A belated post, but better late than never! Last week, I had the pleasure of meeting with three members of the 1776 incubator. This was, by far, the highlight of my week. Three very different, completely fascinating startups that are headed for a really bright future.

talentmatch, a talent recruiting network that lets job seekers use and enhanced profile to connect with potential employers.

Military Jobs Network, a site and service that helps military veterans find civilian jobs based on the skills they acquired during their service. This closes one of the critical gaps for veterans returning from the field.

Perfect, an app that lets you easily locate restaurants with open tables and make a reservation. They would be a direct competitor to OpenTable, without the crappy UX and rapidly-expiring “points” nonsense. They’re aiming for the small restaurants that OpenTable leaves behind.

Each of these startups is in a different phase of their own development as businesses, and it was a great treat to get to know the founders. I’m really looking forward to the next round and keeping in touch with these folks as well.

Love that dirty water.

The summer after I graduated college, my grandmother passed away suddenly of a stroke. She was the matriarch, the pillar on my mom’s side of the family. When she left us, her absence was a tangible thing that rattled the family. I remember sitting at her funeral, my head just swimming with confusion. I was sad, of course, but what hit me the hardest was watching my parents, my five aunts and uncles, and my grandfather positively reeling from the loss. I had only known this group of people in times of celebration–Christmas morning, Easter Sunday, etc.–on days when they were so thrilled to see each other and they laughed and told stories and caught up on old times. And now, they were in tears, broken and shaking.

//

A month later, I moved up to Boston to chase after a girl. It seems like ancient history now because that girl is now my wife and the mother of our two beautiful daughters. We were only in the city together for a year. But I never forgot Boston. I survived the winter, waiting for the bus to work in -28 wind chill. I became a Red Sox fan. I worked my ass off at jobs that just sucked the life out of me. But that town, at that time in my life, was something special.

We had no responsibilities. We’d find the way to game the $2.99 cheeseburger special at Charlie’s Kitchen so that we’d have a few bucks left at the end of the week for a couple beers. We’d swap crazy stories about our bosses or yammer on and on about work and gossip about who had hooked up with who from work. I worked five days a week at a camera store and pulled a double shift every Friday at a bar making nachos and chicken tenders and potato skins. It was right after 9/11, but we were young and unphased. We moved in together. We threw a Christmas party for 25 people in a 400-square-foot apartment. We were in love. It’s the city where I asked my wife to marry me, and the city where she said ‘yes.’

//

When my wife turned thirty, she had only one idea in mind for her birthday party. She wanted to spend it in Boston, surrounded by her friends and family. We saved for months, pulling together money for plane tickets, a hotel. I even booked her into a spa on her birthday for the works.

Katie, the night before her 30th birthday, enjoying Christina’s Ice Cream.

We  spent one night revisiting our old haunts like Christina’s. The next night, we had an amazing dinner with family and friends. I remember my wife positively glowing from the evening’s excitement.

//

I was at work when news broke today, suddenly scouring Twitter, listening to the WBUR live stream and scouring every scrap of video and news I could find. I’ve only ever known the city of Boston as a place to celebrate. It’s the place where my wife and I fell in love and where we were young and ridiculous. It’s a place that has maintained a sort of innocence in my mind. But there it is, torn, rattled, shaking with fear, the subject of condolences from the President and prayers from around the world. The town I had only known in celebration was weeping and forlorn and I was thrown by it. I fought back tears and cranked the Dropkick Murphys to eleven in my headphones.

//

I know one thing for sure–the people of Boston will not stand for this. Things like this don’t just “happen” in the city of Boston, not without consequences. This city will not be phased by such nonsense–it’s in the DNA of the city. The Colonies cast off the damn British Empire from this town, dumped the tea and hung the lamp in the Old North Church, and grabbed the future by the horns. The people of Boston are proud and will not be deterred.

In the meantime, life goes on. My daughters, ages 5 and 1, don’t know what happened today. If the 5-year-old asks, I’ll talk with her, but otherwise I don’t think I’m going to bring it up. Instead, the sun will set tonight on another Monday, and rise tomorrow on another Tuesday. And we’ll keep moving forward.

