These Work Rules are like the Artesian Wells of Old Florida and The Yucatan. The well up on their own. No need to dig down to get to them. And it really doesn't matter which one you drink from first. Find the closest one! There's fresh sweet water in all of them.

As long as you don't do something stupid, like Governor Napoleon Bonaparte Broward, they will keep working for you. Your job is, basically, to find them, and then go with the flow.

The Great is the Enemy of the Good:

Take on these rules one at a time. Start where you're drawn to.

Are you especially clever, conscientious or “driven”? If so, you may have a problem with applying only one rule at a time. You might have been one of those unfortunate students who got only high marks in school, so that you think that the rules of the game are to get all the answers right. This is not the way these rules work. It's never the way living, beautiful things are made, and for one simple reason that even the most clever people might understand:

You can't give birth to an adult.

If you try to follow all these rules at once, your work will not be beautiful nor even very good. Instead the work will be brittle & stiff, and will function for only a short season before cracking. This is the character of much tech. It is brittle & stiff, frail & sclerotic.

Avoid this by letting these rules happen, one at a time. If you know yourself to be especially brilliant, if you think of yourself as such a gift to the world that you are the exception to every rule, go ahead and disregard this advice. When you crash & burn, these rules will be waiting for you. Then you can come back and try again, following the rules one at a time.

Still unconvinced? Study the tale of the Crystal Palace & the Galleria...

“What stands in your way becomes the way.”

“I escaped anxiety... no, I discarded it..”

TEAM NOTES

- Add text: Act like the pirate, grab the chance. Follow the lead. Upwelling would mean nothing if the pirate would not need to drink. Strike while the iron is hot. Stay thirsty my friend. Go with the flow does not include agency. Upwelling is about spotting your opportunity. When opportunity knocks, answer! New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings. Opportunities are like sunrises, if you wait too long you will miss them. Jump at opportunities. Cast the line and then watch that line for a Tell. Hurry Up, and Wait.

- Bon Voyage..

Dear Designer: you prefer elegant, serene staging to the messy complexity of your Boo's world. That's okay. We love your gift for elegance. Just don't fall in love with your first work. Be ready to evolve from landscape to portrait.

Beware of the flipside of your gift for serene & elegant horizons. The wide-open prairies of a Frank Lloyd Wright home or a Le Corbusier flat remain empty, even when photographed for "Architectural Digest," not because these places work better when they are utterly devoid of people, but because the vast expanses are available to house the ego of the Architect. Designer as God.

Be assured that this rule WILL be followed: landscape will become portrait. The only question is whether the landscape morphs into a portrait of your Boo's life—or into an elegant yet sterile portrait of yourself. Some Designers produce numbered series of elegant yet sterile portrait of themselves, sold to Clients who lack self respect. Don't do this.

We Designers got skills.

We good at doing certain things, and we know it. Team's lucky to have us, for real. If you got it, flaunt it.

But there comes a moment when it's time for us to commit, to our Boo, and to our work. Now there's the three of us, and it's not all about "the Designer qua Designer."

So let's say you're good at building an elegant Stage, serene, with muted tones. But your Boo's story is clearly calling for some bold characters who are anything but muted. It's natural to feel safe on your home turf. But when you're ready, embrace a broader palette. Learn to build that palette from your Boo's story, and not from your current skill set. Embrace mistakes, and discover the beauty of Golden Repair.

NOTES FROM TEAM

- Milan: the trouble of every designer, to have a layout that will look good both while laying down and standing up (in landscape and in portrait), but why would you always go for portrait and not use all the space landscape provides? It's difficult to make a general rule, you always need to decide what is best for the product.

Albert: This is not a recommendation, it is a tendency. We are in the let go column, we should not fight against it or attempt to control it, we should let it happen.

- Comment: This is not clear anywhere in the rules and needs to be made explicit and repeated over and over.

- Include Sugar cane story

- The stage is not yours Mr. designer, you don't belong on that stage. You love pictures of horizontality, but you are not the show, the show is your boo. Make space for something to stand up on the stage and make sure that something is not you.

Do you speak in the lingo of your specialty? Does this isolate you from the rest of your team, or them from you?

Where have you adopted the kind of flattened, inspecific speech of tech - that helps you hide with inflated lingo your own ignorance?

NEW TEXT:

New name for rule:

"NAME WISELY" (suggested by Mia)

"WISE UP" by Albert (...Name then Fit means Name the entities, then fit the names more accurately over time)

NOTES FROM TEAM

- When are your words overly precise, overly geeky, failing to use terms that reflect who we are? Where do you need to replace precise tools with relative tools? When will you use measurements or designations scaled to the way in which we use things? Rather than saying cl, say cups or spoons! Use words scaled to the tools and the hand of the doer.

- General

Presented examples belong in another pattern, Blanching then Bluing: “Slave nor free” & “Matched vs. Wide Set”

- Text Revision

SHORT

Designers call it GUI, Coders call it Interface…

Language can either help us understand each other, or prevent us from doing so.

This rule is here to help you and your team identify which of those purposes is the language you are using serving, and is it helping your team work?

LONG

We use language for two goals: to help us understand one another, and to keep us from understanding one another.

Language shapes the way that we think and act.

If you are creating something new, it's likely that your language will be loose at first and become more specific and exact in time.

As an example, let's take the word "User".

