Why so slow?

I often wonder why my blog posts seem to be further and further apart, and also more boring. (maybe that last part is just me). Maybe nothing can compete with last year at this time, but my lack of posting makes it seem like im not doing anything. Perhaps just nothing to report, or is it that im just too busy… maybe im lazy? However it is, what am I doing now?

Lately I have been doing one of 2 things. Reading “About Face 3” (Just finished it last night), and working on bildr, mainly from a content point of view.

About Face was really good. I think this is actually the longest book of its kind I have read cover to cover, every word minus the index. It works almost like a textbook for interaction design with a great deal of design patterns and best practices mixed in. I think it really is 2 books, and even though it is split into 3 sections, I think it should have been 2 books.

The first is all about process. What does an Interaction designer do? What is his process? Who does he work with, and how is his job best accomplished. This part of the book I think should be required reading for anyone that wants to be an interaction designer.

The second part should be names “Patterns for great interaction design”. That’s exactly what it is. This last half is all about why things are done a certain way, how we can break out of the rut, and what could be done better.

Wait… I take that last paragraph back. It did have a good amount of how things should be done. But I think it had even more of how things should not be. Why saving should be put down to rest along with alert boxes, and a horde of other things.

So all in all, it really was more about offering problems than solutions. But as a designer, that is what we need. When Charles Eames was asked “What is the boundaries of design?” he simply said “What are the boundaries of problems?” We designers go after problems like kids to the ice cream truck. But as the book points out, the problem here is that we dont see the problems all the time. If you think saving/save as is a good system, why design something different? So it does a great job of showing that.

The second thing I have been doing is bildr. bildr bildr bildr. Seems like that is all I do… right? Sadly right now I dont have too much to show off that is really cool, but I have started entering in a lot of content.

The parts that gets me is that it takes so long, and seems so small. When your project is to build a window, it seems like you work so fast. But when you are building a tower, that window dosnt seem like much has been done.

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