The 5yo, in the bath, undaunted:

I am saddened to learn that Paolo Soleri, a true visionary of 20th century urban planning, has passed away. You can read his obituary and history in other places, but for me this is a bit of a personal loss. While most people have never head of him, his name was synonymous in my childhood home with the word “visionary.”

When my family took a trip to Tempe, Arizona as part of a family reunion in the summer of 1994(?), my father made sure that we include in our itinerary a trip to Arcosanti in the Arizona desert. Arcosanti is Soleri’s “urban laboratory,” a very small town in the middle of nowhere where Soleri and a small community of architects, designers, craftsmen, and artists were putting his architectural philosophy to work. It is designed in Soleri’s trademark organic modernist style, and constructed not as a city but as an Arcology, a man-made environment that works with its natural surroundings. I was 15 and impressionable at the time, and the trip had a lasting effect on how I look at architecture and the cities we build around ourselves.

Arcosanti, by Flickr user Al_HikesAZ

You can see a lot more images in Flickr’s Arcosanti pool.

Later, In the summer of 2000, I created an art book addressing the impact of the near-sterile suburban environment on the human condition. I travelled the US doing research and shooting photos and had the good fortune to land an interview with Paolo Soleri as part of that effort. During our discussion, he described the impact that the marketplace has had on our relationship with nature and architecture:  

You live in the illusion of being in nature, but it is just an illusion because the furst thing we do is degrade nature–that is a fact…We go out, in general, and we do not build our habitat, we are buying it, and we are buying it on the market. And the market is not the most clever, the most design-wise place to go, so we are getting mediocre results, and mediocrity is a killer.

It’s devastatingly simple:  an architectural marketplace driven by commoditization has a lasting negative impact on the human condition.

I hope his passing causes a spike in interest in Soleri and his architectural philosophies, even if it’s just for a day. He crossed the border between living a life and defining how to live. Take a moment to appreciate one of the many facets that make Arcosanti an incredible place, but moreover, consider deeply the idea that our cities, our man-made environment, is a designed and fabricated thing, and that there is flexibility and choice in how we approach the world. Take a moment to appreciate the fact that Paolo Soleri as someone who committed his own life and resources to living his philosophy, pushing the edges of what we think of as a city and directly challenging our assumed relationship with nature. Take a moment to consider the level of entrepreneurship needed to construct not only a building or series of buildings in a certain style, but a living, breathing community that rests on a deep philosophical foundation.

I live on the South side of Arlington, VA. Every morning, I ride the 16Y bus to my job in downtown DC. I get on and off the bus every morning at the corner of Columbia Pike and Walter Reed.

I was really looking forward to the grand unveiling of our new bus stop a couple months ago. When the day finally came after an excruciatingly long wait (much of it due to backordered light fixtures, verified by an Arlington DES tweet that I can’t find now), I was sorely disappointed by the result.

I’ve made my career in the design field. I understand that everyone makes mistakes, even architects and designers. But there is no excuse for a blatantly erroneous design that doesn’t serve the basics of its purpose. Below, I outline some areas where the new Super Stop falls short, offer suggestions for improvement, and provide another example that works. I hope this post can serve as open feedback to the Arlington County DES.

Site Plan

The site at the intersection of Columbia Pike and Walter Reed has unfortunately been misused. The placement of the bus stop leaves little room in front of the bus stop. Riders are unable to stand one in front of the other.

The placement of the bus stop forms a dead end for anyone approaching the stop from the green space to the South. There is an alley formed by the placement of the shelter that serves no purpose.

Here, from another view, the placement of the stop clearly allows for only one row of riders to stand at the curb. The man in the leather coat with the backpack, the woman in the red jacket, and the man with the dark coat and shoulder bag are all standing behind the shelter, waiting for the bus.

Suggestions

1. Move the shelter back from the street, providing more room for riders at the curb and eliminating the “alley effect” behind the shelter.
2. Leave walkways clear, unobstructed by the shelter structure

Seating

The seating of the shelter is problematic for a number of reasons. First, it’s too deep, so it is impossible to sit comfortably on the bench and lean back against the shelter, as one is often wont to do after a hard day’s work. Second, the materials for the bench–solid concrete and steel–make for an incredibly cold seat in the winter and will make the seat extremely hot to the touch in the summer. Finally, the design of the seat gives it a somewhat sharp edge on the front which could have a terrible effect if someone slipped, fell, and hit their head on the bench.