Only one other business calls their customers "Users" - Drugs.

Having at the core of your creative process a word that is associated to dependence and disrespect is not what you want.

Instead, choose a word that depicts a person that you are creating for and care about and tells us about your relation.

We have chosen "Our Boo" as a generic word to use as placeholder until we meet the person we are working for. At that point we need to become more specific.

Which of these two purposes mentioned above is served by the language you use? Perhaps a bit of both? And most importantly: Is this helping your team work?

Note that as your language Wises Up, it won’t do so in a perfectly even way. Things you know well will gain precise terms, and the frontiers of your knowledge will have loose-fit terms. This is an indication of health in your language, and honesty and humility in your thoughts. Don’t trust people whose language is uniformly precise, people who speak always in a high register that never betrays uncertainty or ignorance. These people are caste members, not teammates.

- Examples

Airbnb's “I am flexible” & “I am even more flexible”: they have made a generic person who is not their best customer. (This example is also mentioned in Field of Play)

- Start with the smallest number of types and statuses, then allow the new ones in very carefully

- Story about IO, ICH, YO and how they provide a lot of information about the speaker just because of how they sound when pronounced vs. TU, DU, TOI/VOUS

“You can know the name of that bird in all the languages of the world, but when you’re finished, you’ll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird. You’ll only know about humans in different places, and what they call the bird… I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.” — Richard Feynman

- Wise up, only as much as you need to.

Have you mistaken the great success of your work for a personal achievement? You might as well take credit for the fact that kids love puppies. Know that if we've fallen for your work, whether it's a house, a chair or an app, it's because all of us have moved together, you and us both, to align ourselves with age-old traditions. The part you play is central, not because it's a big part, but because it must be precisely ALIGNED with the community the craft serves.

ADD STORY ABOUT OMNIPOTENT GOD LACKING VULNERABILITY

NOTES FROM TEAM

- Anja & Cari: great! title and image fit perfectly

Subtitle Text Revision

- "Idiot Proof": better to find other synonym

- Anja: Honor our deep trust in you. Move from "Idiot Proof" to Agency & beyond. Hypo-Agency, & The Design Team as Our Trustee. > not sure if everyone will get that.

- Cari and Anja are not native speakers so we did not get it right away!

- Text Revision

"Next step for TECH: Craft

When our work (Tech) reaches this step - it has become an extension of ourselves, thoughtfully sculpted to serve our needs without us even noticing it’s power. It is acting as a humble servant, gently pushing us in the right direction. It is helping us reach our goal without us even noticing the push.

In our way to get our work CRAFTY, we have brought views and lessons from QUANTS, DESIGNERS and finally TEAMS and we are using all this knowledge to shape a mighty tool that is a perfectly fitted to our world!

In one line: helping us reach our goal without us even noticing the push."

When you’re making your work, who's your Boo? Meaning, who is this person you care so much for that you build this work for them? Your work consumes you day and night, it runs you ragged at times, it actually takes life from you—or you might prefer to say that you give your life to it. You give so much of yourself to this work that the work itself becomes a Who. So who is it who deserves all this devotion? Who is your Boo?

And then, who is this work you make for them? Is it their sidekick? Is it a seamless extension of them, a superpower? or both?

Know & name what you build, and know & name who you are building it for: to name is to call into being. The people you are building your work for, these are the first and primary Selves in your work.

Introduce us to your Boo. Cast a vision of their Character in evocative detail.

Use old words. For example, bureaucratic terms or corporate job descriptions aren't old words, and they likely won't be evocative. (Tell us what will)

Introduce us to your Work. Call your Work into being in one of two ways:

1. Evoke your work as a Superpower that naturally extends and completes the Character of your Boo, without drawing attention to itself as a distinct character. If your work is a Superpower, it extends the Self of your Boo: a fly fisherman's fishing rod, Serena Williams' racket, a chef's knife.

2. Evoke your work as a Sidekick whose Character you can cast in sharp relief with no more than a phrase: "Trusted Broker" is a good start. "The Uber of Playdates" is not. (Describe why one is and the other not, not everybody knows those apps) Your Ford Bronco, my old original Macintosh computer, that wine bottle opener that looks eerily human with its arms and head, that minion-like personal coffee maker.

Are you hung up uncovering what Sidekick or Superpower is in your work? It could be that your work is actually an Ensemble of Tools & Mates. Tease them apart carefully, disentangle them one from each other, and then grow your work one Tool at a time, one sidekick at a time.

NOTES FROM TEAM

- Jakov and the Volvo. Driving was so smooth, the engine didn’t call attention to itself, the car was completing him as driver

Your work is Sidekick or Superpower to your Boo. But to YOU, your work is Child, Mini-me, Selfie: a part of you raised up to serve your Boo. Do you understand this? It's a somewhat slippery idea for many of us to catch.

Often Quants like us "write ourselves right out of the script," so when we write a specification of our work, we do it in passive voice, as if our work is a Virgin Birth. This happens too often for coincidence. These rules bring you to see that your work can't ever Stand Up, Speak Up & Serve Up until you claim paternity.

Still head-scratching? Watch Disney's Pinocchio. And remember, you are Gepetto.

NOTES FROM TEAM

- UpFleet screenshot speaking about slelf-permanence?

