Topical and Tropical

Rants, Raves, and Other Mindless Babble

I Have Changed

Posted on July 15, 2010 in Daily Life, Design | comment bubble 1 Comment »

Over the past few years I’ve really been examining my career as an artist and designer and I’ve noticed something… I have really changed since I started doing web design back in 1999. When I first started designing and building sites I was beaming with enthusiasm because I could make a frame-based website or make a fancy image map. I was completely oblivious to the world of usability and information architecture, and I was more concerned about making it look pretty. You do have to cut me some slack though because after all I was working in a heavily visited tourist area of Door County, Wisconsin where your business had to stand out from the others in order to get noticed.

Now as I sit here and create websites for our partners on the campus of the University of Notre Dame, I am not only a long distance away from home, but I’m also long ways away from that green designer fresh out of college that made amateurish mistakes. I have become more interested in creating strong relationships with clients and producing sites that are simple, informative, and easy to navigate. I’m not so much concerned about the visual look of the site as I am how the content is arranged and styled. Don’t get me wrong, the visual is what hooks the viewer’s eye, but it’s the content that keeps them there.

Even in my freelancing career, I’ve changed quite a bit. It used to be that I would take on any opportunity that comes my way. That was mainly due to the fact that I was a poor college graduate with a mountain of student loans! My estimates were low, the quality of my work was just ok, and I was beginning to get my name out there in the design and development community. Then once I started at Notre Dame and started a family, the number of hours I was able to spend on work outside the norm of my full-time job started to dwindle. Now that things have settled a bit, I’m taking on more freelance work, but my selection process is different this time around. I’m no longer concerned about fattening my wallet with jobs that I don’t necessarily vest any interest in. I pick and choose who I want to work with from the standpoint of whether or not it’s going to fulfill a creative desire that I may have at that particular moment in time and if the work is going to excite me.

I guess what it all boils down to, and I’ve said this to many people throughout my career, that I do what I do because “I like to build things.” What I’m building has changed through the years. I went from creating lego structures as a kid, to student newsletters in high school, to wood sculptures in college, to websites at my first job out of college, and now to connections with people, collaborative environments, and user-centered products.

What a crazy ride. Who knows what’s in store next.

Connections

Posted on July 28, 2009 in Daily Life, Design | comment bubble No Comments »

During the past few years of my career, I have become increasingly aware of the customer experience in our shop. What do I mean by that? I mean how clients are treated from the moment they walk in the door to the conclusion of their particular project. Specifically I have been closely examining how I communicate with them and try to form a connection, because in my opinion forming relationships is just as important as knocking out kickass design. Once you show people that you can produce a great product, you have proven yourself creatively. Once you show people that you are a genuinely nice guy to work with, you have proven that you are indeed human and not just a robot that churns out Photoshop masterpieces.

A former colleague once told me that we are just as much social workers and psychologists as we are designers, developers, and project managers, and I agree with him. Lately I have been focusing not on the technical aspects of my position at Notre Dame, but the emotional components of my job, and finding that sweet spot with clients where we can come together. I have been asking myself questions like, “Do I listen intently? Do I respond promptly to their needs and wants? Do I greet them with a smile and respect? Do I make them feel comfortable when they are in our space for meetings? Do I openly take in all of their ideas without interruption?” If I can answer all of those questions with a YES, I consider that a significant step towards making a connection with the client that transcends websites, brochures, and letterhead.

I often like to use the Department of Development as an example that best illustrates what I am saying. When they come to our office looking to get a project completed, they almost always ask for me specifically to do the work because of the working relationship that we have established over the years. There is a mutual respect that exists. I know that they know what they are talking about and they know that I know what I’m talking about, and that a great product will come out of the ideas that are generated. Design meetings with them are often filled with creative energy as concepts and thoughts are tossed around. People are smiling, the occasional joke is cracked, and we almost always walk away from the conference room with clear goals and a feeling of confidence that we are on the right track. I listen to them, they listen to me, and most importantly we talk to each other and not at each other. We put the image of being a marketing communications machine aside and show the humanistic side of our craft.