Suggestions:

Use a typical bench design that is ergonomically correct, forgiving in extreme temperatures, and curved to be safe in the event of an accident. 

Canopy Design

Perhaps the most unfortunate aspect of the entire design is the canopy itself. The bus shelter does not serve its core purpose of sheltering riders from the elements while waiting for a bus–the sole purpose of a bus shelter. This design fails for a number of reasons.

Rain: As rain falls on the roof, it runs downward towards the back of the canopy. The rain then falls off the canopy at the back of the shelter. If the wind blows, in this case from South to North, then the falling rain is then pushed through the ~2′ gap at the top of the real wall of the shelter, directly onto waiting riders. This completely defeats the purpose of having a shelter. In fact, since the rain running off the back of the shelter is collected from the entire surface of the roof, this would cause riders standing in the shelter to actually get wetter in a rain storm than if they were just standing in the rain.

Wind: The glass panels in the rear of the shelter are wholly insufficient for blocking wind. What’s worse, there’s no protection whatsoever when the wind blows in an Eastward or Westward direction.

Sun: This isn’t so much of an issue now, but it is clear that the shelter will be swelteringly hot in the summer time due to it’s transparent glass roof.

Suggestions:

1. Proper consideration of rain runoff, assuring that the structure of the shelter does not allow for runoff to affect waiting riders
2. Side and rear protection from the wind 
3. An opaque roof

The Arrival Board

I love the idea of the arrival board. Unfortunately, again, it has been poorly executed. The first thing you have to understand is that the arrival board is not completely accurate. In many cases, the board will say that the bus is arriving in as much as 3 minutes as it is pulling up to the stop. For riders, this means that you have to visually verify the timing stated on the board by looking down the street to see if your bus is arriving. All of this is manageable as a rider for better or for worse. Here’s the problem:  The board is on the right-hand side of the bus stop (when facing Columbia Pike), but the traffic is coming from the left-hand side. The process of checking if a bus is arriving is made into a tedious task as a rider must check the board, turn around and look to traffic, check the board again, turn around again, etc. The problem here is not the accuracy of the board, but the placement of the board.

Suggestion: Move the arrival board to the left-hand side (facing the street) of the bus stop.

There is Hope…

Given the attention that this stop has received, one may think that all is lost for Arlington’s bus stops. Thankfully, there is hope and to see it, one only need to get on the Eastbound 16G at Columbia Pike and Walter Reed and ride it to the end at Pentagon City. the two sites are not exactly the same–this is obvious, but there are tangible lessons to be learned.

A site plan that allows for the bus stop AND ample pedestrian access!

Plenty of space for riders and walkers alike! No awkward back alley!

A shelter structure with enough depth to allow for more than one row of riders!

Benches that are sized appropriately, perforated (not solid concrete), and finished with curved edges!

A canopy that shifts falling rain backwards, away from waiting riders AND shelter walls that are high enough to block the wind!

And all of this has been achieved with what looks like an off-the shelf shelter, rather than a custom-designed work of architecture.

Other Crimes Against Design Projects

Design Basics

Design decisions made regarding the Super Stop must take the basic purpose fo the structure into account above all else: does this provide a safe place for people to wait for the bus, sheltered from the elements? Unfortunately the current Super Stop design missed the mark entirely.

To the architects, engineers and designers who worked on this project, know that I am criticizing this from a positive and hopeful place. This bus stop is a part of my daily life, and it is a failure.

Costs

I have been disappointed with the costs of the new “Super Stop” and I’m not alone. In these economic times, there is an acute sensitivity to how tax money is spent. Personally, I believe in a substantial and well-run government, but that brings with it a certain social contract that tax money will be spent efficiently. In this case, poor design methodology led this project down a wasteful path. Now that there is an added level of scrutiny on this project, I hope those acting on behalf of the county will not only reassess its approach to design projects but take a moment to remember that they must, in every sense, be mindful of how the citizens’ taxes are spent.