- Ros & Iria:

The passive voice description I still don’t quite fully understand

Yellow text is not totally abstract but it requires paying close attention and reading more than once. When it asks “Do you understand this?” Makes me feel like the author thinks I'm probably dumb or ignorant.

Explain a little what you mean with “passive voice” and “virgin birth”

- Rose's version: Make a mini-me. Understand that your work is part of story… More than that, it’s a character in a story that’s bigger than itself and this makes you a co-writer in that story. Think about what your work brings to the story, is it a superpower or is it a trusted sidekick for the main character?

Now that you have seen how your work can have a huge impact in someone’s story, you can give life to it, and remember, this is your baby, you are responsible for raising it.

Specs have passive voice, and they leave out The Who, the actual human been that are involved.

Your work is personal. Pay attention to it, it is shadow of yourself.

- General

Yellow text is obscure, needs revision.

Differentiating this rule from “Tool, Mate”: a child is a mini me but so is your work. “Tool, Mate” speaks about you being sensitive towards the people you create. This rule speaks about everything you make being a part of you.

- Text Revision

Subtitle: Who are “they”? Change text to “Everything we make is a selfie”

- Examples

Airbnbs translation engine: It brings this rule to an excess. They haven’t made the effort to know their boo, instead, they have put too much of themselves in the product.

Express Selves in Faces that distill & refine character. Design Faces for expressive range: place ID front & center, surrounded by State [mood]. Show "who" & "how" they are. Map the expressive range of these Faces to our Story.

Does your work have an obvious and clearly communicative Face? By the Self-Same rule, your work may have a face for the entire work as well as faces for the Characters nested within the work. And your work may also have more than one face for the entire work. For instance, Ferdinand Porsche's 1939 Volkswagen has one face each for front and rear of the car, since many drivers will approach the car from the rear. Also, Palladio's Villa Capra [La Rotonda] has one face for each of the four cardinal directions of approach to the villa, and his Basilica in Vicenza presents a face to those arriving along any approaching road. Apple Macintosh computers have one face, but iPhones have two, not unlike the 1939 Volkswagen.

By Frame then Fit, give your work just the Faces it needs to support the story of your Boo.

Concentrate readable elements.

NOTES FROM TEAM

​- News paper with two faces allows you to approach it from different places (Albert shows during masterclass)

-Expensify: how many faces should it have? Should it be within the big dig app or have an entry, a face of it’s own?

When has your visual design and interaction design embraced a flattened expressive range, as a design fetish?

Has your team removed "actionable" elements, essential story details to your Boo, because it makes something look nicer or "cleaner"?

New text to work:

- Let things grow true to themselves

- Look for a proxy (?)

- you are NOT crazy

NOTES FROM TEAM

- Include "Don't mistake your job as interior designer instead of communicator. Don't remove stuff, use the following design tricks to keep what's important while preserving your clean layout (describe design tricks).

- General

Find better image (most people do not understand Lebron James)

- Text Revision

"Less is more? Not always.

Let's go back in time and look at the design of two different airplanes: The Messerschmitt and the Spit Fire.

The designers of the Messerschmitt wanted it to be perfect, they decided to silence vibrations that showed the planes instability. On the other hand, the Spitfire clearly communicated to it's pilot it's current state.

Guess which one ultimately performed better?

Simplifying our designs, using white space…All of that is cool as long as it doesn't become our main focus and we start removing useful elements for the sake of making our design look nicer or "cleaner".

Have you or your team removed things that are essential to the story of your Boo for the sake of design?"

- Examples

Shopping center in Sag Harbor with only blue signs.

Green fire hydrant designed to blend in with nature that no one will find in case of fire.

Marble and glass for ships bridge that is pretty but has no practical value and obstructs work.

- Edward Tufte

"Enough difference to make a difference"

"The eye is a high resolution device"

Is your work part of an ensemble with your Boo and their other sidekicks and superpowers? Does your work fit and spoon with those others?

NOTES FROM TEAM

Anja&Cari:

- it works good: image & title

Anja: but not at the first glance

Cari: text can be improved to better match the image (image is good!)

- General

“Rule yourself” was hard for Anja to understand. There is a lot of overlap with “Stack to milpa”. In our writing we must make clear that: “Rule yourself” is about a couple of selves working together. “Stack to Milpa” is about the entire stack and it comes later in the design process or evolution of design.

- Text Revision

"Don’t separate your work from you - make your environment evolve around you.

Just like we co-exist with our crops or livestock -> all elements can grow and co-exist in harmony. Recognize selves, spoon them and apply the craft so they can co-exist perfectly!"

This thing you're making... Where is the top? Where is the front? When we face your work, does it face us?

Before you begin your work, turn it over in your mind. Try to locate where the front or top might be. If you can't make sense of what "front" or "top" might mean for your work, try instead to locate "the business end."

1. If you find more than one front or top, consider that this may not be one work, but two or more. Return to Tool? Mate? and ask whether your work is not one Self but is an ensemble of Selves.

2. If you can't see the overall form, there may be too much going on. Try factoring your work into parts that can stand on their own as Sidekicks or Superpowers. In any one part of your work, keep only those elements that define that part of the work as a singular Tool or Mate. "A design is complete not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."

This is a two-fer: once you've identified the front, you've got an idea where the back is. If you've located the top, congrats: you've got a hint where the bottom might be. This may not be so apparently useful at first, but later on it'll be priceless to have a gradient from front to back.

