Design Sapling.com

Sapling wilted
I’ve found out specifically what I want to do. I meandered into Interaction Design …so I’m killing Design Sapling. Besides a few months of constant activity, I never updated it much. I don’t like the look of it. I’ve really focused in on where I want to take my career, so instead of just updating the look of the site, I’m going to create a new one: a portfolio site under a new domain name. Eventually anyway. I need to figure out how I’m going to advance my career.

“Design Sapling” is all wrong
The word “Design” is a bit too broad and some people only think of graphic design.
“Sapling” seems a bit self-deprecating now. I know what I’m doing in interaction design. Sapling screams neophyte.

Dusty articles
Several articles I started but never finished might be released in their unfinished state. Why the hell not?

The glorious future
Design sapling will remain up as I frequently use the server for testing other projects and I host a private website for project management with it.

My new website will showcase examples of interaction design. Maybe case studies and examples of deliverables. There will probably be some visual examples, though that’s not really the point of interaction design. I may include a blog, similar to this one, just to show I’m interested in the field, but nothing too personal. Facebook can handle that (although I hardly ever use Facebook).

Be sure to check out Secondhand Storytime. I’ll be contributing more stories in the near future. If you’ve got a few minutes and a good story, you should contribute too.

…because everytime I turn on the TV, I see an ad for a new “disposable” razor or a flushable mop head.

They say “disposable” as if it’s a feature….but it’s just irresponsible design.

Throwing something away doesn’t make it go away.

With Mac OS X 10.5, the new look of the dock makes it hard to see what programs are open, however you can get a nice high contrast dock if you place it to the sides of the screen instead of at the bottom. But, if you’re like me, you prefer the dock at the bottom of the screen.

To get the look of the side dock at the bottom, open up terminal and type the following:

defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES

then type

killall Dock

If you want the low contrast dock back, repeat the above, replacing YES with NO.

Bad Experience
Some friends got married last year. They were expecting to get their wedding album created and sent to them by November. The company they used didn’t send it to them by mid-November. The bride called and asked what the hold up was. They said the CD they sent the photo CD to Italy to get the prints made and the CD was broken when it got there.

Why didn’t they tell her as soon as it happened? Why did the customer have to take action?

Eventually, April comes around and they STILL don’t have their album! No contact from the publisher.

Guess what you’ve got there? An irate customer. A customer that wonders why a CD was being packaged and shipped to Italy instead of sending the files online or printing them in the USA. A customer who lost faith in your competence and then in your integrity.

No updates. No apologies. They could have sent flowers or a partial refund…any pleasant contact is better than no contact.

Do you think she recommended the company to anyone or did she tell people to never use the company? Bad experiences are sticky.

Turn a Sticky Experience into Something Good
There have been times when a company has a made a mistake and the attention and sympathy I received made me happy to recommend the business to other people.

This goes for designers too. Let your clients know upfront exactly what you are going to do and keep in contact to let them know the progress of the project. Not only will they appreciate it, but you might even learn something that will save you a lot of time.

I was recently quoted in the local paper. It has nothing to do with design or business! I’m at the bottom third.
Meaning of Life, Journal and Courier.