service doesn’t get us to work or outings late when we really need it, or during peak hours, and which don’t result in exorbitant overage fees, all covered in numerous pages of fine print, please just initialize here, and here, and down here.

Chances are it will be more complicated than selecting a new mobile plan, and those aren’t known for being particularly transparent.

Take Sprint.

Today, Sprint offers a plan called “Unlimited Basic,” which, being “unlimited” and all, sounded fine to me, until I noticed that one can choose “Unlimited Plus”. 

…I’ll be completely honest, I was still trying to imagine what one could add to “unlimited” that would be worth paying more for, but kept reading and apparently it doesn’t stop there. You can even choose “Unlimited PREMIUM: Everything you want from Unlimited, and so much more!”. Clearly “unlimited” is lacking.

Speaking of “more”, AT&T apparently tried to one-up Sprint by offering a base plan already called: “AT&T Unlimited &More” which offers not only unlimited, but “more” too, at the base tier. And because “more is more”, there’s “AT&T Unlimited &More Premium”. For all of your gold-plated more than unlimited needs.

Verizon, on a virtual rocket ship to planet Unlimited, takes you into the stratosphere with “Go Unlimited”, “Beyond Unlimited” and “ABOVE UNLIMITED!”

Clearly the industry needs to switch its thesaurus out for a dictionary.

Be that as it may, I worry our future will include such a cryptic choice with rides.

And if so, I hope you see what I see. And really, this is the point of this piece:

Every dynamic we face today, in particular the market dynamics that led us as a country to have to defend Net-Neutrality, will suddenly exist on American roads.

Perhaps to even a greater degree, because we will be moving our bodies, our lives and careers, not just data, and because the system will absolutely have to prioritize riders in *some* way to control traffic, and because our arrival time is so crucial to our ability to perform in life. All of this will add up to make it even harder to ensure that access to roads, rides, and thus even daily life, is fair.

Disneyland at capacity is not the "Happiest Place on Earth".

Some have suggested that sheer central control will mitigate traffic bottle-necks. “Traffic won’t happen”. But I disagree. Traffic is traffic, and the central system doesn’t control demand. I’ve spent decades studying traffic flows in theme parks. No matter how orderly, Disneyland on a cold day is a significantly different experience than Disneyland at capacity. Sure you can optimize to a point, but in the end it’s a sheer bandwidth issue. To wit, when digital destination demand surges (eg. web traffic), we instantly duplicate the digital destinations and provision new lines to serve it, but you can’t duplicate real-world destinations and roads. Higher than expected demand will naturally require some percentage of riders to be routed on longer, more indirect routes, while lucky others will ride direct.

Optimization helps, but demand against bandwidth dictates traffic.

When the Internet was new, it was somewhat conceptually easy to demand net-neutrality. But consumers have already accepted for-pay privilege on roads for years: toll roads, fast-pass toll lanes, congestion zones, parking passes, etc.

Wealthier consumers may very well even demand premium speed at a price because for the first time such a thing will be possible. Even at rush hour. For the first time, a centrally controlled system could divert any vehicle to any route on the fly, and would be able to guarantee arrival times for premier customers — traffic be damned. This would cause inconvenience for lower tier riders who would face longer rides, diversions from optimal, direct routes and a requirement for earlier departure times. An arrival time may still be “guaranteed” for these lower tiers, but it will still be a longer ride than the higher-paying customer.

And although one can find many pockets in American life where such for-pay privilege exists, I don’t think we have ever faced an example that would so ubiquitously, and so personally, draw into focus the difference in our economic classes for more people at once, at such a high rate of incidence than by privilege being literally enacted before our eyes at every turn. It would reveal a visceral, demoralizing, rigid, functional kind of class “Metropolis” that does not exist on roads today even between the drivers of say, an old, rusted 1975 VW Rabbit or a brand new Aston Martin. Today, both those drivers and their respective cars flow to work with the same priority, at the same speed, hit the same traffic, and obey the same rules of the road, just with different degrees of comfort. Today, by and large, we have an organic type of “Road-Neutrality”.

Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, the classes above.

Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, the classes below.

But centrally controlled priority service tiers would change all that, and because being places is such a fundamental requirement for living in society, the tier you can afford will change your life. Perhaps even more profoundly than having a nice house in a friendly neighborhood.

Despite all this, in my cynicism, I think the personal benefits that will come from privilege will be just too attractive for wealthy consumers and the companies who would serve them, to pass up.

THE PLANS

To give you a taste of the kind of choices we may have to make in the future, here is a theoretical subscription tier offering for my new Ride service called “Metropolis”:

ON-DEMAND

Pay-as-you-go is the highest average cost for taking a ride on roads.

SUBSCRIPTION PLANS

From single-rider through family plans, subscriptions will offer more rides, riders and benefits to the dollar.

Tier 5

Access Tier — Bottom of the subscription line-up. Probably called “unlimited” if we’ve learned anything from the mobile industry. This is for the non-commuter; retirees, people with walkable/bike-able jobs and occasional errands/ride requirements only.

• Limited number of included rides/week to pre-selected neighborhood/city zones.

• No priority “Fast Rides®”. 

• Few guaranteed arrival times.

• Fees for most extras and add ons.

Tier 4

Commuter Tier — Low/mid-range subscription. 

Probably considered the bottom tier for single, daily commuters.

• Five weekly guaranteed “on-time”, round-trip, rush hour rides per family-member, must be pre-scheduled — usually used as work / school / daycare arrival trips limited to pre-selected city zones. 

• Large number of “flex-time rides” included (low priority, often diverted to outer routes to make room for higher tier riders) for general outings and errands.

• No “Fast Rides®” included — cost extra.

• Fees for changing plans or late departure. Other gotchas.

Tier 3

Convenience Tier — Mid-range commuter and family-plan.

• Everything above, PLUS:

• Limited number of “Fast Rides®” included. 

• Higher number of included riders, schedule changes and departure delays.

• Luxury cars / family vans cost extra.

Tier 2

Luxury Tier

• Unlimited* rides. 

• High number of Fast Rides®.

• Multiple riders included.

• Guaranteed Arrival Plus (allows you to leave up to 20% later than scheduled and STILL hit guaranteed arrival time, without fees).

• Allows last second changes and increased wait times. 

• Small number of included “Luxury rides” — luxurious cars with snacks/VR entertainment/workstations.

 *Unlimited is actually limited, read fine print.

Tier 1

Platinum Executive Tier

• Always “Fast Rides® Premium”. (Fast Rides® aren’t so fast next to “Premium”)

• Always Luxury cars, with refreshments/massage chairs. 

• “AutoMotion® VR Experience” included. (VR syncs with your car’s natural kinetic motion.)

• Blow past literally everyone on the road. 

• Costs a fucking fortune.

With the central control of traffic, it’s inevitable that some riders will find themselves on slower, non-optimal routes. But who, and why? These are fair questions since the answers will absolutely be programmatically pre-determined. And I’ll be honest, I don’t like the tier scenario above.

I worry about the family who today has the same access to routes and roads as anyone else, suddenly relegated — every day and forevermore — to relatively slower, more frustrating, roundabout, outer routes, because they can’t afford a higher tier of service, while wealthier riders enjoy priority over all others, zipping quickly along shorter, more convenient, direct routes with ease.

These issues might seem small at first glance, but such a permanent change in our free access to our very cities forms the basis of a whole new “Metropolis”.

Ultimately it is unfair, for all the same reasons such selective throttling is unfair online; maybe more so.

As consumers we must choose to have an impact on the way this happens at a policy level, and so I think it’s worth processing where we individually stand on this sooner than later.

Because if we don’t engage, it’s going to be decided for us soon, and I think, unregulated, there is little question as to how this all plays out.

This is my alert to fight for something called Road-Neutrality.

The Great Web Design Crisis

THE GREAT WEB DESIGN CRISIS

Beginning in 1993 and several times each decade since, the interactive industry’s reigning crop of web creators have faced new challenges that have required concerted design responses to overcome. Some of these challenges have been the result of advances in codebases and web standards, changes to hardware, economic shake outs and new business trends. And with each challenge the industry responded decisively.

But now web design faces a new kind of challenge, one we are failing to overcome. Not the result of external forces, this is a monster from within, ironically ushered in by the very designers and developers that are subject to it. On the surface we can see only symptoms: an industry-wide homogenization of web design, accompanied by a sharp decline in the innovation of new interactive conventions. And while those critical failures would be bad enough, the underlying cause is complicated and runs much deeper.

The real crisis is that our entire state-of-the-art web design methodology, our roles and teams, and even our qualitative values are the product of a misunderstanding.

Narrowing The Cause

Despite now providing access to countless, wide-ranging categories of content, products and services, today's websites are aesthetically and functionally blending; becoming indistinguishable from one another, save for a logo in the topmost banner. More and more, the brands that occupy these sites are losing their identities in a sea of sameness.

Further, in a medium where interactivity is its defining attribute, and the technology never more advanced and capable of handling challenges, for the most part, designers seem to have all but abandoned pursuit of new, improved, interactive models, rather settling into a non-confrontational, follow-the-leader approach to web design.

I reject the claim that the pursuit of theoretically optimal usability releases us from the strategic need to notably differentiate and innovate. There is not one absolute way things should look, communicate and behave on the web any more than there is one absolute in architecture, interior or industrial design. Great design has always included a quotient of subjectivity.To which one might then swoop in with the oft-quoted web-design hammer, “Yeah but it's been scientifically proven that users prefer generic, prototypical designs. Generic interfaces have been shown to convert better."Yes. That's true. At least that is until it is measured against something that converts better than a prototypical design, at which point the opposite will have been scientifically proven.

Which begs the question, did you stop to wonder how that original prototypical design ever established itself in users’ minds in the first place?It exists because its parts were innovated. They began life as disruptions. Non-sequiturs. In essence, risks. And that’s something web designers, and the companies they serve, don’t appear to have the guts to do much in 2016; instead, taking short-term refuge in the safety of the status quo. Confidently back-peddling into the historic innovations of braver others. Surely you can see that the meme "users prefer generic interfaces" might also be regarded as the convenient mantra of a designer who takes the passive route to short-term profiteering.Finally, you may be thinking, "Oh come on, any of us could break out of any design trend tomorrow if we so chose. We've done it before."Actually we haven't. This is not merely some aesthetic design trend. It's not some fashionable phase that can change with taste. The root causes of this are intertwined with our very state-of-the-art thinking. To solve this problem we must dismantle many of our current best ideas. A contradiction which results in defense of the status quo. It would appear that we are facing systemic incentives not to fix this. 

Hot Zone: The Web Design Ecosystem

It bears noting that everything I will describe happens within an ecosystem that is almost perfectly engineered to focus and amplify the problems. For example, near universal access to computing platforms has enabled more people than ever before in history to lay claim to Designer and Developer roles.

Ironically, this also happens to be during a period of “Flat” design which is characterized by a minimum of affordances and fewer discrete design elements than ever. So these precious few design elements are being endlessly, incrementally adjusted - on a massive, global scale.The narrow result of this spray of minutia is then being further massively shared on sites like Dribbble, Behance, Git Hub, CodePen and dozens of other design/developer communities, which allow for favoriting and sorting of a select few common pieces of work. The top minority of these in turn are being subsequently re-re-re-referenced ad-nauseam and co-opted more widely and freely than ever before.Sorry, gimme a second while I fill my lungs again…So of course everything looks the same, for Christ’s sake! This is the systemic equivalent of a perfect storm; a made-to-order-global-make-everything-be-exactly-the-same machine. A worldwide design purification filter. If you wanted any category of design to fall into complete homogeny, you couldn’t do much better than facilitate it by setting up the exact ecosystem above. Indeed such a complaint has been voiced before.

There is strength in numbers, confidence in the choices of the mob. And the majority of web designers are falling into that trap.Despite the obviousness of this, it’s far from the worst offender. The problem cuts a lot deeper. 

   Patient Zero: UX

And lo, the Internet bubble burst and out of the ashes came the single most valuable invention to hit the medium since its birth: the User Experience Design discipline (UX).

All cures contain side effects.

If there had been a general irrational exuberance and a lack of due diligence on the web before the bubble, there was an equally irrational fear of the medium immediately following it. It was the fear-based era of rote “Web 2.0” utilitarianism and functionality. It was still before Apple had proven the value of great design to even the CFO's of the world, where aesthetics were still regarded as largely gratuitous endeavors.

The UX design discipline evolved out of this period of fear and uncertainty. Following years of unfettered, chaotic experimentation, exploration and a willingness (and sometimes a likelihood) to fail, UX stepped in and rationally culled and refined the best practices (of that era) and established a sensible process whereby optimal performance was achieved through an ongoing cycle of testing, analysis and incremental revision. Today it is the scientific process that dependably leads to incrementally optimized, defensible results.In some way those of us who have worked in this medium, who have lived through decades of recurring skepticism and doubt about the value of design, are thrilled to finally have such an empirical, validating hammer. The relevant impact of this development is that this is the first time in the history of the interactive industry that the web design discipline has been able to systemically validate its own effort. To prove the ROI of design. That’s a heady maturity that is still new in this industry.So far so good.

But the accountability and new-found reassurance that comes from the ongoing, incremental, effectiveness of the UX process has lead most web teams to go so far as to promote UX designers to project leadership roles. You can understand of course why UX designers have been tapped to lead, since the whole of this discipline is effectively accountable for both strategic design and the tracking of success. Makes sense if you want to ensure projects stay focused on addressing the business and end up proving ROI of the effort. What's more, the very UX discipline itself has further come to oversee the web design and development process at large in countless organizations.

On the other hand, our promotion of that sensible, responsible oversight, has resulted in several unexpected, debilitating, side effects. 

UX Side Effect 1: The Fracturing of Design

One of the principle ways UX has unintentionally undermined innovation is that it has caused a fracture down the middle of the design process; a fracture that starts with the people and their roles.

UX, focusing on the translation from business strategy to web functionality, tends to attract and reward highly analytical people. More the “responsible scientists” than the “non-linear artists” among us, who are ultimately accountable for the results of a project. These are people who can articulate data, visualize, organize and document information, and manage a process. I'm not suggesting that such a sensibility is the wrong one to manage those rational responsibilities. However, by placing UX in project leadership roles we are facing an unintended outcome: the "down breeding" of a second, unfortunate sub-species of designer whose sole focus is merely on the UX design leftovers. The scraps. Specifically, aesthetics.

What pesky stuff, that.The area of focus of this aesthetically-sensitive design species is no longer on the overall emotional, expressive, dramatic experience of Interactive Theater, but on the appearance of the graphic layer alone. As such, these designers have largely been relegated to colorers, or house painters, if you will.In an attempt to draw a clear distinction between them, we call this secondary role a UI (user interface) Designer. In reality, what the majority of today’s UI Designers focus on is rather not really the whole of UI, but “GUI” (graphical user interface). And even the title “GUI Designer” may be too sweeping since today’s UX Lead has already, presumably, decided exactly what this interface will do, what components it includes, and generally how it will move and behave. UI Designers do not so much design the interface, as they merely design how it looks.Let’s take a moment here - because this is huge.

When we innocently split (sorry, “specialized”) UX and UI design, we unintentionally peeled in two, the whole of great design. More importantly we created a stark imbalance of power and priority between design's yin and yang that rather should always be in equal balance if truly great interactive design is the intent. We removed influence of the unexpected emotional, improvisational, performer’s sensibilities that come from an artist’s muse and mindset from the origination of interactive theater. Which is too bad, because these are the things that disrupt, that result in innovation, and that delight users. The things that users would otherwise remember.

So is it really any wonder that 90% of the web sites you visit today all look the same? That the apparent “ideal” aesthetic approach is the ubiquitously coveted Flat design, which is itself merely the direct extension of UX’s own wireframes-the flattest design of all? That they all share some variation of the same, tired parallax scrolling effect that pre-dates wide-spread UX leadership? I've been in rooms where the question was asked, "Where can I find other effects and transitions?"Me: (Stares. Blinks) "What, seriously? Well... uh, I don't mean to be a dick, but that's what your imagination is for. Invent it! Good lord, this isn't a #%$@ing IKEA bookshelf!"

Today, most sites lack creative invention and inspiration. Oh sure, we point out how this page load animation is timed slightly differently than that page load animation, or the scrolling effect is nuanced in some way, but it's all the same. And part of the reason is that we have removed the reliably surprising imagination, the randomizing, theatrical showman, the disruptive artful inspiration from the UX process. We have removed the chaos and unpredictability of art and inspiration.Look, I realize that every UX-centric digital agency on Earth has some line about how their UX designers are story-tellers. Which I think shows that at some level they must understand how important this is. But God love ’em, today’s inordinate breed of UX designer is really a figurative storyteller, and not much of a showman. And I don't mean that disparagingly, the discipline simply doesn't naturally attract those people.

Take a summer blockbuster movie; that's also a user experience. Sure, it’s low on user, high on experience, but such theatrics and production value are merely at one distant end of the UX spectrum. What about theme parks? Who on your user experience team has even the slightest little bit of proven experience in story-telling at that level. That’s an extreme, ok, but the reality is that there is huge potential on the web somewhere between that fully immersive, drama-led linear story, and a registration form. Who on your UX team is responsible for spanning that? For even thinking about it? For imagining the magic in the middle? For finding new ways to move from a wireframe toward the Theater of Interactive? Of making the experience surprise and delight us? How often are your projects led or directed by the performer’s mindset?Since most of the web looks and behaves the same today, like the answer to a graphic design problem, most of you should have answered, “no one, and rarely”.

At this point there is always that one person who feels compelled to point at a generation of really crappy, Flash-based, ad-ware from the early 2000s - the antithesis of "usable" - the epitome of unnecessarily dense interactive jibberish - as though that proves great interactive work can't exist. We agree, much of that wasn’t any good. But neither is this future of timid, mincing goals.Our overzealous response to Flash’s demise, was to throw the baby out with the bath water, to largely abandon pursuit of disruptive new interactive models. I guess it was understandable; UX comes to the table with all these facts and empirical data, whereas UI designers tend to come with playful, colorful, unproven imaginings.  We've seen what happens when the artist's mindset has too much control; the stereotypical result is that it's pretty, but doesn't work. So looking at such a comparison one can easily argue that it’s not even a fair fight. You might think that "Of course the UI designers are secondary to UX in the process."But you’d be wrong. The UI Design role (perhaps not the graphic-design-only purists, but this archetypal imaginative soul) has just been intentionally positioned that way specifically to keep the unpredictable, chaotic forces of self-expression and imagination, for which there are no best practices, from running roughshod over a methodical, user-centered, prototypical approach.In fact fostering imagination should be half the job of a project leader who works with tools that are still being collectively learned and understood. But the data-seeking mindset of UX resists this, and resultantly limits imagination. It locks one into what one knows. It causes fear as one contemplates disruption. It magnetically holds one nearer to what’s been done before. 

UX Side Effect 2: The Failure of Experts

Photo: Patrick Gillooly

In 2010 MIT professor Laura Schulz, graduate students Elizabeth Bonawitz, Patrick Shafto and others, conducted a study with 4-year-olds that showed how instruction limits curiosity and new discoveries. In the study a number of children were split into two groups and each group was introduced to a new toy in a different way.In the first group, the experimenter presented the toy in an accidental, inexpert way, “I just found this toy!” and pulled out one of its tubes as if by accident, making it squeak. She acted surprised (“Whoa!”) and pulled the tube a second time to make it squeak again.

With the second group the experimenter presented the toy with authority and expert instruction. “I’m going to show you how this new toy works.” And showed only the function of the one squeaking tube without mentioning the toy’s other hidden actions.In reality, the toy could do quite a lot more than the children were shown in either group.In the end the students who were shown the toy in a more open, accidental, non-expert way were more curious and discovered all the hidden aspects of the toy. Whereas the children who were expertly instructed in the use of the toy did not; they discovered only the action they were specifically taught.Yeah, these were just 4-year-olds, but don’t discount the relevance of this study. This story is being played out in some form on every interactive design team that puts UX in the lead role.UX-centric project leaders are experts in historic best practices and proven usability patterns; they explain “what works” which is then backed by data, and this practice is resulting in measurable, incremental ROI: or, as most business owners would call it, "success". But as with most young companies that begin to turn a profit, such success tends to shift team focus in subtle but profound ways; attention is turned away from innovation, toward optimization.

And this trend shows no signs of stopping. There’s been a splooge of new web design tools, such as Adobe’s brand new “Experience Design CC”, which are the design tool equivalent of all this incremental, best-practice, templatized-thinking fed back to us as next generation design platforms. Where rather significant assumptions have already been made for you about what it is you will be creating.

In their attempt to make these tools and thus the UX job easier, they have tried to dramatically close the gap between raw code (hard work and complete control), and what it is you have in your head. Said another way, these tools encourage a limited range of ideas.On the other hand, an app like Adobe’s Photoshop is, for an image creator or manipulator, a very powerful tool that gives one complete, atomic control over the 2D image. But it is therefor also quite hard to learn and master.And I think, that may be one of the trade offs with tools like these. This popular UX-ified state we are in has reduced the complexity and possibilities such that “easier-to-use” tools like these can exist at all.For that matter, web site template providers like Squarespace.com have had such ample opportunity to observe and reproduce all of your favorite, reused, UX-led design trends that they can offer them back to you in fully-designed, pre-fab form. Honestly, if you have no intention of innovating any new user experiences today, their designs are quite good.All these apps and templates are merely serving as a different kind of expert: limitation, wrapped in the subtext of “what can and should be done”.There can be no question that starting projects on the “expert’s” platform, while incrementally beneficial in the short-term, staunchly limits site creators’ understanding, imagination and exploration of new models and techniques.

No question. 

UX Side Effect 3: The Separation of Content and Interface

Form follows function. That’s the fundamental mantra of great design. But what exactly is being designed on the web? UX designers say they design “user experiences”, so what constitutes a user’s experience?

If you bother to read the definition on Wikipedia someday, be sure to have a cup of coffee handy. Man, what a yawner. Supposedly the "first requirement of a great user experience" is to meet the needs of the product "without fuss and bother".

Wait, seriously? That's a "great" user experience, is it? Literally, it says that. Hey while we're at it - maybe it should also be without any old tunafish cans and sadness.Ok, look, whoever wrote this is both part, and indicative of the problem. They have totally nailed the literal "user" part, but they've left this otherwise really intriguing notion of an "experience" off the table.So what is it really? Let's cut to the chase. An "experience" must largely be defined by what the user does, and in turn what the user does on the web is enabled in large part through an interface.Shouldn’t the interface itself therefor also be regarded partly as content of the experience? Well, yes, of course it should. Because it is.

If this initially innocent thought ruffles your feathers a bit, if it seems to crack some core belief, hold on tight; I’m not done. Because as a result of the interface being part of the content, the line between the form and the function of an "experience" naturally blurs to an uncommon degree. Which is an inconvenient truth that today’s UX designers, who inordinately prefer fully segregating interface and content, have left generally unacknowledged.