NOTES FROM TEAM

- Text overlaps too much with “this side up”

Craft the Top and Front of your work to address your Boo. Build them to stand Facing the ones they serve. Your work will now also have a Bottom or Back End. This is the end meant for Repair, and like any good attic, cellar or crawlspace, it should be built not for looks but for easy access to the insides of your work. Failing to design a Bottom or Back End is the quickest way to shorten the life of your work.

Show your work to your Boo. Does your Boo easily understand "which end is up" and which way your work is "facing"? If not, revise your work until they do.

If you fail too often in this revision, consider that you might not yet get what your Boo is looking for in Tool? Mate?

NOTES FROM TEAM

- Ros & Iria: Address your Boo through the senses, for shapes are readable.

- Include idea of the gradient. You can't have the front without the back door for the grease trap.

- Text overlaps too much with “true to form”.

You may be more comfortable with Typologies & Categories. [You're pretty smart.] Lean against this. Stage Tasks over Types, and always Fit to Task.

Learn the important distinction between Types & Categories versus Statuses & Stages. While Types & Categories are real things, Statuses & Stages are fully dimensional, because they lie along the arc of a story. Statuses & Stages live in Time, the 4th Dimension, and so they can come alive in the narrative of your Boo.

You may have attended school too long, or you might have worked too long the corporate world or a bureaucracy. This makes your conceptions flat, even two-dimensional. We Designers sometimes even find this Flatlay attractive in its spareness and its order. Some Quants feel the same way. Take care that you don't distort the story of your Boo, by steamrolling it into a Flatlay where Types and Categories are poor substitutes for Statuses & Stages. Remember Warehouse to Workbench.

NOTES FROM TEAM

- General

Text needs revision: Milan needed to read it two or three times to understand it.

- Text Revision

Include “Let us work in our way. Don’t make us bend into it.”

- A Memorial for the Living https://open.spotify.com/episode/00COWsl8jj8hg3ad42LFzL?si=2GveZ1a1RuWGSJPseVgzog&context=spotify%3Ashow%3A2LOJaYKijiwNefCvzczyib&nd=1

Has the face of your work grown open, like the face of a child? Does your stage "curl" or "bow" at the edges, bending up toward your Boo like the readable valleys of storybook villages?

NOTES FROM TEAM

- General

Include in text that not everything you create should become neotenous, but that this will be the tendency, and the more neotenous the more cared for it will be.

Adam and Eve?

- Text Revision

"The Bigger the eyes the cuter we find the puppy.

Humans, and most other mammals, are born with big heads and large eyes.

As children, we are very dependent on our caretakers, therefore, the cuter the better when it comes to getting what we need.

As we grow older, our features become more proportionate.

The opposite counts for tech. Have a look at the first computers, the ENIAC, the first cameras, the first phones…All of them were pretty huge and austere. Over time, most of them have been growing softer, rounder, more childlike.

And it's not only tech, corn has done it too! It has gone from having a large body and small head to a bratz - like head and much shorter body. Like a baby, a puppy, or a phone, it draws our attention and makes us tend to it. Admit it: you have caught yourself reacting to a message or notification like you would to a baby's cry or a puppies squeal.

(And what else is new? Corn is not particularly healthy for us.)

Architecture is another field in which we observe this. Palladio's Basilica has hundreds of eyes looking over the city of Vicenza. If they were smaller they could be perceived as intimidating and surveillance-like. But they are not, they are large and cute like the eyes of a child, and therefore we have been taking care of the face that embeds them for centuries.

This rule shows a pattern, a tendency, but it also asks how has your design been evolving? Has the face of your work grown open like the face of a child?

You love what you are creating and you want it to be taken care of. Design accordingly!

Is there a name for the class of work you build? Does the class have a history you can learn from, like the history of cars or newspapers? Does your own work trend towards the co-domestication of this class of work? Compared to the previous generations in this class, is your work more babyfaced, more hypo-agent?

NOTES FROM TEAM

- "You become responsible forever for what you've tamed. You're responsible for your rose.” Quote from The Little Prince.

Anja&Cari:

- Benjamin Button: does not work with image of corn

- Illness may not be a good reference

- Image is not connected to the text (we know how maiz got domesticated because we heard about it from Albert but other people will probably not get that right away)

> most non-solid one!

- General

​​Simplify text or include both: the story of teosinte and Benjamin button, explain how Albert sees Teosinte as an old man and corn as the child.

- Text Revision

"You know your work by now, you know what needs to happen. At this point - make sure that you have it perfectly focused and in line with what you need to do - and nothing more!

If you form your faces right - you should end up with CHILD looking at you with a simple request, not with ADULT being too complex/complicated to handle!"

Build your work to stand on a Stage facing your Boo. This stage may be a place that already exists, or you may make it purpose-built as part of your work. Allow it to move with your Boo on that Stage, and make sure that the Stage and your work together can tell your Boo's story.

Never stop looking for integrity and wholeness in your work, in this way: challenge yourself to build a Stage that allows your work to move and live in a way that is completely at one with the Character of your work as a Self and is also completely of a piece with the story of your Boo. If you can't achieve this, rebuild your Stage Set or consider whether you need to revise the name you've chosen for your work's Character.

Don't be fooled into thinking that a Stage must be complicated to do this. Remember Occam's Razor & Chekhov's Rifle.

“The simplest explanation is the best.”

