Now I am Going to Convince You to Believe in God

Holy crap. It's 3:40AM. I've gone through the battery in the MacBook Pro and now I'm on the MacBook Air. I might as well be on crack. I might not want to publish this post when I am done. But I just can't stop. I need to say this, to anybody, myself, whatever. My last post:

Design is When True Understanding is Self-Evident.

Yes! Makes sense to my sleep deprived mind. Now I am going to take a step over the line. Don't worry, if I am wrong I'll jump back really quick.

I want you to believe in God. But DON'T WORRY. If you read this, and you still don't believe, I'm not going to pray for you or come to your house with some literature. That is why a blog is a perfect venue for this discussion. God should have a blog.

So how can my recent epiphany about design be proof there is a God? How indeed. One of my favorite things to talk to atheists about is computers on Mars.

I don't think I've had this conversation more than twice, but it goes something like this:

Suppose we traveled to Mars and when we got there we discovered the ancient remains of a complex computer. One would assume that someone on Mars MADE that computer, right?

Right (with a sideways glance).

Okay, so the human brain, body, and the world we live in is like, a million times more complicated than even the most advanced computer, right?

Right (eying the door).

So why wouldn't you assume somebody MADE US??

But... (Blank stare).

It hasn't worked once. I don't expect it ever will. I don't expect this to work. But I suppose it is a bit like trying to get people to buy a Mac. You can debate and sell them on it but in the end you just have to keep doing cool things with your Mac and eventually one of your friends calls you up and has gone Mac Fanboy on you.

So the whole computers on Mars thing isn't cutting it. For one, it doesn't really capture what it really means to believe in God. I mean, somebody made me... big whoop. Believing that God made you and then took off is almost worse than not believing at all. Talk about abandonment issues.

This is where this whole "design is when true understanding is self-evident" thing fits in. If you're on board with that, then stick with me. Let's imagine that those Martians didn't just make that computer. Let's say they designed it. Let's even say it's a MacBook Pro. Sweet.

And let's think of this world we live in and these bodies we inhabit were designed. Not just made, designed. And designed like MacBook Pros. If design is when true understanding is self-evident then that means God understands us. He truly understands what it is to be human and he empathizes with the human condition.

He isn't this clockmaker who set everything up and then left. He does exist. It is self-evident. If you look at the world around us, all the joy and even the sorrow, you can see evidence of His existence. When I look at my son and daughters. When I think of the love I have for Amy, I can see that this has been designed. Someone had to know what this feeling is in order to create it. That someone was God.

Simple, eh? It is now FOUR IN THE MORNING. I don't know if I am coherent but I have to keep going. So here is the final point I will make:

Imagine there is no God. If life with God is like a MacBook Pro, what is life without a God?

Design is When True Understanding is Self-Evident

It's 2AM and I can't sleep. There are a million thoughts rolling through my head and the one that looms largest is this repeating phrase:

Design is when true understanding is self-evident

It just keeps rolling up in to my head and I can't get past it without putting it all down "on paper." It has been a slow-burning theme in several conversations over the last few days. What makes certain products so good? How come some interactions are just incredible and some are horrible? This phrase is the culmination of my thoughts on this.

Why does my iPhone rock so hard? Why does this laptop feel so good to type on. Why is the sign up form on Twitter such a wonderful extension of the brand? Conversely, why is it so hard for me to remember whether the doors to our building are push or pull? Or why do we hate Microsoft so much?

True understanding. Empathy. Or lack thereof. When my wife says something to me about planning for my daughter's birthday and I reply with a comment about the new Mercedes GLK, it is obvious I haven't been listening and I don't understand.

Today we got a new MacBook for the team to use for presentations and travel. It is a slick little machine but there was one thing in particular that added to my notion that Apple has implanted a thought-reading device in my brain:

The DisplayPort VGA adaptor.

I've had a couple (4 actually) MacBook Pros/PowerBooks and they all have had the same DVI to VGA adaptor. It is a pretty nice piece of design work, especially when compared to what comes with your average Dell. However, one thing that has bugged me is the sound. The rattling of the little screws has always given the adaptor a cheap feel and led to absent-minded shaking back and forth. It was never something I would have complained about, until now.

The new version has no rattling screws. Someone at Apple hated this sound (Steve?). They realized that you're never going to plug this thing directly in to your display and that you'd alays plug it in to a display cable which has it's own screws. This is what I mean by TRUE understanding. They truly understand what it means to own and use a laptop.

The person who designed the doors to our lobby obviously didn't really understand what it meant to walk in and our of our building 5 or 6 times a day and have to make up a "pull in, push out" song in order to keep from looking like an idiot. A true understanding of this is not evident in the design of the doors.

The design of the doors say, "push me, pull me... whatever, I look cool." And then I look like a dumbass when I push instead of pull. They say, "I don't really understand the basic act of walking in and out of a building."

The best interactions are those we don't have to think about. They just work. They have been created with understanding and empathy. They have been designed by someone who deeply understands our point of view and that understanding is evident in the design.

