I met a really interesting fellow yesterday, a great storyteller and a businessman. I learned a bit about something on how to value your products and how to pick your clients (pro tip: not all clients are equal). I guess the most interesting anecdote had to with the core values of Kone corporation.
Kone is one of those Finnish heavyweights well known all over the world. You have likely used one of their products yourself. They define themselves as "dedicated to people flow". In short, they produce elevators, escalators and automatic door solutions.
According to my source the current leadership of Kone has developed the company based on three distinct values: position, direction and openness. If you look at their current values page, you'll notice they haven't been phrased this bluntly. I think these three values manifest themselves better in their strategy.
What makes these specific three interesting in my opinion is that they seem like basic values each company should instill to their employees. These values are something that apply on macro level as well. A company should definitely be aware of its position on market and where it's headed (direction). Being open doesn't hurt either.
It is important to know your position in the company and how it contributes to the whole. In some cases an employee can even be thought to be an entrepreneur inside a company. Sometimes these folks are also known as intrapreneurs. This sort of thinking definitely has some serious implications on the role of an employee. Instead of being just a passive worker, there's something more. A sense of ownership and pride.
And then there's the concept of direction. A company and an individual has to know where they are headed. This will give meaning to effort. Each task performed takes the company closer to its goal.
Direction is set by vision. In Kone's case the vision is clear. They want to provide world class solutions to make people flow. All parts of Kone (machine in Finnish) are dedicated to this effort.
Openness is the vital ingredient that makes sure progress is possible. If you are struggling, it's better to struggle together rather than suffer alone. As lean principles have taught us, problems tend to cascade. Small issues lead to bigger ones when left unchecked. Openness is the ailment that helps us battle this problem.
Do you know the values of your business? If not, is there something you can do about it? If the employees don't know your company values, what's the point of having values at all?
Friday, August 31, 2012
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Monkeys on My Back
It's better not to have too many monkeys on your back. They slow you down. Tasks undone tax you mentally even if you really don't notice it. If you want to achieve something great, you have to focus and get rid of the taxing stuff. It's poisonous.
I struggled a bit with my thesis for a few years. In retrospect that was something I probably should have gotten off my back earlier. Since I got the thing out of my back I have been somewhat productive and managed to get a lot done. There are still some things brewing.
I feel like I'm in some kind of a positive, self-reinforcing loop right now. The more I get things done, the more it seems to feed the doing. For each action there is some kind of a reaction. Even small things, when done properly, may lead to big gains later on. In my case this has manifested itself as various opportunities I would have otherwise missed altogether and led to some new, interesting acquaintances.
Don't let the monkeys wear you down. There are various techniques that can help to deal with this sort of issues. Personal Kanban is perhaps one of the most intriguing ones I've come upon. I have visualized my goals on a simple Google Docs based document. Just having them visible helps somewhat. If you want to set up one, feel free to use my template. Just hit "File -> Make a copy" and off you go.
If you want to climb a mountain, the only way is to do it a step at a time. No way around that. Visualizing your problem is the first step in solving it. It is definitely worth it to pay off your mental debt, no matter how small the individual issues might be. They add up. Don't let the monkeys wear you down.
Orangutang by suneko (CC BY-SA) |
Friday, August 24, 2012
Sneak Peek at Project Elovalo
Elovalo is a project I have been involved in since the Spring. The goal of our project is to build a couple of led cubes for a week long event held in September. We will place these cubes on pedestals at a central park in Jyväskylä. So far it has been an interesting project. We have tackled most of our technical woes. Still some assembly left.
I've primarily focused on 3D and effect side. I build a small simulator that allows us to render effect code via Blender. The simulator matches actual output somewhat well and has helped us in effect development. It allowed us to design API and develop before we actually got hardware ready. After we tackled our hardware woes, the effect code just worked. You can get some idea of the simulator output by checking our demo video. The real thing looks like this:
There is more information available at the project site. We haven't polished the documentation yet or anything but if you want to build a led cube, that might give you some idea how to do it.
I've primarily focused on 3D and effect side. I build a small simulator that allows us to render effect code via Blender. The simulator matches actual output somewhat well and has helped us in effect development. It allowed us to design API and develop before we actually got hardware ready. After we tackled our hardware woes, the effect code just worked. You can get some idea of the simulator output by checking our demo video. The real thing looks like this:
There is more information available at the project site. We haven't polished the documentation yet or anything but if you want to build a led cube, that might give you some idea how to do it.
Linkdump 11 - Art, Business, Design, ...
