In Memory of Joan Anderson

On Saturday I went to the memorial service for a dear friend - Joan Anderson. Her husband Matt is one of my best friends and we have been praying for Joan for 9 years as she battled two rounds of breast cancer. She is the one in the white shirt in the picture - even when she was dealing with the horrible side effects of chemo she would often join a group of us who play volleyball on Sunday afternoons.

It was a remarkable service as our church was packed with about 600 people who came to celebrate the life of this extraordinary woman. Matt and their three kids spoke at the service and they were unbelievably eloquent. Matt told us that in the 9 years she fought the cancer, he never once heard her complain - not once. Her son told us that the cancer did not beat his Mom because she never let it stop her from doing the things in life that she wanted to do. One of her daughters spoke movingly of her Mom's amazing optimism and the smile that was constantly on her lips. She encouraged us to "pay it forward" by treating people more kindly, by smiling at people who need to see a smile, by focusing on others instead of ourselves. These were all constant traits of Joan - despite the horrendous struggle she faced every day. They told us of her love of dance and how on her last day she came downstairs while her son was playing the guitar and she somehow managed to do some dance steps even while she was hooked up to oxygen and her life on this earth was fading.

I have known some amazing people in my life, and I am blessed with some remarkable friends, but I have never known anyone quite like Joan. The world is a darker place today because of Joan's absence, but I know heaven is a brighter place as she dances with the Lord she loved so much.

The world needs more people like Joan and I hope that her example will lead many of us at that service to be more like her. A little less self-centered, a little more loving, a little more caring, a little more dedicated to being positive and optimistic. Maybe, just maybe, if enough of us act more like Joan, we can help make up for the void that her absence has created in the lives of all of us who knew her. Maybe...

Design Definition

I was reading Guy Kawasaki's blog yesterday and came across this definition of design from a blog called Design Matters: "Design consists of creating things for clients who may not know what they want, until they see what you've done, then they know exactly what they want, but it's not what you did."

I love the design process and that statement has got to be the most concise and clear definition I have ever heard. It's also very helpful because if we take it to heart, it helps get the designer's ego out of the way. We are going through a user interface redesign right now on a project we have been working on for some time. We went over the interface over a period of months in our design team sessions and we thought we had it nailed - until we actually got it into the hands of the people who were going to use it. Then they told us it was all wrong, even though they were all on the design team that created it! It was tempting to say "too bad" and get them to use it anyway, but instead we are completely redesigning the UI.

It's easy to get frustrated over a situation like this, but this definition of design helps put it in perspective. Most people can't describe what they want, but they know what they don't want - once they see it.

UPDATE: I heard from a member of the design team on the project I reference in this post and he took exception to what I wrote here. He thought I was criticizing the team so let me clarify. Virtually every project I have ever worked on has had the same experience. Software developers do not think like "normal" people. We approach the user interface in a different way so I have found that when we build it in a way that makes sense to us, it often doesn't work for our users. Even when we get the users heavily involved in the design process, until they actually get their hands on it their feedback is not that useful. We had a lot of input on the design of this system, but it was all from demonstrations where I controlled the mouse and I knew exactly where to click (and not to click). As soon as they used it themselves, they told me it was not going to work.

That's why I loved the definition of design that is the subject of this post. It reminded me of why it's so important to not only get lots of feedback during the design, but to get a working prototype into the hands of users as soon as possible. The design team I'm working with on this project is the best I've experienced in 20 years of building software and we are producing an amazing system that is going to be an incredible service to our students.

(OK, I'll stop sucking up now and hopefully I won't get beat up at our next design meeting.)