Making another person -understand- what you are saying is the goal. Like good UI design, good communication should be intuitive to the end-user. Ha ha ha… ahem.. I need to get out more. Good writers are hard to find. It spills over into code, personal communications, instant messaging for those long-distance collaborations , and even such esoteric concepts as professionalism and reliability. Of course, this may be just another attempt by those in the ivory tower to keep it to ourselves.
Who knows. They examine the thinking and reason that lead to good writing - particularly the good writing that falls into the area of classic style. Turner has worked in both cognitive science and English lit, so I imagine he knows of what he speaks….
Case in point, an educational site for Grade 6ers on the history of Japan, using an art gallery collection as means of exploration. The copy was written by a director at the gallery and a univserity art history student. Some of read like a 1st-year essay…a 1st-year University essay. I totally agree. Writing for interface design requires real empathy for users. The structure, labels, words, grammar and tone we choose replace the more natural situation of a person and an organisation having a conversation.
I also believe that it is important to check for understanding especially during a client conversation. I think this goal is harder to measure with interface design. Interface text elements need to be as useful and usable as the graphical elements. I would consider someone who excels in both interface text and graphics to be a very wholesome interface designer.
Wow, that is just amazingly spot-on. Good writers are storytellers who organize information in order to communicate a message. More attention is paid to the organization of material, the flow of the story and the technological details. This is spot on for a software developer. Good software developers are storytellers who organize information in order to communicate a message.
No doubt about it. Spell checkers can spell, but they can't write. Wordsmiths rise to the top quickly. Another rule of thumb: When in doubt, always hire the better writer.
We look for effort, too. How badly does this person want the job? Pestering is not the same as effort, though. We hired a designer named Jason Zimdars because: 1.
He was good, and 2. He made more effort to get the job than anyone else. He built a special website pitching his skills just for us. So few people make the extra effort like Jason did. Check it out to see what I mean: jasonzimdars. During interviews, we love when potential hires ask questions. But all questions aren't equal. A red flag goes up when someone asks how.
Why is good -- it's a sign of deep interest in a subject. It signals a healthy dose of curiosity. How is a sign that someone isn't used to figuring things out for him- or herself. How is a sign that this person is going to be a drain on others. Avoid hows. We also try to test-drive people before hiring them full time. We give designers a one-week design project to see how they approach the problem. Sometimes, we'll hire someone on a contract basis for a month to see how we feel about the person and how the person feels about us.
Sometimes that project is just a few hours a week because the candidate already has a day job. But that's often enough to check out the person's work, how the person communicates, and how the person works under pressure. These real-work tests have saved us a few mismatched hires and confirmed a bunch of great people.
In fact, the recognition of the presence of potentially biasing decisionmaking factors such as the affect and representativeness heuristics seems to be the very purpose of this component of the 37signals in-person interview strategy. To rehash a quote from the companys owners, If somebody comes into the room and I just don't like that person for whatever reason, we are not going to hire them.
We are not going to hire people we just don't gel with or don't like and sometimes you just get a bad vibe. By allowing themselves a level of purely subjective 37signals. Has the model worked well for them? As owner Jason Fried wrote in a recent Inc. Magazine piece, In 11 years, we've lost just ve people Fried, Sources Academic Bazerman, M.
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Fried, J. Never read another resume. Why I run a at company. Lindermann, M. There is a right size for certain things, at least if you want to do them well.
They also insist on working fewer hours. The company recently adopted an official four-day workweek, the better to keep everyone fresh, energized, and forced to avoid distractions. Can you solve the problem with a slice of software or a change of practice instead? Products that offer fewer features. Fewer employees who work fewer hours. Are you ready to succeed by one-downing the competition and under-doing your rivals?
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