I'm reminded of the story of the file menu in Bill Moggridge's book Designing Interactions. There is an interview with Larry Tesler about how the file menu as we know it was created. It demonstrates what is needed to gain true understanding. Basically Bill Atkinson and Larry Tesler worked as a team in 12 hour shifts. Larry would spend the day performing usability tests with people in the office. When Tim came in he would spend an hour sharing what he'd learned and Bill would set off coding the interface for the next day.

One night Bill came in and basically invented the file menu system as we know it. Some would say he had an epiphany or a stroke of genius but I would argue that it was the pattern of prototyping and testing and the insight he had in to how people actually used computers that gave him the inspiration. He had true understanding of what it was to use the product he was creating.

This immersion is what stands in the way of truly understanding the people who use our products. We take shortcuts, develop shorthand, create mythical "expert users," and are impatient with how long it takes to really understand our own user experiences.

So I'm kind of petering out here. It's 3AM and I am supposed to get up at 6AM. This concept will certainly keep rolling around in my head and drive me in the future.

The other idea that is bugging me is to tear down my entire portfolio web site and rebuild it using css, jquery, and web standards. I don't know the first thing about how to do it but I need to learn. Sounds like a good way to get in to it.

Found Images: Typography in NYC

Found these images on The Journal of Urban Typography. I love the texture and variation of light and color. The patina is incredible on some of them. I added some of them to my iPhone Wallpaper gallery too.

Patience, Resolve, and Vigor: Three Ingredients for Innovation

I've learned some more things lately and a couple of conversations with some good friends made me want to write them down... to share but mostly so I can articulate them to myself.

I am an impatient man. A very impatient man. I want my life to play like a TV cooking show. You know, they spend a few minutes chopping and mixing and chatting. When all the ingredients are ready they pop it in the oven. Two seconds later they pull a freshly baked version out of the other oven and all the guests enjoy a slice of pie.

Unfortunately, this isn't how it works. Yeah, yeah... I know. Some of you are saying thank God he finally got it!! The other half stopped reading because you've heard it all before (probably shortly after I stopped working with or for you). However, I'm not going to say I wish I had figured this out a long time ago.

Some lessons have to be learned the hard way. I have had the honor to work with some amazing people and I have learned from all of them. Even when I quit, I learned from them.

So what did I learn? Innovation doesn't work like a cooking show. There isn't a spare oven we can put our pie in before the show. Hell, we don't even know what we're baking and our producer is polling the audience for ideas.

We're bright, intelligent, and inspired. We demand a higher standard. We're raising the bar. We're going to change the world. But how do we get there? The theory I've been operating on has led me to jump from company to company following the promise of innovation. It isn't working.

So that is why I am quitting my job... no, not that. I had you there for a second though, didn't I? No, that is why I am going to do the opposite. Design is such a fast paced, revolutionary field that we tend to focus on agility and speed but I think we need to focus on something a little less exciting.

Patience to wait for things to cook. Wait for things to fall in to place. Our ideas and passion outpace our organizations. Without major layoffs or the apocalypse this isn't going to change. The only way to get what we need build the foundation for innovation and that takes time.

Resolve to stay true to our ideals and passion. It is easy to fall in to step with the rest of the organization. It is easy to be distracted by small slights and bureaucratic BS. We need to be resolute in our passion for user experience and stay focused.

Vigor. We need to be vigorous in our work. I find myself using shorthand when I find myself up against a wall. I find myself investing less time in projects I don't believe in. I find myself unwilling to "waste" my time on projects when I have been "betrayed" by my leaders. We need to keep going even when faced with adversity. We have to take the time to tell our story and get people to really understand what we're talking about. We need to execute the fundamentals and deliver the tactical solutions our companies need while waiting for long term strategic plans to come to fruition.

I haven't got it all figured it out. And I thank all the people in my life who have done nothing of short of tell me this stuff directly. I just had to see it for myself.

Run Record 1 - Portland? Have I Told You Lately That I Love You?

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4.55 miles in 40 minutes. 8:45 minute per mile average.

My run today was awesome. I rediscovered some areas of Portland I haven't been to in a while. The city as a whole, from broken sidewalk and homeless shelter to highrise and posh bar, is a beautiful patchwork of culture and history. And I'm not even talking about the East side!

Since my Nike+ sportband is out of commission until the new version comes out I decided I would record my runs via Google Maps. Hopefully I can find some way to port it to an iPhone app, data vis, or my own app. Souns like a project!

Finding Out What Users Want

Justin Garrity put on an amazing TED Tuesday today here at WebTrends. This talk sums up and articulates a lot of what I hold to be true in the business of making products for people:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/joseph_pine_on_what_consumers_want.html

We also talked about Apple and the great example of iMovie 06 vs. iMovie 08 and the new version for 09. As consumers we're happy to live in the world put before us, we use the product and find issues and work around them. As designers we so many times forget to actually use our products. When we do use them we discover issues and ways to improve the product beyond just working around them. This is our gift and our mandate.