"One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn't going to go off. It's wrong to make promises you don't mean to keep."

NOTES FROM TEAM

- ADD TO TEXT "This is a stage that you hope to invite your boo to enter."

- Albert picks up his phone after waking up and it flashes in his face.

Hassell’s voice message stops because something else came in. (Your timeouts need to know what the person is doing, you need to create a good flow between the self and the stage, the feature and the environment.)

Other rules that apply are Warehouse to Workbench, Stagecraft, Rigging (object permanence)

Place your work on a stage that is the simplest, most fitting frame for your Boo's story. Map your work to their world.

Don't bring your own narratives, and—this will be more difficult for you—don't bring your own narrative frame. Discover theirs.

Don't bring your own Maps, no matter how much you like them, and especially if you're proud of some Map that you made for earlier work. Chances are, Your Map wont' fit Your Boo's Story.

Show your work to your Boo. Look for the glint of recognition in their face. If encountering your work is not a Homecoming for your Boo, rework it. If you've got a complicated mind, rework usually means removal.

Leave a Hem or a Seam or a Gather, so that your work can be Let Out when your Boo needs more room.

Don't tailor your work so that it fits too tightly at the start. There are two ways you can go wrong:

1. The precision of your work is higher than the tolerances required in your Boo's Story. This is a common mistake when you are tempted to evoke a tighter fit on your Boo's Story than you actually have.

2. You stopped listening to your Boo's Story before they were done telling it. This is a very common mistake among us Quants.

As simple as possible but not more so. Albert Einstein.

NEW TEXT:

- Welcome redundancy when it fits with the Boo's story (Albert, elaborate!)

- INCLUDE MORE ABOUT MAPPING

TEAM NOTES

- Ros & Iria:

Fit the stage to the story that will be told within it and keep it as simple as the story allows it to be (Occam’s Razor)

Those who know the story, will recognize its stage if framed properly.

- Make a clear distinction between this rule and “Stage Craft”. Both mention Occam's razor. Both speak about simplicity and removal.

- Include the narcissus effect: the Boo should fall in love with your creation.

- Dealing with multiple calls to action: the screen should invite you in one direction. Provide a single clear path at every point (Also applies to Openings)

- Sample data must tell the story successfully. Always show edge cases/ outliars.

- Diane von furstenberg

Rig your work so that Selves inhabit the Stage, rather than just skip or tumble through it.

Choreograph theatrical "blocking" to support the story.

Throughout your work, you've invoked The Tell to show what might happen or what just happened in the story of our Boo. Now use Telltales & Foley again. this time to Rig the behavior of Selves on Stage. Reinforce "Object Permanence" by providing Tells to explain how things disappear from the stage, and to explain how they reappear later. Don't let things disappear or re-appear if they are not part of the story.

NEW NOTE: Autumn leaves, "this will all end not with a bang but with a whimper". To not fade away. Almost nothing in nature just fades away, either decay or flame up? Go out in style.

Story: Sailor. Old diving helmet. He went down and found his ship. Opened the door and found all his buddies. They where all "taken back" flowing away from him due to the wave he helped provoke. Then the water continued to make them flow back and forth..... THE BALLET OF THE DROWNED SAILORS.

NOTES FROM TEAM

- Needs better image

- MILAN Revision November 16th 2021 - Workshop Sag Harbour:

The text is too difficult to comprehend even after a few readings. However charming the comparison with the sailing boat might be, we are not all sailors and do not get it straight away. Especially as the Rigging seems to mostly apply to the older boats which actually had a system of ropes and chains while the newer boats and computer applications more likely do not have those. Above that we were already discussing that the content should appeal to women as well and there are not so many sailing women, i am not sure most of them would easily identify.

- E.g. Albert brings his finger to a button but the button moves before he can touch it. The selves and the stage are not interacting as they should and therefore rigging is not performed correctly. Other patterns that apply are: Serve up (you trust the button and it lets you down) & Object-Action (you can’t do the action if the object runs away)

Try to remove something from your work. Has the work become stronger, more true to itself, more true to our story?

Remember that 1 + 1 = 3 or more. (Needs explanation)

ADD STORY ABOUT COOPER & THE 12 SCREENS

NOTES FROM TEAM

- Text Revision

"Your boo is your main actor. He has a story to tell, a job to get done. You are providing the stage. Make sure to include only those elements which will be useful for his story.

You will know you are done when there is nothing left to take away." (Mia)

- Examples

Airbnb's “14 ways to search for accessibility”. If you are a handicapped person, the last thing you want is 14 ways to search for accessibility.

Tomas fills a form: he marks that he is male and that pregnancy doesn’t apply but they still give him many questions related to that, and then a bunch of questions about his experience as a patient while he has not been one. They are including things that are not necessary.

Other rules that apply are “Selves on stage”: the stage does not fit his needs. He found himself in somebody else's world.

Examine both your work and your Boo when engaging with your work. Can you clearly characterize the manner in which your Boo and/or your work move through their world? Do they present as Prey Animals, in stance, gaze & behavior? Do they present as Predators? Or something inbetween?

Airbnb's "I am flexible" is going from grazing to gleaning, at that point the boo has become more selective. If you have miss-cast you have failed to aknowledge when someone has become more selective about their choices and you have left them grazing while they have gone to the next stage. Goldielocks: Adjust to the Boo's needs. You have made it too window-shopy while the boo has become more selective, or too difficult while they need it to be less curated.

