I’ve never been an outliner. I would consider myself, at least at various times in my life, an avid writer, but never an outliner. I never cared for the school exercises in which you were forced to make an outline and then adhere to it. I’m sure this is a very helpful tool for many, but it has never been a part of my process.

I had never been a procrastinator. Not that I remember anyway. I was the kind of student that would finish homework on a Friday so that I could have the rest of the weekend carefree. I was more like that in high school than I was in college, and now as a graduate student it’s a wonder to me that I was ever like that.

As I writhed in agony last weekend trying to prepare a fifteen-minute presentation for my class, I wondered at what point procrastination had crept so sneakily into my life. Lately, I have been feeling the pain on many school assignments and professional assignments and even my own personal assignments, though I’m still not one to wait until the last minute to start or finish something. I understand there’s a deadline ahead, and I start early, leaving me more time to agonize that I should be working instead of playing bejeweled for the hundredth time.

It finally hit me that I was not and am not a procrastinator, I am simply an agonizer. I remember it well from high school and college, the absolute dread that I was going to have to do a bit of work, maybe exert some effort, and all the bitching and moaning about it until that miraculous point at which it is done. It’s all part of my process. What a terrible process.

Still, any attempts to change the process – to outline or in some manner sstreamline things – have been feeble and abandoned quickly. I take a kind of evolutionary approach to my topics. I know how I want to start and if I’m lucky I have a few ideas in my head of what I want to hit along the way, but where it ends up is as much a mystery to me as it is to you. Editing is a different (and much bigger) process entirely, in which I take my beginning and put it in the middle and rearrange all that word vomit I puke onto the page into something…well…edible. (See, I told you I didn’t know where I was going.)

Though I think I could improve my processes vastly with only minor attitude adjustments, I have to say that the bitching and moaning part of the process, when done correctly, can be quite lucrative. And no, I won’t tell you how to do it correctly because then it would be less special when I do it. I also think that the older I get, the more schooling I have and the more things that I successfully complete lead to this kind of subliminal logic that if all that stuff got done before, it’ll somehow get done again.

I can’t say that I love this process, but I continue with it because I like the results. I always do pretty well. In fact, I found out just yesterday that a paper I wrote for a class I took summer quarter was one of the example papers for the same class this quarter. Not too shabby. And though I was extremely doubtful about the presentation I prepared, it was received extremely well. I’m not entirely sure if I can put that in the win column, but that part after the class is over and everybody comes up to me to tell me what a great job I did – I LOVE that part. It makes the whole process worthwhile. The only problem is it’s only retroactively worthwhile. It’s impossible to carry that feeling over to the next project or presentation because you just can’t be sure how it will be received.

The assignment this week, to propose a way to create service envy in the mobile developer space, made me feel kinda stupid. This was a somewhat difficult assignment for me to tackle as I am not a mobile app developer and have no idea what they might find enviable.

So I took another look at the “cool” mobile developer sites that we looked at in class: The iPhone’s dev site and the Droid’s dev site. These site’s are both beautifully designed but mean little to me as a layperson. The iPhone site at least offered an explanation of the process of creating an app that I could understand. AT&T’s site was useless.

Yet as I finally came to understand, we’re not talking about the website here. We’ve already discussed the many ways in which website’s like AT&T’s could be improved. But why would a person turn to AT&T as opposed to Apple or Verizon/Google to develop their mobile app? What’s the service they offer? This took a bit more research on my part.

I already knew that if you were going to develop anything for Apple or the iPhone, there would be some sort of inspection you had to pass before your app made it to marketplace. I didn’t realize you would have to pay for the privilege. If your app makes it to market, you can make money on it, but Apple takes a percentage.

If you want to develop an application for Android, it’s less restrictive but you have to use linux.

So a few things AT&T might offer that would be better than their competitors… They could (in an imaginary, fictional, fantastical world) come up with a software developer kit that crossed phone platforms. If you create an app for a Windows mobile phone, it would also work with a Nokia phone on their platform.

They could offer access to their services for free, or take a smaller percentage of the app sales.

Another thing they could offer is service. Professional advice for developers when they run into problems.

Or perhaps the ability for a programmer to program in any environment he or she chose.