For years most designers have uncritically regarded their specific web interfaces, their chrome, as being more or less separate from whatever content is being served. Almost as a kind of wrapper, packaging design, or container, rather than it being an extension of the content itself. Indeed, that’s why flat design, as a universal, distinct, separate, design trend, independent of any site content, can exist at all. Flat design can only exist as a solution if you draw a hard line between interface and content. If you regard content as something that should be placed in a template. Period.

Flat design can only exist as a solution if you draw a hard line between interface and content. If you regard content as something that should be placed in a template. Period.

In fact the persistence of most of the best practices we share today, the underlying support tools like content management systems and authoring apps, and even design template sites, are all products of the same segregation-thinking. They can only exist if content and interface are broken apart.

On the other hand, we've all had the very rare experience of visiting a website where something different happened. Where the site creators bucked the segregation of content and interface, and clearly married those components from the beginning. They developed some unique expression of the content through interactivity as opposed to relying on content management systems and best-practice thinking. And when it's done well (of course all things can conversely be done poorly) you feel it. You gasp. You say "Hey you guys, check this out". It feels magical. It wins awards. It feels true to this medium. It says more than any templated, flat-designed interface, images and body copy ever could.

Why did this happen? Why have so many chosen segregation? Why has separating interface and content become the norm? Well, if you have only been working in the industry as long as UX has been a thing, you might imagine that it’s because this is the right way, that we are headed down the true and righteous path. You might look around at all the smart people who are confidently on this path and imagine that it’s because they are in pursuit of some empirically ideal interface; some perfect range of optimized graphic affordances and interaction principles, and that continually refining toward that ideal is our purpose. Indeed if that were true, that might even validate the idea that interface and content are meant to be separate.

But that would be woefully incorrect.

Ultimately the reason we chose to separate interface and content (consciously or unconsciously) is that the nature of true experience design is just... well, it's just really hard. Sorry, that’s it. Too hard, too expensive, too much time. The truthful, authentic approach to user experience design is harder than whatever it is we have all agreed to call “user experience design” today. So we have just rather thrown up our hands and admitted a kind of meta-failure. We gave up. Our further avoidance of this truth is a sign of our own willingness to admit defeat right from the get go.

So everything we design after that, all the busyness and importance, is an openly pale compromise. At least we know that now.

As if that wasn't enough... are you sitting down? I hope so, because I am about to say something further that will cause the remaining half of you to grit your teeth, particularly because I don’t have comments enabled on this site to serve as an outlet.

User experience design is not the strategic design of a site architecture, flow and interface - true user experience design is also interactive content creation. As such, form and function become the same thing.

Yeow! Ok, that smarts. I'm, sorry, I know this is painful and unclear. Just so you know, it is for me too. Moving on.

When designing a television, there is a clear demarcation between the interface of your television, say, and the content it presents. The TV hardware has one user experience, and the content, another. And in such a design world there is clearly no expectation that the content creators are in any way responsible for designing the TV interface, and vice versa.

The same can be said when designing any other hardware device on which we cannot know precisely what content will be presented. Or an OS, which must serve all manner of possible experiences. We must work at arms length to the content. Cognizant and supportive, but ultimately behind the wall. In development of a browser, the classic rules of form and function still come into play. There is a clear delineation between interface and content that gives a designer focus.

But when you step inside a browser window those tenets of design blur. Here, an idealized site creator, a true UX designer, would have complete control over the content to be presented. Strategically speaking, that’s their job after all. As such, drawing a line between content and interface, or not, suddenly becomes a matter of choice, not requirement. The corollary being the designer of a television who is also expected to fill it with content, and must therefor make movies.

Can we apply the tenets of design to the creation of a feature film? What is the "function" of a movie that comes before the "form"? Is it to tell a story? To entertain? To market products? To part consumers from their money? To make an audience feel something?

To be honest, I think that probably depends on who you ask. But it's safe to say that a feature film is less a design problem, and more an art problem. The same condition exists for user experience design on the web. In fact it’s a bit more complicated because the medium and surrounding business has been so strongly influenced by people who come from design for so long. They’ve had their say. They’ve pushed web design into their comfort zone and reduced “experience” to a myopic set of design elements and interactive conventions. And they have relegated the unpredictable sensibility of improvisation and showmanship down the food-chain to an out of the way place that is largely gratuitous.

A movie produced that way would probably result in a middling documentary, a news report, or a corporate training video. But you probably wouldn't be breaking any box office records.What about those aspects of an experience design which really truly need to be segregated from the content? Well, you might ask why that's even part of your site; I mean, you might argue that any interface elements which really are unrelated to the content might rather belong somewhere else.

Virologist studies the hamburger icon

Take the ubiquitous “Hamburger” icon, for example. Since it appears to play a role on the vast majority of sites, one could safely assert that it's clearly not specific to any brand or strategy. Ubiquitous and non-specific the hamburger icon, one could argue, might even bubble up into the browser chrome. I mean, why not? We have a back button up there, and your fathers used to nevertheless design back buttons into their websites. Theoretically, if prototypical sites are so great, and if you take the generic user experience trend to heart, every website should have content to fill a browser-based, hamburger menu. It would free up space in the window, and give users the prototypical experience we are told they crave. It’s a win, win, right?

Ok, I know it has issues, but let’s pretend you think this isn’t as crazy as it sounds. I hope you can see that as we extend the idea of prototypical function over form, we rather quickly get into a situation where chrome owns your “UX” and you merely fill it with pre-determined content.

And hopefully you see that we are basically causing that today. 

External Stimuli: The Fall of Flash And The Rise of Multitouch & Apps

But why haven’t we recovered in our quest to innovate and differentiate on the web? Where did our aspirations go? Why do we even accept such a simplistic view of what's possible on the web?Both the popular rise of UX and the en masse surrendering of interactive innovation by web designers popularly took hold around 2007, roughly following the unveiling of multitouch on the iPhone.Was that timing just a coincidence? I don't think so; I think they were directly related.

After over a decade of interactive experimentation with the often kludgy, challenged tools available to web designers (Shockwave, Flash, etc.), Multitouch arrived via the iPhone.

Holy crap.

That was true interactivity! Our fingers and hands mucking through the very digital mud? Pinch to zoom- seriously?! Humanity’s continuum toward the Holodeck suddenly snapped into sharper focus. Like the sun overpowering a flashlight, one could see nothing else. It wasn’t even close.It was at that moment that anyone who was truly passionate about the design of interactive experiences and of innovating new interactive models on the web, redirected some key part of their attention to the implications of this new domain. Adobe’s Flash, the in-browser tool which up to then had been the de facto authoring tool for rich interactive innovation, in conjunction with a PC Mouse, seemed almost immediately antiquated. Next to multitouch, the resolution of interactivity on the web was pathetic.And I believe a sufficiently large swath of interactivists, at that moment, had an (possibly subconscious) epiphany:“Maybe,” the thinking went, “Maybe the browser isn’t really an optimal platform for innovating immersive, new interactive experiences. Maybe we have been over-shooting all this time, and the browser is already kind of figured out after all. It's certainly boring by comparison. Maybe interactive innovation is rather the domain of countless new technical platforms yet to come. Maybe we should just re-approach the browser and refocus our work there towards the simple, obvious things that we already know it does well. Just the basics.”You can sympathize with this thread. I mean, focusing on the known strengths of any technology, including the web, is sensible, and feels like a more mature, nuanced approach to the medium. And yet that simple recalibration, so holistically adopted, sucked the oxygen out of web design, squelching the drive and appetite for explosive, innovation from our browser-based experience designs.

Some of you read this and probably still believe that the browser is not a reasonable platform for aggressive interactive innovation today. That we “know” what web sites should be now - better than ever before.Yes, it’s easy to fall into that trap. I was with you as recently as a year ago. But there is one thought that obliterates that opinion for me.Let’s play out a hypothetical.

What If Technology Froze?

Let’s imagine that our technical landscape froze. Doesn't matter when. Say, today. Just stopped advancing. That the development tools you use today just stayed exactly the same for the next 20 years, no new versions, no new web standards, or bug fixes or updates, no faster processors, just these exact tools with these exact attributes, flaws and all. What do you suppose would happen?

Would the way we choose to wield those tools remain static and unchanging as well? Would web site design and the experiences we create for the next 20 years stay exactly the same as they are today?

Of course not! Our knowledge of that frozen tool’s true capabilities would explode. We would continue to discover capabilities and nuances that we have simply not had time or wherewithal to discover today. We would fully explore everything these tools could do, every aspect. We would see massive advances in our collective understanding and use of that static technical state. We would see a renaissance in our collective skills, interactive vocabulary and creative concepts. A new language. We would get vastly more sophisticated and better at creating, understanding and using content within that static medium. In short, we would master those tools.Paint does not have to advance for a painter to develop the skills of a master.The tools wouldn’t change - we would.

What that suggests to me is that such depth of innovation has always been possible, and is openly possible today, but intentionally or not, we don’t pursue it. That it has otherwise always been possible to deepen our understanding of any given technical state and to innovate aggressive, new experiences, but that we just can’t, or don’t. We simply choose not to set the bar high enough.Surely, one can argue that this is partly because technology changes too fast for creators to develop mastery. It advances out from under us. Indeed most of us can no more appreciate our true, collective lack of insight and skill any more than a cave painter might have imagined the lacking of insight and skill required to paint the Mona Lisa.That rather than bother trying to master the tools, many of us now patiently rely on the novelty of new technical tricks and advancements to fill the void. We have off-loaded responsibility to creatively innovate on developers of the platform.We wait around for the medium - to master us.

There are ways to fight this condition. Always have been. To reach further, and get closer to the ideal of mastery and innovation, despite technical change, than the vast majority of web design teams do. A very small handful of great teams know those tricks and techniques and achieve that today, such as North Kingdom in Sweden. But it starts with acknowledging that there is more. There are better, bigger ideas than those which the best practices and incrementalism of UX have delivered us so far.

It means you must look at the product of your design effort today and see the potential to have innovated much further.

You have to believe, once more, that your medium, exactly as it is, can do much more than you have bothered to discover. 

The Tragic Death of The Masters

Those of us who created interactive work in the early 90s were long ago forced to come to peace with this. Those of you who created Flash-based projects for many years were probably forced to face it only recently. And as sure as you are reading this, those of you who have only been working in the medium for less than a decade will unfortunately face it soon enough.

That we live in the Digital Dark Ages.

The one thing most of us will agree on is that technology changes. But as our industry incessantly celebrates the new, we less often notice what resultantly fades from view. Yet fade away is exactly what our work does. Unlike virtually every other preservable medium, the interactive work we create erodes from the view of users of future technologies. This is not just the result of changing software, versions and standards, but also of changing hardware, input devices and platforms, and of the unwieldy nature of maintaining functionality across the exponentially vast body of work being produced. A basic change in hardware will obliterate a decades worth of work or more.

A century from now your grandchildren, who bother to look back to your career, will see little to nothing, wonder fleetingly whether you ever created anything of value, and then assume “probably not”, since absolutely nothing you created will exist. Lost forever, as though it was merely a live performance. And then they will design some experience themselves, using future tools, that attempts to result in exactly the same emotional payoff or dramatic moment that you are producing today. Maybe they won’t do it as well as you did. But no one will be the wiser.Unlike any other recorded, preservable medium such as literature, audio recording, film & television, etc, Interactive work is the first where the great masters and masterworks that came before you disappear. Have disappeared. Vanished for being fully dependent on a temporary technical state. Consider what literature, music, film & TV would be like today if every book, song, movie and show ever recorded vanished forever 8-10 years after its creation. If you’d never seen Charlie Chaplan, Buster Keaton, David Lean or hell, even Star Wars. If the only content you could experience and reference today was all post 2008? Think about that. Across every medium. Because although we chronically celebrate the “new” in the interactive space, it’s the previous work that first addressed all the fundamental challenges interactive designers face today. And often without the burden of being instructed by experts in what can't be done.There are countless versions of the Internet (and earlier platforms, CD-Roms, Floppys, Consoles, etc) full of astounding interactive experiences, conventions and designs- beautiful, delightful work that you have lost the ability to reference and learn from. Even now you probably mistakenly assume whatever work existed then wasn’t all that because “we’ve moved so far past it; our tools are so much more advanced now”.But if you imagine this, you are mistaking platform and interactive resolution for experiences, content, emotion, and behavior.

Unfortunately, many of you are relegated to having to stumble blindly into re-conceiving and rediscovering those same, been-done, inventions, stories and discoveries all over again as if for the first time. And sometimes you won’t.

The Digital Dark Age has cut today’s designers and developers off from the vital inventions and experiments of the medium’s previous masters; rich resources of experimentation and invention which might have challenged the gross commonality and safe standardization we see today. Might have allowed today's designers to go farther. But its lacking has instead relegated today’s industry to being perpetually inexperienced. 

Taking Control & Crushing the Crisis

We can fix this. It's huge and has massive momentum, and it will require us to humbly accept our recent errors, but we can fix this.

Approaching project leadership differently than we do today is going to be the best lever we have for affecting this change. We need to start with the right people and priorities in leadership positions.

Individually, each of us can start by acknowledging less certainty in the things we currently take for granted. To once again accept the possibility that aspects of our process and beliefs, bleeding-edge though they may seem, are woefully incomplete. I realize that back-pedalling from progress feels counter-intuitive in a medium that is still being understood - where we’ve only just begun to feel like we “get it”.

Where so many are still only now climbing onto the UX wagon.

But this medium has always been destined to evolve past the domain of GUIs, toward “Interactive Theater”. Consider ongoing advances in Multitouch, AI, and VR among others. More and more, Interactive media is going to be defined truly by experiences, real ones, not the scroll and click brochures we see today.

User Experience will be designed to generate improvisational drama and emotion, delight and magic, in short, a show. Leading such a project, you’ll need usability-knowledgable performers and showmen, not analysts and best practitioners.

Although this shift in user experience is more obvious when you project out to such an advanced technical future, it is still starkly relevant today.

In no way am I saying that we should abandon the best practices we have developed. But I am saying that it’s patently wrong for the same psychographic that inordinately defends those best practices, to lead an interactive project.

Some of you are UI Designers who truly love exploring the aesthetics of an interface. I get that. And thanks to the present state of the medium that will remain a valid role a bit longer. But to build and maintain relevance in your career you must move past the focus on mere graphic design that UX has relegated you to. You must be thinking about motion, behavior and improvisation with your users. And needless to say, you must resist referencing so few of your peers for inspiration.

There was a time before which Bobby McFerrin had his uniquely recognizable vocal style; the one that made his sound instantly recognizable in the early 80s. In interviews he described developing that style by cutting himself off from listening to his peers for 2 years, specifically to avoid sounding like everyone else. He used this time to explore new, original ideas. He then spent 4 more years practicing and perfecting.Perhaps for you, developing an original approach won’t take 2 years of isolation, perhaps you can find your personal, inspirational vein without retreating from the industry altogether. But part of being a strong designer is tapping into a unique creative vein that inspires you. Not taking your inspiration from the work that has been “Most Appreciated”, or “Most Viewed”, but from a thread of your own. It takes guts to put yourself out there. To accept the professional risk of stepping aside the work of the popular kids. To avoid clicking on the “Upcoming Design Trends of 2017” prediction articles, and to do something appropriately true to you. If you aren’t on such a path, then you need to get on it; either that or take satisfaction in being regarded as a craftsman. Good craft is valid, but distinct from design.

So Who Leads?

• When designers lead projects you get solutions that look pretty but don't work.

• When technologists lead projects you get solutions that function but look like spreadsheets.

And we must now add a new, equally unfair generalization to the list:

• When UX leads projects, you get solutions that convert better but are just like everyone else’s.

The ideal interactive experience takes equal insight and invention from all of these very disparate, specializations: creative, performance and design, strategy, best practice, analysis, and numerous technologies.

That's why we must rather encourage much more systemic debate between specializations. This is a team alchemy issue.In particular we must try to undo the damage we have done to the design community when we began deprioritizing the "artist's muse" in the origination of user experience. The fractured sensibilities of strategic UX and aesthetic UI, as we define them today, must be re-merged, either through skill development or team structure.We then must empower that sensibility. We must reprioritize expressiveness, artistic exploration, play and the chaos of inventiveness as critical aspects of the UX Design process. Equal in importance to the logical, rational aspects that exist today.Project planning and scheduling further need to accommodate this change in process by building space for experimentation and the inevitable stages of failure and problem solving.I believe that the best, most advanced interactive teams will address this leadership issue in one of three ways:

1. They will assign project leadership to a new role, a Director, hierarchically above what stands in for UX today. UX will take on an advisory role. This director will defend the dramatic experience, like a film director who leads many technical specialists across wide ranging fields, to a creative end.

2. They will significantly change the job requirements of UX leadership to favor people who have a strong showman’s sensibility, an artist’s openness to new ideas, a true innovator. A playful romantic. In addition to managing strategic, functional, best-practice authorities.

3. They will remove the singular leader altogether and move to a multi-disciplinary leadership model, raising the status and empowerment of each leader of the multidisciplinary teams. This is hard, and risks committee thinking, but in a team lacking ego, whose focus is laser-set on ground breaking experiences, it absolutely works.

Many combinations of these approaches would work. Each has risks and challenges. But if done well, each also increases the likelihood that we will see more  differentiation and innovation than we do today. Hopefully we will see more magic. 

Conclusion

I’m sure by now it's occurred to you that I’m a total hypocrite. That here I've produced this stupidly long blog post that might as well have been a book, and it's everything I have railed against.

Ok, I admit it, you're dead right; ideally I would have expressed these ideas interactively. At least I would have supplemented my ideas that way. What can I say. I did this alone. I don't code much myself, so I have to rely on the tools that I do have sufficient command of.

But at least I'll admit here in front of you that I have totally failed the medium because of that. That I have produced a piece of totally inauthentic work. I only hope you can see past that. And I truly wish the rest of the industry would similarly admit the same failure.Tomorrow we’re all going to go to work, and we're going to be surrounded by a wide range of highly talented people who don't yet think this way. Who don't yet see their sore lacking. People who are comfortable with the current definitions and trends, but who collectively have all the necessary skills to conquer this problem.

Many will not see that they are more than members of the design community, but that they are also on a stage, in a theater, in front of an audience. Putting on a nicely typeset, but very dull, show.

The idea that their project is maybe off target to some extent will not be met with ease. The whole system is aligned right now to squelch your innovative inclinations. But I encourage you to evangelize the need to break the stagnation, to find a new definition for UX and a new team structure to support it. At the very least be the person who questions the status quo and is confident that we can and should invent again.

And look, changing your mindset to favor innovation will help you in your career. The medium is going to change as technology and the world changes. As it has changed countless times already since the early 90s. The birth and death of browsers, the birth and death of Shockwave and Flash, propagation of social interconnection, the fragmenting of screens, ubiquity of mobile, the Internet bubble and ad-blockers, the only certainty you have is that the next fundamental changes will be so profound that they’ll catch you off guard. And if you have merely specialized in the current state, if your days are filled with the processes and skills that serve this narrow, off-target, flat graphic, UX best-practice-based website, circa: 2016, then there is more than a good chance, when such change comes, you’ll have precious few applicable skills to bring to bear.Focus on the big picture. Study and understand the future ideal of this medium, and work back from there.This medium is beautiful and powerful. It carries more latent potential than any other medium before it. And yet we barely understand it. We can barely speak its language. We even lack respect for our own inadequacy. So as the young, best and brightest enter our industry to be routinely trained against such misaligned conventions, led to believe our self-satisfied celebration of "design", all while the true reason for being of this medium is so weakly embraced, it breaks my heart.In those very rare instances that I discover someone who actually does get the medium, who bucks all these constitutionally weak, generic trends and produces a delightful, innovative, true-use piece of work, that effectively marries strategy and functionality, imagination and performance with a fine sense of taste and craft, it gives me goose bumps and makes me want to yell and fist pump in their direction.This medium can support magic. We only need to try. 

Special thanks to Tom Knowles, Gisela Fama, and Marcus Ivarsson for some truly thought-provoking, spirited debates.

Messages from the Future: VR Entertainment

MESSAGES FROM THE FUTURE: VR ENTERTAINMENT

Ok, so in the future, Elon Musk's math turned out to be wrong. No, we don't live in a Virtual Reality simulation. Turns out, however dull and tragic it might seem, this world is our actual base reality. Boring, I know. Turned out the odds of being in the only theoretical simulated reality that DIDN’T have convincing VR technology among an infinity that DID ruined the whole fantasy. However what his math did prove was that otherwise smart people who are exposed even to old, crappy pseudo-VR, like you have today, almost immediately start to question their base reality for no other apparent reason. Not surprisingly this turned out to be equally true of 15-year-old boys who watched "The Matrix" once.

Go figure.

That said when we extended Musk's math even further, it also proved that we will eventually learn to travel back in time, and that time travelers are therefore among us.  Something I didn't believe until it happened to me.

Anyway, before we get into what made VR entertainment awesome in the future, I feel like I need to explain what VR wasn’t, because in your time a lot of you are still confused about that.

VR Wasn't On Your Phone

Listening to the press in your time you might imagine that VR is on your phone. That as early as next year you will be able to “put awesome VR in your pocket”.  ...Really?  Could someone at Wired please define the word "awesome"? I mean, because I just used that word, and the way you're using it so wasn't what I meant.

Today, filmmakers, technologists and, naturally, pornographers are breathlessly diving into this idea (prematurely), pitching and signing VR content deals to produce some of the world's first so-called “VR films”.

So let’s cut to the chase. In the future VR was not about turning your head to look a different direction. Yeah, that didn’t turn out to be it at all. Totally wrong. Yet somehow an entire industry seems to have confused this point. In fact, turning your head during a linear movie appears to be the entirety of what many otherwise smart people mean when they say "VR" in your time. Didn't the fact that Google made theirs out of cardboard indicate anything to you?

Didn't the fact that Google made theirs out of cardboard indicate anything to you?

360 wasn’t VR any more than a 4-year-old's crayon-drawn flip book is a summer blockbuster.

Anyway, despite the efforts of some over-eager filmmakers who really tried making movies where turning your head was, like, a “thing”, you thankfully moved past that phase pretty quickly.

If you are one of those guys considering making one of those linear, head-turny VR movies, you could save yourself a lot of professional embarrassment and personal disappointment and just not do that instead.  Strongly recommended.

I further find it fascinating that the same people who kicked and screamed before admitting that wearing Google Glass made you look like a complete dork, are now honking the same ain't-it-cool clown horns all over again with VR on your phone.

