Pascal Laliberté

"Peaceful serenity, unceasing white blanket stretching out as far as the eye can see. Graceful..."

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 09:55:02 -0500

“Peaceful serenity, unceasing white blanket stretching out as far as the eye can see. Graceful curtain powdering the horizon, you bring me happiness. A nuisance? Not to me. Never to me. You cover the grey and the dying with innocence and purity, almost as if in loving forgiveness. How can one hate that which flutters down so gently and unhurried, caressing and resting on the thinnest branches or children’s eyelashes? You bring brightness and tranquility to both day and night, reflecting sunshine and starlight, and the very essence of my soul…”

- Sarah Laliberté

Perfectionism, Patience, Resourcefulness

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 14:57:18 -0500

Conformity or uniformity?

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 10:42:43 -0500

You have to sacrifice a little in conformity if you want to achieve uniformity.

It pays off that everyone use the same system in a shop. One way to share people’s files, let’s say. You might think that reduces choice, that it constrains creative thinking, and in some sense it might. But in there is the fear of conformity, whereas what you’re really trying to get are the added benefits of uniformity. Uniformity, without the constraining force of conformity.

Apple understands something about the subtle difference between conformity and uniformity. You might say there’s an irony between their current dominance of iOS in the mobile space and their 1984 Super Bowl commercial that heralded them as anti-conformist. But somehow they managed to create in iOS a platform that added morechoice and more freedom of expression. Like everything else in life, the subtleties of excellence lie in how you slice the pie, where you make your choices. Standard screen sizes matter, for example, and imposing that constraint has a liberating factor on other design choices.

You might look at the file-sharing example as too simplistic. Surely, there’s no harm in requiring everyone to store their files in one spot. What’s the big deal, after all? The harm isn’t in requiring where people put their files. The harm is in not going deep enough in the user experience analysis of the system. You’ve put the system in place but there’s no sharing of files. Maybe people hesitate with your solution because the folders aren’t named intuitively. Maybe there’s no sharing being done because team members don’t communicate the new files they put up. Maybe those are the details that affect the adoption of your system. But if you don’t know those things, you throw your arms up, lose patience, and declare that standards don’t work unless they’re imposed.

Adoption is a tough thing to foster. It’s touchy because you’re transforming people’s day-to-day routines, their reference points. You’re asking people to switch train tracks, to go on a new route. You could impose it. Maybe there’s a way to get everyone to choose that new way, instead.

The trick, to me, has always been to sit in as the user and imagine the experience. It’s always a worthwhile experience, mostly because you learn that there aren’t that many variables to change into constants — the mountain of variables is never as huge as we fear. You just have to bathe into their experience and you’ll see there are a few, key things that make all of their experiences the same. Once you demystify those, once you find the few things to nail down, then you can be an agent of change.

To get uniformity, step back a little, resist those urges to require conformity. Walk a mile in someone else’s shoes and in the end, you’ll find you’ll all be further ahead.

Coexist

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 08:24:44 -0400

Coexist

Like what you do

Thu, 25 Aug 2011 13:48:29 -0400

Cory Watilo remembers this memorable day at work.

Steve Jobs came out and the whole theater burst into applause, and the clapping went on for minutes, with people standing and cheering. The success of the iMac was just becoming evident – the first act of Steve’s big return, leading from there to what Apple is now.

Steve let the applause go on for a little bit, then, with much effort, settled down the crowd. When things got quiet, the first thing he said was: “That’s an awful lot of applause considering that you guys are the ones who do all the work.”

Everyone leapt to their feet and applauded again for several minutes more, this time with Steve egging them on, applauding each other as a team.

That moment has since defined what I think about as leadership.

Michael Grothaus commemorates another such day.

For Tim Cook there are no dumb questions. When he answered me he spoke to me as if I were the most important person at Apple.

His look, his tone, the long pause was evidence enough that he genuinely gave thought to the concern I brought up.

Cheering your boss, getting cheered back. Taking a chance to ask a question. Being listened to.

We can all get there.

Take a seat, partner

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 21:59:08 -0400

Boxes. They’re all over the place in big organizations. This is my box, that’s your box. Our relationship isn’t clear enough, let’s define it. Let’s make it clear. Let’s draw some lines. Boxes.

The newcomers, the enthusiastic, the open, the brave, they see these boxes and they don’t understand. So much red-tape, they say. Boulders to get around. Barriers to go over. Just let us do our job!

Eventually, these brave newcomers either leave or relinquish the battle. And you see their passion die off.

Clarity

John’s a manager. His team provides services to other sectors in the company. He’s discerning how to clarify his sector’s responsibilities (yes, we’re in the business of this, no we’re not in that business). He’s also a believer in community values, in collaboration, and you could tell he found the balance difficult to attain. Not too strict, but not too closed off. Some doors are opened to some, while some doors are better left closed for most.

He wants clear-cut agreements with some people, but he’d like to engage in more collaborative relationships with some other people, because his team can’t do all this alone.

