Anthropomorphized Gas Pipe

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38 Special: More Advice For Whippersnappers

Preceded by: 38 Special: Some Advice For You Young Whippersnappers

PART 2: WORK

This is going to be a lot shorter than the previous post, because everyone’s career aspirations and chosen fields are different, particularly at different points in their life. The advice is going to be a bit more general, but greatly coloured by my own experiences.

1. Not everyone is cut out to be an entrepreneur. Michael Gerber’s The E-Myth offers many anecdotes about people who are talented in their particular technical field, but didn’t anticipate what it takes to run a business successfully. They often don’t have professional management skills, and lack the ability to deal with situations or people impartially. They burn out early, and tend to treat their staff poorly. Sadly, you will often end up working for or with these kinds of people in their small businesses, and they may mistakenly expect you to also consider yourself an entrepreneur, when what you expected was clear management guidance and a steady paycheque. Either learn to draw the line clearly at the interview stage, or walk away. Trust me, you don’t need the stress. 

2. Avoid family businesses, unless you’re a member of the family. A well-run family business is a business first; often, they are family-first, which leads to bad decision-making and lax management. King Lear is fun to watch on stage; it’s much less fun to be part of. You can spend the rest of your life wondering why the owner made suicidal business decisions (to intentionally devalue the company to screw over his scheming nephew, or whatever); get out while you still can. Big hint? Arguments between principals in a language none of the employees speak.

3. A business is only as good as its accountants. The minute the payroll situation starts going wonky, ask tough, pointed questions.

4. Just because the founders of the business were successful in another field, does not make them successful in their current field. I.e., stockbrokers becoming restaurateurs, or dot-com millionaires becoming Web 2.0 billionaires. 

5. If you’re a recent graduate in the creative field, read what I had to write about the subject in 2005. As a corollary to that piece, I would say pay close attention to the failures of people who came before you, and try to avoid them.

6. You’ll get more respect challenging authority than being a yes-person, but learn to pick your battles and learn to judge the political landscape in your office before writing that manifesto. The window in which you can be perceived as the save-the-company’s-bacon genius is narrow.

7. Make friends. Real friends, not just Twitter followers and Facebook acquisitions. You’re gonna need them.

8. Read, learn, grow, constantly.

9. Take people to lunch. You’d be surprised where it gets you.

10. Dress appropriately for your position and your workplace. (Need help? Call me. I’m good at helping people shop.)

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A Better eBay Listings Page

eBay Alternate Test Design

I like redesigning sites that I use quite often, when I feel that they’re getting overly cluttered, or that it’s become too hard to find what you’re looking for. eBay is currently testing a new alternate layout scheme (see inset screenshot), but aside from removing the overkill amounts of eBay yellow (good idea) it’s really just a shuffling around of the same old information that’s always been there. There’s no visual direction here, nothing that regroups data and turns it into information, if you get my meaning. So I took a crack at redesigning a listings page to see what I could come up with. It’s likely far from perfect, but I like where it’s going.

 

 

 

“AJBay” regroups the content into two main columns, a wider left and a narrower right, roughly three-fifths and two-fifths in proportion.

The Menubar

The top bar is given more usefulness by noting your logged-in status, a usericon, welcome message, and message notifications. The search bar is made much wider, as the current one is nearly unusably small. A few utility links are up in the top right corner.

Where the current eBay inexplicably puts the main navigation up in the top-right corner, I’ve moved it into a more standard navigation bar, with four larger primary links and three secondary ones. The current “Motors” and “Stores” don’t mean anything to the new user, so I’ve added the company name before them, which should help explain that those are sub-sites.

Given the depth and complexity of the site’s functions and categories, I’d keep the current drop-downs and fly-out menus as there seems to be some consensus that they work well, even from Jakob Nielsen; similarly, the breadcrumbs don’t really need much fixing.

The Listing

The title of the listing is given prominent place at top, which is, in my mind, where you’d expect it to be. Below that is a much larger image lightbox; it’s always bugged me how eBay thumbnails are too small to be useful, so this view uses some behind-the-scenes magic to create large square cropped images. The visitor can page through them, view a lightbox grid, or zoom the image to its full uncropped state, as you’d expect. 

Next, since this is a site about selling things, I wanted to call out the pricing information in a big, friendly way, hence a shape that recalls an old-fashioned price tag. I imagine that new items would get a green one, used ones get yellow, and maybe a different kind of tag for Dutch auction formats. The price is large and bold, using proper superscripts for readability, and there are clear, unmistakable action buttons and other information indicators there. When you want to enter a bid or buy the item, it’ll pop up a modal dialog box right there, rather than force you to load another page. 