I get it. I know. You can't wait to be special, little, cyber-cool, robot-hacker adventure guys. That's still a cool thing in your time, right? A hoodie, a laptop, Christian Slater, and you, with a shoebox strapped to your face, waving your arms like an idiot catching invisible unicorn butterflies.I get it.  Yeah, you're right, you're really cool when you do that in public.

 Augmented Reality's Achilles Heel

"Oh, but I am fully aware that so-called VR on your phone is kind of stupid," you say. "I'm on the cutting edge. That's why my eye is on Light Field-based Augmented Reality."Right. Augmented Reality, or “blended reality”, or “mixed reality”, or good lord, whatever the hell Reality you’re calling it now - it’s all the same thing; why do you keep renaming things that have perfectly good names?

Augmented reality wasn't an entertainment game-changer either. And this goes against everything you are reading in the press in your time. Most Augmented Reality evangelists are super excited about how AR is a, or maybe even the, medium for entertainment in the future. So here’s the deal, in the future, AR was to digital entertainment what Sushi is to fine cuisine.  Some of it is really good, but the vast majority of fine cuisine doesn't involve uncooked fish.

In the future, AR was to digital entertainment what Sushi is to fine cuisine.  Some of it is really good, but the vast majority of fine cuisine doesn't involve uncooked fish.

Due to the medium’s definitive limitations in the face of the massively expansive domain of entertainment, AR occupied a very narrow slice of the experience pie. It was no more the medium for entertainment in the future than mobile phones are today. You know, hindsight being 20/20.

I admit however, that AR appears to demo very well. About as well as any spanking new special effect technique from Hollywood. Bearded tech bloggers with their geek chic but mostly geek glasses are giddy and excited about the promise of this medium, thrilling and editorially gasping at seeing jellyfish near a ceiling or C-3PO standing behind someone’s desk. And it is kind of cool in a way, because in your time you have never seen that before. As a visual effect (which is all it is), it probably seems like magic. But if you’ve therefor proclaimed AR as "the future of entertainment", well, you're missing a really crippling something:You're in your room.

Star Wars VR - Episode XXI - LOCATION: YOUR ICKY ROOM

There's your coffee cup, there is yesterday's half-eaten banana, and, oh, there is the underwear pile you keep meaning to put in the laundry basket before Brittany gets here.In the expanse of storytelling, I don’t know how else to say this, there are only so many believable stories that could happen in that room, surrounded by your own personal junk. Said another way, amidst the infinity of possible amazing stories that storytellers will wish to tell, across vast worlds and realities, only a minuscule, meaningless number of them has anything to do with wherever the hell you actually happen to be in reality.

Got it? By its very definition, AR suffered the severe limitation of having to co-exist with your world such that suspension of disbelief was maintainable.  Even though the effect might make a compelling 5-minute demo today.Hey, who doesn't love the idea that C-3PO might be on a vital mission for the rebellion which coincidentally can only be conducted... three feet from your slightly mildewed, 1960s, pink-tiled bathroom?

Hey, who doesn't love the idea that C-3PO might be on a vital mission for the rebellion which coincidentally can only be conducted... three feet from your slightly mildewed, 1960s, pink-tiled bathroom?

Pixar folk have uttered a number of brilliant statements related to the relationship between Technology and Art over the years, and this one feels relevant here:

"You can have some really stunning imagery and technical innovation, but after about 5 minutes the audience is bored and they want something more interesting -- story." - Lee Unkrich

Yes - I know AR entertainment seems cool right now while the visual effect is still novel, and further, by having not yet experienced any, let alone five or more, big budget VRs, it probably seems like there must be countless stories and realities one could create that would coexist nicely with your real world thanks to AR. In fact, the possibilities might seem limitless to you now. That’s what you’re thinking, right? That's certainly what you're reading. And ok, fair, there were a small handful of good ones.

The problem was that those couple good ones got made, and in very short order it became clear that the same few, contrived, narrative devices had to be repeatedly enlisted, ad nauseam, in order to explain away the unavoidable fact that this story was happening a few feet from your much too hastily selected Ikea shelving unit.  And trust me, that got old really fast.There were the scary killer/monsters in your room stories, the impossible, magical/sci-fi whatever in your room thanks to some coincidental, random, accidental dimensional/time portal stories, the Elon Musk was right about the Matrix stories, and the king of all AR stories, the Bourne-ish spy/conspiracy for-some-reason-you're-the-random-person-we-coincidentally-need stories. And at some point storytellers and audiences just realized that having to co-exist with the real world was a repetitive, and somewhat annoying, contextual handicap, and backed off, allowing AR mode to settle into it's righter use-cases.

...at some point storytellers and audiences just realized that having to co-exist with the real world was a repetitive, and somewhat annoying, contextual handicap, and backed off.

That said, the one genre where none of this was a problem at all was - porn. Although few acknowledged it openly, porn dominated AR entertainment. Integrating with your real world actually enhanced porn's value. On the one hand, the illusion was all that mattered; unlike other genres, no one cared about actual story devices in this context. And on the other hand, with AR you could keep a defensive, watchful eye on the real world. There was little more embarrassing than being walked in on, and on full display, unawares, while blindly aroused in some depraved, fetishistic VR extravaganza.

To wit, whole video sharing sites were dedicated to streaming parades of horrifying, thank-the-greek-love-goddess-Aphrodite-that-wasn't-me, "caught" videos revealing one blissfully-oblivious, self-gratifying, gogglebrick-faced, sex pig after another. Esh. There but for the grace of God...Non-porn AR entertainment on the other hand, settled into a more casual entertainment role, generally serving arcade and puzzle games that utilized objects or textures in the space around you, or ignored the room altogether.This is not to say that was all AR was good for. Not at all. AR was massive in so many other, non-entertaining ways. AR was indispensable at work, in communication, education and productivity.After all that, I guess it would be a good time for me to tell you that actually, the difference between Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality, was trivial.  They were just modes.  A toggle.

Tap, AR.

Tap, VR.

Tap, AR again.

Got it?

So turning off your view off the real world and entering an immersive new one was trivial.

But although mode switching was trivial, it was here in VR mode - the real world blocked out entirely - that entertainment non-trivially reigned.

VR Storytelling

What constituted a VR entertainment experience? What made a great VR story?

This isn't VR either.

Today the closest discrete relative you have to VRs, as they manifested in future, is games. But don't get all excited. These weren't sisters.  Today's games are that second cousin who voted for Trump, eats way too many Cheet-Os, smells her toenail clippings, and buys cheap jewelry on the Home Shopping Network. Comparatively speaking, the best games you have today are fiddly junk. And the platforms that power them are - so - fucking - slow. I mean really, today's games are cryptic. How did I ever enjoy them? Ug. All these ridiculous limitations.

"No, you can't kick that door down because we meant for you to find the key. Oops, you can't walk over there because, well, you just can't. You can break the window... oh, but no, you can't use the broken glass to cut the rope, because, well, honestly none of us thought of that."

If a specific action was not preconceived by a creator, you can't do it. No room for your creativity and problem solving, unless the creators thought of it first.  And the whole time you have to twiddle these stupid little game controller buttons and joysticks. God forbid I should wish to say something to a character, with all those coy responses designed to side-step the fact that this so-called "AI" can't logically respond to anything outside of some arbitrary, branching, preordained multiple-choice quiz.

I mean, imagine how you would feel if you were back in 1978 and all the millennial, hipster news bloggers were fawning over Coleco's Electronic Quarterback as "awesome video games in your pocket" and you were the only one in the world who'd spent 5 years playing a PS5?  You wouldn't know where to start.

And yet games are still the closest, discrete thing you have to actual VR.

VR Storytelling: The User Strikes Back

A great story, as you think of it today, depends on structure, timing and sequence. Without a story's structure and a sequence of events, how can there be a story at all? Fair point. A traditional, linear auteur very carefully structures a story, and times a sequence of specific events, that build to a conclusion. The linear storyteller definitively owns these decisions.

But in an interactive domain, glorified by VR, the user throws that structure, timing and sequence into chaos. Because the user makes those decisions. Not the storyteller.

So structurally speaking, "Storytelling" and "Interactive" are polar opposites.

Now at first this sends all the linear story tellers into a tizzy because it sounds to them like a kind of absolute chaos. But that's because they're just used to having absolute control over structure, timing and sequence.

"Yes, but what do I do then? How do I tell a story?! What are the tools of my trade?"

To this I would remind the linear storyteller that story is about more than structure, timing and sequence. Story is about character. In fact, the very best storytellers will instruct, much better than I can, that "character is story". That embedded in every character are countless stories that might manifest fascinatingly under a near infinite range of meaningful challenges. Writers of the world's greatest stories start with who their characters are. The way characters react to conflict drive the story forward. In fact when a story is perhaps not about character, the story is usually bad.

Character backstory was a critically fundamental part of interactive storytelling in the future. The platforms were fast enough and the AI intelligent and improvisational enough to literally perform characters that you could relate to. As a writer, you could create people.There were other tools: environments, objects, and acts of God (or maybe acts of "storyteller"). Along with character these were all parts of the interactive storyteller's palette. The story was literally embedded in the assemblage of programmatic objects.  And "acts of God" did allow the storyteller to take some control. To affect timing and events.  To a point.And in the end, that was the game. Not sequence and timing, but potential and likelihood.

The art of VR storytelling was the masterful design and assembly of character, environment, objects, and acts of God in the construction of a narrative theme park - saturated with latent story probability.

The art of VR storytelling was the masterful design and assembly of character, environment, objects, and acts of God in the construction of a narrative theme park - saturated with latent story probability. All powered by sophisticated, improvisational AI.

VR storytellers were experts in human behavior, and understood how to encourage motivation and read and manipulate emotions in action.

Crying

Despite the skill of great VR storytellers, one of the things they struggled with for years were sad stories. There were so few successful dramas that brought you to an emotional place. And at some point we realized - it was a result of the very medium.

In real life we experience emotional pain due to our lack of control over the universe, and that is what makes us cry. For example, say Bosco your puppy gets run over by some (yes, self-driving) Uber. You would do anything to stop that from happening, but it's real life so you can't.  The same is true for movies and books where you are limited to a preplanned path. You can't change it.

But in VR, we were in control. When you saw some pending tragedy, you had the immediate ability to fix it, undo it.  We could choose what we wanted to happen. Bosco can be saved!  Hooray!

VR, as a medium, existed to provide wish fulfillment.

As a result, you almost never cried in VR. And VRs that wrested away your control to try to make you cry, just didn't do that well.

Actually, Size Matters

The hipster millennial reporters, who thought awesome VR could ever make its way to your phone, took years to accept that despite Moore's Law, there was a consistent, significant, qualitative improvement afforded by large, dedicated, wired systems. The quest for perfected VR ended up being a never-ending hole of technical advancement because the target was so high (the convincing recreation, abstraction and manipulation of the real world and all nature's elements and laws) and so far beyond what was technically possible at any given time, that any version of miniaturized, portable VR always seemed grossly inferior. The state of the art physical set up, the sensors, haptic projectors and computing power required to run great VR still had not, by the time I popped back to this time, become small enough to carry with you, and nor would you want it to.

The target was so high and so far beyond what was technically possible at any given time, that any version of miniaturized, portable VR always seemed grossly inferior.

The reason you might not fully appreciate this is because you are still defining VR resolution as you think of it today. Oh, that gets miniaturized, sure, but that was lame.For example, by the time I popped back here what you’re calling haptic holography was a critical part of both the experience and the interface. This was not just some dull Apple Watch pulse. I mean you could bruise yourself on a virtual rock if you weren't careful. Wide ranges of textures, heat, cold, fluid dynamics (wind, water, etc) could all easily be replicated. If you got haptic water on your hands, they really felt wet. Which lead to all sorts of applications. You could wave your virtually wet hands and feel the coolness of evaporation; you had to dry them off on something. You could feel VR clothes and the weight of objects.

And get this, they could even create haptic effects inside your body. Again there were safety limitations, but it allowed the system to adjust your sense of orientation, to create the illusion that you were flying, or falling, or accelerating or decelerating, or standing. Even when you were just sitting in a chair you could feel like you were walking. And seriously - don’t get me started on porn.

As you can see, by the time your Apple Watch (the only device most of us carried) had enough thrust to power aural/visual-only experiences, the larger, wired, in-home rigs were producing massively richer, more jaw-dropping experiences that just made the phone version seem, well, kind of stupid.

You'd see businessmen fiddling with some portable version on the Hyperloop, but there just wasn't much to that.And so it went for some time. Until our senses could be bypassed entirely, computers became sentient, and all hell broke loose.  But that's another post.

Generation VRI

Back in the "moving meat days", and despite VR-proofing rooms (which basically involved padding, like you would do for a baby, but only for a full-grown, 250-pound man) everyone of my friends had some awful VR injury story . VRI was a thing you bought insurance for. As you neared walls and objects in the real world, most VRs would alert you in various ways. However, you would be surprised how strong the drive to do what you'd intended could be in the heat of the dramatic moment. You would invariably push, just that little bit further, to accomplish your goal, despite the warning. This tendency was called "elevening" (11-ing "push it to 11"). Elevening caused stubbed toes, noses and fingers. People tripped, collided, broke bones, knocked things over, fell off balconies, knocked people out windows, got electrocuted and burned, and in too many cases, died. To counter this, some VRs employed something between VR and AR called Reality Skinning, where your real room and objects like chairs or whatever was in it, were all rendered as themed objects in the virtual one. But I always found that a bit lame.

Getting injured in VR, however, was the least of our issues.

Although VR was awesome, it's problem was that is was really awesome.

Pretty much an entire generation weaned on VR grew up, at best, bored stiff with the real world. But usually worse. Leaving the virtual world and reentering the real one of inconvenience, dirt, ailments, limitations and an oppressive lack of control was such a profound let down. Your ego was once again forced to accept your oh so many pathetic imperfections.

Pulling out was universally met with depression. Often severe.

People slept there. It was vilified as being addictive, but how could it not be? An always-on Vegas casino, perpetual early-dusk; party-time forever.  Like heroin addicts, VR users suffered from a wide range of ailments, severe nutritional deficits and health problems related to hours on end foregoing attention to their real-world meat. Dieting stopped being something anyone tried to do. You think you have a sedentary population today?  You have no idea.

Users exhibited all sorts of bizarre behaviors and tics due to reflexively gesturing virtual actions that had no impact in real life.

Intelligent users were often confused and distrusting of base-reality.

A surprising number of people drowned when they discovered they couldn't actually breathe under real water, let alone swim. Others jumped off buildings because they actually did, with complete certainty, believe they could fly. Empathy plummeted. Samurai sword violence shot up dramatically.  And we generally stopped procreating, having been profoundly overstimulated by wildly perfect, surreal fantasy surrogates, and because we'd also become far too insecure in the presence of other equally damaged, relatively ugly, real live biological people to build relationships anyway.

I mean, no duh, seriously? What did you expect?

There is so much more to this story, but suffice it to say that VR changed everything. You could do anything, be anywhere, be anyone...

As such, VR was not just another medium.

VR was an alternate world in which our wishes were granted.

Think about that while you fiddle with your phones.

Oh, and Oculus Rift didn't end up ushering in anything. They just became a peripheral company.

Messages From The Future: The Decline of Apple

MESSAGES FROM THE FUTURE: THE DECLINE OF APPLE

I’m sure you’ve had your own debates with the “Apple is about to die” crowd. I’ve had those too. Except that being from the future, of course I’m the only one who actually knows what I’m talking about. And yet even though the future is not always rosy for Apple, even though some of these people sometimes have a point, they still piss me off just like they did the first time I was here.

Usually the argument centers around the tired meme that Apple has nothing significantly visionary or profitable to jump to that comes close to the potential of the iPhone, which of course supposedly means that Apple is going to die under its size and obsessive and unsustainable inclination to polish and “perfect” in the face of speedier, less precious, competition.

But that is so not how it goes down.

The other day Marco Arment read about Viv the AI virtual assistant , still being developed by creators of Siri. This, in particular, he told me years from now, after we’d met online which hasn't happened yet (Hi Marco - you dropped it in the potato salad - remember I said that), coupled with highly cited reports of the AI efforts of Google and Facebook, inspired his first post on the topic of this possible kink in Apple’s armor. It was about then that he, and a handful of others, came to their conclusion; one that was not too far off from what actually happened.Though it wasn’t quite as simple as “Apple showing worryingly few signs of meaningful improvement or investment in…big-data services and AI…”, nor as some had suggested, “When the interface becomes invisible and data based, Apple dies”.

Actually interfaces remained visible, tactile and exceptionally alive and well in the future. AI (via natural language interfacing) did not herald the death of the visual or tactile interface.  We used each for different things and in different places. Trust me - there are still a million reasons you'll want to see and touch your interfaces, and maybe more importantly, a million places in which you still don't want to sound like a dork talking to your virtual assistant.  Even in the future.But there was some truth floating within the "big-data services" thread.

But there was more going on here than the advance of AI. There was also the ongoing fragmentation of your platforms.

Apple mastered the hardware/software marriage. With rare exception, Apple exceeded in virtually any device category they ventured into. So you might argue that so long as there were devices to build and software to make for it, even if it was indeed powered by advanced AI, Apple, with resources beyond any other company, stood a chance. But there was more going on here than the advance of AI.

There was also the ongoing fragmentation of your platforms.20 years ago most of you still had one computer: a desktop. 15 years ago you probably had two, including a laptop.  10 years ago you added a smartphone and a “smart” TV. 5 years ago you added a tablet. Last year you added a watch. Now you have six computing devices plus peripherals and are only a few years from adding the first real VR platforms (incidentally real VR catches all the currently uncertain silicon valley trenders, and mobile hypeists off-guard. VR is so not this unbelievably temporary, phone-based, turn-your-head-to-look-another-direction ridiculousness. What a joke. That’s the equivalent of the 1998-chose-your-ending interactive CD-ROM, or red and blue 3D glasses. Trust me, speaking from the future - your phone didn't become much “VR” anything. Took a lot more hardware. If you’re investing, focus on in-home solutions and content creators, that’s where it all went down in the future. Another post.)

And do you think this platform fragmentation will stop? (Spoiler: it doesn’t.) Having to remember to put your device in your pocket is totally kludgy, you can see that even now, right? That you have to manage where all your various form factors are and independently charge, set up, maintain and connect them all, is grossly unwieldy, right?

You should know this, because it has been commonly theorized by now, that computers will continue to get cheaper and more powerful so as to become ubiquitous. In everything. Not just the so called internet of things, but the interconnection of EVERYTHING. And indeed, that happened. Exponentially. And yet few were ready. Businesses were disrupted and died.

Computers became part of almost everything. Seriously, for example, computers were in fish. And for that matter your toilet became a massively parallel processing platform…

Seriously, for example, computers were in fish. And for that matter your toilet became a massively parallel processing platform… I’m not kidding, 1.84 YottaFLOP power flushers.  Everything that touched it, and went into it, was measured, DNA-decoded, and analyzed in a million ways.  And this, more than any other advance in medicine, lead to quantum advances in health care and longevity. Who knew. There was a toilet company on Forbes Top 100 US Companies list.  No, really.  Though Apple never made a toilet.

Aside from your watch (and a headset which eventually you didn’t need anyway), you didn’t carry anything. Everything was a potential display, even the air, when it was dark enough. My Apple Watch was still the last and only device I carried with me (I posted about this before - it is laughable that people today think Apple Watch has no future. Oh man, just you wait.) But I’m getting ahead of myself.

This platform fragmentation, and not just AI, and not the feared loss of interface, was what ultimately changed things for Apple. Suddenly - there were thousands of device form factors everywhere. A virtual fabric. Rampant commoditization. Experience democratization.In hindsight, it became clear that what Apple required to be at its best was a market limitation in consumer’s access to devices. Limited form factors, limited production and distribution. These limitations, which were common during the PC and mobile eras, allowed Apple to qualitatively differentiate itself. To polish and make something insanely great - in contrast to the others. To design a noticeably superior experience.

But the more the device ecosystem fragmented, the harder it became for Apple to offer uniquely valuable and consistent experiences on top of all those infinitely unique functions and form factors. It just became unmanageable. I mean Apple had an impact for sure. Companies knew design mattered. And Apple went down in history as the company that made all that so.

Your six devices became upwards of fifteen devices, at which point I think most of us just stopped counting. And the number kept growing so fast. The car was a big one. Yeah, Apple did a car. A few actually. The car was perfect for Apple then because there were still significant market limitations in that category. And Apple could focus on the qualitative experience. Later, as the dust settled, the watch, being the last device we needed to carry with us, also served as a different kind of market limitation - a focal point for Apple's strengths.

the idea of a “device” of any specific, personalized sort had begun to lose meaning

But as device fragmentation continued to explode, as the hardware market massively commoditized, the idea of a “device” of any specific, personalized sort had begun to lose meaning. In the future, the term “device” sounds much the way “mainframe” or “instamatic” might sound to you today. Quaint, old; it’s just not a relevant concept anymore. Everything was a device. Focus instead shifted to the services that moved with you. Which was part of Apple’s problem.

Like Facebook, Apple, the wealthiest company in the world at the time, did a good job buying its way into various service categories (including AI, banking and hospitals), and innovating on some. Apple had a huge finance division, they had media and content production, utilities, but then so did other companies by then. Ultimately, none of it was in Apple’s sweet spot.

Without discrete devices, it was services and systems that became consumers' constant. I hope you can see that when this happens, it fundamentally changes Apple’s proposition, the so-called perfect marriage of hardware and software itself becomes an antiquated paradigm.

No, Apple did NOT die, but became some significant degree less a focal point for all of us. And yet... maybe now armed with this knowledge, they can change how things played out.In the meantime I’m watching the toilet sector. And I plan to invest heavily.

The Presentation of Design

The Presentation Of Design

There was an excellent post on Medium recently called: 13 Ways Designers Screw Up Client Presentations, by Mike Monteiro which contained thoughtful, if rather strident, recommendations related to the selling of design work. It was a relatively enjoyable read. I agreed with all 13 points. However in his first paragraph, establishing the primary rationale for the article, Mr. Monteiro made a statement that caused me to choke on my coffee:

“I would rather have a good designer who can present well, than a great designer who can’t.”

I had to reread it a few times to make sure I’d read it correctly. After reading the article I kept coming back to that line. “Really?” I kept asking myself.

He went on to say:

“In fact, I’d argue whether it’s possible to be a good designer if you can’t present your work to a client. Work that can’t be sold is as useless as the designer who can’t sell it. And, no, this is not an additional skill. Presenting is a core design skill.”

My emphasis added.

Undoubtedly that pitch goes over super well in rooms filled with wannabe designers who can present really well, busy account executives and anyone whose primary tool is Excel. Certainly for people who look on the esoteric machinations of designers as a slightly inconvenient and obscure, if grudgingly necessary, part of doing business.

But surely it can't be the mantra of someone who cares supremely about the quality of the design work - about achieving the greatest design?

