How about scope creep interpretive dance? You don’t get that “no big deal, super quick, tiny little” additional widget, form or feature unless you can express it through movement, damn it!

and don’t worry, i know you’re not talking about the facebook photos of my children. they’re so cute, with or without pumpkins, that i’m sure everyone is on the edge of their virtual seats waiting for the latest updates.

Nevertheless, optimism persists and next up I’m planning a musical!

Let’s chat soon

I’m really thrilled that you took the time to write about me and the MTL GGD group and it makes me so happy to hear that you get something of value from the events.

Now to make plans for your talk… Hmmmmm?

At least now more companies are providing a greater variety of cup/band sizes, but as you say the quality is still sub par. It’s no wonder the majority of women wear the wrong size, when the average (i.e. mid-level) retail outlet peddles such rubbish. Most of their bras feel like wearable cardboard (and look only slightly less ridiculous).

Personally, my way of coping is by knowing my relative size in the high-quality brands I trust (Aubade, Le Mystère, Lejaby) and finding good deals on beautiful new sets on eBay when retailers inevitably clear their inventory for the next season. The brands I mentioned are not prone to the usual architecture problems (underwire popping out after only a few hand washes, “quadruple boob effect,” water/gel/sand/air-filled nonsense) and aesthetic issues (girlchild colour palettes & prints) and by getting them from sellers I trust when they are clearing stock I get the best of both worlds: affordable but well-crafted (and beautiful) support. Plus, I avoid giving the Victoria’s Secrets of this world any of my hard-earned dollars. It’s win-win-win!

It’s true, babies have terrible fashion sense: Booties? Onesies? Bibs? Pffft.

We live in supposedly the sexiest city in Canada, arguably the most fashion-aware, and yet the lingerie available in this town walks a narrow path of poorly-made, ill-fitting designs in the kinds of colours most people would only ever put on a baby.

Thanks! I was chuckling about the poster for days…

Academics taking a current paradigm (e.g. digital) and borrowing its break-out language for the old (e.g. print) in a bid for relevance is a time-honoured Ivory Tower comedy tradition.

It is just as sacred as the corporate gobbledegook clichés you clearly know and love, although the anachronistic bid for funding makes them just a tad more earnest.

When designers are briefed they often get limited information about the client’s role, target audience, sector, etc. When they look for stock photography based on certain keywords, they attempt to encapsulate a broad range of functions, practices, etc. into simple, powerful conceptual statements. If the distinction had not been made 100% clear to the designer that this firm DEFENDS people charged with these crimes, rather than simply handling these sorts of cases, this kind of problem would easily crop up.

So while it is tempting to blame the designer for their stock photo choices, project managers should have given clearer direction, and certainly should have caught and corrected the conceptual error in layouts. It’s mind-boggling that neither the agency nor the firm thought twice about this, but certainly possible given certain (easily avoided) pitfalls with vendor-client communication.

Of course, the cynic in me thinks this was no error in communication or judgment, but an attempt to shoot for visceral (if grossly inappropriate) imagery.

If that is the case than the law firm (and their design agency) were truly myopic. Taking the extremely sensitive subject matter out of the equation for a moment, why would someone choose to be represented by an organization capable of misrepresenting themselves (or their client) so terribly? Definitely a contender to rival BNET’s worst branding blunders of 2009!

For personal use (as opposed to marketing initiatives), I think of Twitter as a public platform, Facebook as a forum for friends & family, and LinkedIn as professional networking territory. There are exceptions, and many applications are pushing the envelope to extend beyond the boundaries we’ve created for them so that they can make greater inroads into our media diet.

As you mention, there is a lot of pressure to add people to your social network, some of whom may be only acquaintances or professional contacts. I like how LinkedIn encourages us to add only people we actually know, it’s a more genuine/organic way to build your network and it’s more effective for building connections in the long run. If only because managing larger contact lists requires more energy and effort.

Facebook, on the other hand, is tackling this issue by giving us greater content control, as a way to effectively allow us to define multiple communities (e.g. create a “family” list vs. a “McGill Friends” list, etc.) and publish to different groups or individuals with more granular privacy options.