Design decisions directly affect costs. It would seem, from the final product, that the bus stop was not researched and designed properly. I wasn’t a part of that design process, so I can’t account for what did and didn’t happen along the way. But the final product is indicative of a work where little to no research on the core function of the structure was done. The final product is indicative of a need to reinvent the wheel on a very basic type of structure. The final product is indicative of a wholesale failure of project oversight on the County’s part, as there was apparently never a reality check on whether this stop will actually work.

On Prototyping

Finally, I find it very unfortunate that the Super Stop is being referred to by the county and the media as a prototype. A prototype should never serve as a finished product. A prototype is, by definition, a tool for discovery, not a finished product itself.  If this stop were properly prototyped, with cheaper materials in a short timeline, then all the problems listed above would have been avoided.

If Arlington DES were to prototype a bus stop, I wish they would really address it as a prototype: book a local park as a workspace and bring in a palette of plywood, 2x4s, plexiglass, screws, and a labor crew, and do some cheap and fast prototypes. Then include citizens who use the bus shelter to offer their feedback. Every one of the problems described above would have been identified and prevented. Prototypes are not made of concrete and steel.

But most importantly–this is a bus shelter. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel here. There’s always an opportunity to create new and innovative designs, but the core function of the structure–keeping people out of the elements while waiting for the bus–must remain in tact.

In Closing

I never thought I would be so affected by something as seemingly mundane as a bus stop, but here I am and I know I’m not alone. I only hope the Arlington DES will do what it takes to address this properly and, even though it would be a huge inconvenience, tear down the Walter Reed super stop, replacing it with the basic but effective bus shelter that riders really need.

I think there’s another level of conversation that I’m not going into now: do we really need this? Isn’t a normal bus stop good enough? If the county is going to invest in new features for the bus stop like heated sidewalks and realtime arrival boards, then these investments are only justifiable if they are usable and useful. Anything else is a mistake.

I had the good fortune of getting invited to the deLUX meetup that was held at Adaptive Path’s offices. The event was hosted by Ian Macfarland of Neo and included some great presentations from Jared Spool and Tim McCoy. Tim’s presentation was especially great; a 15 minute case study of the research, design, prototyping, and implementation of a mobile news service for iTV, built from the ground up. Awesome stuff!

Ian McFarland

This helped show me one of the better sides of SXSW: micro-events and one-day tracks (like Lean Startup) happening under the umbrella of the SXSW mothership, purely for the reason that a lot of people interested in the same stuff are going to be in the same place.

I’ll be brief here….

What’s really disappointing is that there is no reall “breakout app” or other topic that has everyone excited. The only thing close to that this year appears to be Hater, a social network build around hating things.

“I’m in traffic and I hate it.”

“I’m stuck waiting at the DMV and I hate it.”

“I’m waiting for a table at the hipster cafe and I hate it.”

Grow up, take a shower, get a job, and shut the fuck up.

Come on, Internet. We can do better.

Oh, and congrats to the Hater team on their product launch.

I don’t want to dwell on the bad, so I’m wrapping up several crappy experiences into one story.

The sessions and other events are held in what feels like an endless number of locations, spread out across downtown Austin and beyond. If you’re trying to make it work on foot, you’re going to have a challenge.

I went to see the CTO and CIO of the United States Speak as part of the Lean Startup track in the Hilton. I was really interested in this–I love LeanUX methodology, I love my country–a perfect match. But…

The CTO and CIO of the US couldn’t be there’re because of the sequester–cutting back on travel. As a substitute, Tim O’Reilly spoke, along with someone else (a woman whose name I can’t remember and feel terrible about because she did a great job). But…

Their presentation was about the Presidential Innovation Fellows and Code for America, with which I am already familiar. I figured I would just ride it out and see what session was coming up next. But…

There’s was a constant din of noise at the back of the house and in the hallway, which was distracting. At this point I figured I would go catch Russ Unger’s presentation on innovation through the life of Jim Henson and his work with the muppets. But…

It took me so long to walk from one building to another, get lost, then finally find Russ’ presentation, that by the time I got there, he was wrapping up. Boo.

This experience loosely encapsulates my SXSW: sessions plagued with the din of the crowd, hustling around, semi-lost, looking for an event I wanted to go to, but just trailing off because it took so much longer to get there than I anticipated.