Services are a commodity and experience is the new measure of success. As we move from solving old problems to solving new problems we need to think about new interface paradigms. The way to do that is to hold on to that original user experience that we all have. We're in this business because we love great experiences and hate it when things aren't designed well. Sometimes it seems overwhelming but the best way to do it might be just to simply use our products. By using them we can see what people really want from our products and find new ways to not just fix bugs and make incremental feature enhancements, but really change the way people interact with our brands.

Desktops and Wallpapers

I created some mobileme galleries of desktops and iPhone wallpapers I've gathered from the web. Enjoy and feel free to upload your own:

Desktops:

http://gallery.me.com/davidstewart64#100087

iPhone Wallpaper:

http://gallery.me.com/davidstewart64#100080

iPhone Case Fail

Amy's Agent 18 iPhone case totally failed yesterday. Broke in two and literally jettisoned the iPhone. Lame.

Imagine wearing a bike helmet and getting in to a minor accident like hitting a low hanging branch on a tree. But what if the helmet broke in to two pieces on impact and actually propelled your head in to the tree branch harder?

That is what happened to me. Amy's iPhone fell out of her pocket from about 1 1/2 feet (she was getting out of her car). The case broke in to two pieces and literally jettisoned the iPhone on to the pavement. The iPhone still works but it is chipped and scratched on the back.

What Being a Christian Means to Me this Christmas

I'm not what you would call an overt Christian. I don't believe in foisting ones religious views on others and I don't blame people for a lack of faith in Christianity. I especially don't try and push my beliefs on people of entirely different faiths. If you believe in God, that's good enough. If you don't, well I guess that is good enough too but I'll pray for you. ;-)

The Christian faith isn't without it's problems too. We Christians haven't always turned the other cheek. I guess it is a bit like being a Democrat or Republican... there are good and bad eggs in every bunch. But I digress. Bottom line, it isn't possible to change someone's mind about politics or religion in one conversation or a hundred for that matter. So this isn't about convincing someone to believe in God or Jesus. It's about sharing something I thought about. And I think it applies to anybody, no matter their faith.

When people talk about the Christianity they say a lot about sin and rules and heaven and hell and how Jesus forgives. Blah, blah, blah... right? Trust me, it gets old for me too. Besides, that isn't what being a Christian is about. Not at all. At least not for me anyway.

It is about many things. For me the most important are; living your life one day at a time, appreciating what you have right now, and loving those around you while they're here. We run around this world looking toward the future and lamenting the past. We obsess about what will come next and wallow in guilt over things that happened years ago.

All the while we never appreciate what we have right now, in the moment.

This year is the first year in my entire life that I have ever been able to do this. I don't know what clicked this year but I believe it has a lot to do with the people around me. The love that surrounds me makes me stop and look. My heart is open. My mind is focused on the moment.

But it's hard to stay focused and I drift in and out. I think that is where faith comes in. It isn't some scripture that says if I do this and don't do that I will be saved. It isn't some karma piggy bank that I can fill up and withdraw from when I need it. It is a pause. It is way for me to look at my life from a different perspective. Jesus is a mirror that reflects the good in this world.

It is my sincere hope, that no matter what your perspective, you find a way to glimpse the wonderful person you are and the amazing world you live in. It is a fleeting view and you may go for days and even years without seeing the light it brings but it is a beautiful one. It doesn't matter whether you believe in God, Buddha, Allah, Science, or just Luck... it's there. You just need to look.

Running with Data: How data can inspire

Today I took advantage of the sunny weather and went for a run around the water front. It was nothing short of amazing. Crisp Autumn air, leaves changing, and Portland for a backdrop. It all helps distract from the searing pain in your lungs and the acid in your veins.

Of course, I am not a runner. I've been taking better care of myself for the last few months mainly by going to the gym and playing soccer, but I am not a runner. In my opinion, I'd rather play a sport than run on a treadmill. However, I've gotten in to it lately.

My new perspective on running started when I started running with a friend. My good friend Ryan Russell and I started doing intervals at the local park every now and then. Torturing yourself... er, training with a partner really changes things up. You can't slack off, you push yourself harder, and you learn new challenges. The difference is amazing.

Another factor is my new Nike+ wristband (bought with a gift certificate from my awesome soccer team). It is a little wristband with an LED display that hooks up with a sensor in your shoe to tell you pace, distance, time etc. It plugs in to your computer to sync up with the Nike+ web site. The web site has all kinds of useful data about your runs, coaching programs, and ways to train with your friends and community.

But the tech is just the beginning. The real beauty is what happens when you run. It is like having a partner their to push you. Glancing down at your pace tells you that you need to pick it up. Stop lights and slow pedestrians become the enemy. Picking up the pace might help make that walk signal. Knowing you've only got a few more yards to go to get a 3 mile run in gives you the added motivation to keep running.

When you upload the data to your computer and comparing it shows you are making progress You start thinking about how to fit your schedule around the next run. You may notice the little smurf lookin' guy to the right. That's my "mini" and although he is yet another online avatar, he gets pretty amped when I upload a new run.

Right now running is a great way to release energy. I'm hoping I'll be this pumped in a couple months.