Moving forward I obviously plan on doing this much more and doing an even closer analysis of my own personal client relationships. After all, at Notre Dame we are suppose to be a family, and families are suppose to have open lines of conversation. So if that means I take 10 minutes out of my day to walk someone through a wireframe over the phone or walk up to a colleagues office to show them a simple technique in Photoshop, then that’s what I’ll do. In the end, we don’t work in a hospital emergency room. People’s lives aren’t at stake if a site doesn’t launch. So why not slow down, start a dialogue, and create a connection?

Being Stealthlike

Posted on February 13, 2009 in Daily Life | comment bubble No Comments »

I like to consider myself a ninja in training, constantly honing my stealthlike abilities, both at home and at the office. It starts in the mornings when I have to successfully get out of bed without waking my wife and our 3 month old son who is sleeping in the bassinet next to our bed. I quietly creep past him, go down the hall, and close my 2 year old’s door, all the while hoping that the hinges holding it on don’t let out an ear-piercing squeal. As I enter the bathroom directly across the hall and go about my daily bladder-emptying sequence, I cross my fingers as I gently push the toilet flush handle down. After the whooshing and swirling sounds have stopped reverberating off the walls, I listen intently to see if the natives have grown restless. Success. Everyone is still asleep. From there I jump in the shower and turn on the water, praying that my son thinks it’s just that daily downpour. After a quick drying session, I proceed to slip into my outfit for the day, all the while trying to not rattle my clothes hangers into an uncontrollable plastic chorus. Then I glide past my sleeping son and wife again, grab my glasses, and clench my phone with a death grip as I attempt to muffle the unhooking beep. With a surgeons precision, my fingers lift up my keys and they quietly clank together as they dangle and await the nerve-racking drop into my pants pocket. After a quick gazelle-like gallop down the hall, I slowly lift the plastic shopping bag that contains my lunch and mechanically slip my work bag over my shoulder. Finally I open my 2 year old’s door slightly, quietly whisper goodbye to everyone, and efficiently negotiate the creaky boards of our upstairs as if they are museum security lasers. Success. I’m downstairs and in the clear.

After packing up my lunch and nervously listening to the gears of our garage door grind, I gracefully pull out of the driveway and go off to work where I engage in a different kind of stealthiness. Donning my design ninja outfit, I quietly enter our basement offices, and fire up my computer. Unknowing clients and co-workers walk past my curvicle and say hi, never knowing completely what I’m doing as I sit hunched over my keyboard. I am quietly concepting video gallery interfaces, sketching out wireframe documents, designing site bugs, and changing the face of the web at Notre Dame. Without notice I emerge from the shadows of my glowing MacBook Pro and launch an attack on the social networking world, thrusting my conversational throwing star into the Twitter and AIM interfaces. While the rest of the campus leaves the comfort of their offices and goes out to enjoy lunch, I stay back, and with my stomach rumbling from sheer hunger I continue to plow my way through client projects and initiatives. I have complete radio silence throughout the day, with the exception of the occasional blasting of Rage Against the Machine or Metallica and the tension-relieving phone call from home, where I listen to the calming words of my wife or the incoherent sentences of my 2 year old. At the end of the day, with a cat-like reflex I close all software applications and dialog boxes, swiftly pull all cords from their respective outlets, and stride out of the office only revealing my presence with the parting words, “Have a goodnight gang.”

Fortunately, the pressure of being ninja-like subsides once I get home, until bedtime of course, and I can enjoy the freedom and chaos that comes from being a husband and father of two young boys. My son Jacob and I can wrestle and play cars on the floor, I can hold my son Lucas and watch him smile at me as I make sounds only frogs would make, and I can crash on the couch with my wife, with TiVO remote in hand, and peruse through numerous shows with robotic-type grace. Along the way, diapers are changed with the highest degree of calming smoothness, table scraps and crumbs are collected, temper tantrums are resolved, and the garbage is taken out under the cover of the late-evening Midwestern darkness.

The night has come once again and the warrior must once again appear. After engaging in online video game conflicts and tweaking freelance design projects while the rest of the world sleeps, I creep upstairs, and amongst the glow of a hallway nightlight and a harmony of snoring, I get ready for bed, only to wake up the next morning and do it all over again.

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