In these big organizations, though, you do need agreements. Lines have to be drawn sometimes. Then you just got to give a name to your relationship.

Those are my clients, and these are my partners.

Clients are far. Partners are close.

Clients want more than you can offer, and you close the case at some point. You define the scope. Win-win, for a time. You got more clients to serve.

Partners, though, they help you as much as you help them. There’s give and take. Win-win, at a deeper level, and for longer.

Partners partly own your problems and you partly own theirs, and that’s okay because you communicate more openly, and you feed off of each other’s strengths.

Actually, you feed off of each other’s enthusiasm, too. And every chance you get to work together, you both feel like newcomers again, and that much more is possible. As if there were no boxes in the first place.

Got enthusiasm and openness? Take a seat, partner.

A New Kind of App Market

Wed, 20 Apr 2011 21:48:01 -0400

This is a great time to be building apps.

You can get your app on a store-front and tons of people can buy your app without thinking twice about it. Customers can find you, and your fans can spread the word for you. Your app is findable and spreadable. Your product will sell on its merits. That kind of market favours the smart, human-connected and small over the slow, impersonal and large.

If you’re in it for the long-term and you iterate your app, you can build a nice business. You can be like that baker on the street corner. People will drop by, you’ll know their favourite kind of loaf. You’ll chat up and they’ll take an extra pastry or two before they go. You can be the baker by hanging out at the virtual storefront: respond to people on twitter, answer comments on your blog, chat up your true fans and fold into your apps the stuff you both like. You’re building your business with your customers. There’s a relationship. People value what you do, and you value your people.

You’re close to your people, but you’re also close to yourself and your craft. There are many places you can take your app, but you know what you like and what you don’t like. You developed a sort of palate for how your app is designed. You’re not solving every problem, you’re only solving the stuff that you care for. You can let others figure out how to make apps solve other problems, because there’s plenty of space for all sorts of apps, like there’s plenty of space for another baker in town. You got your breads, the other baker specializes in different breads.

In fact, your app can solve a pretty specific problem, because the app market is a lot larger than a village. Your app is findable and spreadable, and so you can focus on a pretty slim slice of customers. You want a way to track your personal journal, but you don’t like the experience of using the other competitors? Build your own. Yours will be just the way you like it. It’ll be easy to use for the tasks you do most. It’ll be a delight to use for the types of journal entries you like to write up. You’ll make all these small design choices, suited to your own taste and to your own palate, and chances are tons of people will be craving the same qualities. You’re into crusty sourdough with lots of big bubbles. So is someone else. And both of you can connect in a seller-client relationship like never before.

Used to be that apps were tough to sell, and so companies who sold software needed to be big and well structured. The software needed to hit the middle of the road to be successful. The apps were built for the lowest common denominator, because that was the only way to get noticed, to get the right kind of volume to make some revenue. The apps needed to be incredibly clever, and companies valued engineering prowesses over delightful user experiences.

No more. You don’t need a big company or complicated algorithms to create a product that creates a difference, an app that is remarkable. You can count on just solving small annoyances, delighting people with a simple app that does a few things remarkably well, and in a different way than anyone else.

It’s a hyper-niche-user-experience market.

It’s a new kind of App market.

Magnets and Culture

Tue, 19 Apr 2011 11:59:00 -0400

Do you know the difference between a magnet and a chunk of iron? The magnet has all of its atoms spinning in the same direction.

Changing a culture is hard. You’ll say you need more people, but maybe there’s a way to do all the stuff you’re doing (and more) with the same amount of people.

You want more chunks of iron. I say find a way to change the iron you have into a magnet.

"And to really reach that end goal, Apple has to forcibly yank out all that cable."

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 22:23:57 -0400

“And to really reach that end goal, Apple has to forcibly yank out all that cable.”

- lonelysandwich on the problem with the current TV set.

Funny how the word "contract" means to reduce. Contracts serve to clarify the slices of a pie, not to find ways to increase its size.

Fri, 15 Apr 2011 11:39:12 -0400

Paying to learn

Fri, 11 Mar 2011 14:19:00 -0500

Learning something new is tough. All the variables are new, the vocabulary is new, the techniques are new. Most people who are already in-the-know on that thing you’re learning, they think all of those things you’re learning are obvious, no big deal, instinctive. But for you, you’re out in left field, and you feel it.

I joined a for-fun basketball league recently. It’s the first time I’ve played in a team since high school, and the first time I’ve played with an English-speaking team. And I’m lost. I’m lost in the plays you need to do, I’m not sure where I need to be, and I have no idea what the coach is talking about. Before joining the league I didn’t know that I didn’t know, and now I know that I don’t know. And I’m navigating through the mountain of new variables, guessing my way through them and picking the low-hanging fruit.

There are a bunch of ways to get better at something, and all the options revolve around a word: investing. You can invest time in practicing, you can invest in broadening your perspective by reading up on how other people do it, you can invest in books, videos, tutorials, personal coaching, therapy, and of course, investing in a teacher. You can invest time, you can invest money, but either way you’re investing something that’ll cost you some other opportunity.