It seems Facebook sees their way forward as both a public and private publishing tool, encouraging users to publish to a variety of audiences (be they friends or vague online acquaintances), which is likely an effort to encroach on Twitter territory and encourage users to “friend beyond their means,” so to speak. Facebook grows as their user base grows and the more relational data within the system the more (theoretically) profitable their information is. There are definite downsides to this, but I think what is clear is that we need to define why we are using the tool to understand how we should use it best.

Sometimes that means respecting someone’s decision not to add you, or not to join these networks at all. I used to proselytize, but now I realize that if someone isn’t interested in understanding the way these applications work, they shouldn’t be using them.

I recently noticed you were cleaning up the accounts you were following on Twitter, and I think we can all benefit from occasionally pruning our networks. Whether you’re a heavy or light user, these accounts should be kept manageable (I, for one, have no idea how people with 1,000+ friends manage, but more power to them).

Sometimes Facebook acquaintances turn into real friends over time, which is great, but if they don’t, we should feel perfectly comfortable removing them or limiting their profiles. And if the instinct is not to add/confirm, I think LinkedIn has the right approach: just don’t.

Basically, the article gave us all permission to deny the existence of parasocial friendships, the people who really AREN’T our friends. And I liked that a lot, because when I can’t even identify the person’s name, I’m certainly not going to befriend them, but I’ve definitely felt pressure to add people to my social networks who don’t really belong. And (to make a short story long) that’s why we need more choices than Facebook vs. LinkedIn.

I guess what is comes down to is that a great interface is well-planned AND well-edited on all those levels.

Poor interfaces feel like the first draft of something, afterthoughts or over-thoughts, rather than what has been edited for the right purpose. It’s like if Nike’s slogan had been “Hey, just do it like that,” the idea is in there somewhere, but it needs to be paired down, focused, aimed into “Just do it.”

My purple prose, on the other hand, is purely genetic

a) “Strangeness” – Not just that it’s foreign to them, but a pre-conceived notion that growing up around the world must make a person odd, different or maladjusted because that’s “no way to raise a family”

b) Wanderlust – Some people assume an expat life growing up = the desire to perpetuate it as an adult. I personally think all of us (recovering expats, current expats and born-and-bred folk) fight itchy feet vs. setting up roots: we just articulate it differently. For some it’s played out over “Should we get married?” for others it’s “Should I run off and join the circus or backpack around China for a year?” I’ve met people who grew up in the same town their whole life only to choose to join the international ESL teaching circuit in fun places like Taiwan, and I’ve met people who moved around every 6 months – 2 years as kids/teenagers who choose to live in the same place for the rest of their lives as adults.

All to say, TCKs may be more aware of their options, both locally and globally, but it doesn’t necessarily make us flighty, inattentive, distracted or non-commital (which is what some assume). It makes us more likely to choose the right path, however winding it may be.

Jamie: Well-played… Well-played. Although it was missing a reference to Cuddy’s rack and/or backside… BTW, did you see the House cameo on the Fail blog? Classic!

Oh, and you aren’t selling out by studying screenwriting. Whatever you end up doing, being able to craft what is essentially a brief/blueprint/functional requirements document adeptly will ALWAYS serve you well. Whether you’re making movies, viral spots or taking over the world.

I think you’re spot on regarding how companies should proceed. Too often they choose proposals based solely on the budget or the development house (both are important, of course), when they should also bear in mind the CMS/CRM that vendor will use to build their site.

For example, if an open source platform is used, it might leave the door open for the company to hire contractual or full-time developers of their own in the future to roll out new features. However, it will mean taking on a QA and PM burden as well, which has to be factored in…

It is true that no CMS is perfect, but the worst situation is to end up with one that never (or rarely) gets used. Sometimes it’s due to poor usability (engineers can build some pretty scary UI), sometimes because online content is not prioritized highly enough. But the key is to see them as we in the web business do: a means to an end. Only then can the causal relationship between a site’s purpose and functionality be adequately assessed.

BTW, if you liked that, check out: http://informationarchitects.jp/wtm4/

And XKCD sells poster versions of two popular comics/maps- Online Communities & Map of the Internet: http://store.xkcd.com/

Laura: Thanks! I credit 5 years in Singapore during my formative teen years with ridding me of a desire to ever chew gum. Poor J.D., you’re right he has had a tough year! But at least oral hygiene won’t be high on his list of concerns. BTW: J.D. Salinger in a snuggie = random idea for a hybrid Halloween costume.