I never do this, but I posted a brief opinion of disagreement on this point in the margin comments of Mr. Monteiro’s article. And I would have moved on and forgotten all about having done that, but my comment was subsequently met with some amount of resistance and confusion by Mr. Monteiro and other readers writing in his defense. It frankly depressed me that there were professionals in our industry that might sincerely feel this way and more so that the article might convince even a single talented young designer for whom presentation is a non-trivial challenge, that this particular thought, as worded, has any industry-wide merit. And then I came across this recent talk he gave where he doubled down on the idea.

So I wanted to explain my reasoning more fully- it’s an interesting debate- but the limited word-count allotted to side comments didn’t allow for meaningful explanations or exchanges (particularly by people who are as verbose as I am). So rather than pollute Mr. Monteiro’s otherwise fine article further, I decided to explain myself more completely in a post of my own. Maybe more as personal therapy than anything.

No matter your field or role, you will never do worse by having strong presentation skills. It will help you align the world in your best interest, without question.

Let me first state — presentation proficiency is a useful skill. No matter your field or role, you will never do worse by having strong presentation skills. It will help you align the world in your best interest, without question. Everyone should cultivate these skills to the best of their ability.

But to what degree does this affect a designer? Does its lacking utterly obliterate one’s potential as a great designer, as Mr Monteiro asserts? And should designers further be “had” principally on presentation skill over other attributes?

Language Logic

Linguistically speaking, his choice of words “A good designer”, and “who can present well” clearly contemplate two separate states of being. This compels one to infer that not all good designers can present well, which is further supported by the fact that Mr. Monteiro evidently turns away “great designers who can’t.”

Which leaves me wondering:What is demonstrably “great” in a “great designer” who can’t present well, if presenting is a core design skill that dictates the ultimate usefulness of the entire role? Wouldn’t that mean then, that there never was any such “great designer” to begin with? That this designer must have been, rather, a “poor designer” for lacking presentation skill? Perhaps a better way to say what I believe Mr. Monteiro meant is:

“There is no such thing as a great designer who can’t present well, because presenting is a core design skill.”

On the one hand this revised statement at least avoids contradicting itself, but on the other I still absolutely disagree with it because, to me, it inexorably expands into the following thought:

“I would rather have a designer who has relatively weaker creative problem-solving, conceptual, aesthetic and technical skills so long as they can, alone, persuade the client to pay for the work, than I would a designer who has vastly superior creative, conceptual, aesthetic and technical skills  who unfortunately happens to lack presentation skill.”

Based on his specific wording, I think Mr. Monteiro would have to concede, at the very least, that design and presentation are separate, independently measurable skills unrelated to one another except within the context of what he prioritizes - in this case the selling,  as opposed to the designing of  work.

Part of what troubles me then, is that no other option further appears to exist to Mr. Monteiro except that every designer present and sell their own work - full stop.  And that the quality of the design work is naturally the first thing that should be compromised to enable this.

And I think that’s an unnecessary, limited, nonrealistic supposition.

When Design Requires Explanation

Great design does not exist in some vacuum, opaque and impenetrable until, thank God, some good presenter comes to our rescue and illuminates it.

Nor is presentation inexorably required in order to perform the act of designing. If it were, that would mean that a, say, tongueless person, who also perhaps further lacked the ability to play Charades, could never be a designer. Which is ridiculous none the least of which because I cannot name any tongueless designers who could not also play Charades, but I trust that within the expanse of probability such a person could nevertheless exist.

But what about basic language and cultural barriers?

I work and live in Switzerland with a team of highly international designers: German, Swiss, Swedish, French, Ukrainian, British.  And so perhaps I see this more acutely than Mr. Monteiro, who lives and works in America.  But the native languages and references of these great designers are all quite different - and this would obviously affect their ability to present to, say, an American audience. If I valued their American/English presentation skill above their great design skill, well - there would be no team.

That said, it would be interesting to see Mr. Monteiro present to a roomful of native Chinese executives.  I wonder whether he would attempt to learn Mandarin, or choose to have a Mandarin translator interpret his words and meaning, or ask the Manderin-speaker on his team (if he has one) to assist in the presentation.  More critically, I wonder if he would be eager to define his presumed lack of fluid, confident Mandarin presentation skill as weakness in his design, or in his skill as a designer.

I'm admittedly being obtuse here, but only to illustrate the fault in the mindset. Great design is worth defending with presentation support, and I would argue there are even those projects where, counter to Mr. Monteiro's opinion, design actually does speak for itself.

 ...design which is not “great” rather usually does require a fair amount of explanation. Enter “good design”

This is because design is, in part, a language of its own. Indeed great design results in, among other things, the communication of function.

So where design is truly “great”, as opposed to “good”, its value must be nearly, if not sometimes wholly, self-evident. Great design is observable — at the very least, by the designer’s own team, for example. More on that later.

In contrast I find that design which is not “great” rather usually does require a fair amount of explanation. Enter “good design”, or worse, which may in fact require some presentation skill merely to compensate for its relative lower quality, its relatively weakened ability to self-communicate.

Supporting Talent

If you limit what you value in design talent by requiring that it absolutely be accompanied by self-sufficient sales skill, then you are shutting yourself off to some of the most creative and talented people in the world.  Indeed many people become designers and artists in part specifically because their brains don't connect with the world the way people who are good presenters do!  From my point of view it rather requires a kind of tone-deafness to the psychology of creatives to not see this.

My old friend and business partner, Sir Ken Robinson, speaks on the topic of creativity all over the world, and he often points out that exceptional intelligence and creativity take many forms. That rather, our reluctance and systematic inability to recognize and accommodate these varied forms of intelligence and creativity - our resistance to individualizing our interaction and support of it - results in an utterly wasted natural resource. He points to many famous creative people — at the top of their respective fields — who simply didn’t fit in “the box”, they didn’t easily align with the system. And that only through acknowledgment of their unique skills and provision of personalized support, could their inordinate brilliance find its way into the world. These are the people who often dominate their profession once the standardized models surrounding them are challenged to support their unique strengths. And I suppose I feel something similar is certainly true here. From my perspective, great talent must always be nurtured and supported. Even if, no, particularly if, that merely requires the support of a presentation.

From my perspective, great talent must always be nurtured and supported. Even if, no, particularly if, that merely requires the support of a presentation.

My expectation is that the people who buy into Mr Monteiro’s stance don’t like this idea in part because, for them, it probably perpetuates an old archetype of entitled, high-maintenance designers; insulated royalty who idealistically prefer to ignore business realities and design in a bubble. Of the managers and the operational and sales functions having to serve and adapt to the designers whims— of having to support and compensate for someone who isn’t carrying his weight in the business sense.

In reality, the type of extra effort required to support the development of truly great creative work in any field is exhausting and something that anyone lacking sufficient constitution gets quickly fed up with. So it must feel good, refreshing even, to be able rally behind this concept, to shed all those feelings of subordination and responsibility, and demand that designers do that work themselves, to say:

“Designer, if you can’t sell the work yourself you’re not good enough! Because guess what, it’s always been your job - alone!”

And although that stance may feel refreshing and proactive, it’s misguided.

The Business of Design

“Work that can’t be sold is as useless as the designer who can’t sell it.”

With this excerpt from the article, here again, I take issue. Sure, in the business of design, work that can’t be sold is (usually) useless. Agreed. But why on Earth is it the only option that the designer alone sell the work? And why does that make one's world-class, insanely-great design “useless”? This designer obviously works on a team, since Mr. Monteiro “would rather have” one of a different sort. So where is the rest of this team?

Of course in business, presentation must happen — it’s a requirement in the client-based sales of design. But how we go about accommodating that requirement within our agencies, I think, is a fair debate, and a relevant topic.

In my teams we frankly rely on one another. Does that sound odd?

Since we have already established that great design can be identified in isolation without the accompaniment of a formal sales presentation, that means great design is observable. At the very least, it’s certainly not going to be missed by a seasoned team. Especially, I assume, by someone like Mr. Monteiro, or his fans, who have all undoubtedly worked in design for a very long time. Surely each would acknowledge being able to recognize great design work if it were shown to them without the benefit of a sales presentation?

In my teams we frankly rely on one another. Does that sound odd?

So when this truly great designer who can’t present comes to you, lays an unbelievably brilliant piece of design work on your desk, perhaps the best you’ve ever seen, and mumbles to his feet:

“Yeah, um…well, this is what I did. ….er… I uh…. don’t know what else to say. (inaudible… something about “…my mom… ”)

What does Mr. Monteiro, or any of the people who would argue with me do?

I’ll tell you what I wouldn’t do, I wouldn’t yell:

“Somebody get a worse designer in here and start all over! Pronto!”

I would sit down patiently with this great designer who can barely put two words together, along with members of our team, and talk it through.

This is where a couple things happen, first it’s at this time that a strong director is sometimes called upon to be a mentor, a psychologist, a parent or friend to nurture, to listen and understand, to pull words and thoughts from someone whose mind literally doesn’t work that way. Yes, that sometimes takes work, but in my world-view,  great design is well worth it.  This is also when the team comes together to build our common language.   The fact is, the whole team needs to understand the project anyway. We all need to internalize why it works and what makes it so insanely special. Each of us.

If the design is actually great, at most, this exercise takes one hour.  Usually quite a lot less.  Rather I find we enjoy discussing truly great work, it sets the bar.  And we probably spend more time than necessary doing that because we love doing it.

And I have never in my 30+ year career been faced with a situation where someone on the team who was indeed exceptionally skilled at presenting could not assist a great designer who can’t present well.

Oh sure, it’s super-duper convenient to have great designers who are also great presenters — but those are rare creatures. Unicorns. You better believe that your search results get exponentially narrower with each search term you add. To combat this natural rarity, Mr. Monteiro claims he would rather broaden his search results by dropping the term “great design” from a search that includes “can also present”.

Whereas I prefer the reverse.

What the Client Wants

Obviously Mr. Monteiro is a busy person who runs a company that hires designers. This company cannot survive if design work is not paid for by clients. Perhaps because he has very little time, he has therefore decided that he needs his designers to be able to present well, as well as design. In fact, his preference for designers who can present is so strong, he will choose a designer with lesser design talent to accommodate that.

Hierarchically this clearly places the quality of the work below one’s ability to persuade the client to buy it.

Hierarchically this clearly places the quality of the work below one’s ability to persuade the client to buy it.

If one were to take this to heart (and I am not suggesting that Mr. Monteiro necessarily takes his own advice in running his studio), to me this would be a very cynical, virtually dishonest, platform on which to operate a design firm that promises great design solutions. Indeed it’s a hiring platform perfectly optimized to lower, rather than raise, the qualitative bar. One that prioritizes not the best work, but the ease of financial transactions. One that takes advantage of unsuspecting clients.

Where I come from that’s called selling out, and as a client, if truly great work is what I’m in the market for, any team that operates that way is a team I wouldn’t knowingly hire.

Good and great are relative of course, but in principle, I simply cannot imagine passing on what I would perceive of as great design in favor of something lesser-than just so that the rest of my team and I don’t have to put effort into assisting with a presentation. Because in the end — that’s all this boils down to — a willingness to apply the required effort to sell the greatest solution.

If you’re not willing to support a great designer with help in presentation — you might as well tell your clients you routinely compromise on quality because you don’t like to work that hard. Surely your clients would vastly prefer having the best possible talent in the world on their project.

Common Ground

Honestly when I originally wrote this post I just didn’t think Mr. Monteiro probably had the opportunity to be as critical as I am being about the language of that particular statement yet. I guessed he might have accused me of splitting hairs.  Of playing semantics. I was sure if he were really pushed against the wall on this topic he would probably concede that this particular stance seriously needs to be re-worded.  But his recent lengthy magnification of the idea at his recent talk makes me think he sincerely believes it, as I interpreted it.

That said, the two skews in which I think Monteiro’s language and my beliefs on this topic are in absolute alignment are:

1. Regarding a fully independent designer, one who wishes to work in total solitary — not part of any team — contracting design skills directly to paying clients. Then I agree, having presentation skills will be critical in the event that you wish to support yourself on the sales of that design work.

2. And that as a universal rule, presentation is an excellent skill to nurture in yourself if you are a designer, or occupying any other role on the planet, quite frankly. Presentation is just a good skill to have no matter what field you are in or role you play. It’s a skill that will always serve you well in affecting the world to suit your interestes. Everyone should do what they can to improve their presentation skills.

The lone swordsman aside, if you have even one other partner or team member, there are almost always alternatives that will allow great work to be presented and sold.

And if you are indeed a great designer, a lone swordsman, and feel genetically incapable of presenting well, I’d suggest you develop a professional relationship with a strong sales/presentation partner.

FYI — that’s generally called starting a company.

Apology

I’d like to sincerely apologize to Mr. Monteiro for being so hard on him in this piece. I’m sorry. I rather respect his thinking in every other way so I have felt conflicted the whole time writing this. I think if you haven’t, you really should read his article because it otherwise contains some solid advice and can help you be a better presenter.

…Just maybe completely skip the first two paragraphs. Truth is, the thrid paragraph is actually a much better opening bit.

Lastly —  To any truly great designers out there who can’t present well or don't feel comfortable doing so:

I admire and respect you. I’m hiring great designers all over the world.  Send me a message.

iOS Ad Blockers: Why Advertisers Are Suddenly Going Diarrhea In Their Pants

IOS AD BLOCKERS: WHY ADVERTISERS ARE SUDDENLY GOING DIARRHEA IN THEIR PANTS

Apple recently released ad blocking capabilities in iOS, and the ad and publishing industries began frothing at the mouth. Every emotion from spitting panic to disdain have been hurled into the webversphere over the capability. And as a consumer, and an ex-advertising shill, I love it. I am particularly fond of the most vicious ad blockers, the so-called ‘blunt instruments'. The ones that leave gaping, blank maws between thin slices of actual content. The ones that so severely disable Forbes ’welcome page’ (an interruptive page of ads feigning value with some irrelevant ‘quote of the day’) that you are required to close the resulting blank window and click the article's original link again to see the content.

Yes, I even revel in the extra effort it requires to get past all the newly broken, well-blocked bits. It's harder in some ways. But you know what? It's payback time. And that extra effort? It's a pleasure. I know that each tap and empty window is sending a message.With every whiny press release and industry insider wailing about the "end of content as we know it" a delightfully warm, glowing feeling washes over my insides.

I admit it, it's an unhealthy pleasure in general. And in any other context I wouldn't celebrate it. But here? I'm gonna party like its 1999, because for all the ad industry has learned since then, it might as well still be.

I'm gonna party like its 1999.  Because for all the ad industry has learned since then, it might as well still be.

This is what selfish, self-inflicted industry ruin smells like. Banners in ashes, melted trackers. A stockpile of suddenly outmoded scripts and tactics, all in embers. The dumbfounded expressions of dim-witted middlemen watching the gravy dry up.  Ah, there's that warm glow again.

Unfortunately, ruin is what this will take.I realize there is a risk that the arms race will result in even more devious forms of advertising, that the penicillin will result in resistant strains. But the relief for now is unquestionably worth it.

Even so, some are feeling guilt.  Under peer pressure, I assume, a few creators of Ad blocking technology are trying to give a crap.

Marco Arment pulled his ad blocker from the iOS app store, after 3 days as the top seller, I assume, with a last-minute guilty conscience.He said: “Ad blockers come with an important asterisk: while they do benefit a ton of people in major ways, they also hurt some, including many who don’t deserve the hit.”

I believe his observation is mostly correct but his response was wrong. And his kids will probably hate him someday for leaving a sizable portion of their inheritance to someone else's family. To wit, other excellent ad blockers have already moved in happily.  At least he hopefully slept better that week.

Then there is the new "AdBlock Acceptable Ads Program" where the previously dependable ad blocker now whitelists so-called 'acceptable ads' - allowing these ads through by default.  They define acceptable ads as adhering to a manifesto they've concocted which attempts to qualify approved types of interruptions.  I commend the attempt - but it is critically flawed,  a fundamentally incomplete manifesto, that sits precariously on an arbitrary portion of the slippery slope.

In an article posted to the Verge, Walt Mossberg wrote: “browser ads represent both an unwanted intrusion and a broken promise”. I read that and wanted to virtually high-five him since I momentarily thought he shared a core belief. But then I kept reading and discovered that the only ‘intrusion’ he referred to was the surreptitious collection of your information, and the ‘broken promise’ was the delivery of ads that weren’t as personalized and useful as he felt should be possible.

Well, ok he has a point, a reasonable one, but completely misses THE point. He’s a Kool-Aid drinker debating flavors.

So, What Is the Point?

Those of you who have read this blog in the past know that my world view of interactive media has, since the early 90s, been based on a small handful of very stable principles: Interactive Axioms.

The most sweeping of all, what I call "The First Axiom of Interactive", is that the user is, by definition, in control. “The User is your King. You, the creator, are merely a subject.”

People don't often acknowledge that this medium would simply not even exist if delivering control to the user was not the singular top-most goal.  There is nothing inconsistent or squishy about this reason for being.  Any functional capability you can point to will distill upwards to the quest for control.

The sheer existence of an affordance, a button say, anywhere on a remote control, or a website, or app, is a promise. It’s not one that we talk about much. But the obvious, unspoken promise is that it will react predictably and instantaneously.

The medium itself is an affordance - and the expected result of that affordance is control.

THAT is the promise.  Said another way, the medium itself is an affordance - and the expected result of that affordance is control

.If you remember DVDs and you happened to be in the USA, you might recall the FBI Duplication Warning at the start of every movie. Upon seeing these warnings, every one of us pressed the “skip” button. And then we subsequently experienced a moment of inner outrage because the button had been temporarily disabled requiring us to view the FBI warning in its entirety.The promise of control had been intentionally wrested away from us. And it felt like a violation.Because it was.Today interactive media is based on an even wider and more articulate provision of such control. It is a ubiquitous and fundamental condition of the medium. As such, any time anything happens that is not what we wish, we feel something similar to a sense of injustice. A violation of the medium.

So, yes, of course Walt Mossberg is right, spyware and irrelevant ads sit somewhere on the spectrum of broken promises. But what he does not acknowledge is that the mere existence of interruptive ads in the first place, ads that were not explicitly requested, is the spectrum.

That's further the problem with the Adblock Acceptable Ads Program manifesto.  It attempts to carve out a little plateau on the slippery slope that allows for *some* control to be wrested away from you.  But they miss the point which is that sheer interruption of any kind, not degrees of interruption, is the violation.  My rewritten manifesto would be very simple and would contain only one test, "Acceptable ads do not, in any way, interrupt the user's attention."

Acceptable ads do not, in any way, interrupt the user's attention.

That would be acceptable.

But the problem for advertisers, then, is that such an ad will take up no screen real estate.  It will call no attention to itself. It will not seek to draw the user.

In short therefore, it will not exist - until explicitly sought out. That is an acceptable ad, because that is an ad that honors the promise of the medium.

John Gruber occasionally points to his ad partner The Deck, as a viable ad model, intimating that it is less invasive, and more relevant, and therefore an appropriate ad format. Ads, but not “garbage”. He claims not to understand someone who wants to block ads. But I hope you can see that he is still defining the Deck’s format merely by contrasting it with the grosser violations of other advertisers. Yes, it’s a degree less offensive, sure. A comparison to "garbage" ads actually makes sense because they are, after all, genetically closer, interruptive cousins. But we are not comparing it in context to, say, the content the user sought out in the first place. Because if we did that we would see that such an interruptive ad is still quite a lot further away.

If you’re an advertiser, or an interruptive-ad-funded writer or publisher, I’m sorry if your livelihood may yet suffer as a result of ad blockers. That’s no one's goal. But it's you who've chosen to base your livelihood on such a patently inauthentic payment format, one that defiles the very medium it exists in. Tidy and convenient though it may have seemed for you at the start.

It’s a kind of Faustian bargain. Content creators agree to include interruptive advertising to afford creation of their content or derive wealth. But the ads are, by definition, not the content. I seriously doubt a single one of these content creators would choose to include an interruptive ad on the merit of the ad alone. Which reveals a truth.

That interruption in the user’s quest, the user’s wishes, is not allowed in this medium. If you break this rule - you must accept the penalties.

You say, "But ads are the necessary cost of receiving content!"  No, actually they are not. It’s the cost of receiving your content. And if you stop, unable to afford creation of your content any longer, don’t worry, someone else will be there to take up the slack.  And I think you know that.

"But ads are the necessary cost of receiving content!"  No, actually they are not. It’s the cost of receiving your content.

Do you seriously think that without advertising content creation will go away?  Please. It will result in industry upset perhaps. It will inspire more authentic payment systems, or not. But it won't go away.  Fees from advertising is not a prerequisite for creation of content.

All these publishers and content creators who complain about the bluntness of the ad blockers, arguing about which interruptive ads should be blocked, are already working way outside true-use of the medium. Ignoring the basic fact that they stand on stolen ground to begin with. They rather seem to be suggesting that there is a way to break the law of the medium in a good way. They remain hopeful that they can remove maybe just a little of your control. And that should be totally ok with you.Well, sorry, I appreciate the work many of you do - but you’re wrong. It’s not ok. You have merely gotten away with the violation until now.

Authentic Advertising

Authentic advertising (if you can even call it advertising) requires an advertiser to be part of the very business it’s selling. To promote the product through authentic interaction with the product itself (I've written about this before). And/or to create something that is so inordinately valuable and powerful that it will be sought out. To become the very content, services and products that people want.

To create authentic advertising you must embrace that you must be CHOSEN (or ignored) by the King. If you interfere in any way in your King’s journey to suit your own interests - even daring to appear when the King doesn’t wish it - you are a violator. A criminal.

Since you are not allowed to present yourself until invited, authentic advertising is hard. Much harder than the ad industry is accustomed to.  Traditional interruptive ads need only be good enough that users maybe won’t look away after their control has been wrested away. That kind of traditional, interruptive advertising of course is much easier to produce.But rather, honest to god valuable content that people might be willing to pay for, or invest their time and networks into, takes the same effort, risk and expense that developing a successful product does.

Interruptive ads need only be good enough that users maybe won’t look away after their control has been wrested away.

Do not confuse this with so-called ‘native advertising’ as it’s been disingenuously referred to, which is little more than a cheap ad aping the appearance of content.

Authentic advertising in interactive is not easy to produce, and it's often the subject of inordinate luck. This means advertisers wishing to defensibly game that system have to resort to great expense and extravagance. And precious few are willing to do that.Conversely, interruptive advertising requires little to no luck, and demands roughly the same work and expense that advertisers are used to applying. The difference is that these advertisers are still, unbeknownst, spending wildly. The resource these advertisers have been spending rampantly without qualm is your goodwill. Your willingness to continue to tolerate their violations.

Well advertisers, you’re in a deficit now. A really big, fat overwhelming deficit. Hope you enjoyed the ride, because interruptive advertising has drawn down your accounts and built tremendous debt.And ad blockers are just the latest means of putting holds on your well-worn credit cards.