However, the one thing I was not able to completely reconcile myself with over the course of this assignment was the entire idea of “service envy.” Not a small thing, I agree. The book says that in order for services to be desirable and create envy, they must help people communicate their values and develop an identity in the way products do. There are two things that bother me about this. First, in the context of this assignment and taking the definition in a more literal sense than perhaps was intended, I would think that a person’s identity as a mobile app developer would be much stronger than the service they use to develop the app, no matter how good the service. A particularly good or avid mobile developer would probably use all the services available and have comments and critiques of each. Second, in a broader context but perhaps still too literally, I’ve noticed how, in the digital age more than ever, our identities are supposed to be tied to products, brands and services, and I don’t think I like it. I have brands, I have products, I have services, and at times I sound like a damn spokesperson. It’s an effort to put into black and white an overwhelming amount of information. Good brands and services deserve loyalty, but do we need to go so far as to make them part of our identity?

If you follow me on Facebook, you’ll know that I have been housing a big white bunny with black spots for several days now. He appeared in my yard one morning, happily dining on our overabundance of dandelions and weeds. I thought that he was perhaps somebody’s pet that had escaped his cage and would soon return home or be sought after in some manner by his owner. After about five days of watching the rabbit hanging out in my yard, I began to doubt that he was going to make it home on his own. I really didn’t want this cute little guy to be dinner for the coyotes, so on the advice of a friend I decided to try and catch him. After my attempts to entice him into a box with a piece of fresh lettuce failed, my mom came over, chased after him with an ugly weed in her hand and a few minutes later we had him safely trapped in the garage.

But then there was the whole question of “now what?” The friend who suggested I catch him, a former bunny owner, was able to borrow a cage from a pet store and she brought it over with some hay and pellets. We cleaned and dressed the cage and she told me a little bit about taking care of a rabbit. For instance, did you know that bunnies first pee on their hay, then eat it? I didn’t either.

I hadn’t been under any assumptions that I might be able to keep the rabbit but I found out that if I took it to the humane society, his chances of survival were, ironically, slim. When I called them they said they were obligated to take the rabbit, but did just about everything they could to discourage me from bringing him in. Too many to find homes for, I guess.

So I reluctantly let him stay while I asked around the neighborhood and tried to find the owner. I gave him a bit of freedom each day in the laundry room but didn’t want him roaming around the house. He is a very cute bunny, soft and fuzzy, and he makes a delightful crunching sound when he’s eating lettuce, but rabbits are destructive. They like to chew cords and apparently my friend’s parents had their entire couch eaten by their rabbit. The amount of poo I returned to in the laundry room each day assured him very little freedom while he was staying with me.

I had to find him a home and fast. At first, a coworker of my mom’s agreed to take him, which is one of the reason’s he had an extended stay at my house. I was waiting for her to pick him up. But it was my opinion that if she wouldn’t divulge exactly when she would come get him, she probably wasn’t going to. I was right. It looked like he was headed for a shelter.

Then, as I was awaiting a phone call from a rabbit rescue to see if they would take him, a customer at my mom’s restaurant drove up in a car that had stickers of rabbits all over it. My mom talked to this lady who, it turns out, raises rabbits and had several cages free at the moment. Just a short while later, bunny had a new home with a competent care taker and lots of other animals to hang out with. It was quite the fairy tale ending for the little guy.

I have to say that the thought of losing my own pet is devastating to me and I could never imagine just abandoning him if I could not care for him. I want all the bunnies and kitties and puppies to have great homes and long, fulfilling lives. But as I was begrudgingly cleaning out this cage every day, distraught over what was going to happen if I had to take him to a shelter, I could see how someone might (erroneously) think letting an animal free was the better choice. If it seems chances for adoption are slim, one might  (again erroneously) think, that an animal’s chances for survival were better in nature.

I am so very grateful that this story has a happy ending, yet I am not as happy as I thought I would be. I wondered continuously while he sat quietly in his cage if catching him was the right thing to do. I actually feel bad that I was unapologetic and unwavering in my stance that I did not want to take care of a rabbit and that he could not stay with me. And it would be awful if he were abandoned but worse if someone were looking for him and we missed each other.

However, I do see the bunny as having a very happy and long life where he wound up, so I guess that’s the best anyone can hope for.

For this week’s assignment, I chose to envision an improvement for the “Help Wanted” or as I have called it “Jobs” section of the MCDM Media Space website. The task I gave myself was to use Media Space to find ads for editing jobs. Below are the task flow diagrams and the use case.

Media Space Taskflow Current

Media Space Taskflow Improved

Use Case: Use Media Space to find an ad for an editing job.

Step 1: User logs in to Media Space

Step 2: From the homepage, user clicks on the “jobs” tab.

