Archive for the ‘getting real’ Category

Simple business transactions

Saturday, June 13th, 2009

Jason Fried likes simple business transactions:

I called them. 10 minutes later the guy came by. He was down the street on another job. We walked out back. I told him what I needed done. He looked around for 20 seconds and said $300. I said “deal.”

That’s it. No proposal. No “I’ll get back to you tomorrow”. No “Let me see how much the materials will cost and I’ll drop an estimate in your mailbox next week.”

Just $300. Deal. When can you start? Wednesday. How long will it take? A few hours for a few guys.

He knows his business. I know what my time is worth. End of transaction. It was so damn refreshing.

I know everything can’t be done like this, but often it seems like we’ve slid down a path of formality with so many things that really don’t need it. Extensive contracts, delays, red tape, precise cost estimates based on precise amounts of materials, “let me think about it and I’ll get back to you,” etc. Essential? Sometimes yes, but most of the time probably not.

This does sound appealing, though as general business advice, I think one would have to modulate this strategy depending on the gender of one’s customers. I just got done re-reading You Just Don’t Understand: Men and Women in Conversation which mentions that one difference between the genders is the amount of social interaction they tend to think should be part of the transaction.

Posted in business, gender, getting real | No Comments »

Three links to the 37Signals “getting real” philosophy

Sunday, March 2nd, 2008

These are articles that I’ve often spoken of, and often copied the URLs to emails that I’ve sent to others, so I shall record them here, so in the future I shall only need to point people here.

The illusion of agreement:

“We should build a house!”

“Yes! A house!”

But what kind of house do they mean?

The interface as a spec: including stories inline:

Sometimes designing the static states takes more time, and doesn’t quite represent reality, as well as a brief note about how the functionality works. The key is to make this note in context — right next to the interface element its describing. The combination of real visuals and a brief contextual note shrink the chances of misunderstanding to near zero.

Designing an interface: from sketch to screen

The screen mostly followed the sketch, except for the controls in the upper right and the description field. That’s fine, because at step two those details Didn’t Matter. Coding the real thing, I found room for all three of those pieces in the top-right, and that worked better.

Thinking and sketching took me 10 minutes. Creating the real screen and updating the code can take two or three hours. That lopsided pattern, with short make-believe-time on the left and long build-time on the right, is always a good sign that you’re making progress. Ideas and paper are necessary, but they’re destined for the trash bin. So burn through them and focus on the good stuff.

Posted in 37signals, design, design lead development, design patterns, designers, getting real, sketches, the Illusion of agreement | 1 Comment »