An Open Letter to the Creators of the New Muppet Show

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE CREATORS OF THE NEW MUPPET SHOW

Dear Disney and ABC,

Holy crap, how could you assholes so monumentally blow it!?

Whoa… I’m… I’m so sorry, that just came out. I totally meant to intelligently build up to that point.  Sorry, let me start over:

Dear Disney and ABC,

There is precious little joy in our world. Such little magic and wonder. Far too little care-free innocence.

When we connect through media today, our lives are more commonly associated with terrorism, disease, economic meltdowns resulting from greed, natural disasters, child shootings, police brutality, suffering, intolerance, hatred and the ongoing horror and assault of the seedy bottom half of real life.

Hold on, before you jump into writing me off as some “the world is going to hell, whatever happened to the values of this great country” kind of person, who worries that video games are perverting our youth or thinks television should be censored or whatever, please know that I enjoy violent video games and I like seeing movies and TV shows that push the limits of acceptability. Things change. Boundaries get crossed. That’s progress, art and evolution. Live and let live. No I truly don’t give a crap about breaking the rules and pushing the limits of inappropriateness.

But over the last several weeks I’ve discovered that I actually do give a crap - a really big, fat, loving crap, about the Muppets.

A New Muppet Show!

When I heard that you were bringing the Muppet Show back - with a new, more modern take - I remember thinking, “YES! It’s about time!”

The news was reason enough for celebration. I told my wife and some friends and they too shared the very same sentiment. Who wouldn’t? One would have to carry a very cold, dark heart not to feel that way.

But as I have been exposed to your new pre-show clips, teaser, pseudo press releases and marketing, a slow dawning has crept over me. It took a while, but I have begun to feel something unsettling that has taken some effort to define.In fact my initial elation has now settled into deep disappointment.

Although as of today the show has yet to premiere, I believe (but continue to hope you’ll prove me wrong) that you have mistranslated and misunderstood Henson’s great, iconic legacy. Worse, I believe you may be in the process of undermining it, surely unintentionally. But surely nonetheless.

Until I saw the teaser for the New Muppet Show (UPDATE: the video has been pulled) I confess I took the long-standing values of the Muppets and the reality of their world quite for granted; how they behaved, how they deftly interacted with our real world at arms length. They made it seem effortless.

And one of those values, a key attribute, perhaps the most critical of all, is that the Muppets never - ever - fell below THE LINE.

The Line

When I talk about “the line”, I mean the line above which the Muppets remain arguably pure creatures at heart, connected to the joyful world they came from, and largely driven by the pursuit friendship and the spreading of happiness. Sounds a bit corny - but in fact isn’t. And the line below which the Muppets would become just another part of real-life’s ugly bottom half, inconsistent, undependable, self-centered and cynical.

Naturally, good humor demands breaking boundaries, stepping over some line. And at their strongest, the Muppets were so very good at doing that.  The Muppets always broke boundaries. They understood magic - of playing with the medium (whatever medium they were contemplating) - of breaking the 4th wall - of being surprisingly self referential. And in so doing concocted their own, very recognizable, brand of magic.

And I imagine, aside from Henson's obvious challenge of inventing, or rather, raising the art form to a new level, it must have taken tremendously hard work and commitment to that vision to maintain that position - above the line.

Henson, Oz and company always stayed above the line. Dependably. They clearly worked very, very hard to find new humor and boundaries to break above the line. Satire and social comment are all possible above the line of course. Tear-inducing laughter is possible above the line. Pixar, for example, dependably and successfully lives only above the line. Boundaries can be broken above the line. And like it or not, the Muppets made clear that being above the line was a fundamental tenant of the brand.

As I reflect on my feelings upon seeing your new teaser, the pseudo PR and marketing for the new show, I believe the tone with which you are approaching the new Muppet Show, the direction your underlying compass is aimed, is fundamentally inauthentic and careless.

I further argue, that this approach you’ve taken, this direction, required very little effort. You merely chose the easy path.

You've just drug The Muppets way below the line, sacrificing everything that came before it, in exchange for a few cheap laughs.

You chose the dark side.

You've just drug The Muppets way below the line, sacrificing everything that came before it, in exchange for a few cheap laughs. You chose the dark side.

Did you think, for one second, that the temptation to do what you have just done was not an easy temptation all along to the original teams, just as it was for you?

Do you think that living in 2015 somehow suddenly makes such a thing a good idea? Perhaps that only now would we “get” such a joke? Give me a break.

Yes, yes, the Muppet Show was made “for adults”. And quite often the show would venture briefly into comically dark places. But these ventures always fell short of true cynicism of cold reality. Never would the Muppets cross the line into the seedy underbelly of real life. Of genuine cynicism, grime and fear. The Muppets were never cynical, they were never crass. They always reassured us with a deft wink. They were always tethered to a balloon that kept them floating, kept them from descending. And in so doing they defended and insulated us from the bottom half of life. That was their role and very reason for being after all! They gave us a world that we could to escape into. One that wasn't reality.

Why then have you concluded that being an“adult” today must equate to being cynical, inwardly conflicted and cold?

I have no doubt that as the new show and its tone was being developed words like “edgy, fresh, and real” were used. Which always, bar none, sounds like a good idea in any board room.  Who wants to be the opposite of that?  Further that you probably felt the writing of the later Muppet movies and presentations were growing stale and you must have talked at length about breaking through that staleness with a “modern, fresh take”.

I do not believe, as you must, that the Muppets innate lack of cynicism, and consistent distance from the grotesqueness of the bottom half of real life, was the reason the material was not compelling enough, not fresh. That, I believe, would be a misdiagnosis on your part.

We can debate the quality of much of the writing in later movies and years. Some of it was admittedly a bit tired and occasionally not very good. Not as good as Pixar. Some of the later movies suffered a kind of lack of meaningful stakes for the characters to respond to (one might also argue this was true of Most Wanted). But, and I suppose this is one of my main points, I do not believe, as you must, that the Muppets innate lack of cynicism, and consistent distance from the grotesqueness of the bottom half of real life, was the reason the material was not compelling enough, not fresh. That, I believe, would be a misdiagnosis on your part.

What’s worse, by depicting The Muppets in our often tragic, imperfect real world via the reality-TV, documentary style, and imbuing the characters with peculiar new behaviors, inconsistent with their legacy, you have, perhaps unintentionally, established that anything the Muppets may have been before - any purity or innocence they may have shown us in the past - all of that was actually unreal, an illusion, just show. That by rewriting their characters and motivations to be able to exist in our world, you have introduced the idea that whatever we thought they were - with their original personalities, these were just parts, roles they'd been playing all along. That only now are we seeing the “real” Muppets, their real lives, behind the scenes, for the first time. The suggestion is that they were actually like this all along, we were just never exposed to what they do off-camera before now.

As a result, you have instantaneously undone and debunked Henson’s entire great legacy.

What a shame.

As a result, you have instantaneously undone and debunked Henson’s entire great legacy. What a shame.

Yes, Miss Piggy, and others as well, have made occasional appearances in our “real world” for decades.  And it was always met with a level of heightened enthusiasm from audiences.  It's pretty transparent that this partly inspired your approach.  But it was not so simple.  These appearances, and the occasional overlaps with our real world was always a delicate balancing act. Those brief appearances were a magic trick that only worked because their world, the Muppet’s world, still existed somewhere. Piggy was only visiting us, breaking the 4th wall of their world.  And we were all in on the joke. Her dips, so precariously close to the line on those occasions, were handled with extreme care and awareness.

And on a superficial level, yes, most of the movies even appear to happen in our world - but they never did. It was always the muppets own world, and it only looked a lot like ours. On the Muppet Show and in every Movie, human actors always joined the Muppets in their world.  Not the other way round.

...one instantly feels that we were never meant to see any of this.

But by eliminating the existence of the Muppet’s safe, insulating world, as the new show appears to have done, you have scraped them raw. Laid them bare. There is no Muppet world left to poke through or join into. The magic has been surgically removed. Like pulling the skin off a live animal, we now see with discomfort, the organic muscle, ligaments and bones hidden underneath. And one instantly feels that we were never meant to see any of this.

Fozzie

I think the appearance of Fozzie in your teaser best captured this problem and as such caused my heart to sink most of all.

COMIC howard the duck magazine 7

So, Fozzie has a sexy human girlfriend. Um… ok. Feels quite out of character and slightly creepy, but alright, I’m sort of with you, maybe, MAYBE that could work, Miss Piggy was briefly attracted to William Shatner years ago (although that WAS absolutely in character for her).

But then you bring us to the real home of his girlfriend’s disapproving human parents, they reveal their “secret” romance, she calls him “Honey”, Fozzie’s panic over his pending unemployment, and all that stark reality is run through a way-below-the-line, icky exploration of a kind of cartoon bigotry and a clear intimation of sexuality. Such ideas were somewhat funny in the Howard the Duck comics - a comic world specifically designed to explore these topics - but feels utterly out of place and even grotesque here because this is not some random bear. This was, we all thought, our innocent, beloved Fozzie. But it slowly dawns on us that, no, this is not our Fozzie, it’s a strange imposter. Even Fozzie’s voice change, no longer performed by the brilliant Frank Oz, might have passed by without bothering us much, but packaged within a sweaty real world just makes us feel queasy.

As a result of this scene, we are not so subtly asked to consider Fozzie’s underlying drive for survival and even his reproductive needs. Requisite mental images of the two of them “sleeping together” conjure naturally as a side effect of your scenario. Oh, sorry, you didn’t even think of that, right? Images of the two of them having sex? Never occurred to you? Uh huh, sure, how sick of me to even think that. Yeah, right, convince yourself of that.

Images of the two of them having sex? Never occurred to you? Uh huh, sure, how sick of me to even think that. Yeah, right, convince yourself of that.

Face it, the joke of that scene - the uncomfortable humor - comes from the fact that a real woman is really truly dating a bear puppet. Ha ha ha. The rest of the mental images are just falling dominoes.

Gonzo’s love affair with Camilla the Chicken never had this kind of real-world context and intimated followthrough.

You’re showing us inauthentic things that, speaking as a viewer, we never wanted to see. You’ve pushed deep below the line and opened a big ol’ can of slimy worms: if Fozzie can be unemployed, does he get unemployment checks? Since he’s in our world, well, one must assume that he does. If he can’t afford food does he go hungry or beg? Does he mooch off his friends? Either way this is all a kind of undeniable, below the line thread that just feels icky. But why stop there? One is almost encouraged then to wonder all sorts of things - perhaps whether Fozzie gets feces stuck to his fur when he defecates. Does he wear a condom? No, don’t feign surprise at all this. Please see that this is the natural result of pushing below the line as you have. You have broken those boundaries, and opened these thoughts, not us. Though undoubtedly you would feign surprise at such implication.

Good god, Disney! You have whole buildings full of departments in place devoted to ensuring that Mickey is never caught in compromising positions. How dare you turn around and do this to our dear old friends.

Good god, Disney! You have whole buildings full of departments in place devoted to ensuring that Mickey is never caught in compromising positions. How dare you turn around and do this to our dear old friends.

Kermit and Piggy

Really, now Kermit actively dates and is “hopelessly attracted to pigs”… in general? Ugh, too much information, yet again.

IMG_0933b

Gonzo was insane - and loved chickens. That worked. It never dipped into sexuality because he was truly an eccentric. But Kermit is sane, he’s our hero, the reasoned one - and therefor this new intimation that Kermit sleeps around is once again moving towards the too-real grotesque. And this focus on his and Piggy’s TMZ break up - as though they actually ever had a relationship - seems totally misguided.

Yeah, yeah, we get it, if they are "broken up" it gives the characters and narrative something to build to. And it's tabloidy which plays into the whole theme, and maybe most important of all, serves as free marketing.

Brilliant.

Hey, you're the writers, but throughout the Henson years, the beauty of their story was that, well,  Kermit and Piggy never really had an official relationship to break up over.  They flitted around the idea, flirted with it you might say, Piggy always on the offensive, and Kermit never quite connecting. Like so many other things, even their relationship always hovered just above the line. They’re so-called relationship was a slippery and elusive concept. Totally non-committal.  By design.

But by bumbling into the the Muppet universe flailing, mouth-breathing and drooling as you seem to be, you are knocking over these delicate constructions, it seems, without much care for the original rationale or their great benefits.

Gonzo

This failure, like the others, is so obvious and easy to see.

In your teaser you chose, of all characters, Gonzo to criticize use of “the office interview” format.

Should have been funny. I wanted to chuckle because the observation was a good one. But I found myself wincing a bit. Don’t you see, you chose perhaps the only character in the entire Muppets main cast, next in line perhaps to Animal, who lacks enough self-awareness to even have such an opinion in the first place? So it just feels strangely “off” somehow. Not to mention that Gonzo’s, well “GONZO” has been completely denied. Now Gonzo is suddenly just some calm, rational guy? Seriously?

Hello?! Gonzo is many things, but calm and self-aware was never - and I mean like ever - one of them.

Gonzo recites the seven-times table… balancing a piano. Naturally.

This is the guy who overenthusiastically agrees to every insane, wrong idea, no matter how absurd - in the name of art. That’s who he is. You see that, right? The guy who shoots himself from cannons, wrestles a brick, tap dances in oatmeal, recites shakespeare while hanging from his nose, Plays bagpipes from the top of a flagpole, recites poetry while diffusing a bomb, hypnotizes himself, and wants to go to Bombay India to become a movie star because it’s not the “easy way”.

Did you, even for a second, consider that just maybe Gonzo was the completely wrong guy to feel vaguely self-conscious and introspective enough care about such a subtle little narrative device? Do you really think he, of all characters, would really care? Piggy sure, Fozzie maybe, but freaking Gonzo?! You’ve lost me. The reason that joke wasn’t funnier (and it should have been), is because you chose the wrong guy. You went fully against his long-standing character. And we all felt it. Maybe younger viewers don’t remember enough to care, and maybe most long-time viewers couldn’t quite put their finger on why - but sure enough - it just felt weird. And it’s another example of your apparent inability to defend and shepherd The Muppets at a most basic level.

What Worked

Lest you think I did not appreciate any of your effort, there were, what I would call, a few “authentic, above the line, classic Muppet moments” in the teaser too.Miss Piggy’s walk, smack, into the glass, leaving a nose print. A brilliant moment.

That creepy “incredibly obscure character” with glasses who talked with his tongue between his teeth was funny as crap.

I’m conflicted on Rowlf wearing the big surgery collar. I laughed authentically at that. And although that doesn’t sit above the line, maybe ON the line, a very careful, self-aware break like that can clearly work, so long as the Muppet universe is still intact.

Work Harder

Look, truth is - the idea that, say, a puppet is dating a real girl, probably has sex, meets her disapproving, real parents, and maybe loses his job and all that, that’s actually really funny.

Ted smokes pot.

Seth Macfarlane’s Ted did that a couple years ago and it was a good movie. A teddy bear that has sex, smokes weed, swears - it’s totally juvenile and funny as Hell. I loved it.

And then there’s “Meet the Feebles”, Peter Jackson’s obscure, disturbing puppet movie that includes a frog prone to vietnam war flashbacks, a pornography-directing rat, suicide, adulterous three-ways, alchoholism, drug-running and all sorts of other far below the line topics.

A gun to the head of a character in “Meet the Feebles”

But the Muppets? In one of your bumpers Rowlf talks about being followed by cameras into his bathroom at home. It’s kind of funny, but so now Rowlf uses the can? This is a very slippery slope you’re on.In the old days these topics could never find their way into the Muppet consciousness. The Muppet world was intentionally disconnected from all that. But now, stripped from their world, these  real-life concepts begin to co-mingle, and indeed they will.And that’s not who the Muppets are. You should have known better.“

Hey - you’re making all this up! We never said they had sex, and we definitely would never show them doing drugs or taking a dump!!” you say.

No? But that is the world you have directed them to inhabit. All these ideas, and a lot more, exist in our real world, and you have placed them in that exact real world. You have provided no buffers. No signals. No insulation from the edges of that very cold reality. Indeed, your every creative decision has amplified it. You have said, "They live with us here, amidst our real-life challenges, filth, and complexity."

What a monumentally bad call.

You have said, "They live with us here, amidst our real-life challenges, filth, and complexity."  What a monumentally bad call.

If that’s the show you wanted to make, why, oh why didn’t you just work harder, take some risk (e.g.. by not trying to rely on the automatic, positive associations we all have for the characters), and instead invent a new set of colorful characters of your own. Some who could more naturally play out the decidedly unMuppet-like topics you are shoe-horning our old friends into? I would have actually enjoyed seeing that show to be honest. I would have tuned in, and I’m sure I would have laughed. Ironically the connection to the the Muppets and every other pillar of innocent puppetry would have been obvious. But at least then you would have been arguably protecting and defending something the world still needs.

We needed the Muppets that Jim Henson left us.

We needed the Muppets that Jim Henson left us.

But instead you chose to exploit our gentle, rainbow-yearning friends into the same old, daily gutter that we were all, ironically, trying to escape. All in trade for a couple easy, if uncomfortable, laughs and the benefit of a built-in audience.

“Hey, the Muppets were all about cheap laughs.” True, but you did it at the utter expense of their very long and hard-earned legacy. You threw that gentle, magical, innocent legacy under the bus of reality. And that is not where The Muppets great and endearing humor belongs.

In doing so you have so far proven yourselves unworthy guardians of these beloved icons.

And from Disney of all places. Hard to imagine.

Well, I’ve made my point ad nauseam. So all I can do now is beg you, please, please be more careful.

These are our dear friends.And corny as it sounds, the world still needs that rainbow.  Maybe now more than ever.

Messages From The Future: What Happened to Apple Watch

MESSAGES FROM THE FUTURE: WHAT HAPPENED TO APPLE WATCH

As some of you know by now, I am from the future.  And slightly annoyed to be here.  But anyway, this is what became of Apple Watch. Truth is, being back in 2015 is such a trip. All this talk about “wearables”. I have to laugh, I remember that! Ugh, It’s so quaint to hear that again. “Wearables”. For the record, in the future no one talks about “wearables” like it’s some classification of device. That’s just you guys coming to grips with the fact that technology is everywhere. It’s in everything, it’s networked, and no, you have no privacy. But that’s a different post. Today I wanted to let you in on Apple Watch since I guess you’re only now about to see it launch. Weird. A lot of you are asking “Why would I use it?”, “What’s the killer app?”, “Why would I pay so much for it?”.  Yeah, yeah. You do that every time Apple launches a new device, did you realize that? Android users are staring at it dismissively thinking they would never want one since it probably doesn’t do that much.

“Why would I use it?”, “What’s the killer app?”, “Why would I pay so much for it?”.

Admittedly what the first Apple Watch did was only a glimpse at it’s value. A few years after Apple Watch was released it became pretty obvious what it was all about, and yet it still took a decade before absolutely everybody stopped doubting.Indeed Apple Watch not only survived a decade, but it survived quite a lot longer than that. It outlasted PCs. It outlasted iMac, iPhone and iPad. The Apple Watch strand functionally outlasted almost every other product strand of Apple device and consumer hardware model you are aware of today. It was still going strong when I popped back here, but by then auto-implanted alternatives were becoming pretty common - even though they gave me the willies.So, what did Apple Watch do that was so useful?Much to the chagrin of a fair number of iOS App developers in this time, Apple Watch was not a platform that was ideal for, well, running apps. At least not like they do on iPhone and iPad. Sure people tried. But in short order it became clear that Apple Watch was about being used in conjunction with other devices. If your app did not involve another device or platform, your app-life was probably short lived. As a result many of the best app makers were also developers of apps on other platforms or device makers.  You almost never made an app for Apple Watch alone.And that was a clue into Apple Watch’s true conquering strategy.Apple Watch became your key. First and foremost. It was your unique identifying digital self. Your ID for all manner of technical configuration in every other device and context.

Apple Watch became your key. First and foremost. It was your unique identifying digital self. Your ID for all manner of technical configuration in every other device and context.

When I look back, the clues are all around you today:Apple Pay, Continuity, Apple ID, iCloud, Apple TV.These are some of the "existing" components that dovetailed to make Apple Watch what it was.Ultimately, Apple Watch was not a device for consuming media, or even much in the way of experiences (with the exception of communication). Primarily, Apple Watch identified you, it was the key that unlocked your information and preferences and configured all your other devices and environments.Secondarily Apple watch served as an interface for simple tasks (related to these devices and environments) and as a communicator.This is not to say that the devices around you became dumb devices (dumb screens, dumb terminals etc). They were never that. They still carried the lion’s share of computing power required to perform their specialized tasks. But they were merely normally “un-configured”.My Apple Watch connected to any friendly Apple TV and suddenly all my movies and shows appeared. All my content was in “the cloud” after all. (Btw, we don’t call it “the cloud” in the future, in fact we don’t call that anything, it’s just “storage”.)Within a few years an iPad or iPhone in your household could switch between users depending on who was using it. Your unique desktop and apps would appear on any workstation you sat down to.  Because it knew it was you.Apple Pay was just another variation on the theme. Apple Watch validated your identity and gave you the choice of credit card to use.And I should mention, since there is a flurry of speculation, that yes, Apple Watch worked amazingly well with what you guys are calling the Apple Car (and other cars by the way). The Apple Car was particularly excellent. Your digital environment on wheels. Once identified, all your media was available, your seat, mirrors, mood-lighting, common destinations, and temperature adjusted to you, and of course you locked, unlocked and started your car with your Apple Watch.There was some other stuff of course - once Apple and others started making things for the home. Thermostats, lighting, door locks and home security. It all responded to and was partly controlled by, your Apple Watch.This system was ultimately more secure as well. None of your other devices had to hold content or information. It was encrypted in storage (sorry, in "the cloud"), and your Apple Watch merely unlocked it.  But in this way, none of your other devices became points of vulnerability.Do you see what I mean - Apple Watch - plus our finger print (and later more convenient biometric ID - another post) - was our digital key. So it was with us literally all the time.And this is why so many of us were so willing to spend so much on our Apple Watches. It was the most central piece of hardware we owned; a functional part of every other device we used and every modern environment we entered. It was perpetually on display, occupying the familiar, ornamental status of horological watches of the past. But even more important than that, it was the sole material manifestation of our digital selves.  And in the future, let's just say, our digital world doesn't get less important. For these reasons it was plainly worthy of inordinate expense and pageantry.

It was the sole material manifestation of our digital selves.  And in the future, let's just say, our digital world doesn't get less important. For these reasons it was plainly worthy of inordinate expense and pageantry.