Time for another linkdump. It's always nice to compose these posts while you have some real content brewing. Given it has been half a year since I last made one I have quite a few links to share with you this time. If you follow my Twitter feed already, you have probably bumped on a few of them already. If not, good for you. Anyway, here we go.
Art
- Autodesk SketchBook Copic Edition - Limited, free edition of Autodesk Sketchbook. Available for both Windows and OS X platforms.
- 33 Brilliant Collection of Batman Artworks - The caped crusader has inspired a lot of artists. Some nice works here.
- Composition with Philip Straub - A golden oldie.
- Denis Gonchar: Artist of the Day - This guy has somewhat unique and recognizable style.
- Step by Step Reprise and Video by Nathan Fowkes - This guy is the man with charcoal.
- The Art of Rendering (updated) - Nice overview of the basic techniques.
Business
- 3 Rules to Actionable Metrics in a Lean Startup - Important post on one of the hardest yet most important things in Lean Startup.
- 10 common UX mistakes startups make... and how to avoid them - You've got 5 seconds or so to convince your prospective customer. Better make the most out of that.
- 10 Ways Startups Get Screwed - Avoid these mistakes.
- 20 lines of code that will beat A/B testing every time - Apparently it's quite easy to do better than just A/B.
- Getting pre-launch traction with web games - Games, people love those! Might be the perfect way to get some traction for your startup.
- Lebedev's Pyramid - Looks familiar?
- Startups: Bands for Hackers - Some truth in this alright. Good analogue.
- The top five Lean Startup myths - There is a lot of buzz about Lean Startup. This article dispels some of the myths around.
- Two Mindsets: Fixed and Growth - It's amazing how much your outlook on life affects it. Same goes for business I think.
CSS
- 20 Fresh CSS3 Tutorials - There are definitely a lot of these out there. Here's a selection.
- How to Develop Scalable and Maintainable CSS - Superb points about writing CSS. There are some many ways to fail in this.
- Sass vs. Stylus: Who Wins the Minimal Syntax Battle? - If you use either of these, check this out.
- What's the Deal with display: inline-block? - Well. What is it? :)
Design
- 30 Examples of Vintage and Retro in Logo Design - Retro definitely has its value in design. In a way it's timeless and always trendy.
- Applying Macrotypography for a More Readable Web Page - Learn to improve reading experience.
- Compfight - Since Flickr's default search sucks I use this little service instead.
- Free logo design format guide - Nuff said.
Gaming
- 10 tips for building a better game - If you make games, read this.
- mienfield - Multi-player version of minesweeper.
- The future of game development? - Nice concept by the famous Bret Victor.
Hardware
- Building the worst Linux PC ever - Doesn't probably get much worse than that.
- The Mechanical Keyboard Guide - All about mechanical keyboards you've ever wanted to know and then some.
JavaScript
- 6 Free JavaScript E-Books Worth Reading - There's something for CoffeeScripters too.
- Category Theory in JavaScript - A good starting point if you are a JS guy that wants to understand a bit of category theory and its applications.
- CSI Image Enhancer - Based on real technology.
- Fay programming language - A proper subset of Haskell that compiles to JavaScript.
- fool.js - The April Fools' day jQuery plugin. If you can imagine it, there's likely a jQuery plugin for it.
- JavaScript: Arduino Programming on Node.js - Yay! No need to struggle with low level tools anymore unless you really want to.
- JSMaker - JavaScript for the Visual Basic guys.
- php.js - PHP VM with JavaScript. Oh, the horror.
- Single page apps in depth - Free ebook for those interested in single page apps.
- q - Avoid the pyramid of doom.
Kitchen
- Kitchen Hack: One-Minute Bread - Nothing is better than a freshly baked bread.
Software Development
- Choosing the Right Lean and Agile Innovation Practices - How to know which practices to use and when?
- codestre.am - Stream and record your terminal. Learn from the gurus.
- How Gearbox's 'Truth Team' outwitted Borderlands feedback - The users are not as clever as they think. Same goes for developers of course.
- Increase Your Productivity in Vim and Terminal - If you use these tools like real developers do, check out these tips for some extra horsepower.
- Linus Torvalds' Greatest Invention - No, not Linux. Begins with a g.
- Lisp as the Maxwell's equations of software - Lisp, the mother of all programming languages?
- Moleman 2 - The Art of the Algorithms - Demoscene, what is it?
- Successful GitHub Development - What it takes to make a GitHub project successful?
- The Agile Inception Deck - Ask these questions when starting a new project.
- The Agile Waterfall - It's not that black and white out there.