NOTES FROM TEAM

- Anja&Cari: It works well together

- Text Revision

"Stage is yours! Craft a field for a herd to feed, forest for a wolf to hide, lights to point to the scene or stairs to leave the stage!

If you craft it right - your actors can be free to do their thing at their own pace and have freedom to move around it as in their natural environment.

- Examples

“I am flexible” & “I am even more flexible”: Just looking around Airbnb is the first stage, it’s window shopping. “I’m flexible” is already gleaning or hunting, you use it when you don’t get the results that you wanted. How does your boo look for what he needs? Do they do it as grazers, predators or something in between? Figure it out and design accordingly.

(This example is also mentioned in Speak Up)

Let the work you build show how your Boo might use it, with movements mapped to the Boo's stage and story.

Use two different kinds of Telltale:

1. The Tell [affordance, entasis]: hint how an action might occur or what forces are in play, before your Boo acts, through visual conventions or mapping to known movement patterns in the world. E.g. the visible frame of a doorway, the ripeness of a fruit, a Peekaboo Tattoo.

2. Foley [feedback & dialog]: use visuals, sound and haptics to confirm which actions are taking place, which ones have already happened, and where we are in the arc of your Boo's story. E.g. laughing at someone's joke, the solid thud of a well-made car door.

NOTES FROM TEAM

- It’s not just a matter of an arrow or label showing direction. It’s about looking at something and knowing it’s time to harvest, pick the ripe peach.

- Problematic images: peekaboo tattoo & Wobble (They are both things that need additional explanation and a story. Perhaps material to show in the class and not on the website where there is no Albert to explain.)

Start with the persons, the places & the things that populate your Boo's story, then craft gestures that embody the story of each. "No Ideas But In Things. "

If you've got a complicated mind, you might prefer to begin with "process flows", and leave the "agency"—that is, the folks who are doing the "processing"—and the "target populations"—in other words, the ones are "getting processed—a bit sketchy.

This is another habit of mind common in both Quants & Designers. Don't worry: there's a cure for your condition. Remember that both you & your Boo existed before your work did. Embody every process by naming the process with a phrase that starts with the Agent or Actor and then in the second half of this phrase, name the actions or processes. Share these names with your Boo, and look for the glint of recognition.

Do the same for objects, be they products, documents, or living things that are being acted upon. While in English, you may say...

Buy sunglasses, file the receipt and then protect your eyes with the glasses...

... in a visual communication such as the screen of your phone, you would communicate these actions as follows:

FIRST show the sunglasses, THEN add them to a shopping cart...

FIRST show the receipt, THEN offer the act of saving the receipt to a folder...

FIRST show the face without the sunglasses, and then put the glasses properly over the eyes.

NOTES FROM TEAM:

- It doesn't talk about inanimate objects. Include example of Airbnb calendar.

- Text needs revision. Ros and iria struggled understanding it and making elevator pitch. Iria “We are losing a big crowd by using so many complex words.”

- Ros & Iria:

Start with the person, the thing, the place… then, take action!

“I think; therefore I am” -Descartes

Shapes communicate

Across the board first you identify.

Does your work tell your Boo's story? If not, are you insisting on speaking yourself as Designer, with buttons, icons or words? Don't.

In your early days as a Designer, it's easy to think that using icons, graphics, buttons, voice & text to guide your Boo is exactly what Design is. Many people who are called Designers never do more than this. But a better name for these people is Traffic Cop or Lunch Monitor, because when you do this kind of work, you're just telling folks where to go. It's just your own voice, as if you have been conducting user testing, and when the test subject can't figure out how to use your design, you just blurt out the commands that you've failed to make apparent in your work.

Good Designs speak for themselves. It's not Ferdinand Porsche's voice or Palladio's voice, it's the actual Volkswagen and the actual Villa Rotonda who lock eyes with you, and then speak, directly to you, though the Designers are long gone.

Voice Them, so that the thing itself tells the tale.

NOTES FROM TEAM

- If the wrong tale is being told then you have to change the design. E.g Domi washing his hands in the bidet or Goldilock's looking for things that are sized to her.

- Domi on the bidee: The bidet is communicating something that it shouldn't. Rose’s suggestion: redesign in a way that makes it clear that you should sit on it. (Rules that also apply “Tool, mate?” and “Self-Same”)

- Make clear distinction with “Face them”

Your team is made up of brilliant people who are at home with abstraction. When they say something is "iconic," it's high praise. Remind them that most of us prefer real things over abstractions, even if those abstractions are "iconic." Don't use a Sign when a Self is available.

NOTES FROM TEAM

- Make a clear distinction between this rule and Object-action.

- Text Revision

"A picture is worth a hundred words…

We, people from the tech world, love our fonts and icons. At times these can be abstract and in no way related to the real world. After all, we are working in new and different, digital world.

However, Boo comes first: we need to keep in mind the story of the person we are creating for and use the things that will make more sense to them, and these are more likely to be selves than signs.

Don't tell, show!"

- Examples

Fire Hydrant in Sag Harbor.

Your work uses a suite of languages to communicate with your Boo and with the other Sidekicks and Superpowers in its ensemble: visual languages, gestures, informal or formal spoken or written language, APIs and more. Let your work speak any and all of these languages that can serve your Boo.