It was so much more than critics today seem able to wrap their heads around.  More than a hobbled phone, more than the convenience of ready alerts and messaging.  It was your key, your hub, it was you.There was admittedly an awkward phase where Apple Watch was lovely, if a little bulky. You’re in that phase now, well, or are about to be. But Apple quickly slimmed the device, and generated many more models. Once the dimensions were improved, and battery life extended, Apple Watch found it’s sweet spot. One that lasted for many years.  I could have spelled that "maaaaaannnny", which is an actual word in the future, but I believe that's still bad grammar in this time.Anyway, having seen it all play out, I think Apple understood this larger system before most. Being the Apple with vision, they got all this at a time when other companies were scrambling around calling goofy, little, one-off technical experiments “wearable” when in reality few of them really were. No one wanted to wear visible gewgaws. It was just a fact. Existence of these technologies never sold anyone on wearing some device prominently on our bodies. Not on our clothes (except underwear for mostly medical reasons), and definitely not on our glasses. Not anywhere on display BUT OUR WRISTS. Oh, and our finger of course… ah, but that’s another post.

Apple Watch is NOT Replacing the Mechanical Watch

APPLE WATCH IS NOT REPLACING THE MECHANICAL WATCH

My little voice is nothing in the breathless rush of chatter about the Apple Watch. But I keep hearing the same set of sentiments from my friends and I think they have it all wrong.In various ways, friends are lamenting the loss of the mechanical watch. Others are asking “Why do I need this accessory? What’s the killer app”?

Back in the day people had pocket watches. You’d dig in your pocket, and pull out your pocket watch to tell the time.

Then the wristwatch came along. It was smaller - but so much more convenient. The time was right there at a glance.

The thing people have wrong is that Apple Watch is not replacing the watch. It’s replacing your phone. Or it will rather. Apple is just hoping it can provide sufficient value through the form-factor in the meantime.

“But they call it a watch.”

Yes, it’s called “watch”, but calling the Apple Watch a “watch” is akin to calling the iPhone a phone, and not, say, a pocket computer. The Apple Watch is a wrist computer and will eventually replace your pocket computer. All based on pure convenience.

The Apple Watch is a wrist computer and will eventually replace your pocket computer.

“But I need a bigger screen!”, friends have then said. Of course you do for some things, and bigger screens will become accessories. And that's another paradigm shift here - the watch is not the accessory, the screen is.

There is no way this first Apple Watch is the fully expressed big idea. This is just the first step.  Surely the plans for Apple Watch are long.

It's long been acknowledged that anyone under 30 who wears a mechanical watch today is essentially wearing jewelry. And that they use their phones to tell the time now.  For these users wrist watches are merely quaint objects on par with vinyl LPs and 50s geek glasses.  So for a generation of users who have abandoned mechanical watches for “pocket computers”, a wrist computer is so much more convenient, and it does not replace anything already there. For them, sheer convenience is the killer app.

For hipsters and us old farts who still think mechanical watches are beautiful and functional jewelry, yes, we need to “replace”. And if one is contemplating that switch there is no killer app. But there are 3 dozen small, functional features - in addition to telling time - that make the switch quite worthwhile.

Over time, I believe that switch will happen - even for them - as the Apple Watch replaces the iPhone.  

Die Hard and the Meaning of Life: The Undeniable Attraction of Loyalty

Die Hard

DIE HARD AND THE MEANING OF LIFE: THE UNDENIABLE ATTRACTION OF LOYALTY

I was watching a movie with my wife when I had an epiphany. I don't want to tell you which movie because it doesn't matter, and I would really rather not reveal the ham-fisted taste I have in movies anyway. But I was watching this movie and there came a point in the story that you will recognize because it's part of every movie ever made - where the hero, who was obviously so committed... alright, I'm not going to be able to explain this without telling you which movie, it was Die Hard....Ok see? Now you're going "oh, one of those guys". Fine. Yes, I am. I am totally one of those guys. And so is my wife.

Anyway there came a point where I found myself delighting in the fact that John McClane was not going to stop trying to save the hostages, one of whom is his estranged wife, no matter what happens to him. No matter what challenges and risks are placed in his way - he is going to try to save them despite impossible odds. And I realized that it's really his unshakable, defiant loyalty to the innocent people he cares about that makes you cheer for this guy; his belligerent loyalty - in the face of possible death - to protect and honor the people he loves, that is so positive and attractive. I realized that in one way or another some display of loyalty is at the root of every moment I've ever cheered during a film - or conversely a lack thereof when I've been angry at a character.  And as the thought rolled over me, quickly becoming more complex and patterned, I had this epiphany: that loyalty, in all its positive flavors, is maybe the most impressive, attractive, beautiful and powerful behavior humans can display to one another.

When someone says "No! There is one more guarantee you have. You can depend on me. I will be here." is there anything more powerful and uplifting?

Like I said - it doesn't matter that the movie was Die Hard, because it became clear that this was true of every movie I'd ever seen, of every character relationship I'd ever read.

And, I realized, it must be true of nearly every kind of interpersonal relationship we have as humans.

The world can seem unfair. The only practical guarantee you have is the end. We live life under a looming cloud of uncertain timing; in so many ways the universe is not aligned to favor us. But when another person rises and defies the dearth of life's promises and through action says "No! There is one more guarantee you have. You can depend on me. I will be here" - is there anything more powerful and uplifting? One person's will against universal entropy.

Lord of the Rings: the Return of the King, 2003

Step Brothers, 2008

Aliens, 1986

Good characters become bad guys when they are disloyal to the hero.

And bad guys redeem themselves when they demonstrate a turn of loyalty to the hero. Back in my screenwriting days one of the mantras we carried with us was "Characters are what they do, not what they say."

All sorts of interesting character dynamics emerge when we mix up what is said and done by a character. And when, despite claiming loyalty, a character sheds that and instead acts in his own self-interest, he transforms into a villain. That's how important we naturally feel loyalty is. It seems there is nothing tragically, unjustly worse than losing the loyalty of another. The emotion is innate.  And gaining loyalty is similarly immediately endearing.

Raiders of the Lost Ark, 1981 Indy: “Give me the whip!” Satipo: “Adiós, señor.”

The Lion King, 1994

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, 2004

So I came to realize, maybe too late in life, that loyalty is perhaps the most profound, meaningful, beautiful and useful behavior humans can give to one another. Indeed, loyalty is perhaps the only meaningful measure of humanity. Loyalty to your fellow man.

Some would say that love, sits on that throne. And I suppose it does sit above in principle. "Love conquers all" as they say. But loyalty is the action; the visible, tangible expression of that love. The "what characters do". One must act, sacrifice and possibly face critical risks to remain loyal. And let's face it, it's loyalty that makes love so wonderful in the first place.

The Notebook, 2004

Titanic, 1997

I don't mean to knock love, but I guess it's just that love is so abstract and effortless - love just happens. Why do you think we say "fall in love"? Love’s happenstance is captured in the iconic moment where two characters bump into one another at a corner. Or when they unexpectedly glimpse each other across a room - boom - "love at first sight". It's easy. No effort. No will. Indeed love has no real meaning until action is required. Love cannot be measured - except through displays of loyalty.

Marriage vows, although of course well-intentioned, are mere promises of eventual loyalty (remember, characters are what they do, not what they say). So long as life is easy, so long as there is no temptation or risk, love is easy to profess. And lets face it, it's never easier than when the future seems bright, a roomful of loved ones are smiling, and champagne and cake are in hand. Rather, it's when life becomes hard, perhaps many years and tragic events later, when the darkest of life's unfortunate challenges are faced, that's when love - through displays of loyalty - has meaning.

Billy Elliot, 2000

Avatar, 2009

Drive, 2011

Even in unexpected places, loyalty plays an important role. I look around myself at work and I realize how grateful I am for those people who have stuck by me and the company's mission, despite work's up and downs. You know, those people who stick with you and seem almost immune to the business world's constant seduction of self-interest. These are the people you want to reward. Because they have displayed such loyalty.

Skyfall, 2012

Schindler’s List, 1993

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, 1982

Forgive me, I'm on a journey; this may seem simplistic and naive to you. And observations like this don't always have a practical application, but I suppose this one made me mindful of the importance of choosing my loyalties. Remembering that the measure of my loyalty is my action.  And it redefined what I look for and value in others.

Office Space, 1999

Léon: The Professional, 1994

The ebb and flow of loyalties can make us feel joyful and loved, or drop us into profound sorrow. But a life filled with mutual, positive loyalties is filled with meaning, and I'm not sure there is anything more important in the world. 

Cinema Paradiso, 1988

The Art of Conquering Problems at Work

THE ART OF CONQUERING PROBLEMS AT WORK

All workplaces are rife with challenge and friction. Competitiveness and politics abound. Simply existing in a company that does what companies tend to do to their employees can weigh one down and demoralize. Although there are aspects of our jobs that we enjoy it's more likely that what we take home and talk about is the worry and obsession about the things that we wish were different.

There are all sorts of conditions in a company that at various times and in many ways make most of us feel demoralized, under appreciated, and generally poorly managed. And these can bring us so much stress, disappointment and pressure.

But I can say with certainty that there is something you can do that will meaningfully solve those problems. I don't mean mask them or bypass them, I mean actually, genuinely solve them to your great benefit.

It's a two-part process, neither part works without the other. But executed together you cannot fail.

1. Do good work, and

2. Be patient

I hope you're not annoyed by this answer. People often prefer some quick trick to gaming a system. Like reading secret body language, or using special influential words. But meaningful change is never the result of easy gimmicks.

Rather, this plan is based on raw truths and results in fundamental, healthy change. The kind that will advance your career and eliminate all those pesky corporate politics and demoralizing conditions. This degree of change requires that you have your hands on the real levers of control.

Of course there are other steps to succeeding at work, being able to recognize opportunities mainly. Opportunities to:

a) Offer solutions and improvements

b) Share critical opinions

c) Take challenges outside your job description

But these opportunities only meaningfully come after you have mastered the big 2 - doing good work, and being patient. If you try to force these lower opportunities too early, it will be mistimed - the machine won't be ready for you. You won't be taken seriously, and/or your suggestions and comments will fall into the din of daily business. The machine has to be ready, primed. When it is, when the time is right, you will find your opportunities. Indeed, they will come to you. And your comments will then carry weight and meaning. Suddenly you will have control and impact.

Do Good Work

This should be your mantra. It should blow above every negative feeling work is delivering to you.

• Are machinations in the company making you feel victimized?

• Are you getting lame projects?

• Do you feel your supervisor is an undeserving idiot?

• Are the company processes (or lack thereof) causing chaos and confusion?

• Is there some person you feel is bypassing you only by hiding weaknesses and playing politics?

• Is the whole company such a mess that you don't even know where to start?

Whatever has you wound up, you must allow yourself to ignore the feelings these conditions engender for now. Because you can't do good work if you think that way. No, really, you can't. You may think you have your mind under control, but trust me here, if you approach your day with these thoughts in mind, you won't be doing the best work you can do.  You will be distracted and some percentage of your attention and energy will be misdirected.Doing good work requires joyful immersion, passion, and focus. Most importantly a belief that you will succeed. Your mind must be on your project and the unique greatness that only you can bring to what you do.

Doing good work requires joyful immersion, passion, and focus. Most importantly a belief that you will succeed.

You aren't capable of greatness if you feel beaten down by these conditions. If you see annoying work obstacles as barriers, as opposed to mere hurdles that you are capable of leaping over with creativity and persistence.

So you need to accept them for what they are and let go. Embrace the ambiguity. The good news is it's all going to change anyway. You are eventually going to help usher in that change. So why worry about it? Just take note and let it go, in time it will work itself out and blow away in the best possible way.But only if you do good work. Your best. And not just once. That's never enough. You need to do good work many times. And that's why you need to:

Be Patient

See, your emotion and thought processes have a given metabolism. It's actually a pretty fast metabolism, relatively speaking. But companies, and the systemic problems they experience, have a much slower metabolism. Much slower. So where you see a problem, and perhaps its solution, and where that maybe took you a few hours, a day or a week - for a company that week was a split second to which it is incapable of responding in kind. Companies are big, slow, dumb animals. They lumber. Information has to travel from person to person. Meaning and urgency has to build. Even the smallest, nimblest, most aggressive of companies lumber compared to your individual gnat-like emotions and decisions.

Companies are not individuals that can reason. They are systems- composed of budget plans, contracts, and relationships that must run their course and expire before any given change can occur. So of course real change is a slow process.

So don't fight that, be patient. It just takes time for good work to have an impact. But rest assured - it does.

Young workers often regard one year in a company to be a reasonably long time. A duration within which his or her working conditions should improve, promotions granted, the ability to affect corporate change, etc. But here, our young worker is being grossly impatient. In truth, as most of your seasoned mentors will tell you, one year spent in a company is merely the cost of learning enough about a company not to say dumb things. Offering truly good ideas requires a deep, intimate understanding of the company, its business, and its inner workings. And this typically takes at least a year. Any employer who expects more from an employee must be himself, inexperienced.In the meantime, listen, watch, and do good work.When you do good work a number of things happen around you:

• good work sits in contrast to mediocre work (which itself usually abounds),

• good work helps the company, your department, your boss, and the world,

• good work gets noticed

• most importantly, good work causes people (your supervisor and management) to ask questions, "can I have some of that?", "why didn't the last project turn out that well?", "what was different on this project?" "What can we do to make sure we always get this result?", "why has that department been doing such good work all year, and the others not so much?" Etc.

And this is how companies change. This methodical awakening is how they improve.

Sometimes they don't know why the work was better. Maybe that self-promoting worker convinced them the reason the project worked out was because he was involved. Even though it was your good work that made it so. Don't worry about this. It all gets resolved in time. This is the power of patience and consistently delivering good work. Good work and patience is a relentless force within the context of corporate nature. And over time there are simply too many opportunities for your good work to slip through the cracks into plain view. And conversely for any subverter's weaknesses or negativity to become exposed.

Good work and patience is a relentless force within the context of corporate nature.

You're long on to your next project or two before any of these conversations happen. Again because the corporate metabolism is so much slower than yours. But be patent.

Maybe it will take 3 or 8 really good projects before these questions are asked and your trail is sniffed out. But eventually it will. It's inevitable.In the meantime you must continue doing good work- that's your trail. Don't worry, you may think you have a boss who takes credit for everything you do, but keep doing good work and be patient, and the trail will stay warm. No such boss has ever been able to maintain such an illusion for long.

See, when those questions are asked, you can go back up to that list of corporate crazy-making conditions and every one of them will change under the force of good work and patience.

Doing good work and being patient is how you ensure poor performers get fired or reassigned, it's how necessary systems and incentives get put in place or change, it's how you earn better more important projects, it's how great people get promoted and recruited, it's how other staff members learn to respect your process and your work, and it's how the company succeeds. It's how you will eventually be consulted to see what can be done to make the company better - and not in some empty, feel-good, "team-building retreat" way either, but the real kind, in a quiet executive office, where decisions get made, and where they will really care, because you do such good work.

Do good work and be patient.It all works out. You just need to embrace the ambiguity of the current condition for a while. Embrace the fact that the company is not right-configured at the moment. It will change. It will.I'm sorry if this sounds horribly tedious and tiresome. But this is the real way, no tricks, sure and steady.

Patiently and consistently doing good work will present you with the opportunities to solve every problem you see today.It's a fact of corporate reality- your good work will make it so. You just can't give up.

The Social Network 2: Social Guesswork

The Sequel

THE SOCIAL NETWORK 2: SOCIAL GUESSWORK

The Interactivist has obtained the following pages from the upcoming sequel to The Social Network.

Title: The Social Network 2: Social Guesswork

Scene 27b INT. FACEBOOK HQ CONFERENCE ROOM, DAY.

We see a pair of bloodshot eyes. We ZOOM OUT to reveal Mark Zuckerberg staring into space.  ZUCK sits at huge black conference table surrounded by middle-aged people who probably used to be cool.

On the table in front of him sits an Oculus Rift developer's kit. ...Right behind 37 lines of cocaine.

ZUCK chews his lip nervously.  Finally he speaks in short quick clip...

ZUCK: That's cool.

The room nods.

MIDDLE-AGED PERSON WHO PROBABLY USED TO BE COOL #1: Very cool.

ZUCK does a quick line of coke - grimaces - and pounds the table. Everyone jumps.

ZUCK: Whooo! Yeah - THIS... (he points at Rift) THIS - is totally awesome.

His eyes dart across the room in spastic jerks.

ZUCK: It's awesome, right?

People nod.

ZUCK: I mean, and I'm just doing my magic here, could you imagine... just imagine... if THIS... was Facebook's "iPhone".

Inhales heard around the room.

RANDOM PERSON: Wow.

ZUCK: Right?

CTO, MIKE SCHROEPFER, sitting across table, squints disconcertedly.

ZUCK: What!? Shit, seriously? What, Mike? Fuck you're such a downer!

CTO MIKE: I didn't even say anything...

ZUCK: I see your eyes! You don't think I see your eyes getting all squinty and judgmental??

CFO DAVID EBERSMAN: That's not fair.

ZUCK: Oh, you too?!? You're an even bigger downer David!

CFO DAVID: Mark, we're just looking out for the company.

ZUCK: Oh, I'm sorry, so you're not a downer!? Oh ok, lets see, uh, Instagram wasn't the future, and it was too expensive. Paper was a lame app, and it was too expensive. These are your words! QUOTE! WhatsApp is "JUST" another app - it will get replaced by some other app in a year or two and was galactically, monumentally too expensive... and... and - what am I missing?

SHERYL SANDBERG: (snorts line of coke) Facebook has no vision and is randomly grasping to find relevance?

ZUCK: Right Sheryl, thank you! - Facebook has no vision and is randomly grasping to find relevance. Your words, David.

CFO DAVID: Look I'm... I'm being honest. And Mike agrees with me.

MIKE SCHROEPFER looks down at his hands.

ZUCK: What are you even doing here David?

CFO DAVID: I just want to help Facebook Mark.

ZUCK: (stares) ...well you're a fucking downer, David. A complete fucking Debbie Downer.

The room is silent.ZUCK does 8 lines of coke.

ZUCK: Fuck - even the coke doesn't UN-DOWN you guys! OK WHAT!? What's wrong with it?!

CTO MIKE: um... well - I mean it's cool, yes. But It's not a platform, Mark.

All eyes back on ZUCK.

ZUCK: What do you mean it's not a platform!? Have you ever experienced that before??

CTO MIKE: No, but Oculus Rift owns no content, you use this device to interact with someone else's content. The content exists on a computer and probably over the internet. Manufacturing devices like this has nothing to do with creating and owning the experiences people will have in the future any more than manufacturing headphones has to do with creating and owning the music people listen to. If you want to own the social experience as VR emerges, you needed to create the killer software experiences that people will use. Lots of companies will make headsets like these. It's like a DVD player, it's dumb hardware! This headset in no way buys you into the world of VR enhanced social networking. Oculus Rift is... well, it's just a peripheral. Like headphones and monitors. The content is the experience.Long silence.

ZUCK'S eye dart around the room. He looks at some 17-YEAR-OLD-LAWYER-LOOKING-KID who shrugs.

ZUCK: FUCK!! ...Why the fuck didn't you tell me that before I bought it?!

Gasps around the room.

CFO DAVID: WHAT!? You already bought it? Oh God.

ZUCK: Well fuck David, you're always such a downer - I didn't want you in the room. ... I did it this morning.

CFO DAVID: But you only saw the device for the first time yesterday...! Did you talk to anyone??? Oh Christ - how much did you spend this time??!

ZUCK: Less than last time.

CFO DAVID: Mark. Look at me. Last time you bought an iPhone app for the price of a small country. What - did - you- spend?

CFO DAVID looks around the room.

CFO DAVID: WHAT DID HE SPEND??!

17-YEAR-OLD-LAWYER-LOOKING-KID: ...um 2 BMil (unintelligible)

CFO DAVID: What?! 2 what? Million?

17-YEAR-OLD-LAWYER-LOOKING-KID: eh, um no... 2 um... B... billion. 2 Billion.

Several people in the room visibly deflate.

CFO DAVID: (frozen) Good jesus christ.

CTO MIKE slumps in his chair and closes his eyes, visibly shaken.We hear a loud snort and ZUCK sucks up another line of coke.

ZUCK: SHIT YEA! (laughs maniacally - coke all over his nose) AWESOME, RIGHT? FUCK YEA! WE CAN PUT OUR LOGO ON IT MAN! FACEBOOK! RIGHT THERE BRO!

CFO DAVID: ...right where the user won't see it because it's covering his FUCKING EYES, MARK!

ZUCK: You don't think I know that?! I KNOW THAT! And that's why.... (sly smile) we also put advertising... in the fuckin' content, baby!

CTO MIKE: ...in the content. (sighs) Right, um, Mark, the content doesn't... it's not running in this device - it's just showing up there! The content is running on a computer.

ZUCK: (stares, beat) Well why not? We can just make a smaller computer and cram it in there! CRAM - IT - RIGHT - IN! WHOO!

He snorts more coke.

CTO MIKE: (under breath) Jesus christ. (to ZUCK like talking to a child) Mark, the kind of experiences that people will want to see on a VR device - and there will be many other VR devices on the market to choose from - will, for the foreseeable future require a lot more processing power than you can cram into this thing. Like in gaming, where resolution and responsiveness of VR is a moving target. A bigger box will always yield a superior experience. Which is why people will prefer having a cable - connected to a bigger game box that gives them a way more kick ass experience, than having a self-contained device that runs 10-year-old looking graphics and laggy response times. Again - this device is not VR. This device is only a peripheral that serves it up. Advertising can exist in the software - and if you, Mark, really have a vision for how Facebook can be enhanced by VR, you should have started making that software - WITHOUT ever having to buy this device.

Long pause.

ZUCK: But it's FUCKING COOL MIKE! NOW WE'LL BE COOL AGAIN, MAN! DON'T YOU GUYS GET IT?  See YOU'RE OLD, and I'M YOUNG!  I HAVE a vision man! I'm gonna hang them all over the place! Sheryl!!!

SHERYL: (finishes a huge line of coke) uhf! Yeah? (closes eyes) Oh Shit.

ZUCK: Everywhere I like to chill with my board homies - I want to see these badasses hung all over the walls - decorate the fuck out of HQ Sharon. Shit this is going to be the coolest batch-eh-lor pad in da world holmes! OCULUS RIFT WALLPAPER BABY!

CFO DAVID: Mark...

ZUCK: And YOU! You don't even get one David. You either, Mike! 'Cause you're totally blowing my high, bitches. (Snorts another line of coke) FUCK! I LOVE BUYING SHIT FOR BILLIONS! DON'T YOU JUST FUCKING LOVE BUYING SHIT FOR BILLIONS?? FUCK!   C'mon Sheryl, I'm hungry, Let's go buy In-N-Out Burger and Coke.-Scene end.