- Vim: From Essentials to Mastery - If you like Vim (or even if you don't), this video might be worth checking out.
- What People Think Software Developers Do - There's definitely some truth hidden in this image.
Typography
- 7 Typography Tools Every Design Should Know - Comparison tools, testers and such. A nice collection.
- 10 Web Typography Trends to Watch in 2012 - Man, there is a lot to learn about typography. Hard to keep up with the trends.
- 25 New and Free Fonts for Web Designers - You don't always have to pay to get a nice typeface. :)
- Frustro: The Impossible Typeface - This typeface is so confusing. The name couldn't be any better.
- How to Choose a Typeface - It can be hard to figure out which typefaces to use. This guide gives you some idea which factors to keep in mind while doing that.
- Just My Type: Super Clean, High-Quality & Free Fonts - Moar free fonts!
- The 10 Best Script and Handwritten Google Web Fonts - A good selection from Google's Web Fonts.
- The ultimate guide to web type - Web fonts and all the shiz.
- Tomorrow's web type today: The fine flourish of the ligature - Find out what ligatures are and how they work in web.
- TypeButter makes it easy for anyone to kern their Web typography - Kerning. For the web!
- Type Study: Pairing typefaces - Many know that sometimes all you need to do is to pick two typefaces for your site. How to pick these two is the problem, though.
- When Typography Speaks Louder than Words - Sometimes typography makes a world of difference.
UX & UI
- 5 Interface Laws Every Software Designer Should Know - Good slides to go through.
- 10 things every designer needs to know about forms - If you deal with forms a lot, read this.
- A Beginner's Guide to Wireframing - If you want to get started with wireframing, check this out.
- Comics and UX, Part 2: Flow and Content - There's something to learn from comics.
- Design for Readability - Magazines get this right. Now, how to achieve this on web!
- Form Label Proximity: Right Aligned is Easier to Scan - This might seem a bit counterintuitive but once you think about it, it starts to make sense.
- Interesting Trends in UI Design - Some nice observations there. Esp. Apple seems influential these days. Retro is good too.
- Making Considerate Software - Software doesn't have to necessarily behave like a jerk.
- The Importance of Tying Personas to Wireframes - Don't just create personas. Use them!
- Using Scientific Knowledge to Bring Structure to Design Problems - Old truths aren't that right always. It's so easy to assume something that's not.
- UX Design as a Two-Way Conversation - Remember, UX is a discussion.
- Why Your Links Should Never Say "Click Here" - Kind of obvious, really. Semantics and all.
Web Design
- 21 Examples of Excellent Navigation Menus in Web Design - There are so many ways to screw up your navigation or make it just plain bland. Here are a few examples how not to do just that.
- 21 Fantastic Examples of Sliders in Web Design - Sliders, never enough of those...
- 23 Fantastic Examples of Illustrated Elements in Web Design - Wisely chosen illustrations definitely add that needed oompfh to your design.
- 3 Fantastic & Fresh Tools for Web Designers - Color utility, text warper and a CSS starter stylesheet went to a forest. Fill in the rest of the joke.
- Design Principles for gov.uk - This is how you are supposed to guide the design of your site. Especially if it's a huge one.
- More Examples of Fresh Effects in Web Design - Effects, just what you need to make your site positively different.
- screenqueri.es - Handy for testing your responsive layouts.
- Ultimate Responsive Web Design Toolkit - Nice starting points for responsive design.
- "Undesign" Your Portfolio Website - Sometimes less design is better.
- Web Design Trends 2011 - Some nice slides to check out.
- Why Every New Website Will Use Bootstrap - Save some time, use Bootstrap.
Web Development
- 25 New Examples of Single Page Websites - There is something really novel about single page designs. In a way it forces the designer to focus on the essential.
- Cache them if you can - "The fastest HTTP request is the one not made"
- Creating a Mobile Web Application with Meta Tags - Setting those meta tags right can make a world of difference.
- Drawing Resolution Less-Dependent Graphics - Make your web graphics more awesome.
- Is Your Homepage Overcrowded? - Well. Is it?
- Three Super Easy Ways to Pull Off a Masonry Layout - Masonry is the new carousel. Well worth checking out to see what the buzz is about. Masonry isn't too dated an effect yet and might be just the thing you need to make your site content "pop".
- Timeline Portfolio - Still remember what I said about jQuery plugins earlier?
- Wireframes for Web Apps - Remember. Clarity matters in wireframes, not polish.
Labels:
art,
business,
css,
design,
javascript,
linkdump,
programming,
software development,
typography,
ux,
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