When you speak of things you know well, your language will be more precise, and when you are exploring new things your words will be loose fit. Beware when you don’t notice this gradient in the Fit of your words. It’s fine for adults to wear tailored clothing, neckties, bracelets or highlaced shoes. But putting those garments on infants or even children will bind. If your work is young, feel free to speak babytalk and even to babble! Keep your high-registered lingo for old, thoroughly explored territory. This will lead to a Spanglish effect, often nested fractally.

And remember, places you think you know well often harbor hidden treasures.

NOTES FROM TEAM

- Include Matched vs. Wide-set Symbols, Port Starboard, The shepherd communicating with his dogs.

- Anja&Cari: Works good! We like it :) Bricolage? - we're not familiar to this word.

- Story about English's permissiveness

Use Openings to show paths your tool & your Boo can take. Let these Openings Invite the dance forward, rather than push or pull it.

Evoke these Openings with Tells, visual and otherwise. Accompany significant arrivals & departures with Foley, when this supports the Boo's story.

Has your work grown bigger again and again, without redesigning its Openings & Paths? Does your Boo experience your work as if they are lost in a corn maze, or in the corridors of a large hospital? One hint that Openings & Paths need pruning is the accumulation of too much Signage. When Openings are drawing your Boo in, verbal direction in the form of Signage is not needed.

Once you get the hang of Openings, you may over-use them, because they're kind of fun for you. Find other ways to have fun. Don't add Openings to your work unless they advance the narrative for your Boo.

If you think you may have added too many Openings to your work, consider that the paths you've created aren't needed. Revisit the rule "Selves on Stage" & "Frame then Fit"

Size Openings to be comforting and familiar, so they draw your Boo forward.

Walk your Boo through your work, step by step, path by path. Notice when your Boo is at home, on a familiar route. When they are a bit lost, re-route.

NOTES FROM TEAM

- Ros & Iria:

The subtitle can be better, more clear.

Create inviting atmospheres and paths to follow, like yellow brick roads that promise a wonderful destination.

Direct them.

Does your work engage your Boo in dialog? Is there a Rhythm and Rhyme to this dialog? Make it a Duet.

Once your Design is speaking to your Boo, the next step is to weave these utterances into a conversation between Work and Boo.

Three ways:

- Raves: The simplest way. Bike ride with traffic going by.

- Catechism: Question - Answer.

Complexity: Ordering cafesito at the ventanita. Como estah mi amor? xD

- Salsa, Rueda, tumbaos on the piano: Deeply mashed together forms. Erudite, complex conversations.

NOTES FROM TEAM

- Explain how is self-scaffolding related to Jump in and does it even belong in this rule?

Is Repair Work central to your team, or is it an afterthought? Work breaks most often at its weakest point, which means your next bug fix is likely the best way to strengthen your work at its most vulnerable spot. Honor and celebrate Repair Work, and reap the benefits.

Do you use deliberate missteps to explore the realm of the possible? Sounds like a silly question: "To find what's possible, why don't we look for actual possibilities? It sounds like you're asking me to focus on what won't work!"

I hear you. This is a tough one to understand. Lemme go at it this way. Have you ever played this kind of silly game with a child, where you're showing him how to put his shoes on, and you try putting them on his ears? And he laughs and says "Silly Papo! Shoes don't go on my ears!" Then you put the shoes on his hands, etc...

There is a time and place when the foolishness of deliberate missteps is the best way to learn how to do something. Let/s do some Requirements Gathering! explain....

NOTES FROM TEAM

- General

​​If you wait for it to break you might have to fix it quickly and therefore not do a golden repair.

- Text Revision

"What doesn't kill us makes us stronger!

Muscles, bones…they break, once they recover they are stronger then before.

Embrace your failures. Your work is likely to break at it's weakest point. If you can take this as an opportunity to learn how and why it happen and apply the knowledge on a larger scale, you're headed towards a golden repair."

- Examples

New York water pipes: If they would plan ahead and see where they are likely to break so they can be be prepared, that would be a golden repair.

- Iria's example: Adele requests Spotify not to have shuffle as their default option.

- Andria's ceramic pot and the tree in her garden!

- Fab: "Always be able to revert to what they were using last if whatever is current gets broken."

Your work is likely already part of an ensemble of sidekicks and superpowers in service to your Boo. There is another level that opens below this, when you make of your work a Milpa. This happens when your work is actually a community of elements, each open to each other. Start with a Stack of elements. Then conform the elements one to another with openings and nestings, Spooned together so they can be BOTH tightly coupled AND swapped out.

NOTES FROM TEAM

- If we are going to keep the Mangle as an example we need to change title “Stack to Milpa”, otherwise, if we are keeping the title: have Milpa as the main image.

- Include" You could view accounting in many businesses as a commodity service, but if you have an accounting firm maybe it won't be. Identify whether the layer you are using is another layer in your business or a competency in your organization. You will find it easier to swap something that is not your core competency.

- E.g. El Zócalo de México.

- Anja&Cari:

Text doesn't have sense with the image with water. Milpa is where the corn grow - those are roots and image has fish.

New image with only corn is better but maybe there can be better association/image/text so everyone gets it right away without the need to explain benjamin button/domesfication/neoteny of the maiz etc.

You've begun. Now find the best level to work next, above, below, before or after this beginning. Look for gaps to fill. When you do this, you will bring to life the fractal nature of these rules.

