Simplicity Rules

Adam DuVander on keeping it simple

I’m Getting Better at One Thing

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I’m on my second year of having a real job. It’s still a new experience, working on one project (though I still find a little time for the stuff on the side). Part of the corporate structure, that annual review and plan, has helped me discover a great aspect of a real job: taking the time to make sure I get better at one thing each year.

The one thing I choose is not a direct skill, like “learn Spanish.” I suppose it could be, depending upon your job. For me, I’ve chosen skills that will help with my current work, but also serve me well in whatever is next.

2011: Year of Management

Last year I focused on becoming a better people manager. My team is entirely freelance and virtual, which is admittedly a challenge. It also didn’t exist until December, 2010. So I also had to learn to find good candidates and hire the best ones.

By the end of the year, we had six team members working 20 hours per week. We moved communication to a web-based platform called Podio and started to feel like a real team.

It’s a work in progress and I’m still learning, even though I’ve moved on to another “one thing” this year. Among the things I’ve taken away is the power of systemizing my approach to tasks so that I can scale myself via others. And I also found a great outlet for my obsession with what other people think. I can listen to what the team needs and make adjustments to help them do their work better.

2012: Year of Metrics

What is measured improves, goes the saying. This year the one thing I’ve chosen to focus on is everything. I’m trying to quantify everything that is important. Then I can measure the change and make the changes to hopefully make the numbers go up, down, or whatever direction means success.

Since we’re a content site, I’m obviously focused on traffic numbers, like most websites. But there’s also volume of new content, the cost of each piece of content, the output by employee, content decay, user engagement outside of the site (ie, social networks), registrations, logins, interaction with important users and many others.

With each of these One Things, my aim is to improve in an area of my job, but do so in a methodical way. I want the skill to be generic enough that it will help me in my future professional life and even in my personal life. The focus on only one thing and the intentional approach means I have an excuse to work on the skill every week, often every day.

What One Thing do you want to improve upon?

2012 Starts With a New WifiPDX

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If I were a cobbler and I had kids, they’d be very happy today. Today would be the day I finally gave them shoes! My Portland WiFi site was responsible for some of my first forays into map scripting, but it was dreadfully out of date. Now the site has a brand new look and is more map-centric than it was when it was redesigned six years ago.

In fact, when I started the site in 2004, there was no such thing as the Google Maps API. And I’ve given many mapping talks where I go a little bit grandpa on the audience, telling them how hard it was to translate addresses to latitude and longitude points (geocode) in those days.

The WifiPDX of 2005-2011 was showing its age, both technically and visually. In late 2008 I started working on a new version, but writing a mapping book got in the way of creating a mapping site. Finally, last August I decided to pick up the project again.

When I look at the progression of the site, I’m really happy with the updates. But, working in fits and starts over the last few months, I had a much longer list of things to do. These weren’t even major features, just ways to polish what’s there. Then I realized I needed to listen to my own advice and release early rather than release ready.

Some of the non-technical updates I particularly want to point out:

  • Every hotspot page can be edited by anyone–WifiPDX is a sorta-Wiki
  • The home page is mapified, complete with closest WiFi searching
  • The closest WiFi feature tries to guess your location
  • The WiFi map can show both neighborhoods and types of places

There’s plenty more going on, but those are the big ones. I could also do plenty more to it–and perhaps I will. But for now it’s nice to be at a state of completion on my first side project in two years.

Something Complex Can Be Simple, Something Complicated is Always Complicated

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Many people use “complex” as a synonym for “complicated.” In make a complex startup, Peter Ehrlich doesn’t argue to make things complicated. In fact, he says to make them simple. And complex.

An idea must be complex inside (to the founders), for otherwise it is nothing and weak. It must not be complicated inside, for then the founders do not understand their own creation, and more time must be spent.

An idea must be simply represented on the outside (to the users). In a world rich with information, understanding something complicated is a heavy investment on the part of the user. This can only rise in correspondence with the popular belief of the worthiness of your product.

An idea that is complex on the inside, but complicated on the outside is ahead of it’s time. Users need catch up, so that it becomes more simple and obvious.

Some call this simplexity, the idea that a single button can connect to a complex series of events in order to start a car, run an elevator or buzz an intercom.

Taken from the other direction, I like the idea that to be useful something has to be complex. Otherwise there’s nothing left to make simple. In startup terms, you need to solve a problem. And if your problem is too simple, then it might not really be a problem.

The Laws of Simplicity get further into this topic, especially the law of differences, which says simplicity and complexity need each other.

My New Gig: Editing Programmable Web

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Big changes for me. My mapping API book goes to the printer this week. And, at the end of the month, I will join Programmable Web full-time as Executive Editor. I will manage a staff of freelance writers and do a bunch more reporting myself. We cover APIs and mashups of all sorts, with a healthy amount of mapping in there.

I’ve been calling this my first real job. I’ve never had benefits (other than from my own company) or actual vacation days–the sorts of things that most people are used to. Of course, it’s not “real” in the sense that I’ll work from most anywhere and have flexible hours.

I’ll also have a big challenge on a tiny team trying to do huge things. That’s exactly where I like to be.

The Simple Solution That Stopped Wandering Patients

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“Occasionally people slip out the front door and then they wander.”

That was the problem facing a senior center in Germany. Their patients, afflicted with dementia or Alzheimer’s, would walk away in a desperate search for a reality that only exists in their heads. The story is told in fifteen minutes on an episode of the Radio Lab podcast:

“He sat on an advisory board at the senior center. And one day he came up with this idea. It’s one of these ideas that’s so out there and yet so simple that you think it just couldn’t possibly work.”

Install a bus stop. Or, more appropriately, a fake bus stop. That’s all it took to stop the wandering patients and give the staff a chance to notice they’ve slipped away.

Do you have a recurring problem with your website, business, or personal life? Perhaps you need a fake bus stop, something that works with the other party rather than against them… and still ends up giving everyone what they want.