Some of this is probably my fault. I didn’t really go into this with an eye for planning. This is probably due to the fact that I spoke 3 times in 3 cities in 8 days, which kills my motivation to prep. This was not an isolated incident, but rather emblematic of the entire experience. The SXSW of c. 2007, small enough that you could drift from session to session in the name of serendipity, is long gone. But hey, poor me.

Austin is a great eating city, well-beyond BBQ. This was on full display at the Food Truck parking lot, just south of the Convention Center, across Chavez street. I had the pleasure of sampling some amazing chicken bulgogi and kimchee tacos that I enjoyed immensely.

In line for korean tacos.

Added bonus: I think this is the only place where you are highly likely to, like me, stand in line alongside a trio of food bloggers from Pittsburg who were making a point of sampling the local wares.

I also got to see a little bit of Austin that the SXSW crowd doesn’t usually see. I met up with my friend Kit and his girlfriend at a restaurant in North Austin called Olive & June. it was a great place to partake in an outstanding assortment of antipasto and craft cocktails.

L to R: Charcuterie plate, farm egg with polenta and mushrooms, creamery butter with olive oil.

We followed that up with ice cream from Lick, a n ice cream shop with house-made, locally-sourced ice cream in some pretty wild favors like carrot with tarragon or beet with mint. It was fantastic!

One of the best things about this year’s SXSW is meeting up with old friends. At usually goes like this:

1. You say something about SXSW on twitter/Facebook/whatever.
2. Your friend sees it
3. Your friend replies/DMs/messages you, “hey, I’m here, too! Want to meet up?”
4. There is an exchange of determining where you are and who wants to meet where.
5. Meet up and talk about old times.

I caught up with an old colleague I haven’t seen in 6+ years who is now running a political big data consultancy, a friend from high school who works for Pixar and was there to premiere something at SXSWFilm, an old client that I haven’t seen in 3+ years who now works on a startup–THAT was great!

SXSW remains consistent in their ability to pull together utterly outstanding line-up of speakers, talking about utterly outstanding things. This year, my favorite presentation was Arrogance in Design, a presentation by Jonty Sharples.

Ok, first things first: how great is the name Jonty Sharples? Add to that the fact that his twitter handle is @gringomoses and you realize this guy has cornered the market on awesome human taxonomy.

Jonty Sharples, dropping knowledge.

His presentation was fantastic not just because he was a great speaker with a wonderful speaking style, not just because his slides we utterly gorgeous examples of design in their own right, but because he had a point, and a good one: Design needs to stop being so arrogant. That’s a message for “big D design” for those of you playing along at home.

He pointed to examples of high design like Phillipe Stark’s rocket-shaped juicer, or an angular Alessi teapot that just don’t fucking work. Seriously, designers, just stop it.

On the other end of the design-as-art spectrum, he pointed to hyper-utilitarian objects like seating on trains that were rendered unusable, uncomfortable, and unconscionable as the desire to pack more passengers onto the train (and maximize profits) outpaced the passenger’s basic needs. to

Finally, through experience, one gains a combination of insight, humility, and confidence that helps counteract this arrogance in your work and in the greater design context.

It was altogether a worthwhile lesson and I’m very glad I got the chance to see it.

Welp… I’m back on the East coast. Even thought I was only at SXSW for a couple days, I am exhausted. It was a whirlwind as it always is, but this time, I think it left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. I’m going to publish the things that I liked, didn’t like, and just can’t stand from this year’s SXSW experience.

I’m probably never going back to SXSW. The festival (or conference or shindig or spring break for nerds, or whatever you want to call it) has reached a scale that I just can’t handle. But I could be swayed to return if there’s some clarity around the mini-events, the micro-tracks of of speaking or if there are going to be a lot of people I know. In the meantime, here’s a bunch of blog posts about what I liked and didn’t like.

GOOD: Speaking

I’ll start off with something good: speaking at SXSW as part of the Tweak Your Talk workshop was great.

Speakering. I has it.

This year I had the pleasure and honor of helping my friends Dan, Adam, Russ, Brad, and Laura with a workshop where we gave (almost) last-minute speaking coaching to SXSW speakers. It went really well, and I’m so grateful to be a part of it. The participants were great, the facilities and volunteers were great, it was really nice all around.