Rhyme over scale & time:

Look for the chance to use the same rule again at a different scale or level. Model the frugal elegance of the mahogany, whose winged seeds echo the lovely curve of each mahogany leaf.

Delight in scale:

Emulate the sailors who keep a scale model of their ship onboard that very ship, or the “cosy” stories of Beatrix Potter which feature a small family of mice or rabbits who reprise our human families at a scale that delights. Note that mobile apps very commonly pull the same trick, allowing worlds that are daunting at scale to become more manageable.

Mind the Gap:

Beware of scale jumps that paralyze. Like the painting “Christina’s World,” a work that carelessly skips over these gaps will be tough to navigate.

NOTES FROM TEAM

- Elevator pitch was tough on Tomas. Revise text: Include explanation about the pleasure and control of something being miniaturized.

- Link to rule Stage Set.

- Include in text ''The rules are fractal''.

- Include in text “Do it again and again at a smaller or larger level.”

- Domi on the bidet: Domi interacted with the bidet because it was designed to fit his size (scale).

- Goldilocks. Scale Gaps Christina's World.

“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius—and a lot of courage—to move in the opposite direction.” — E.F. Schumacher

Shape the tasks in your work so they nest and spoon together. Don't jam any single channel: use the five senses.

NOTES FROM TEAM

- Ros & Iria:

Now that your work has an identity, a readable form and a warm personality, it’s time to make it join this dance that we call our daily life.

At first is about advantage, later on it becomes graceful and balanced.

- Youtube (not premium). You cannot keep listening while doing another thing, it does not enable you to spoon tasks.

- Apple's new copy-paste feature enables perfect spooning: I copy something on my computer and paste it on my phone.

- Using three fingers to swipe enables better spooning (it’s a different rule according to Albert: Modelessness, He thinks it belongs to keyed, lapped, thatched).

- Asking google a question while I am typing. Or asking it to change song while I am cooking.

- Netflix used to ask you “what are you interested in”, now they give you suggestions based on what you watch. In the cinema you don’t want the guy to ask you what your interests are, you just want to watch your movie. “look for the glimpse of recognition in your Boo's eyes”

- Other patterns where this applies: Jakov says this example belongs in “Stand Up” (instead of asking the guy, collect the data, socialize with him and give suggestions based on that.), Frame then fit & Tool, Mate.

- Deaf people signing use multiple channels and therefore can communicate faster.

Are there weak spots in your work? Strengthen the work by applying these rules and patterns again & again, slicing a big job into many many components. Don't worry if the resulting individual slices are seemingly insubstantial, or if the element you are adding seems minor all by itself.

NOTES FROM TEAM

- General

Find better image

Text needs revision (Milan doesn’t understand it at all) Albert gives as an example the evolution of photos, from their beginning to hdr which compounds many photos.

- Text Revision

​​Include the notion of closing up design in a way that you can open up again in the future.

STORY

- Us vs. Neanderthals

- RISC vs. CISC

- Velcro

Does your work echo in its folds and wrinkles the world of your Boo? In other words, is your work simple where our world is simple, becoming complex when our world does too? Or are you grasping for Ease of Use no matter how Difficult our story? Don't disrespect your Boo by daring to assume that you, a visitor to their lives, will easily cut their Gordian Knots. As a team, y'all may indeed succeed, but only if you approach the task humbly. Bow down. Fold up.

NOTES FROM TEAM

- General

Find better image.

Example must include the evolution from simple to more complex.

- Time becomes as precise as it needs to be in order to handle the situation (trains). But there are times when we base our decisions based on what is already there (we will hold a class at three because the clock is there, coffee at 3:05 because of Miami's code). Types of screwdrivers. Forculi not being standardized but evolving to map. Frame then fit: evolving frame of reference to fit what needs to be done. Enfolding and wrinkling language in the process. Once we had the wrinkle language it could be used even in cases when we don't need it. Once you have the precision of a standardized descriptive language you need to make the difference between precision in description and precision in enaunciation.

- Text Revision (Mia)

"You are enjoying a day at the lake in your rubber boat, your paddle helps you move smoothly though the clear water.

Suddenly, you are tele-transported to Venice and your paddle's worth nothing. You will need a forcula to navigate this new, much more complex environment.

Same counts for your work, start with a paddle, but upgrade as the environment gains folds and complexity."

- Text Revision (Fab)

When Darwin set foot on the Galapagos Islands, he discovered something so revolutionary that it changed the way we look at the world forever. It is especially fascinating that what he discovered was so in plain sight, until then we were not able to see the forest for the trees.

Would it not be odd to find a polar bear roaming Yellowstone Park? Or to see a Grizzly bear trying to approach its prey, clumsily stumbling through the snow of Alaska?

Nature has a way of adapting, specializing and folding together. We should strive to not just create something generic, but to understand how and where our design will be implemented.

Compose your work as an ensemble of tuned masses, each set in counterpoise to one another. Use actual heavy objects, or ancient traditions, or something your uncle or grandma built, to be the bedrock below your work. Or use something newer like existing roads or next-day delivery, blockchain or decentralized finance or social media. Engage your opponents by including them.

NOTE FROM TEAM

- Cari: maybe good image would be an old man and child arguing but they are both included and respected and listened to.

- ​​History is something that happened, myth is something that never stops happening.