We’re pleased to announce that Jon Gordon, host of Future Tense, American Public Media’s technology broadcast heard on over 100 stations nationwide, will be joining us.

We’ve tallied up the resources we’ll have to play with, remix, and generally use as building blocks. These include 37 RSS feeds, 33 podcasts, a pair of Flickr streams, 10 discussion groups, 4 Twitter feeds, 11 blogs, a pile of videos, transcription samples and collections of commentaries and other content.

What would you make with MPR’s stuff?

1 Comments

• At 03 Jul 2008, justin wrote:

  A pirate radio station that played a prairie ho companion, the current tv. Guess they probably wouldn't like that, but that's the idea.

For your convenience, I’ve culled the 50-line job description to:

responsible for: search marketing, SEO, web site optimization, online advertising, social networks and blogs, viral marketing and grassroots events marketing, analysis of e-mail projects, including e-newsletters, e-postcards, online advertising and Web sites metrics.

Sound cool and exactly the type of gig you’re looking for?

Wait, I forgot one line:

Math Ability: Ability to add, subtract, multiply and divide in all units of measure.

How’s this go again? 2 cups to a pint, 2 pints to quart, 4 quarts to a parsec, 8 parsecs to a petabyte….

If you’re still interested, contact: Signe Peterson (speterson at caringbridge.org) their Senior Marketing Coordinator.

The latest deal breaker, iRise Files Patent Infringement Lawsuit Against Axure Software Solutions 10 weeks after it receives a software patent (a questionable idea itself). Awesome.

Let’s say, iRise wins: eradicating Axure and leaving it’s customers without an ongoing supported tool. Think those customers will purchase licenses from the company that killed the tool they selected?

Me neither.

Feels like Adobe & Macromedia Redux, and I’m not happy with how that turned out.

I think I’ll stick with napkin sketches and HTML, kthxbye.

6 Comments

• At 05 Jun 2008, Nicole Netland wrote:

  Wish you could have seen it :)

  On Wednesday, with an iRise Sales Rep:

  Me: "Give me your 2 minute why iRise versus Axure."

  Rep: "Well first, we just filed a patent infringement lawsuit against them..."

  In terms of whether Axure clients would consider buying iRise after eradication - not sure they even could. The price points are apple and oranges - or cadillacs and kias.

  Lastly, I keep wondering if as we become more agile - truly, and are able to have working prototypes within weeks of project initiation if these tools like iRise (which don't produce any code) will become shelfware.

• At 05 Jun 2008, Garrick Van Buren wrote:

  Nicole, re: agile-ness removing the usefulness of these stand-alone prototypes, I completely agree.

• At 06 Jun 2008, Fred wrote:

  A *LAWSUIT*???? That is so ridiculous. Our community is very small and typially we all play well together. This is just *bad business practice.* Axure is kicking their asses because it's good and it's affordable, so out of spite they try (in an absolutely crazy fashion) to sue Axure out of business. There are other ways to be competitive. Jerkwads.

  While I am admittedly an Axure fanboy, I have had no problems recommending iRise over Axure when the situation warrants it. But now that is over. I wouldn't recommend to clients that they work with a company that practices business in this way.

  Regarding Agile... Aren't working prototypes expensive? You have to retain additional coders to manage them. Plus, making changes has got to be slower than making changes on a wireframe and regenerating. As far as I'm concerned, a prototype is the designer's playroom. It's where we can fail merrily until we get it right. Failure becomes less of an option when a) you're dealing with code and b) that code will end up in production

• At 06 Jun 2008, Garrick Van Buren wrote:

  Fred, working, easy-to-modify, html & javascript prototypes _can_ be expensive. But considering the price of either of these tools, I'd put it about even.

• At 06 Jun 2008, Jay Morgan wrote:

  @Fred: You better step back from your computer if you're going to stick with that plan of avoiding products in a patent law fight. After all, IP is much bigger than UX. Let's not be too self-centered about UX community being the turf for this fight.