Step 3: User clicks “Need a job?” Design note: The “jobs” page is divided into two sections, “Need a job?” and “Know of a job?”. “Need a job?” has a news feed of the five most recently posted jobs and a keyword or quick search entry form. “Know of a job?” has a drop down menu for category, which allows the user to select a category for the job posting, then takes them to another page to further complete details.

Step 4: User can choose to browse all jobs, search by keyword, or select a category from a drop-down menu. User selects category and then clicks subcategory “production.”

Step 5: User browses through all production jobs by title and brief description, and clicks on ads for jobs on which she wants further information. Full details plus a link to the company website are provided.

Today my husband Shaun turns 32. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science and he works at Microsoft as an operations engineer. He loves driving his Subaru Impreza WRX STI and building creative things, like cardboard computer cases. Shaun and I have been married for a little over a year, were engaged for nearly three and have been together for nine.

As some of you can probably already tell, Shaun and I are extremely different people. He hates making plans, I hate being unprepared. He likes science fiction books, action movies, anime and NCIS. I like realistic stories of domesticity, well-made dramas, things that aren’t cartoons and Mad Men. His favorite meal is breakfast, I don’t like to eat until lunch. He is an avid gamer, adept at everything from Mafia Wars to World of Warcraft. I am terrible at and dislike everything that doesn’t involve a plastic guitar controller or gems that swap places. He listens to the local alternative radio station, I listen to the Beatles and Paul Simon. He loves Asian food and rice, I like Italian food and bread. I could go on and on and on and on like this. We are, as you can see, extremely different people.

They say opposites attract, but that may be simplifying the plot a bit too much. Opposites, if you will forgive the dated and sappy reference, complete each other. While it can be frustrating at times to be with someone who is so different from myself, Shaun is also everything I am not. He is patient and forgiving, calm and easy-going. When I become overwhelmed by the selection of laundry detergent at the grocery store, he can make that decision in two seconds flat. He still changes my car’s oil even though, when we were dating, I first convinced him to change it by saying that I wanted to learn how to change it myself, then made absolutely no effort to get down on the floor and crawl under the car. (Eww.) He is a great cook and shoos me out of the kitchen despite my attempts to help, which is perfect because we have a small kitchen and most of the time I don’t really want to help. He is a handyman, adept with tools and willing to make mistakes. When we were fixing up the house, he put down all the floors while I painted all the walls. He also built his own Mame Arcade machine, which I affectionately refer to as “the monstrosity.”    

Showing off the monstrosity

Shaun will hate that I am writing this. He’s asked me in recent weeks to stop referring to him so much in this blog. And I think I have to admit that for a while, in any of my writing, I tried not to refer to him. I’ve always been one to write what I know, and what I know is me. So how truly odd it was to discover that, whether or not I was writing about my husband, he was still present in my writing.

So to the person that has colored and tinted my world view, who has introduced me to Guitar Hero and LOLCats and House, who has waited for me and accompanied me and enabled me, who has laughed with me and at me and at himself, thanks. Thanks for being so awesome and for loving me. Happy Birthday.

Naptime is the best time for pictures.

Valentine's Day '09

Spinning on the Teacups at Disneyworld, December '08

My favorite picture of us, September '03

P.S. Quit frustrating me!

For my project, I propose a comparison case study of Apple’s iTunes software and Microsoft’s Zune Marketplace software. The final deliverable will be a ten to fifteen page paper. The presentation will include audio and visual aids though the format is yet to be determined.

iTunes was the first to make available legally downloadable mp3 content, but its software and user experience has remained largely unchanged over the years. Microsoft was very late to the mp3 game with its Zune software and hardware. While the Zune hardware has a long way to go to catch up to the sales of the iPod, its software for downloading and sharing music takes better advantage of the trends in social networking and music discovery. The music industry’s struggle to understand and adapt to the changing ways in which individuals consume music makes this a relevant topic of considerable personal interest to me.

This paper should include a focus on the history of the mp3 and its impact on the music industry’s business model. Napster’s legal battles and Apple’s solution for making content available online for a small fee are important parts of how most people consume music today. The revolutionary design and wide popularity of the iPod should also be dissected briefly to give context to the iTunes software and the ways in which software interacts with hardware. Likewise, the design of the Zune should be dissected though its late arrival to the game makes it less weighty a topic.

