If we ever get to meet and get to know each other, you’ll find out pretty quickly that technology has been woven into what I do for just about my whole career.
Up until recently, I don’t think that I have ever considered technology to be a real roadblock to anything that I wanted to do. If it appeared that that was ever the case, I always had a backup — if the fancy electric drill didn’t do the work, I could always pull out the manual one. If the website wasn’t letting me do what I wanted, (with a bit of work and patience) a human (via email or the phone) could always be shaken loose from one of those interminable phone trees to talk to me.
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Facebook and I have a tenuous relationship. I read incoming posts. I almost never put posts on online. I’m a consumer. Not a producer.
The reason? Because, to me, Facebook makes it too easy to generate misunderstanding by breaking two important rules of communication —
- Rule 1: Know your audience; and
- Rule 2: Encourage understanding by delivering the whole story in context
Let me clarify with a story:
Recently, I saw a post from someone I was Facebook “friends” with. This person is a public figure in the community and I respect his work — a lot.
This post told a story about a situation that he and his friend experienced. It was a lot like other typical Facebook posts. A photograph with the two Read the rest of this entry »
I recently finished the annual Fast Company “Design” issue that is published about this time each year. With the ever present Jony Ives gracing the front cover, it was obvious that this issue was going to have something to say about Apple and their philosophy of design. (Spoiler alert — the Apple design process is so secret that the only sources that Fast Company could rely on for the article were people who used to work at Apple and could legally say something about the Apple design process).
What I expected and what I got from these articles were two completely different things. Read the rest of this entry »