WhatsApp: One More Turn of Facebook's Very Expensive Treadmill

WHATSAPP: ONE MORE TURN OF FACEBOOK'S VERY EXPENSIVE TREADMILL

19 Billion is a big number. Dr.Evil big. And like Instagram before it, the WhatsApp acquisition belies Facebook's utter desperation for relevance, and in contrast to pundits' breathless projections, signals a likely end to Facebook's mobile survival.

If you don't work for Facebook, and you're not invested in it, you are probably comfortable considering the obvious signs that the Facebook social network has been revealing a lack of relevance.

As Facebook's users age, and become associatively uncool, the network has become less a place where young, influential, upwardly-mobile users go to "hang out", and more a place where they "reconnect", get updates on high school reunions, and share the occasional cute cat picture with grandparents.

Facebook made sense in a web-browser universe, back when digital social connections were still new, few, and cumbersome. But users don't live in that world anymore, and have increasingly numerous and convenient options for connecting. This has forced Facebook scrambling to find relevance. Literally breaking itself into digestible mobile parts only to find themselves competing with a million other apps with similar attributes.

And it's exactly this desperate scramble that has Facebook blowing 20 billion dollars on 2 mobile apps.

Mobile is... a perfect storm - one specifically designed to remove dominant players from power.

Yes, I've seen the amazing numbers and projections. Every investor has a slightly wide-eyed, positive spin on the Whatsapp deal, lining trajectories of popular mobile apps next to the web's old guard. But I'm still shaking my head, certain the cards are not stacked in Facebook's favor. Not because the current numbers aren't impressive, but because those numbers exist in the eye of a hurricane. Those numbers only make sense so long as the landscape remains recognizable, the natural laws consistent. So long as we don't acknowledge the inevitability of exponentially disruptive players.

The mobile world is fundamentally different than the one Facebook was born into. The metabolism of business is rapidly increasing before our eyes. There are dominant and unpredictable forces swirling around every business today - let alone those that exist solely on objects of convenience, like mobile apps.

The democratization of development and distribution makes the mobile app ecosystem a whole new world. Never before in history have there been so many competing software developers with so much power to utterly disrupt. The distance between market dominance and failure is now one person, and a day.Add to this that the very existence of an app store as the portal of distribution, concentrates attention on the value of new discoveries. On trying new apps that might be better than, say, whatever you use today. Face it, app stores are like news outlets; old news isn't good for business.

Face it, app stores are like news outlets; old news isn't good for business.

And here you have a perfect storm - one specifically designed to remove dominant players from power. Once you've enjoyed a run, the entire ecosystem is optimized to make room for the next thing.

Take the case of Dong Nguyen, a developer in Vietnam who created FlappyBird. In a few days. Single-handedly. One guy. Unpredictably it quickly became the most downloaded game in the iOS app store, and the Android version, released later, was catching up. Was that predictable? Did Rovio or King see that upset coming? How many people stopped playing Angry Birds to addictively play Flappy Bird? Lucky for them Nguyen inconceivably pulled the app from both platforms. A virtual get out of jail free card for every other contender. But see, it was predictable. Because this is the very nature of the mobile app landscape.Facebook's 19 Billion dollar deal does not appear to take into account the high likelihood - the inevitability rather - that some deceivingly simple upstart app, like WhatsApp and Instagram before it, will come along and do something different, better, cooler. Just enough that it gets attention, gets downloaded, spreads, and eclipses or replaces the old ones.Mobile apps are not platforms, they are disposable instances, they are trends. The sturdy limitations that held Microsoft Office in place for so long do not exist here. Nor are the ones that have continued to keep Facebook warm on the web. Every popular 3rd party mobile app is destined to face an unprecedented, massive and relentless onslaught of unpredictable new ideas from divergent competition.

I'm not sure how many multi-Billion dollar app acquisitions Facebook is prepared to close over the next 5-7 years, but I can tell you with absolute certainty that WhatsApp is far from the last app acquisition Facebook will have to make to retain a position of relevance in mobile users' lives. Far from it. If indeed sheer acquisition of disruptive apps is to remain the sole successful basis of Facebook's mobile strategy - they're on a very expensive treadmill. 

Becoming a Director: The Undisclosed Challenge of Creation in a Straightjacket

BECOMING A DIRECTOR: THE UNDISCLOSED CHALLENGE OF CREATION IN A STRAIGHTJACKET

As professional creatives, as designers, and artists in any medium, staff or freelance, we tend to share a common career goal. After entering the workforce and working in our chosen field for a number of years, we imagine naturally progressing to directing, where we will be inspiring teams of people in doing what we have done. We may further imagine rather loftier goals than that, but surely directing is part of our journey.

Although often eager for this promotion, few creatives understand the implications of directing, and therefor fail to prepare themselves adequately for the role. Let me state emphatically - the hardest thing any talented creative person will ever have to do in his/her career - and truly nothing is fraught with more hidden challenge - is face the moment of transitioning from being a person who makes things, to a person who directs people who make things.

I have watched and mentored countless creatives through this transition, and at 50 I still continue to face the challenges of this transition myself. As such I can report that upon finding yourself in a directing role, many of you will not be happy, won't be any good at it, or both. At least not for many more years than you expect.And that's because directing is a completely new medium, one that has almost nothing to do with the creative medium you are an expert in. You will (likely) painfully find yourself virtually starting over in your career, you will have to let go of reliance on so many of the expert skills you have acquired, and as when confronting any new medium, you will have to confront the lack of knowing the basics.

Despite expectation and intuition, directing is in no way a natural progression from wherever you are as a creative today.

Despite expectation and intuition, directing is in no way a natural progression from wherever you are as a creative today.

Your Internal Director

As a maker of things, as a designer or artist, your work-flow is often intuitive and non-verbal, you feel your way. It's how virtually all of us started - by making things ourselves, satisfying our inner voices. You form ideas, you sculpt - internally debating, making decisions and solving problems as you feel best, all in the flow, without uttering a word or articulating a thought. If the work doesn't look, feel or sound right, you simply know it at a glance. You don't have to articulate why - you only need to respond to that powerful creative intuition you have developed - trusting your hands, your increasing skills, and feelings to take you to the answer.There is nothing lost in translation at each step because for you it happened organically.

When your work is completed - often you have to step back and analyze why it works. But anyway - in the end it does.So says your intuitive internal director. 

Directing: The Art of People

Most assume that because they know how to design or make things that they are suited to direct, succumbing to the illusion that directing is merely a progressive step.However, what you soon discover is that when you direct people in making things you don't get to use most of the skills that brought you here. The tools that you spent 10 or more years cultivating. You soon discover that you're standing there holding a new palette, new tools. The new tools of your trade are interpersonal relationships, the ability to sense feelings, to encourage artists to do what they do, to analyze and diagnose creative, strategic and emotional conditions and articulate them back - all with words. Words. Words.

Words. Words. Words.

Remember that intuitive, internal director? That one who worked so confidently, who felt its way, who, without ever a single utterance, instructed your mind and hands to create stunning works of art?  That director must now step out, stand on stage and articulate every thing it thinks and does - with words alone - in such an attenuated way that it encourages this trusting ego, or that passive-aggressive, defensive ego, or the gentle, sensitive ego over there.Every creative I have ever known grossly underestimated the difficulty of this, they mistakenly believed directing was a natural evolution, the next step of being the artist that they are.  Which is ironic because, truth be known, a large number of us became artists specifically because we were not good at interacting with people.   But despite this, I think most creatives naturally believe they would excel at directing.

We're all quite used to being directed ourselves, and as the receiver of someone else's direction, it just doesn't seem all that hard to do. Maybe in part because good directors and clients appear to do it effortlessly and bad ones (of which we encounter many more) suck such that you can plainly see it, you feel naturally emboldened that you can do better. The problem is, this game isn't doing better than the bad ones. The game is doing it great. And doing it great means , among other things, that you must be terrific at motivating, challenging, inspiring and analyzing people. 

Directing Someone Else's Good Idea To The Target

Aside from turning interpersonal relationships into creative solutions, there is another aspect of directing that is often a very new experience: Encouraging someone else's creative voice to occupy the space.

For someone who has come to define his/her aesthetic sensibility through hands-on action, the act of letting go of execution - while still being responsible for the outcome - of motivating someone else to create great work in their own creative voice - not yours, is a daunting challenge.I now know that when the team's work is poor, 9 times out of 10 it's my fault. And when their work is good, 9 times out of 10 it's not because of me. That's directing.

...when the team's work is poor, 9 times out of 10 it's my fault. And when the work is good, 9 times out of 10 it's not because of me. That's directing.

And it's not because we, as directors, don't occasionally have good creative ideas, but because the director’s tactical creative solutions are not those that finally manifest. Sure you inspire, and guide and you might even get the team to design down a path that you originally conceived, and you are ultimately responsible if the work sucks. But the work, the image, the site, the art is not yours. It can't be. The artwork simply is somebody else's - and it must be allowed to be. It has to come from their heads. They hold the brush, and their heart needs to move it.

There is a close corollary when directing film and theater actors.

A bad theater or film director will give his actor a "line-reading". This is when the director acts out dialogue from the script by speaking with specific emphasis, and then directing his actor to repeat the line with that emphasis. This is micromanaging, forced, and does not result in a realistic, believable performance.A great film or theater director will never have to tell an actor how to say a line. That does not mean that he won't manage to get the actor to say the line differently however. Our hypothetical great director will sit down with the actor and discuss the character - he may revisit the character's back story, the impact some event must have had on the character's current emotions. A dramatic event, the context of the scene. The director may further sense a personal conflict in the actor himself, one the director must emotionally counsel the actor through. Armed with that context, feeling, and emotional therapy the actor is then able to do his job - to lose himself in the real emotion - to use his own instrument to become the character. When the actor is truly in character - when he believes what he says - with the emotion of his back story in his heart - the performance will feel real- and it will be consistent. And any emphasis on that line of dialogue, and all the others, will come from the actor alone.

The same is true for all great directors, no matter the medium. Designers need to understand the goal, the intent, the strategy, the feelings that the piece needs to convey. The artist will likely need emotional counsel from time to time- sensitivity to the challenges she faces. And the director must trust the voice of that good designer. If he does not, if he says "do it like I do, do this, do that", if in exasperation he sits down and creates a piece of art to show his designer what he means, he is essentially giving his designer a "line reading", he is cheating. And he is undermining his designer's ability to be great, to do the best work she can do.

...if in exasperation he sits down and creates a piece of art to show his designer what he means, he is essentially giving his designer a "line reading", he is cheating.

Often new directors gravitate back to their creation tools. Simply because sometimes it is how they think. It's how they have grown up communicating. The art-making tools are a young director's comfort zone. Even if you don't think that's why you're doing it - it is usually the reason. It feels safe. You know where you stand when you wield photoshop or whatever your tool is. You have power there.

But when you let go, when you donn the director’s straight-jacket and try to merely talk... well, what does one do? How does one "create"? If the work isn't right, how does one get the team from point A to point B? How does one get the artist to change the art without telling her what to do? Does one repeat the original direction- again? Does one simply reject bad ideas? Does one compromise? Does one make forms, or charts, or plans? Does one come up with ideas for off-sites to motivate the team? Does one make sure everyone has the best equipment? What's the job?The idea that the director's contribution has little or no physical deliverable is often an alien sensation to someone who has been promoted from making things. 

Skills and Credibility

With all this talk about "hands off" I hope I haven't misled you to believe that a director does not need a solid foundation in the hands-on skills in his background. Having watched so many directors from different fields and backgrounds, I've come to realize that those who have done the work before, who have solved problems like these many times before, who might otherwise be able to sit down, take up the tools and do this job now, these directors are almost always better. (Again - assuming they apply the knowledge - but withhold from doing it!) They know what their team is going through. A director who lacks such direct hands on skills neither understands the nuanced challenges his team faces, nor does he tend to command respect and belief from his team. The extent to which the director or client has not done this type of work is the extent to which the creative team will likely doubt the integrity of any direction he has provided.It's why clients and directors who lack creative or hands-on backgrounds but who provide creative comments are notoriously lampooned and ridiculed by creatives in all fields.Authority without experience. Creatives are a cynical lot. And few things trigger their cynical response more than an inexperienced client or director giving feedback.

Creatives are a cynical lot. And few things trigger their cynical response more than an inexperienced client or director giving feedback.

And this brings me to the last main challenge for most directors. 

Navigating the Corporation

Even the title triggers measured sighs and eyes to roll. But this is another arena that often comes as a shock, and where great directors can excel.

Almost all creative jobs exist within a company. Very few of those - even among ad and design agencies - are truly designed to nurture creatives' needs, disciplines and sensibilities. And it's here, in the organizational world of profit and loss, of business plans and strategy, of budgets and Excel spreadsheets that the last few creative directors sink or swim.Nothing elicits such a strong show of cynicism as when corporate machinations impact the creative team. If you run a company you are all to familiar with the fear, uncertainty and doubt that seems to plague your design teams. You feel they often make unrealistic demands, disconnected from what it takes to run a business. They complain when things change - they always seem to look on the dark side when the company grows or changes - never seeing the positive.

But you need to know, your creative teams are not just irrationally "whiny". They behave this way because creatives, by in large, really are victims of the corporate world.

creatives, by in large, really are victims of the corporate world

See, the reason creatives enter the fields they do is because they were designed for that. It's how their brain works. And being designed for that often (though perhaps not always) means not being designed for other types of roles: strategy, management, accounting, and sales for example.Unfortunately for creatives, creating great artwork does not automatically explain or justify its benefits to the business. The disciplines and skills involved in being a great creative does not make one great at conceiving and arguing for organizational change that will both improve the work they produce and also make the company more money.

Not the way, say, salesmen can. Or strategists can. These guys can assemble a compelling argument, compare the numbers - they can argue and show how the bottom line will improve by funneling more money and resource to their departments in ways that make their lives easier and allows them to do better work. They are verbal creatures. They think in quite literal, logical terms. And they can sell in their ideas. Their job skills actually align with organizational operation.

But creatives generally don't have those skills. They are intuitive thinkers. They have feelings that manifest through their hands into objects and artwork that none of the rest of us can fully explain but that we love and appreciate.

So it goes that when things happen in a company - when teams move, get reorganized or budgets and schedules are allocated, the creative team is carried along for the ride - in whatever way some executive, armed with reasoned arguments from other articulate teams, decided was best. Often this results in non-optimized conditions for the creative teams. When they are lucky the creatives have a team of executives that look out for them. But this is most often not the case.

So creatives the world over are literal victims of the corporate system. And they act like it.

This is where a solid director has an opportunity to make a difference. Navigating the corporate world - selling into the business - justifying the need for greater budgets, schedules, resources. And defending the creative product itself in the face of dissension.If you can do all this, your creative team will do better work - and to me there need be no more reason to do this part well.

But what exactly does any of this have to do with that wonderful creative skills that brought you to this role?

Very little indeed.It's just another unexpected challenge that most directors discover after the fact, and struggle against for years. 

Love What You Do

Like all things the transition to directing often eventually works itself out if you enter with your eyes open - aware of these otherwise hidden factors, and remain committed, always willing to learn a new lesson.Mainly though, and I'm sorry if I sound like a broken record, it's important to be aware that directing is not a natural step in the progression of your role as an artist.If you love your art, if you love designing - if your heart thoroughly enjoys the skills you have developed, my emphatic recommendation is: don't be too eager to leave that behind you. Because in many ways - that is what directing results in. 

Conclusion

To recap, there are four main qualifications you'll end up confronting, if indeed directing is your calling. You'll have to:

1. Know the art and have mastered the hands-on skills. If you can't make things yourself, if you haven't done it before - you don't really know what your team is going through - you're guessing - and therefor can't direct well. Having these skills behind you is how you will relate to your teams, how your feedback will carry credibility, and more importantly how you will gauge what they are and aren't capable of.

2. Become an expert in interpersonal relationships. People are now your medium - where the art form itself no longer is. You must be able to read people's concealed emotions, you must intuitively know what they need from you and from others to do great work. Your own ego has little place here. You must have nothing to prove, you cannot be defensive. You must be a therapist and a leader. If this one qualification doesn't come naturally to you - directing may not be up your alley.

3. Direct with context and words, not "line-readings" and hands. You must be a strong speaker - you must be able to form and articulate thoughts that are valid and make sense. You must wear the director's straight jacket, able motivate and redirect your teams without doing their jobs - they must be allowed to own and invent the solution. They must be allowed to create the art. If you do it for them, and it does not manifest from their consciousness, they're ongoing performance will will be weaker.

4. Navigate the corporate organization. You will have to defend your team's creative ideas in such a way that clients, and executives can buy in to the creative executions. This is about much more than the "pitch". You need to be able to explain to them how it improves their business. You need to defend your team when corporate changes are likely to impact them. You need to be able to wrangle the corporate machinery to your team's best interest.

This is directing.

It's all about the art - but the art is not your medium.  Now your medium is people.And that is why, creatives who've advanced to directorship often find themselves longing for the days that they were making things again.

Crank My Projector: The Embarrassing Overuse of Scroll

CRANK MY PROJECTOR: THE EMBARRASSING OVERUSE OF SCROLL

If you want to identify an embarrassing trend that will iconify outdated, wrong-headed web design circa 2012 - 2014, you need look no further than this.

Though probably not in the way you expect.

For the better part of 2 years, and largely ushered to popularity on the back of scroll friendly platforms like iPad, scrolling has become one of the most useful but sorely abused and overused interfacing tools available to web developers today.

Like a lot of people I breathed a sigh of relief when it became clear that the tide had changed and the dark ages of "above the fold" had lost a fair bit of its gravitational strength. That scrolling had finally osmosed its fair share. Always important, but more articulately understood today than years past, the fold just doesn't have to work as autocratically as it used to.

Today, scrolling enjoys unfolding and metering stories and arguments as it was intended.

That said...As often happens in the world of interactive trends, when they get an inch, they take a mile. And for script-gimmicky developers (undoubtedly suffering from Flash withdrawal) scrolling has entrenched itself as one of the industry's latest misappropriated novelties.

Site creators have long embellished the basic scrolling function by creating parallax effects - where layers move at different increments; sometimes to create subtle, pseudo 3D effects.

And I bet you thought these were the sites I meant to deconstruct. Well, not today. The parallax effect is admittedly overused, but it's generally ambient, and doesn't overtly undermine the UX or  content it carries. Despite parallax, users still scroll as expected, content may be consumed as intended, and no one is unduly surprised or confused.

The parallax effect is admittedly overused, but it's generally ambient, and doesn't overtly undermine the UX or the content it carries.

No, today I'm talking about the sites that take it further. Too far. To the point of utterly undermining the content and user experience. These are the most embarrassing of acclaimed executions.

These executions are characterized by something I call the "scroll-powered movie". Projects where the scroll function is employed to advance lengthy animated sequences to tell a story. And it's my opinion that use of this technique reveals a weak understanding of the medium. Here are some random examples. But you've seen many more of these.

Example 1 Example 2 Example 3 Example 4 Example 5 Example 6 

Naturally, they even win web design awards.

I'm regularly bemused at the poor judgement web award groups display in selecting sites that are so clearly off the path to our future. It leads me to believe that these organizations have little in the way of a philosophical understanding or stance on interactive language to inform their decisions, instead apparently basing their awards on the interactive equivalent of "ooh shiny". 

astaire

The Quest for Consistent Speed

As long as mankind has had the ability to record time-based images and sound on a medium that could be stored and played back later, we have well understood the need for a consistent, repeatable playback speed. Record players, tape recorders, movie cameras, projectors, VCRs and even video codecs all had the same dependency on consistent playback speeds.If the speed of playback was not identical to the speed of the recording, content was presented inaccurately.In analogue audio, playback too fast and you got the chipmunk effect (increased pitch and tempo), too slow and you sounded like James Earl Jones. On film the well-paced dramatic scene would lose any dramatic tension as the characters zip around like keystone cops. Even worse, inconsistent speeds result in all manner of warbling and stuttering. And with rare exception (say, the specific intention to poorly reproduce), none of this is "good".

But welcome to 2014, where such past obviousnesses are overrated - hey, we're in the future now, right? We use computers. Lessons from the past have no relevance here.

/sarcasm

Interactive, at its "true-use", is not about linear, prerecorded experiences. It's an art form based on gesture and response.

Even so, we often consume linear content within the context of an interactive experience.

And it's here, between interactive design, and linear self-play, that so many site creators continue to struggle; failing to find rational hand-offs between these sometimes opposing concepts.

And it's here, between interactive design, and linear self-play, that so many site creators continue to struggle

This struggle is iconified by the scroll-powered movie.

Despite its rampant popularity, the scroll-powered movie never (ok, rarely) serves a useful or even aesthetically superior purpose. In fact, as I will show, it usually diminishes the value of the content provided in these pieces.

(I say rarely, because there can be practical uses of the interaction, if, say, the user were enabled to carefully analyze motion or footage to some practical or aesthetic end: for example the way a film editor scrubs video to find a specific cut point. The problem is, the vast majority of acclaimed instances of this practice are not of this rational sort.) 

How it Breaks

The scrollable "movie" contains a story, sequence, or idea that is expressed via a series of frames, or positions that were intentionally designated - laid out at specific increments or percentages from one another - to create a meaningful sequence.

But the careful relationship of all those increments and percentages are ultimately worthless in random users' hands.

A User is in the habit of scrolling however he or she prefers. Fast slow - jerky, smooth. And scrolling further dictates highly variable speeds from device to device, and from system preference to system preference. So immediately a wildly unpredictable "random speed generator" is introduced. Other technical functions play a role here too - browser, processor speed, network, all sorts of things impact the ramp up, momentum, speed, smoothness, and stop points of the scroll function. In short, there is an absolute guarantee that scrolling speed and action will be wildly unpredictable.

And yet all of that was generally functional until our young creator got the bright idea of tying those unpredictable variables to the speed and progression of his linear movie.

The comical result of this brand of "experience" is that users inch, inch, inch their way through some linear animated segments that would have rather benefitted hugely from consistent, smooth action. And at other times unpredictably zip through, skipping and stuttering past important segments, wholly missing key ideas and moments and losing all sense of dramatic pacing and timing.

To these site creators one might ask: what did you think you were giving the user control of, and to what end?  What value has the user derived?

The lesson we need to take away from this kind of UX failure is that we must rather functionally honor the true nature of our content.

The lesson we need to take away from this kind of UX failure is that we must rather functionally honor the true nature of our content.

If what you have conceived is a linear movie - one that utilizes lengthy (more than binary or iconic) animated sequences to tell your story, then honor the inherent nature of that, embrace the linear "movie", and let the machine manage your ideal speed and pacing. With rare exception your linear story is never going to be improved by handing your user an inconsistent, kludgy interface, and saddling them with the job of managing consistent and smooth playback; in short, to be your virtual projector motor.

There is nothing wrong with letting a movie be a movie. It's how you handle users' potential desire to interrupt it that matters. 