In examining the market share of iTunes and the iPod, and the Zune and Zune Marketplace, a brief discussion of other manufacturers and their contributions to the mp3 landscape would likely be appropriate.

The paper should include usability critiques on Apple’s iTunes software and Zune’s Marketplace software. The ways in which a person interacts with iTunes is different than the ways a person interacts with Zune Marketplace, and the overall satisfaction likely correlates to the person’s ultimate goal. A brief discussion of the popularity of websites like Pandora, that recommend and help users find new music, is important to place into context the goals of the Zune Marketplace.

Music has long been closely associated with a person’s image: how I see myself and how someone else sees me. This paper should include an analysis of how the changing ways we listen to music has also had an impact on the image one projects as a music listener.

The final objective of this paper will not be to classify or rank one software or company as better than another, but to evaluate the ways in which Apple and Microsoft, the two giants of computer technology, have changed the music industry and the ways in which listeners relate to and consume music. The usability and innovation of the iTunes and Zune software are key to this particular revolution.   

The research for this paper will include academic and commercial articles and any literature on the evolution of the music industry and the mp3.

When asked to find an example of something I considered bad design, my first reaction was, “Sweet!” I love complaining, and there are plenty of things I would like to tell a captive audience how to improve (as regular readers of this blog know very well.) I could cite any of a hundred websites here, including a couple of the ones I have to use for work, but I wanted to choose something more domestic.

When I was pondering my pick, the question I asked myself was, “what was the last thing that broke me?” I am somewhat of a rigid flower and when things don’t work exactly the way I expect, well let’s just say I can get a little upset.

The last non-web related thing that truly broke me was a vacuum cleaner. I wasn’t entirely sure if a vacuum cleaner could qualify as bad design when the design of the vacuum has been around for…ever. Re-reading the description of the assignment as a piece on bad usability, I knew it qualified. Or at least in my eyes it qualified.

I’m not sure if I’m correctly drawing the line between design and usability. Certainly they are not mutually exclusive. But this vacuum cleaner, the one that broke me, was aesthetically pleasing. It looked like any number of other upright vacuums, so it’s design was not radical in any way.

And yet, it was a truly terrible vacuum. Bagless vacuums seem to be all the rage these days, spurred by the Dyson company. Somebody somewhere must like them, but not me. Instead of bags that must/can be tossed, they have canisters that must be emptied, requiring the vacuumer to come into contact with all that dust. I was never sure if I was really dumping the dirt or just releasing all the particles back into the air to be vacuumed up again. Plus you have to clean the filters. It’s a dusty, dirty job. On this particular vacuum, the hose attachments were worthless. They’re supposed to allow you to reach into nooks and crannies, the operative word there being reach. But the hose on this vacuum, when tugged, simply tipped over the vacuum. It was also difficult to maneuver and heavy, and one day, when the vacuum tipped over on my head, I broke.

It was less than a year old, this vacuum, but there I was in the checkout line with a brand new bagged vacuum cleaner. This one doesn’t look that different from the bad one. Maybe even a little uglier. But it’s easier to operate and does a better job cleaning. It’s not perfect. It’s attachments have a habit of falling out of their slots. But it’s much better and as a user, I am much happier.

For week three of class (Theories and Practice of Interactivity) we were asked to take a website that we considered bad design and create wireframes for the home page and one other page that would make the site easier to use.

My two wireframes are below and my example of a bad website can be found on the web here or in screenshots from the previous COM 597 post here.

I definitely know what I like in a website: functionality and a clean look. I definitely know what I don’t like: aimlessness and clutter. I also feel I am not entirely without taste. Yet, as a person who doesn’t know a whole lot about design, I just hope I don’t screw this up too badly.

Here’s an example of a website that I think employs good design.

www.thebeatles.com

It’s clean and has several clearly designed sections. The navigation bar at the top will help you quickly find the type of information you are looking for, and there are lots of different types of information a person might be looking for. If you’re in too much of a hurry or looking for something really specific, the search bar is prominently displayed. The only thing I don’t like about this page is that the big black box in the left hand corner is for video, and the video starts playing automatically. It would be better to have a slide show of a few different videos you could click on and then watch, if and when you wanted.

Now here’s an example of a similar website that I think missed the mark.

http://abbeyrd.best.vwh.net/

It’s busy and messy. Text and images are placed all over the page without regard to straight lines or sections. They have a search bar but have done a great job hiding it. The only real information you can get without scrolling is a headline of news about the Beatles, and you have to click on it and go to an outside page to get any further information.