Below the tag, various bits of information that were tucked away in various corners of the page have been unified in a zebra-stripe table, with certain terms linked to provide either pop-up explanations or tooltip-style definitions of terms in place.

The left-hand column finishes off with some category- and product-specific information in tables; in this case, specs for this particular model of MacBook. I debated putting this in the right-hand column where the seller’s description is now, but I thought that the first thing I would want to see after the pics are the specs; I’d only want to read the seller’s description to find out about things that aren’t standard, such as included accessories, notes about damage or refurbishment, etc.

Countdown Clock, Seller info and Seller Description

The right-hand column starts off with a large ‘countdown clock’, the background of which will slowly change from blue to green to yellow to red as the auction progresses. This seemed like a much more logical place to put the ‘Watch This Item’ button, as it emphasizes the connection between watching an auction and its expiry date. Below that is a friendlier Seller Information area, with self-labelled links to profile pages and feedback information, a handy form for asking a question about the item, and an invitation to view the seller’s other items. Using a specific number makes it more concrete, rather than a vague promise of ’something’ on the other side of the link, hence the ‘72 other items’.

After that is the seller’s description. I’m thinking simple, clear typography with maybe only a few styles (headline, subhead, paragraph, bullet points) would help keep the site looking more consistent, vs. the current riot of ‘themed’ pages. Similarly, a simple WYSIWYG editor that works cross-platform will help users a lot here; it’s 2009 and there still isn’t one that works with Safari.

Let me know what you think in the comments below. Does this make you want to shop more? Less? Does it make the product more appealing? Would you use eBay more if it had listing pages like this? What other UX issues does eBay need to work on, in your views?

Filed under: design is not decoration, the internets, user experience design

38 Special, or, Some Advice for You Young Whippersnappers*

In no particular order, some wisdom I’ve acquired over nearly four decades (yes) that I wish I had known, and acted upon, much earlier in life. I address this advice to anyone over the age of 14. Part one of a series all this week.

PART 1: MONEY

Save your money now, because you’re going to need it later. Life is ridiculously expensive. University can cost tens of thousands of dollars; if you choose to have kids, it’s something like $150k to raise one to adulthood; then there’s a house to live in; and down the line, which will come much faster than you realize, is retirement. And gods forbid, but emergencies happen and you should have a fund for that, too.

I can’t stress this enough — get into a habit of saving first. Then, after you’ve salted away 20-30% of your immediate income, you can spend the rest on life’s necessities and pleasures. It may seem obvious, but you can’t save anything if you’ve spent it already; if you’re always getting to the end of the month and are coasting on the fumes of your bank statement, then this probably applies to you. Putting aside a pre-set amount via automatic withdrawal is easy to set up — talk to a financial advisor at your bank or other trusted financial institution.†  

Besides retirement savings (or RESP for your kids’ or your own education, etc), you should keep 6-8 months’ worth of salary saved up as an emergency fund. You never know when you’re going to be downsized — as happened to me in late 2007 — or when the next job may come. 

If you’re under 20, for instance, a student working a summer job and still living with your parents, that’s an even better time to salt away a decent wodge of cash as your expenses are low to none. Given how long we expect to live nowadays, you’ll spend 20 to 30 years of your life post-retirement living on your savings. Accounting for future inflation, you are likely going to need around $1,000,000 to carry you through this period, if you figure living expenses of about $20 – 30k / year, even after your mortgage is paid up, etc. So get cracking! 

If you are young or just getting your first job, remember that compound interest is your friend. Starting early reaps a much bigger reward down the line. Starting a retirement savings plan when you’re nearly 40 like me means you have much less time to build up that million bucks. In essence, I’m trying to make up for 20+ years of not saving anything; if I had started when I was 18 I’d be in a much better position. Again, this is where talking to a financial advisor can help. Once you get into the habit of saving and budgeting, that small amount every month will carry you through the rest of your life.

Oh yes – there’s the matter of credit. Get some, because you definitely need a good credit history, but you have to stay in control of it. Only spend as much as you can afford to pay back relatively quickly — then pay it off in full. Credit card interest is much higher than a regular bank loan, line of credit or mortgage — we’re talking 24% vs maybe three to five percent at the moment. So $500 on a credit card adds up much faster than the same amount on a line of credit attached to your bank account.

Even at low interest rates, it’s easy to get in over your head. When I was in my early 20s, with under $1000 of credit card debt, I succumbed to a $10k credit line offer from the Royal Bank. I was totally too young to handle that amount of “free money,” and promptly dug myself into a hole that took years to recover from. Having negative net worth for nearly a decade is *not* fun, so take this as a cautionary tale. 

† As a totally unpaid plug, my financial advisor is Shahid Hannan at Investors Group. He’s super nice and he even makes house calls.

