Sometimes people think that designers just come up with ideas…have you ever encountered a person or prospective client that throws a project/idea at you and immediately says…so what do you think? do you have any ideas? It has happened to me…and it is just funny because at that point you can say so many things, have so many ideas…and all of them can be so far away from reality.

The reality is that every designer has a process, my process lives in Moleskine notebooks.

Another funny question I have been asked is ‘and how do you use a Moleskine’ and the answer is there is not right or wrong way, depends on how you feel comfortable working, anyhow, I will share my way…

• To-dos: It is important to know what you have to do. This is key for me, every email I get, Basecamp message, phone call, etc. I erase and write it in my Moleskine. Why? Because if you only had one thing to do every I am sure you will not forget about it, but when you have several things to do, you will forget something. Anyhow, the secret of productivity relies on not leaving anything to your memory. Treat your mind, like you treat your computer, try to have it as free as possible so it can work faster on the tasks you need it to work on.

• MITS: Most Important Tasks. So, out of those 029472393409274 to-dos you need to know what your priority is, some to-dos might need to be done ASAP, and some others might be done in a more relaxed way. Your MITS will let you know if there is something of urgency you need to do.

• Briefs: A new project will always be briefed, what is the concept? target? keywords? tone? so many things to think about, that if you do not have all this information in one place so that you can organize your ideas, the quality and effectiveness of your project might suffer because you missed something.

• Research: Gather information, nowadays that we live in an overload information world, it is a sin for you to not study your brand. Research the industry, who are the competitors, learn from them.

• Unleash your thoughts: Create roughs, very very roughs, nothing pretty, nothing like the final product…just ideas. This will be your base so that you know what direction you are going.

“Moleskine was created as a brand in 1997, bringing back to life the legendary notebook used by artists and thinkers over the past two century: among them Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, and Bruce Chatwin.”  www.moleskine.com

Dave McClure at Lean Startup Circle from David Binetti on Vimeo.

The aim for most people building websites or webapps is to create a source of revenue aka to become rich. This is a shallow goal, but definitely the most important in any business. It starts by building a prototype and getting paid for it. Most people seek to monetize their efforts by selling ads, but this is slippery slope because they’ll have to compete double.

Compete double is  the concept of competing in two completely different fields. By selling ads you’ll have to compete against Google, Facebook and many more for the advertisers; moreover, you’ll have to compete against other apps in your space. For example: If I was building an app to handle project collaboration, I’ll have to compete against Basecamp, Activecollab, Zoho and many more. On top of that, I’ll have to compete against many more for the advertisers money.

Be careful becuase monetizing is a slippery slope specially is your model is based on selling ads. It has worked great for Facebook or Google, but it may be a dead sentence for many because they’ll have to compete double and create the infrastructure to sell those ads.

What do I mean by creating the infrastructure to sell ads? It starts by having the proper technology in place to count, rotate and display the ads. There are many open source software that can be use for this purpose, but this is just deviating attention from the core product. People are needed to sell the ads or build that system to support it. It just adds a tremendous burden to the entire organization. Let’s assume the technology stack is already in place to support selling ads. I believe it is equally or more difficult to get somebody to pay for an ad that is to make people pay for your product or the vision of it.

So I have had this thought for quite a while now.

What makes the perfect team? What makes it or breaks it? How does it function?

One cannot make it alone, in fact most biggest entrepreneurs tell you that for a business to be successful needs at least two minds into it. Teams should be small, but there should still be a team to support any project. This could be an active team, or may be a board of advisers, call it however you want to call it, but you need these different angles of seeing things.

So, being the freak I am with good TV shows, I recently watched all 7th season of 24, and really this thought clicked in my mind. You see it with the characters of this show in this season, and what they represent. Any team needs these:

Leadership - somebody to trust

Every team needs a leader. Somebody to offer options, the type of person that can make the most imaginable things happen. The leader is always somebody people look up to, might be because of his/her experience, achievements, or whatever reason. This person is off course Jack Bauer, this guy can come up with the most imaginable and risky moves, and finds a way that everybody ends up following him. The guy is always right.

Experience - somebody who has done it

You always need somebody who has done it before. Who knows how to do things, and knows this because he/she has done it. Again, this person can be in either your team or board of advisers. This character is played by Tony Almeida.