Embracing Linearity - A Successful Variant

Despite the failure of these continuous scroll-powered movies, there is a different scroll-based movie model that does work, one that more effectively utilizes the function to advance linear sequences.One of the most iconic of those today is Apple's Mac Pro site.

Here the true, linear, movie-like quality of a number of discrete animated segments is fully honored - even while the user is given the freedom to advance or back up within the greater story. In this case scroll is used as a trigger - instead of as the virtual motor. In this case, scrolling simply triggers an animated sequence, which is then displayed (powered by the machine) in as smooth and consistent a speed possible, until it comes to rest on a predetermined idle point. Although users might initially disorient as control is temporarily wrested away, the feeling is only initial and momentary. Here, one discovers that scrolling has become a page-turn or "next" button.In this first "scroll-as-trigger" model the vertical response we are accustomed to does not exist. The subject (a Mac Pro) appears to exist continuously on screen animating in arbitrary ways, somewhat in contrast perhaps to the expectation of scrolling up and down.

But closely related to this is a second model where the act of scrolling rather does move the subject up and down, but in a semi-automatic way, and here again, in a triggered, page-turn, manner.

Example

The system, once instructed by the user to scroll, ignores the user's increments, and does the work of setting the speed and stop point of the scroll - usually ending when the next "fold space" is aligned perfectly in the browser window.

While I am not particularly an eager fan of the latter two techniques, they do represent sensible alternatives to the page scroll function, and can enhance the UX.But this of course is in contrast to the embarrassing scroll-powered movies employed by so many site creators today.

The time will come, and for some perhaps that time is now, that we will look back on these years of scroll-powered movies, roll our eyes and wonder with embarrassment what the Hell we were thinking.

Why I Prefer Closed to Open

Why I Prefer Closed to Open

The greatest creative expressions are the direct result of an individual's inspiration, vision and guidance. It may take a mammoth team to execute on that vision. But the best work starts with an idea, a visionary seed, one that must be defended and guided through a myriad of decisions a project meets along its growth.

I often think of creative ideas like trees in a forest. In a forest, the trees that stand out, those that get your attention, that make you stop and marvel, those are the trees that are unusual in some way. The ones that defy the average vertical pattern. The tree that is bent and twisted against the norm. A tree that quite literally goes out on a limb. This tree is not average. To some, this tree may seem awkward, or ugly. To others it is unquestionably the - one - beautiful stand out.

At this point some feel compelled to point out that the forest - made up of my average trees - is itself a thing of beauty. And indeed that is true - but taken at that scale, the forest then is the unique, unusual object against a larger experiential backdrop.

Either way, our tree is its own. It is unique.

Such uniqueness is only possible because it was subjected to a one-of-a-kind force or condition that the other trees were not.

If however, you averaged the shape of all the trees in the forest, the unique beauty of this one unusual tree would be lost. Averaged out.

In development of creative ideas, void of an individual's guided vision, the more voices, the more inspirations, the more filters, doubts and preferences that collide and direct, the less distinct the eventual expression becomes. A variety of inspirations naturally cause a canceling effect. An averaging of the distinct, unique exceptions. They pull the limb closer to the middle, closer to an average. It's a simple truth.

And this is how I think of closed Vs open.

It's why artists tend to prefer a closed condition. It allows for authorship - for an individual's vision. For expression of (potentially) a truly unusual, unique idea. One that goes out on a limb. One-of-a-kind.

There are often many flaws and possible pitfalls in the structure of closed projects. Being non-standard, they are more often prone to systemic deformities and challenges. But this is why the whole process, the whole team must be working in agreement to support the originating vision. Because more technical rigor is required to overcome this natural weakness - to ensure the integrity of the unique structure. While each member of the team has a role that will impact the project, still above all directives is the one that defends the vision.

This is not to say that Closed is naturally superior. Open has its own benefits.

An open project naturally resists many of the risks of systemic deformity. In fact it excels at evading deformity- errors. It more easily reveals and repairs structural flaws and more readily results in a functional system. But what it more easily gains in structural integrity, it gives up in uniqueness, in surprise, in drama, creative integrity, and delight. It is merely a tree - out on no limb. Standard, functional, and utilitarian.

And it's why so many of the engineers I know prefer an open environment. Not all, but most.  It is sensible if your aim is above all to ensure technical integrity.

I don't mean to split artists and engineers, that's a generality and not entirely fair. I've known rare exceptions on both sides.

But to me, all this does ring true when I reflect on debates and sensibilities surrounding iOS and Android.

When I use each system I can see the difference in the originating process and sensibility.

My experience with Android is one of utility and functionality. It works. And for some that utilitarian functionality is plenty. It's preferable even. These people look on the unusual bends and twists of iOS and they see flaws, a focus on gratuity that feels odd and unnecessary.

But an open system will never surprise you. It will function rationally, but it will not surprise and delight.

And to me - my heart drops when I use Android. It works, yes. I get from point A to point B. But (heavy sigh) I don't enjoy it. There is no joy.  Perhaps acknowledgement of this is part of the reason Google has been taking a more "closed" approach to parts of Android.

Users of iOS, and all other Apple products, I think generally appreciate the ongoing lengths Apple has gone to engineer and fortify its twists. The obsessive attention to detail that make Apple products surprising, delightful and unique.  Apple is the very product of going out on a limb.Creativity requires a vision.  A great movie, a pointed work of art, a gripping book, a great design, a delightful OS experience, all require a vision.  And these further require strong direction and leadership - on whatever scale may be relevant.  There are easier ways to create - but none that result in strongly differentiated creativity.  Great creative expressions are not originated by communities. Executed, perhaps, but not originated and directed.And for this reason I assert, with exceedingly rare exception, outstanding creative expression is the result of a closed model.  And it's why I prefer the closed model myself.

Google Glass Is Not About Hardware - The Solution Rests on Software Alone

Google Glass Is Not About Hardware - The Solution Rests on Software Alone

There is a reason the word "face" is found in "interface". Your face (and its senses) is the primary conduit through which you receive information. And when we talk I tend not to look at your elbows, but at your face, since most of the information I receive comes from it. In addition to verbal responses, your face communicates non-verbally - where your elbows for example, tend not to. And this is why Google Glass, as conceived today in hardware, is doomed.

In sitting persistently between the world and your face, Google Glass screams self-centeredness, persistently communicates contradicted attention, and confirms a flip in the social subtext from "occasionally about me" - to "always about me".With a design that belies an effort to both persistently engage but not interfere at the same time, Glass appears plainly two-faced and is predictably regarded with social suspicion.Proponents of Google Glass will argue that Glass - by virtue of it being persistently available - will reduce the annoyance others experience when you look away to your phone, or maybe, someday, your iWatch. That pausing a conversation to look into space, up and right, at an email is somehow less intrusive.

But that's ridiculous.

You call on these other devices only as needed, and yes, it's always slightly annoying to have mutual communication interrupted by a glance at your phone. But I can assure you, it doesn't solve the problem when you mount your phone over your right eye. At least you can put those other devices away and once again plainly give yourself back to our communication.

Despite the many flavors of self-centeredness ushered in by digital technology, few consumers, no matter their age, will be willing to outwardly don such an obvious "fuck you, I'm actually all about me" to the world.

For this reason, Google Glass will never work - it will never be adopted en mass - until it fully fades from view. Until you, the wearer, no longer broadcast utter self-centeredness to all passersby.

Even a telltale bump and lens on your tortoise-shelled Warby Parkers will not save you the heavy-lidded eye rolls (that's Mime language for “Jesus, one of these guys”) and sudden camera-shy self-consciousness that the Google Glass wearers I know are encountering today.

Until such time that Google Glass recedes into invisibility, until there is no outward evidence that you are a Google Glass wearer, only then does the technology stand a chance of penetrating the greater world.

And only then will the real product design problem start.For when aesthetics of the physical device is no longer a consideration, the entirety of the experience becomes a software problem.

For when aesthetics of the physical device is no longer a consideration, the entirety of the experience becomes a software problem.

And on this point it seems to me that Google Glass software with its slightly kludgy behavior, mediocre design, and limited overall experience is a very, very long way from the target.

I remember when Steve Jobs demoed the iPhone. Do you remember the shocking fluidity of the interface? What it did seemed like magic. It was delightful and seemed some factor more sophisticated than every other device you'd ever used. It solved problems gracefully and with striking originality. It was at once charming and incredibly hi-tech. The physical form-factor was great at the time which was necessary considering its handheld status, but the real story was how it behaved. The software experience.

Had he demoed iPhone, with software that was merely utilitarian and lacking in surprise and delight, had he dumped responsibility to invent a delightful user experience on the developer community, rather than leading with one, no one, aside from a few geeks, would have wanted it.

And that's exactly where we are with Google Glass.

We have a long way to go. The hardware has to recede starkly to make up for its current social failure, and the software experience has to balloon into something profound.In the meantime Google is now jumping through hoops with Warby Parker. But I don't think it will matter. They'll probably try to make Glass look like real glasses, (hopefully for them  fat, chunky geek glasses stay in style a little longer) and maybe that will go some distance in making the tech a little less blatant. But the second you catch wind of a battery pack and a camera - it will start all over.

Whatever the specific brand of industrial design applied to Google Glass, no matter how fashionable the obscured right eye, it will not play the slightest factor in the future of a successful solution.Delightful software is the product, the sole playing field on which augmented reality will succeed or fail. Software so great that you'll want it everywhere you go.

Because that's all anyone will ever see.

Your App Should Not Look Like iOS7

Your App Should Not Look Like iOS7

In reading the frenzy of reactions from bloggers across the web to the design changes in iOS7, I have come across a sentiment that I believe is misguided.

Basically the message goes: "iOS7's UI is flat (etc.) to focus on content (etc.), and if you don't make your app flat (etc.) to focus on content (etc.) too, it won't look 'at home' in iOS7, it will look old and nobody will want it".

I'm paraphrasing but that's basically it.  And I refer only to the belief that the aesthetics need to conform, that it needs to look more like the OS.  I am not referring to functional adaptation.

Some of you might take issue with my use of the word "flat" (Vs deep or whatever).  I know, that's incomplete because iOS7 is layered with its illusion of depth, light and materials.  That's an important point - and I'll get to that. But for now I'm talking about the general practice of removing everything from the UI that doesn't communicate functionality, and of the focus on graphic minimalism.

Before I explain why that message is misguided, let me say - I love most of the aesthetic changes in iOS7.  I think it's a handsome, on-trend and functional design update, with some niggling exceptions that others have done a fine job addressing (font issues, icons - some of which are already improved), and I expect it will just keep get better in coming releases.  I am generally a fan.

Although this flat, minimalist movement is based on a rational devotion to better, more communicative UI, and I suppose seems truer in some pure UX sense because we have essentially moved closer to the very wireframe, "flat", as it is being advocated, is still just a design trend.

And as with all design trends, "flat" will have a popular lifespan, following which, it will fade.

One of the main points I want to make is that this "flat" UI minimalism will go stale quite a lot faster than previous interface design trends, I believe, for two primary, synergistic reasons:

1. Because we have such an uncommonly concentrated community of app designers in the iOS ecosystem that trends get identified, and adopted en masse at increasingly rapid rates, but more critically.

2. Because the very nature of flat design, or rather, of minimalism, is the provisioning of a vastly reduced design palette. A palette that, by design, offers far fewer areas of adjustment which are rather defined by attention to detail and subtlety; the restrained, disciplined modification of the most basic UI building blocks.

So as more designers than ever are working with fewer design elements than ever, together, these factors will result in a sudden commonality in design across apps. Frankly, if you watch for these things, you know it's already happening on the web (the Squarespace Syndrome).  And with it comes a lack of clear differentiation. Indeed, I argue, minimalist app and web design will run to a type of commodity.

So as more designers than ever are working with fewer design elements than ever, together, these factors will result in a sudden commonality in design across apps.

As soon as this realization hits, that their apps are homogenizing (and it will hit) designers are going to start looking for unique ways to move past this commonality. They will start to add, and embellish. They will expand their design vocabulary and re-embrace varying degrees of gratuity.That said, and perhaps thankfully, the best of them will not revert back to the pre iOS7 trends.Like most shakeouts, the focus on minimalism in app design has been healthy; it's bringing the developer community closer to understanding the rigor required for working with type and layout, of prioritizing elements, of limiting the palette to better communicate.  And hopefully that awareness will remain.So what form will the "new embellishment" take?

Virtually all of my designer friends are talking about a new "Maximalism" (half-jokingly perhaps, but that's how these things start) as a way to break through this inevitable homogenization. I've heard half a dozen rather cool ideas that push past the current focus on "flat", moving forward in a new direction - adding back elements that are, once again, completely gratuitous (and sometimes functional) in a new way. If joyfully so.  These will be new, surprising elements that are, under the current flat dogma, "unnecessary" and "distracting", allowing for random surprise and spontaneity - where rigid minimalism is clearly challenged.

But, I think many of the minimalist designers looking at iOS7's UI aesthetics are mistaking the larger challenge as a graphic design problem. Dribbble is teaming with designers who are offering up alternative "flat designs".  A point that in some way reveals a basic weakness in the Dribbbles of the world - that these groups focus inordinately on the graphic layer. On how a UI looks.

 a basic weakness in the Dribbbles of the world - that these groups focus inordinately on the graphic layer. On how a UI looks.

Whereas the vast majority of designers I interview barely focus on how an interface behaves. And how a UI behaves - how it responds - the alchemy of interaction, that is "interactive design".  A mere portion of which is graphic.

Now, if you look again at iOS7 you can see that Apple is acknowledging this. In those parts of iOS7 that the staunch minimalists are having such an allergic reaction to, things like parallax on the home screen, and wiggle of the text bubbles in iMessage. The so-called "flat" graphic design is there, yes. But it sits within an interactive design that, while restrained, is not minimalist at all, it's embellishment. But it's also delightful, and surprising.

This is one of the ways design complexity will necessarily reassert itself through the minimalist homogenization.

For me the main take away here is recognizing that one can honor the rigor that design minimalism has forced to the table - even while one expands the vocabulary. Where "Flat" maybe reduces to a kind of baseline, a jumping off point.

But I think we all need to find our own unique approaches.And I guess that's my parting thought. That I don't believe the answer is to just jump into the specific iOS7 design approach as though it is some sort of ideal design guideline. In fact, depending on your app's function or audience, it may even make perfect sense for your app to be utterly, cartoonishly skeuomorphic.

Namely because, from where I sit, the world of communication and UX is just way, infinitely bigger than iOS7. That's just what Apple did - with the platform. Ok. I'm glad they did it, it is an improvement over the previous. But surely you have something to say that is different. Surely your content - your idea - your app - is a unique invention of its own. Surely it wants to be itself. Sure it does not need to look just like it belongs inside the OS.

But surely you have something to say that is different.

I mean, if a platform with one aesthetic approach always dictated the form of its content, what would that mean for, say, movies?  Is it better if movies all self-reflectively share the aesthetic approach of the theater interior, or maybe of your home?  I know that's ridiculous, but I guess I feel like reflecting design choices of iOS7 is just some percentage less ridiculous. The trees you notice in the forest are the ones that are bent over funny. The ones that are unique. This is where I completely lose the rationale for following Apple's design solution in the development of apps. I get that there are best practices, and a basic growing language that we share in the interactive space. But the point should not be to copy or align with Apple's design approach. It should be to honor your unique vision. Learn from the masters, of course, embrace best practices, but where aesthetic choices are open to you, strive to find your own voice. 

UPDATE

:From Tapadoo:

"I predict the iOS 7 effect will be worse (than the update to iPhone 5 where legacy apps were letterboxed). Within a week of running full time, those apps which haven’t been modernised to look like an iOS 7 app will look very old. They too will become insta-deletes."

I know that some strong thinkers out there agree with Tapadoo, like John Gruber, who linked to the post above, and with whom I almost never disagree.  So I must say - it's left me scratching my head.  Because on this, I do fundamentally disagree that updating your app to "look like an iOS7 app" is even remotely as urgent as updating an app to accommodate the larger screen of the iPhone 5.  Not even close.   With the iPhone 5 the screen was bigger and your legacy app looked broken.  Of course any app needs to work, and by "work" I mean the app needs to adapt to the new system's basic technical and functional conditions.  So I guess, yes an update is necessary, but where we are talking about aesthetics - of "looking like iOS7" - no, following such a design trend is not necessary. 

UPDATE 2:

John Gruber graciously answered my question:

"I use iOS 7 as my main OS on both iPhone and iPad. The non-Apple apps stuck out like sore thumbs. They don't even have the new keyboard.

"I'm not saying all apps should look just like Apple's. I'm saying only that they need to look and work like they were designed with iOS 7 in mind, and they need to be updated with the new SDK. That's all."

Agreed. 

Google Glass Vs Recon Jet - The Difference is Context

Recon Jet

Google Glass Vs Recon Jet - The Difference is Context

Those of you who read this blog know I reflexively roll my eyes and exhale heavily any time the topic of Google Glass comes up.

And yet here I am today pointing to a similar product that I think, in principle, stands a chance. At the very least, if too niche to change the world, it makes functional and practical sense to me. Which is a lot more than I can say for Glass.

In fact when I saw Recon Jet (and Recon HUD) for the first time I didn't cringe in sympathetic embarrassment for the person wearing it, as I do when I see some bozo wearing Google Glass. It's not because I am particularly drawn to the design, or any particular feature. Rather, it's because the person who wears Recon Jet, as designed and marketed, arguably has a rational reason to wear it. The same reason he might also wear a helmet and shoes with clips.

As an athlete, he's fully engaged - physically and mentally. There is nothing casual about pushing your body to its limit. If you're serious, it's fully consuming. Needless to say, if both hands aren't busy, you're not trying hard enough. A person so engaged might therefor benefit from some way of accessing data as he optimizes his ride and behavior.

Contrast that with Google Glass' proposed casual meandering down the street holding a Latte. The other hand probably carrying an Abercrombie and Fitch bag which holds a baggy shirt labeled "Muscle Fit".

That's the difference. Google Glass lives in the world of casualness. Recon Jet lives in the world of purposefulness.

I know, I know, those of you who want a pair of Google Glasses, don't get this, you draw a timeline from your phone to Google Glass as though Glass were some logical extension. But that line you're drawing (which may be valid someday - once the device operates effortlessly and doesn't dominant your appearance) is narrower and frailer than the immediate, overt line connecting Google Glass to your face - and therefore to Maui Jim.

Basically - you don't need to wear your phone over your eye when you're casually window shopping. It's gratuitous. The decision to wear Google Glass is therefor rather a choice of preference, of style.

And that's what makes Google Glass so overtly lame. Because it is, like it or not, also such a strong fashion statement.

“She almost looked at me. That’s right, I know where the nearest Starbucks is, baby.”

Recon Jet easily hurdles Google Glass' utter fumbling of fashion sense by making it not about that any more than the helmet or pedals are. The self-conscious dopiness that comes pre-packaged with Glass, is not evident here because, as athletic and emergency equipment, Recon Jet has a defined purpose that fits a solid, if temporary, real-world need, and is therefore subject to different design references and expectations.

And I groan inwardly to accept this, but maybe that's how such a device might cross over into the mainstream - someday.In the same way that the athletic authenticism of high performance running shoes eventually informed the daily choice of out-of-shape people everywhere; a sort of ubiquity that bred acceptance of the design approach, so too might the iPatch form factor work it's way past geekdom.

Needless to say, in the meantime, if you wear your Recon Jet while shopping for your Chihuahua's new food bowl, expect to get laughed at behind your back just as much as you do wearing Glass.

Recon Jet may seem like Google Glass in many ways - but there is one major, all-critical difference - Recon Instruments knows why such a form factor might actually be necessary. And in this case, the context is everything.

Google Glass? I'd Rather Get Laid

GoogleGlass

Google Glass? I'd Rather Get Laid

I was catching up with my super smart friend, Pär, who reminded me of a study that showed how iPhone users get laid more often than Android users. I currently use an iPhone and you know, on some level I think I can anecdotally corroborate that.

Ok well maybe you didn't buy that study.

But what if the reverse were true, that say - being outed for owning a specific device actually resulted in getting laid measurably less? Lets say that was demonstrable. This hypothetical device will cause a woman or man, who might otherwise have found you attractive, to actively avoid you.I mean, guys, seriously, would you use that device in public?  Be honest. Use this device and chances are, you will get laid less. Do you reach for it on your way out for drinks with friends? After all that time in the gym? Really.

"Well that depends.  What does this device do?" you ask.

You think that matters? Well, what would it have to do? That's a better question. To make up for the likelihood that all the beautiful people across the club will see you with your Googly-eyed face brace, roll their eyes and laugh to their friends. It would obviously have to make up for a period of forced unogamy. That's a tall order. For me that would have to be one hell of a device. It would have to feed my children - assuming I can start using the device only after I've had kids.In reality this device will not feed your family, make you richer, or smarter, make you high, more attractive, or more fit, in fact this device won't give you much more value than your smartphone already gives you today.  You'll have one hand free more often. That, and you won't get laid.  Ok, well, you can see where this leads.

Yes, of course I am referring to Google Glass.

The company that just announced a ban on any porn appearing on their little, winky, face screens.

Nice one guys. First you go all PR on steroids, Jedi mind-tricking a bunch of grown up dungeon-master, techie trend-nerds with a device that cements nights alone with a pint of Hagen Daz, and then add insult to injury by disabling the little visual stimuli they might need to tap their own hardware. Really nice.

Do no evil indeed.

Yeah yeah, Apple restricts porn too, but as we know, with an iPhone, you get laid more often.  So that all works itself out.

The problem is, you don't use Glass, you wear it.  So like it or not, unlike its hand-held counterparts, it therefor, inexorably, falls (at least half-way) under the domain of fashion.  And fashion is about increasing your attractiveness and status.

Naturally Google has realized this and is rather desperately searching for a credible fashionable foothold - because if it's not fashionable, honest to god fashionable, it's doomed.

Indeed then, as unlikely as it sounds, I have to think that increasing your chances of getting laid is a Key Performance Indicator for Google Glass.

Perhaps the ultimate KPI. At least for the fashion-hopeful half of the product.

Perhaps you take issue with this idea that Glass is a full half fashion.

"It's hardware. Utility!  Function!  Not Fashion!" you scream, and since I am writing this, your voice sounds all out of control and annoying.

No, a therapeutic, halo head stabilizer with screws is utilitarian and functional.  Google Glass is fashion of questionable value.

Not that anyone will buy glass to get laid (obviously) but if, as it intuitively seems to me based on the fact that 2.5 out of 700 people wearing Google Glasses don't look like complete tools, Glass will obviously reduce your chances of getting laid.  If so, how likely is it that it will succeed?

Not very.

Those of you who argue that it won't matter must be either comfortable in a very secure relationship or are, for whatever reason, already resigned to dipping into the Jergens.

Google Glass?  Meh, I'd rather get laid, thanks though.