Uncarved

Wu Wei is a Taoist concept that means “act without doing,” or “action without effort.” It is an ideal towards which the Taoist aims in life.

One of the hallmarks of great design—whether in a newspaper layout, the construction of a utility knife, or a human-computer interface (HCI)—is its ability to recede, or “get out of the way.” The kernel of this idea is born from the notion that the layperson is typically most likely to take prolonged specific notice of design when it becomes an impediment; when the newspaper’s layout is too cluttered to follow the flow of an article, or using the utility knife’s scissors requires its serrated blade to awkwardly dangle out at 90º.

When a design presents no such distractions, its end-consumer is able to go about his task smoothly. In these circumstances, when the end-consumer becomes immersed in his task, the design of the item they are using is said to “recede.”

The more its design recedes, the more efficient it can be understood to be.

Successful design allows its end-consumer to take action with minimal effort, or—as Kathy Sierra said on the Creating Passionate Users blog back in 2006—to “help [its] users kick ass.”

And so I’ll say now that the official goal of any design should be to foster wu wei.

Design wu wei

There has recently been quite a bit of controversy over Macheist, arguing that it’s unfair to the participating developers, largely due to the “steep discount” at which these (largely great) apps are being sold. Some other arguments are simply in the sensationalist vein.

Agreed Benefits

Even the critics of Macheist will concede to a number of upsides to participation, including:

1. Macheist is clearly a great marketing opportunity for each developer’s product,
2. any opportunity at growing their product’s user base builds upon its chances of retaining customers (and thereby capitalizing on upgrade fees for major versions later), and
3. participation with one product stands to produce sales gains on other products made by that developer

Naturally, these potential upsides are by no means guaranteed; if a product doesn’t compete well on its own merits, then its developer(s) will likely not capitalize on upgrade sales. But then Macheist can’t offer to make anyone’s products automagically good; this remains the responsibility of the developers, themselves.

Argued Problems

The basic arguments the critics have boil down to:

1. Macheist sells their apps at a [very] steep discount to their normal sale price,
2. this stands to undermine their perceived market value, and
3. general participation in Macheist may work to undermine the generally perceived value of shareware apps

As such, the critics argue that the developers may well be sacrificing more than they stand to gain in return for their participation.

These arguments, however, are missing a critically important point. Read more…

Responses business, Macheist, response, shareware

Arguably the best linguistic “style guide” ever written for contemporary English. Doubly-relevant to Uncarved, since it both informs the way I aim to write, and serves as a canon for how sentences and paragraphs can most optimally be constructed.

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. William Strunk Jr., The Elements of Style, 1918

There is a new hardcover edition to commemorate the anniversary. [via Daring Fireball]

Canon books, language

It didn’t take very long, but I finally grew annoyed with Blogger. The Blogger bar permanently affixed to the top of the blog was the straw that broke the camel’s back; though its presence seems perfectly reasonable, I just couldn’t bear looking at it.

And although Blogger’s functionality is “sufficient,” it’s just no fun to use. WordPress, by contrast, are constantly adding polish to the user experience of the CMS.

But maybe I’m just seeing greener grass — time will tell.

Uncarved changes, news

Dear LiveScribe Product Managers:

I really love my Pulse smart pen. One of the most valuable affordances it’s provided me is the peace of mind I have, knowing everything I’ve written is safely backed up on my computer (and in the cloud), after I’ve synchronized.

It’s certainly replaced my normal notebooks, but I find that I’ve also started leaving my laptop behind more frequently. I often bring it along “just in case” I want to capture a thought or other information that I’d likely want to share.

In a fantastic feat of accomplishment, the Pulse actually also played a part in “permitting” me to leave my laptop home, when I set off to a two-week vacation.

All of this is just great.

On the other hand, however, I’ve been finding that I’d like to synchronize and/or share information that I’ve written down with it sooner, rather than later. Of course, I could easily install the sync software onto my laptop instead, but then I’ll be back to being tempted to bring my laptop along for the ride – what a step backwards.

But there is an answer: iPhone OS 3.0‘s External Accessory framework.

This new API will allow third-party devices to communicate with iPhone / iPod Touch devices via either the dock connector, or Bluetooth. This, naturally, opens the door to “on the road” syncing with the cloud, without the use of a personal computer. And, really, isn’t the “untethering” of the human from his PC one of the fundamental goals of paper-based computing?

Please, oh please make this happen!

Best Regards, John Lianoglou

Open Letters computing, iPhone OS, open letter, Pulse