Good Management - somebody to put it all together

You will always need the organized person who can call the shots. The person who keeps the project going by knowing which step is the next one needs to be taken. This is what Bill Buchanan represents.

Technology - off course!

So, off course I can say this is a must, since I am very much into technology. But it is really true. The things you can do with technology, you would not be able to do without. All the information you can reach, people you can follow, etc. it is really invaluable. Off course none of the operations of 24 could have been done without Chloe O’Brian.

Apprentice - the drive to learn

You always need someone who you can pass your wisdom to if not the world would not work the way it does. There is always somebody that has the drive to learn, that is basically a sponge. They usually do not have the experience, but are eager to. This passion of the beginners does not have value. This is off course played by a newbie to this show, Renee Walker.

If you ever wonder what the hell is twitter, Eric Ries (in this video), gives an excellent example of how to use it. He gather knowledge about his customers by starting his presentation and telling everybody the only rule is to tweet with hashtag #leanstartup. This is a great way to start a presentation and I know many of you give presentations quite regularly. After he finishes, he search for the #hashtag and see what people are talking. Ask yourself, what is the #hashtag that represents you? Think about that for a while.

I recently implemented delayed_job into one of our applications. It was done because the application was dropping emails at the expense of user experience. We had about 120+ “Net::SMTPServerBusy” notifications and something had to be done about that.

We had about six places in our application where the email-spec gem came into play with a nicely:

Then “thebaker@bakedweb.net” should receive 1  email

After implementing delayed_job they changed to:

Then “thebaker@bakedweb.net” should receive 1 delayed email

The question is: How would I go about implementing the step? I came up with the following:

Then /^"([^\"]*)” should receive 1 delayed email$/ do |arg1|
Delayed::Job.last.name[0..15].should == ‘Notifier.deliver’
end

I know my implementation is dirty and brakes if we are sending the email from somewhere else, but Notifier and it only takes into account 1 email. The real reason for this post is to pick you mind on how to better implement the step. How would you go about it?

Update: Kotrin from #cucumber came up with a neat regex for the step and tells us that we could probably expand on it to pick up on args.


Then /^"([^\"]*)” should receive 1 delayed email$/ do |arg1|
Delayed::Job.last.name.should match(/^Notifier\.deliver/)
end


Since I became aware of this technique of developing the right attitude and believing in the right things (the right way), it is something crucial for me.

The mind is something incredibly powerful and when you learn how to put it to work, amazing things happen. What do I mean by this? Believing in what you are and what you can do.

Treat it as your own. When working for a client, you need to believe you are part of the team, you work with them not for them. It is always in your best interest that the outcome of a project is something of value so you have to push for that.

Security. You need to believe you are awesomely good at what you do (don’t get me wrong, there is always room to improve our skills). Basically you portray what you believe and your client will see that. Either you do portray it or not.

Structure. You are treated how you’d like to be treated. When working with a client, you need to set your parameters of how you work. Everybody has their own method. The structure or set of methods you build are the ones that work best for you and that is why you have chosen them.

No intimidation by titles. What do I mean by this? In corporations you will usually find titles such as ‘Art Director’, ‘Senior Designer’, ‘Junior Designer’, ‘Intern’, ‘Head of Technology’, ‘Information Architect’ (which by the way never understood what that means?). Titles are used only to intimidate people. YOU ARE PART OF A TEAM. I have a meeting with the Head of Technology, The Marketing VP, Production, and my Art Director… whooooaaa those are a lot of titles or important people right there. Wouldn’t it be easier just to say: I have a meeting with Jason, Alice, Nate, or whoever, they are humans! Anyhow, when you have one of those meetings, talk like you usually do, speak your mind, disagree when you have to, give your opinion, ask questions. Treat them like your team mates (which is what they are!). Everybody has something to learn.

We had the pleasure of hosting Corey Haines for a week last month. It really was a eye opening experience into the practices of a Software Craftsmanship (more on that later). This time is for a video we did about starting up a company, dealing with clients and the whole designers/developers worlds.

Conversation with Ivan Acosta-Rubio and Bellatrix Martinez from Corey Haines on Vimeo.

We’ve been observing patterns on client behavior that cast some light on how a project is going to develop. By recognizing this patterns, you can avoid clients that will drown your energy, work with clients that get the big picture, advance your career and obviously make more money.

Have you observe any pattern of client behavior?