The poem is titled Otherwise, written by poet Jane Kenyon.

Otherwise

I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.

All morning I did
the work I love.

At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.

I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.

But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.

“That’s not to say you don’t go for the talent if you can; of course you go for the talent. But the work only begins there. The solution to this too-many-cooks problem is leadership.” – Matt Drance

At HIVE 2011, Hillel Cooperman, Co-Founder of Jackson Fish Market, emphasized this idea in his keynote: most organizations don’t have design leadership. They’re using metrics they learned from B-school to apply to something they don’t get, and designers are rarely in decision-making positions.

At the most recent Seattle Info Camp, while Ario Jafarzadeh talked through 10 Observations from 10+ years in the Corporate UX Trenches, I noticed a theme: it’s not just the software and user experiences we work on that are broken, the corporate environment in which we’re working in is also broken.

Today, Marco Arment penned four steps on how to bring good design to a platform, and step one starts with the top, again.

“Demonstrate from the top that high quality and attention to detail are prioritized and appreciated above everything else, including being the first to market, having the most features, or having the most aggressive prices. If you can get those as well, that’s great, but quality will not be sacrificed to do so.” – Marco Arment

Are you seeing this pattern too? Is it too hokey to chant leadership, leadership, leadership? If there are people trying to improve the experience of the users, who’ll improve the experience of the corporations?

In any case, now I’m 29, it rings bitingly true.

“I think there’s a self defense mechanism that keeps my generation from having any real honest connection or commitment with our true feelings. We’re rooting for ball teams, but we’re not getting in there to play. We’re so concerned with failure and success like these two things are all that’s going to sum you up at the end”

The products we design are going to be ridden in, sat upon, looked at, talked into, activated, operated, or in some way used by people individually or en masse. If the point of contact between the product and the people becomes a point of friction, then the industrial designer has failed.

If, on the other hand, people are made safer, more comfortable, more eager to purchase, more efficient—or just plain happier—the industrial designer has succeeded. – Henry Dreyfuss, American Industrial Designer

Emphasis are mine. Something about the idea of friction is sticking with me. Also, I like this as an effect of a design: “or just plain happier”.

No, we don’t always have to merely be more productive or efficient. Happiness is a legitimate goal on its own.

Agent Smith: Never send a human to do a machine’s job.
Agent Brown: If, indeed, the insider has failed, they’ll sever the connection as soon as possible. Unless…
Agent Jones: …they’re dead. In either case…
Agent Smith: …we have no choice but to continue as planned. Deploy the sentinels. Immediately.

King county library system error message: someone is looking for you.

Thanks for sending someone to look for me, KCLS.

I learned about Amit through that birdie Twitter, and wasn’t really sure what to do at first. He seems to be popular enough that Seth Godin and other luminaries are helping him fight the odds. If my list of People Big on the Internet is buzzing with #IswabbedforAmit, then what good am I to the cause? How much more help can I bring? I was chillin’ with that villain the Bystander Effect.

A part of me wants to jump on the bandwagon and retweet. Yeah! Retweet all the tweets! A part of me asked myself how effective that would be, and more deeply, it confronted my motives. Would I publicly voice my support because all the cool kids are doing it. Would I do this if it weren’t for all the Internet celebrities? It is, after all, an easy button to click or touch, and I’ll unlock that Groupie badge. Over-analyzing and Analysis Paralysis, yessir, I has it.

Something deep inside, thankfully, keeps it real for me. Whenever I see someone who might be South Asian (if they’re from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Maldives, or Sri Lanka), I keep wanting to walk up and ask if they’ve registered in the Bone Marrow Registry.

What this tells me is what The King would say: “A little less conversation, a little more action please”. A human out there needs help. I can do something about it. I don’t need a complicated decision tree to anal-yze that.

So, Seattle, grab your fleece and let’s start walking. I’d like to hold an event, a West Coast party similar to like the one happening in NYC October 14.

What does that mean? Glad you ask. I need help with:

• If you have experience organizing a drive like this, I would love your help.
• Getting registration kits and paperwork. (I have no idea how this works.)
• Contact an agency, like SAMAR or AADP to help.
• Recruiting as many eligible people to come
• Securing a venue. It does not have to be a bar/restaurant.
• Getting good entertainment. Do you know a good band? Are you in a band? Come play for us!
• Getting food + drink
• Getting the word out
• If something like this is already happening. Let me know how I can help and we will have one big ol’ party.

What if I hate parties?

Screw parties! The most important thing you can do is get anyone you know, or suspect might be, of South Asian descent to get tested.