  Now, as a person who is inbetween prototyping tools :D, I'm happy to be reading "Sketching User Experiences" by Buxton and having Dan Brown's Deliverables book in hand. I might just join GvB and use paper.

• At 30 Jun 2008, Darrel Austin wrote:

  Jay:

  It'd be great (if your willing) if you'd post a review of said book!

Congrats Jay.

Make sure you know the rate you’re billing out at, figure out how much money you’re bringing into the company, and how much of that you are seeing. If you’re utilized more than 80% of the time (and that’s already probably too high…) ask about when you’re supposed to find the time to develop your skills, recharge your batteries, evolve. - Peter Merholz

Thank you Peter. This had to be said.

2 Comments

• At 22 May 2008, Nicole Netland wrote:

  I love it. I wish I could figure out how to live it.

• At 25 May 2008, Darrel wrote:

  I recall one job where we employees had the idea to read one design magazine a week and summarize for the rest since we would never get to reading them all individually. We then got an email from management reminding us to make sure we entered in a billing code into the time management system so that we could properly track the amount of time we were reading trade journals.

  *sigh*

In it Cooper promotes the use of archetypical descriptions of people, Personas, to keep the software development team focused on the customer.

That was 10 years ago.

This was before Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, Amazon reviews, Wordpress.com. Before so many people began publishing their experiences, wants, desires, and honest feelings online publicly.

Today, we don’t need to make up people (even if they’re a composite of real), real ones are easy to find. For example, H&R Block is on Twitter currently with 346 followers.

Not frozen urban beasts - living, breathing, complex people with continually updating timelines.

People. That use software.

Here’s an example:

“On Sun registration form: “Company/Organization (Please, no abbreviations)” - but it allows only 30 chars, too short for my employer name.” - afongen

Can’t make this up.

3 Comments

• At 01 May 2008, Ed Kohler wrote:

  Sam isn't a real person. He's a web developer. I guess things have come full circle.

  Tapping into Twitter users and bloggers makes sense, but anyone who relies solely on feedback from sources like that will miss out on 95% of the real world users of most consumer sites today. The most technical and vocal aren't always the most important.

• At 01 May 2008, Garrick Van Buren wrote:

  Ed, the company Sam's referring to is a technology company with lots and lots of web developers as customers.

• At 05 May 2008, Featured Douchebag Comment on StarTribune | The Deets wrote:

  [...] that are, well, related in some way to the current post are displayed. Whadya think of that label? Over on MNteractive, the term “Algorithmically Related Posts” is used to describe the results of the [...]

“[Letterhead Fonts] may think it’s going to shame one of its customers into paying, but all it’s really doing is convincing a lot of folks never to buy anything from Letterhead fonts in the future. ” - Michael Masnick

I do the same work, the difference is I’m biz dev, finance, project manager, marketing, as well as lead IA.

Business
• Get an Accountant.
  They’ll help you understand the tax implications of different business entity types, set up payroll, and make tax season a pleasure. That’s what accountants are supposed to do, be sure to find one you like. I like Lottsa.
• Define Your Rates
  What do you charge? I’ve found this to be a pretty easy answer. If you have no idea, there are 2 easy ways to get a ballpark on the market: if you’re in-house; find out what your vendors are charging you, if you’re not; ask around and don’t take ‘it depends’ for an answer - by unpacking ‘it depends’ you’ll get a better idea of actual vendor/client relationships.
• Define Your Services
  What do you do?². You’ve got to decide up front what kind of projects you want and more importantly the ones you don’t. Even more importantly - what it would take to work on a project you don’t really want. In any case, you have some idea of what you enjoy doing.
• Define Your Space
  Where in your house will you work? Make your space comfortable, adjust and arrange everything just the way you like it - make it the perfect office for you. If you’re just starting to work independently and you have a family - you need to declare office hours and set boundaries, for you and them.