Scrolling down further on the page, there’s an ill-defined table of contents on the left, and clicking on any of those items takes you to a different page with a different, yet still incoherent, style. Then, displayed (not quite) in the center is a big box with the dates when the website counter passed significant numbers, as if someone going to this site is going to be more interested in its visitors than actual Beatle information. The last date on the counter, when the site passed one million visitors, is all the way back in 2000, even though the site was updated earlier today.

This is obviously a homemade site, as opposed to the professional and official Beatles.com, yet it would not be difficult to rearrange this site to make it more user-friendly and focused.

A friend of mine from college, upon seeing my home bedroom for the first time, decorated as it was with Beatles posters and books and CDs and proudly displayed pictures of me at Abbey Road and in Liverpool, told me this: “I knew you liked the Beatles, but you’ve got it bad…”

It shouldn’t be too hard, then, to explain just exactly why I like author Nick Hornby (High Fidelity, About a Boy, and Juliet, Naked) or just exactly how much I like him. I am an obsessive creature and Nick Hornby understands me. I don’t always connect with Horby’s characters, but I always connect with the way he writes about them and the observations he makes about life as an obsessive person. A music fanatic and die-hard Arsenal fan himself, Hornby knows not how he or his characters got to be the way they are, but he knows, unquestionably, like I do, that it’s the best way to be.

I suppose part of the reason I am an obsessive person is because I don’t like much. Life often doesn’t live up to the grandiose expectations set by romantic movies or the ramblings on of idiotic, happy co-workers.So when I find something I really like, it holds a more prominent place in my existence than it might in someone else’s. It might seem like a lot of pressure to ask a single author to validate my entire existence with every novel he writes, but Hornby never fails me.

I am writing about this today because last night Hornby was in Seattle reading from his latest release, Juliet, Naked, at the Seattle Public Library. He’s a short man, skinny but with a bit of a beer gut. His prominent ears stick out from his bald head, and his voice is nasally, though last night he also sounded congested, making me think he had a cold.

In response to a question asked by an audience member, Hornby described himself as an optimist – a rarity in British literature. Taking the thoughts out of my head and the words out of my mouth, he said that he didn’t believe art had to be dreary and devoid of hope to be good. This is why he puts characters in bad situations and helps them turn things around or find the good in life.

(In response to my question, about the process of writing a novel and whether the idea comes to him whole or in bits and pieces, he said the particular inspiration for Juliet, Naked  was a story he read in a magazine about a journalist’s quest to find the reclusive Sly Stone from Sly & the Family Stone. He said the idea generates as he is writing it, but he always knows his characters fully.)

Despite my propensity for pessimism, the hope that infiltrates Hornby’s novels and the emotional connection I am able to make with the writing (and writing style) make me feel real, whole and at home. There are many times when I don’t feel connected with the world that surrounds me, that I’m some sort of hopeless anomaly in a world constructed for other people. Then I read something by Nick Hornby and I know that everything is okay because somebody out there gets me.

My idol. He gets me.

From Songbook, by Nick Hornby (I think it’s important for you to know that I found this quote AFTER I wrote this post, and this is from a non-fiction work of his.)

“But sometimes, very occasionally, songs and books and films and pictures express who you are, perfectly. And they don’t do this in words or image, necessarily; the connection is a lot less direct and more complicated than that. When I was first beginning to write seriously, I read Anne Tyler’s Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, and suddenly knew what I was, and what I wanted to be, for better or for worse. It’s a process something like falling in love. You don’t necessarily choose the best person, or the wisest, or the most beautiful; there’s something else going on. There was a part of me that would rather have fallen for Updike, or Kerouac, or DeLillo – for someone masculine, at least, maybe somebody a little more opaque, and certainly someone who uses more swear words – and though I have admired those writers, at various stages in my life, admiration is a very different thing from the kind of transference I’m talking about. I’m talking about understanding or at least feeling like I understand – every artistic decision, every impulse, the soul of both the work and its creator. “This is me,” I wanted to say when I read Tyler’s rich, sad, lovely novel. “I’m not a character, I’m nothing like the author, I haven’t had the experiences she writes about. But even so, this is what I feel like, inside. This is what I would sound like, if ever I were to find a voice.” And I did find a voice, eventually, and it was mine, not hers; but nevertheless, so powerful was the process of identification that I still don’t feel as though I’ve expressed myself as well, as completely, as Tyler did on my behalf then.” –pg. 16-17