Also, it does not have to be a party in that boozing and groozing way. I can teach a yoga class and lead a meditation session. You come destress and maybe get your cheek swabbed. We all win. (Yes I made up “grooozing”, a cross of cruising and grooving.)

This is for Amit Gupta, and it’s also to spread awareness for the bone marrow registry. I knew nothing about leukemia, but after digging around the Internet, I’ve learned a few things that have propelled me to take action, such as the low chances of finding a genetic match for bone marrow if you’re a minority.

Most often, bone marrow transplant patients need a donor who is of the same ethnic or racial background. BUT, people of color are drastically underrepresented in the bone marrow registry.

Tragically, most adults and children from diverse backgrounds cannot get the life-saving bone marrow transplant they need because there is no match for them in the registry. More donors from diverse backgrounds are desperately needed. – swabacheek.org

So, to summarize:

• If you are South Asian, please get a free kit in the mail, stick a Q-tip in your cheek, and return it.
• Hell, you don’t even have to be South Asian to do it, here is the linky poo to the Bone Marrow Registry again.
• Oh, hey, are you rolling around in Kyle’s money? There is a cost of lab tests and database maintenance that you can help cover.
• If you’re in Seattle and willing and able to help me put on a little (or big) party of any kind, please write me at dragonc@gmail, or @dragonc on Twitter. Again, if you’ve done this before and can help, I would appreciate it so much.
• Who the heck is this for again? Amit Gupta. From what I gather he is a pretty swell guy.

“The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.” – Steve Jobs. [Wired, February 1996]

The outpouring of love for Steve Jobs over the past couple days is summed up by Techcrunch writer John Biggs: “Apple and Jobs brought something to technology that it didn’t have before he began – irrationality.”

I can accept this view in the sense that you can’t explain it, people wonder why they’re crying for a complete stranger, and that you can’t understand it, some other people, mostly non Apple users, consider those of us crying crazy and ought to be committed.

Here’s my take: people love their Apple products, so they love the person(s) making it possible. Beyond word processing and making spreadsheets, they have an emotional connection to their devices. But don’t take my words for it. It turned out through neuroimaging that You Love Your iPhone. Literally.

But should we really characterize the intense consumer devotion to the iPhone as an addiction? A recent experiment that I carried out using neuroimaging technology suggests that drug-related terms like “addiction” and “fix” aren’t as scientifically accurate as a word we use to describe our most cherished personal relationships. That word is “love.” – Martin Lindstrom

Ok, love may be completely irrational. It’s also another thing: the third level in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

My questions: What are examples of products in each of Maslow’s level? What do they do? What are their characteristics? What works? What doesn’t work? Most importantly, how do we design to serve up the pyramid, all the way to the Self-Actualization level? 

Design is often viewed as a compromise between business needs, user needs, and technology capability. If we take out the business needs, which I’ll abbreviate as money and profit, and technology, which usually becomes possible in due time, we are left with user needs, or what Interaction Designer Jonathan Korman calls human sense.

Apple has aggressively worked on accessibility for users who are blind or deaf or have other limitations, an effort that makes no “business sense” but surely makes human sense if you read that or any of the countless other articles about what a boon the iPhone has been to the blind.

Money and technology represent the first two Maslow levels and provide shelter, safety, food, water, sleep, sex(?), employment, property, resources, etc. User needs span the whole pyramid, and we address the most basic needs first: the functionality, ie. user must be able to input username.

We have User Interface Design Guidelines for non-functional needs, like consistency and appropriate error messaging. We have usability tests, we have user research data. Yet, how do you spec Love?

My questions: We already have guidelines to create passionate users, what does it take to create self-actualized, compassionate users?  In other words, what are products that make us feel fully human: more fulfilled, more self-aware? What are apps that do this today? 

“We tend to assume the problem is with us, and not with the products we’re trying to use. In other words, when our tools are broken, we feel broken. And when somebody fixes one, we feel a tiny bit more whole.” – Jonathan Ive

One more thing: Am I crazy for thinking about this in product design?

Apple.com screen shot. Wednesday October 5, 2011. 5pm. Steve Jobs, 1955 - 2011

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.

 

Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

It’s raining in Seattle. I am sitting in my car crying.

The copy on the United site, however, gives me the idea that should I want more space, I can get Economy Plus, but I don’t really have to. Which, of course, is not the case at all.

Also, is it just me, or the image does not inspire confidence? I know what they’re trying to say, you’ll have so much space, but to me, it just looks ridiculous.

Yeah, I really do think.