Marketing
• Domain/Email Address
  Buy the [YourBusinessName].com, set up email there. Stop giving out Gmail, Yahoo, or GeoCities addresses. That’s pure silliness.
• Website
  Yes, you’ll need one of these - specifically a blog, to help people understand your approach and personality. Your resume, portfolio (images from past projects), bio, and current photo should go here. Being able to say “It’s on my website” when someone asks for any of those things relieves a great deal of stress.If you’re an IA in MN, feel free to make MNteractive.com that blog.
• Comment Elsewhere
  You need to be involved in the conversation online and off. Online, find blogs that you enjoy reading and leave an intelligent comment with a link to your website.
• Events Around Town
  Find all the local marketing, usability, product design organizations’ websites and put their monthly events and meetups on your calendar. Meet these people. Then, do the same for tangentially related groups like programming language user groups, and anything else that sounds interesting.
• Do I Need Business Cards?
  That’s your call. I don’t have any. Maybe I’ll get some later, I dunno. Lately, I’ve found blank index cards more effective for jotting down information about the people I meet and what we talked about. Are they an effective replacement for business cards? You’ll have to ask someone I gave them to.
• Follow Up with People You Talk To.
  It’s easy. Email or phone, pick the one you’re most comfortable with, but do it. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard an independent lament about not getting a project and they admit to not following up.

Mandatory Reading
• Seven Day Weekend - Ricardo Semler
• Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working for Yourself - Daniel Pink
• The Project 50, The Brand You 50, and anything else by Tom Peters
• Million Dollar Consulting - Alan Weiss
• How Much Should I Charge? - Ellen Rohr
• Getting Things Done - David Allen

Hardware
• Apple MacBook Pro 17″.
  No question. It gets noticed by clients and I like the big screen for working comfortably while on the road, and it will do whatever you ask it to. You’ll also need AppleCare, and a spare charger.
• A backup plan.
  At minimum, you’ll want an external drive that stays in your home office. My external drive backs up to the cloud. This is great for providing fairly easy access to archived projects without having them on your work-a-day machine.
• Noise-canceling headphones.
  I find them great in helping attain and maintain focus - especially on airplanes and if you have small children in your household.
• A mobile phone that you like
  At minimum, it should have an easily accessible un/mute and speakerphone toggle. So many don’t. The rest of the stuff (email, web browsing, camera, Bluetooth, etc) all optional.

Software
• Apple’s iWork Suite & NeoOffice
  Used effectively together, you’ve got near-100% compatibility with MS Office for a small fraction of the price. Personally, I use spreadsheets and presentations far more than word processors (that’s what email is for).
• Mail, Calendar
  Whatever works for you bestest.
• What ever your clients want your work in.
  I’ve created wireframes in almost every application out there and I wouldn’t purchase any of them if not for that being the preferred application for a specific client.

After this, it comes down to your own organization, sales, and resource management skills.

Good luck.

1. Anyone that works for themselves knows this is a misnomer.
2. This is one of my least favorite questions. It assumes a singular perspective about work that doesn’t represent my reality. Currently, when I someone asks me this question, I pretend they asked, “Tell me about a cool project you’re working on?”

3 Comments

• At 05 Apr 2008, Dan Knutson wrote:

  Garrick, thanks for the article. I have actually just begun a very similar path of my own. While my business identity is still being established, I have work samples posted at my website (http://www.danknutson.com). I can also be found online at http://www.andiamsomebody.com. I will definitely be checking out some of the titles you've listed - thank you!

• At 06 Apr 2008, Alan Weiss wrote:

  Thanks for mentioning my book. I consulted with the American Institute of Architects for about two years, FYI.

  Alan Weiss

  http://www.contrarianconsulting.com

• At 08 Apr 2008, Mark Leppke wrote:

  Great advice, it should be listed as, how to start up your own consultancy... Most of the advice is too good to limit to Information Architecture.

  Mark

Contact Jonathan Dahl for more information.