*And PS, get off my lawn, if I had a lawn, which I don’t, but you can stop spray-tagging my entranceway, kthxbai.

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The Oughties Are The 80s Volume XXVII: Keane, Spiralling

After the relatively doom-laden Under The Iron Sea, Keane’s new disc Perfect Symmetry references the 80s at almost every turn. This video references Hajime Sorayama’s (NSFW) sexy airbrushed robots, early CGI videos like Dire Straits’ Money For Nothing, and (with its spiraling threads of colored light) the oddly similar bits of bubble-chamber particle-physics graphics from the kinda-80s-esque-Klaxons‘ Golden Skans.

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Overdue Notice

If I’ve lent you a book anytime before October 1st, 2008, please return it. My bookshelves are feeling a little empty these days.

I’ve been thinking of getting Delicious Library properly set up, so I can scan my books in via their barcodes (it uses the Mac’s built-in iSight camera to do this — neat), and keep tabs of who’s got what. Plus I think there are hooks to let you publish your ‘lending library’ online.

Oh yeah, and it’s probably time for me to design some really good ‘EX LIBRIS’ stickers…

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Microbrew banking

Interesting thought from cultural anthropologist Grant McCracken:

There was a little protest here in Connecticut as small town merchants began to protest the intrusion of lots of new banks. And sure enough a town like Darien has an intrusion of banks. And this is odd, and I wondered if we are now a kind of micro brewery trend in banking. Or is there such a thing as artisanal banking? Has small come to the ultimate big? And how will we feel about banking and bank branding once we recover from the present difficult?

Filed under: economics, politics

I Was Jens Hannemann. Not.

Full disclosure! I used to work at the now-defunct York Music on Ste-Catherine (where the Nine West shoe store is now). We would play lots of instructional videos like this all day long, from be-mulleted losers from South Florida who played crazy bass guitar to unknown be-mulleted jazz nazi guitarists.

And that’s why I do all my music using computers, nowadays. Frankly…”musicians”..well, at least of the jazz-fusion-overserious-have-their-own-column-in-Bass-Player-Magazine ilk are just…GAH!

*I did sell Murray Lightburn his vintage Hagstrom guitar while working there. So yay!

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Pro-America vs. Anti-America

Best comment on the subject so far:

“As big cities and most suburban areas are not Real America, and “sharing the wealth” is apparently an incredibly evil thing to do, those of who live in Fake America will stop sending our money to Real America anytime it wants.”

Read the whole post over at Yglesias.

Filed under: politics

This Election Is A Referendum on Milton Friedman

So sayeth Naomi Klein, and I agree. Klein recently went into the “belly of the beast” — speaking at the University of Chicago — to deliver a barnburner that equated the current Wall Street crisis with the fall of the Berlin Wall: as the death knell of an ideology, namely, Friedmanesque deregulated, trickle-down economics:

I admit to being a journalist. I admit to being an investigative journalist, a researcher, and I’m not here to argue theory. I’m here to discuss what happens in the messy real world when Milton Friedman’s ideas are put into practice, what happens to freedom, what happens to democracy, what happens to the size of government, what happens to the social structure, what happens to the relationship between politicians and big corporate players, because I think we do see patterns.

Now, the Friedmanites in this room will object to my methodology, I assure you, and I look forward to that. They will tell you, when I speak of Chile under Pinochet, Russia under Yeltsin and the Chicago Boys, China under Deng Xiaoping, or America under George W. Bush, or Iraq under Paul Bremer, that these were all distortions of Milton Friedman’s theories, that none of these actually count, when you talk about the repression and the surveillance and the expanding size of government and the intervention in the system, which is really much more like crony capitalism or corporatism than the elegant, perfectly balanced free market that came to life in those basement workshops. We’ll hear that Milton Friedman hated government interventions, that he stood up for human rights, that he was against all wars. And some of these claims, though not all of them, will be true.

But here’s the thing. Ideas have consequences. And when you leave the safety of academia and start actually issuing policy prescriptions, which was Milton Friedman’s other life—he wasn’t just an academic. He was a popular writer. He met with world leaders around the world—China, Chile, everywhere, the United States. His memoirs are a “who’s who.” So, when you leave that safety and you start issuing policy prescriptions, when you start advising heads of state, you no longer have the luxury of only being judged on how you think your ideas will affect the world. You begin having to contend with how they actually affect the world, even when that reality contradicts all of your utopian theories. So, to quote Friedman’s great intellectual nemesis, John Kenneth Galbraith, “Milton Friedman’s misfortune is that his policies have been tried.”

(h/t to: Digby)

Filed under: Obama, economics, politics