Amy Middleton Loves New York

Last night after an inspiring evening of peace and music, I launched twitter to catch the tail end of Jared Spool’s twitstorm on the implications of low-cost design. Intrigued, I went to his profile page where I then was able to trace the discussion. Twitter’s new handling of @replies has been generating some controversy, and naturally the inaccessibility of the exchange was bemoaned a few times. Leave it to a 1am idea, but I thought, “tracing the exchange was easy, and documenting it might be of value for those who didn’t follow it.” I copied and pasted blocks of tweets into excel, then thought my solution was probably too obvious or useless, and went to bed.

Through the night I had nightmares that publishing this twitstorm was a race, with new entries pouring into twitter as I rushed to finish my simple table. When I woke up and checked into it, I saw nothing of the sort, and decided that if I had the idea in the first place, I needed to do something about it.

Here is the ungraceful, aesthetically awkward chart I sent to to Jared Spool and Jon Whipple:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=rlKehAIuxxERtYY7niedeew

If you’re interested in design value and cost, it’s a good discussion.

Here’s the thing, Nichelle Stevens is awesome.

This week, after being given the option between a w2 and a 1099 for an upcoming contract job, I began looking into the pros and cons of each. Most of what I was finding online was stale government speak about tax forms.

Then Thursday at the Runway Project (probably the most valuable meetup group I’ve been a part of), Nichelle presented her bookkeeping advice in not only human terms, but web2.0 terms, giving us lots of tools and recommendations for web-based accounting. I’m actually excited to fill out a schedule C now.

What a great time to be a freelancer.

I put together this project to help out some of my friends who are getting frustrated writing cover letters. I’m clearly not a power point pro, but I hope the content can be of use:

I have a hard time with break ups, even when they aren’t mine. A journal entry marks the first day I *didn’t* dream about Tom and Nicole after they announced their split.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been trying to reconcile the separation of Douglas Bowman and Google. I admire both, and I’m satisfied that Mr. Bowman will do amazing things as Twitter’s Creative Director. To a large extent I get why he needed to leave (see: my employment history). What bothers me is the irreconcilable differences he cites. Frustrated with Google’s reliance on data, he says:

Without conviction, doubt creeps in. Instincts fail. “Is this the right move?” …Remove all subjectivity and just look at the data. Data in your favor? Ok, launch it. Data shows negative effects? Back to the drawing board.

THAT is the Google way, and that’s why I love Google. The worst part of my job is working with clients who have too much conviction and not enough respect for data. Data isn’t an engineering crutch, it is a collection of voices. Data is user experience. It’s your community telling you “we’re with you on this,” or, “what’s clear to you still isn’t clear to us.”

The brilliance of the web is that it’s interactive; we don’t just speak, we also are privileged to listen. Yet so often, web design has only one charge: make it look awesome. Other concerns (Is it effective? Does it accomplish its objective?) are secondary, often relegated to a different department, divorcing “communication” from “art.”

Data doesn’t prevent daring design; it rewards success. In fact, how can design be “daring” if the designer insists on being sheltered from feedback that could suggest failure? That accountability is still so often forsaken and dismissed is, I believe, a disservice to the design community. I’m surprised at how many Art and Creative Directors require portfolios that showcase fluency in typography or web app development, and entirely overlook their results. If designers aren’t interested in optimizing their own work, looking beyond their own convictions, or responding to user voice, what kind of experience are they designing?