All those examples are extrinsic investments — you invest in stuff that’s outside of you, and you consume the outside investment to make it part of you. You’re investing in something that you don’t have, you get help from outside. The thing you learn then becomes part of you, within you.

When you look at it that way, you realize you are receiving knowledge, and you have control over how you receive it too. Your stance, how your mind is positioned to receive your new knowledge, that’s what separates the active learner from the passive learner. It’s what distinguishes someone who learns fast and deep from someone who scratches the surface.

Paying for courses, spending your lunchtime watching tutorials on youtube, reading up on the basketball lingo before the game, those are all ways to invest time or money in learning.

But above all, the best investment you can make when you learn is simply to pay attention. It costs almost nothing. The work you need to do is all in the head, it means removing everything else within you that’s distracting you from learning, and it costs just a second of your time to switch those gears. It’s being present, in the moment, with the game, with the teacher, with the person in front of you, with the subject matter.

Sure, spend time or money to learn. But make the choice to pay attention, and receive that new knowledge. It’ll multiply your investment.

Gave a talk on Happiness and Design at UXCamp Ottawa, on...

Sun, 28 Nov 2010 09:36:00 -0500

Gave a talk on Happiness and Design at UXCamp Ottawa, on November 27th 2010.

The best predictor of great design isn’t the tips nor the tactics nor the tools, but rather, it comes from your own happiness. This presentation identifies the forces between happiness and design, and how in the end, the process of becoming happy is the same as creating great design for the end-user.

More pragmatically, design isn’t the only preoccupation on the mind of the typical user experience designer: changing the culture of the organization most often is the prime barrier to great design. Happy, win-win people are the ones who usually lead lasting culture changes.

Design your life, spread your own delight.

UPDATE: Re-uploaded the presentation to save a few transition clicks, and corrected the order of the slides.

"In bureaucracies many people have the authority to say no, not the authority to say yes."

Sat, 16 Oct 2010 09:26:12 -0400

“In bureaucracies many people have the authority to say no, not the authority to say yes.”

- John Sculley (via Instapaper)

"Entrepreneurial spirit is about optimism and creativity. (…) It’s never a question of not..."

Fri, 10 Sep 2010 19:26:00 -0400

“Entrepreneurial spirit is about optimism and creativity. (…) It’s never a question of not having enough resources but not having enough resourcefulness.”

- Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos

"Not the spectacular things are the important things. The unspectacular things are the important..."

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 22:30:15 -0400

“Not the spectacular things are the important things. The unspectacular things are the important things, especially in the future”

- Dieter Rams on his approach to design

Apple CEO Steve Jobs at D8: The Full, Uncut Interview What I...

Sun, 04 Jul 2010 21:15:20 -0400

Apple CEO Steve Jobs at D8: The Full, Uncut Interview

What I love about the consumer market that I always hated about the enterprise market is that we come up with a product, we try to tell everybody about it and every person votes for themselves. They go “yes” or “no”. And if enough of them say yes we get to come to work tomorrow, you know, that’s how it works is that it’s really simple. As where the enterprise market, it’s not so simple. The people that use the products don’t decide for themselves. And the people that make those decisions sometimes are confused.

Sir Ken Robinson, speaking at TED 2010 on the importance of...

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 21:06:00 -0400

Sir Ken Robinson, speaking at TED 2010 on the importance of rethinking our education system, to move from an industrialized model to what he calls an “agricultural model”:

We have to recognize that human flourishing is not a mechanical process but an organic process. You cannot predict the outcome of human development. All you can do is, like a farmer, create the conditions under which they will begin to flourish.

via Kneale Mann

Vortex Cannon! - This cannon shoots a blast of air at 200 miles...

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 22:03:00 -0400

Vortex Cannon! - This cannon shoots a blast of air at 200 miles an hour, enough to shoot down a shack made up of straw or wood.

But what about bricks?

(via kottke)

loveallthis: Inspired by jeannr, I flowcharted the Beatles...

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 13:40:32 -0400

loveallthis:

Inspired by jeannr, I flowcharted the Beatles classic, ‘Hey Jude.’

Making a tiny star on Earth?

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 13:13:49 -0400

Making a tiny star on Earth?:

This sounds interesting: by 2013, a first fusion engine prototype.

The National Ignition Facility, located at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, is the world’s largest laser system… 192 huge laser beams in a massive building, all focused down at the last moment at a 2 millimeter ball containing frozen hydrogen gas. The goal is to achieve fusion… getting more energy out than was used to create it. It’s never been done before under controlled conditions, just in nuclear weapons and in stars. We expect to do it within the next 2-3 years. The purpose is threefold: to create an almost limitless supply of safe, carbon-free, proliferation-free electricity; examine new regimes of astrophysics as well as basic science; and study the inner-workings of the U.S. stockpile of nuclear weapons to ensure they remain safe, secure and reliable without the need for underground testing.