Twitter responded especially well to one of our participants, Alfred Lui, who had a great talk about measuring design work. He partnered with Adam for a mentoring session and it sounds like things went really well.

I had the pleasure of working with Matt May on his presentation. He told the story of the accessibility community’s contribution to our cell phones and our need to take that to the next level by embracing Universal Design.

Even one of our mentors benefitted from the class’ feedback. The class helped Russ Unger set up the opening of his talk. Russ is a killer presenter and the reviews were glowing.

A good time was had by all, congrats all around! And many, many, many, many thanks to Dan Willis for letting me come on as a mentor.

Yes, I’m one of those lucky S.O.B.s that was able to get through the massive waiting list for Mailbox. After using it for a few weeks or so, I can tell you, for what it’s worth, I love it.

If you haven’t used it, it goes a little something like this: the product team made a critical observation in how we all manage email: you receive it, you read it, you figure out if you need to do something about it, and you either do what needs to be done, you put it off to later, or you delete the email. It’s funny even writing about this as though this is a breakthrough–this is so friggin obvious–but email clients to date have done a terrible job of supporting this behavior.

To accommodate this triage process, the app overlays interactions generally associated with task list apps onto your email inbox. It accomplishes this by creating a few folders and labels in your Gmail account that are scripted to make the app’s hocus pocus possible. If you handle your email on your phone, you’ll never really notice this. If you check out your Gmail account in a browser you’ll probably see a label or folder here or there that makes it possible.

Starting out 

I set up Mailbox with my personal email account. I’m still managing my work-related emails through Apple’s iOS Mail. I turned off push notifications for Mail and for the Gmail iPhone client, favoring Mailbox as the only push notif option.

The app is well-executed, with a great deal of attention paid to visual design details–the typography speaks to this with clear, understated styles. Most importantly, the interaction framework has been very well-executed, with clear states of use.

At first, I thought the gestural vocabulary of the app was a little odd, specifically the long-swipe gesture for deleting an email. Really? We’re going to intriduce a new type of swipe for something as basic as deleting an email? I kept accidentally archiving emails that were headed for the trash. But after a few days of use I became accustomed to this started swipe-sorting my emails with ease.

I started quick-swiping emails to the right–archive that stuff for a rainy day.

I started long-swiping emails to the right–trash, never to be seen again. OK, so far so good.

Awesome gif on Mailbox swipe interactions by matthewmooredesign.com.

The Breakthrough

Interesting things started to happen when I got the hang of swiping emails to the left and marking them to be read later. This feature on the app gives you the chance to not only designate an email for later but designate what “later” means for this specific email. Swipe an email to the left and you see this:

That email about that thing that I am going to deal with after work? Mark that for “this evening,” an option that resurfaces the email in my inbox at 6pm. SXSW badge pickup bar code email? Friday, 9pm, right after I touchdown in Austin. Evite to a 4yo birthday party that my kid is attending? 3/30, 8am, two hours before the party starts.

Damn… Email is where I want it when I want it, not just starred and sitting there. This was huge. The ambiguity of other tools (flags, stars) leave the actual  productivity twisting in the wind.Mailbox wants to know not just what email is important but when it’s important. This simple grid of selections is like a gentle nudge from the the project manager of your life, asking “Sure thing, we can deal with that later. What time did you have in mind?”

At first, I thought this was just a nice thing to have, but it turns out that’s exactly what I needed in my inbox. I started to actually enjoy managing my email. The app gives me an actual sense of control over the torrent of email in my life. I was still skeptical that this would really change my behavior until something interesting and totally unexpected happened:

I became a total whore for Inbox Zero. 

Damn straight.

The Verdict

I am now actively using my inbox in the way that I think it was originally intended: as both an email inbox and as a personal task list.

The app is not without its shortcomings. Among some other little things, there’s no support for drafts (yet). But this is coming in time, and I’m confident that this team will nail it.

I have to say, I’m impressed. Really impressed. The types of interactions they are dealing with here are repetitive actions that happen in the background of people’s lives. The margin for error is virtually nil. And with the hype around this app (especially among my beloved hyper-talented-hipster-designer friends) made me wonder if this was being overhyped. And at first, I sort of thought that it was but after working through a few cycles of my email I really came around. Kudos to the team!