Artemisphere

My wife and I were down in Novi for another repair on her iMac (long story but we’ll say that gravity was involved and the Mac shouldn’t take the blame.) Anyways on the way back we stopped at a grocery store called Trader Joe’s. My wife had heard online that there was some good organic food choices there for here special diet. East Lansing does have a store somewhat like it called “Foods for Living” which we like but find their prices a bit on the steep side. However Trade Joe’s is a different story. They buy their products direct from the producers and sell it under their own brand name. They also change suppliers frequently so if they find a particular product isn’t performing well then it’s pulled from the shelves. Nice to see that a can of lima beans has to pull it’s own weight around there.

Their organic natural foods are usually priced lower than competitors as well often being priced lower than the non-organic equivalents you find at other chain stores. Sure you could live on organic groceries from the other stores but all you could afford would be the organic mac and cheese and a box of erbal tea. Not a good way to support a family of 5.

What I really liked about Trader Joe’s was the store itself. It had a sort of quaint old town store feel to it. The signs were hand painted and the decore was a sort of island retreat, even down to the detail of bambo aisle signs and hand painted wall murals. Even their recycle bags were custom designed with fun tropical prints. There was no sterile endless giant grocery isles in a sea of stainless steel freezers, no markdown sales tags, no gimmicks, no discount cards, no self checkout computers, and very few brand name items. It certainly didn’t feel like your typical impersonable grocery-supermart. The workers dressed casually some wearing Hawaiian shirts and they were genuinely happy to be working there and helping people. And there were a lot of customers…apparently Joe’s is not a well kept secret. I think their success can be attributed to it giving back a small bit of that sense of community we’ve lost with all these cookie cutter chain stores taking over our town’s streets. Now if we can just get one in East Lansing.

It was a great grocery shopping experience and this is coming from someone who hates shopping. So much so that we plan to make some regular trips down there to stock up on some healthy organic food. Definitely swing by one of the stores if you’re in the area.

You don’t hear of this too often in a grocery store. If you don’t like it bring it back.

“Do you have Moral Fiber?”

Sorry for the blurry image. The sign says “He who must not be named has closed this register!” Children of the corn movie reference, 2 points.

We’ve just recently launched a very large website redesign for CATA. I was thinking how this site truly showcases the differences between visual eye candy design and useful informative web site design. While CATA’s makeover is still visually appealing the quality of the design comes from a underlying thought process of what information should be displayed and where as well as what users will need to do with it. The information architecture forms this foundation and the design is merely there to support that. In fact the best designs for the web are the ones where the user doesn’t even notice the design, it just falls to the background and the purpose and content rise to the surface. They simply and intuitively know where to go and how to get there because the design guides them and doesn’t distract them from doing what they need to do. While I’ve done many heavily branded and thematic designs as a web designer where the visual treatments are weighed heavier it’s important to not allow the artistic elements to outweigh it’s usability. Your website still has a purpose and relevant information to provide to it’s users. Your web audience is an inpatient group so the quicker you guide them to the info the better. If you put that as your main focus you’ll find a clean effective appealing design will naturally follow. Everything else is just window dressing.

I finally got my phone and DSL service switched over from TDS to AT&T today. Besides all the acronyms to remember, the switch took nearly 2 weeks and was probably one of the worse experiences I’ve had in getting a service up and running. Their customer support phone system passed me from department to department and person to person never actually letting me talk to the final person that could actually get the problems fixed. Automated computer voices asking me the same questions over and over again didn’t help either. By the way someone out their needs to redesign customer support systems. Apple you hearing me?

AT&T has become the giant monster of smaller telephone companies it’s devoured over the past few years promising better service but under delivering. It’s for all intents and purposes a Monopoly. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. You know what causes a company to no longer have great service and great products? It’s when there’s no true competition left and they just don’t care anymore…because well they don’t have to. There’s no passion left and no sense of urgency. It becomes a well feed pet whose every needs are already being met and it gets lazy, bloated, and bogged down in it’s own bureaucracy.

I find the most exciting companies are one’s facing their own tough challenges and outside competition. It’s about the people keeping the business pushing forward, innovating and not resting on the fence. Knowing that you might not be in 1st place right now but that you’re doing a good job for your customers and you know you can do better. This keeps you humble and keeps you motivated to improve. When everyone is contributing and has a passion to see the company succeed they are a part of that success and not just a nameless worker. A successful company is one that still has that hunger to fight the good fight. Sure, not everyone can get the silver race car but it’s even worse to be the thimble and there’s no one else playing.

Clever design to watch your toast get toasted. check out all the other great toaster designs.

In the wake following the release of Photosynth, many bloggers noted its lack of support for a non-Windows OS and self-deprecating humor.

I’m actually quite fond of this alert box for IE6 users:

But what does this imply for web developers, if anything? Is Microsoft setting precedent to stop supporting IE6? We certainly hope so. It’s nothing but a nightmare of legacy support for those of us who want to build web app UIs in 2008. And they’re not the only ones. 37signals is also phasing out IE6 across all their products.

So is it time for us to follow suit?

Internet Explorer 6 is by far the worst browser on the mainstream market today. It’s finally showing serious decline in recent days, but for small and local business, we’ve found the stats to remain steady and strong. The answer to my question is still “not yet” at this point. We’ve certainly made compromises and restrained some UI effects and application features from being available for IE6 users, but we haven’t completely phased it out of our testing environment.

Maybe one day we will, and I’ll actually thank Microsoft for taking one big step in moving us along.

It occured to me the other day that sometimes clients really don’t know what the heck we’re talking about as designers and programmers. You might as well be speaking Klingon. That’s not a slam on the client’s intelligence (or on Klingons.) It’s more of a failure on our part in effective communication. If a doctor starts talking medical terms, I have no clue what he’s talking about either. But a reputable doctor will have a good bedside manner to compliment their medical knowledge. Their ability to relate the information to the patient in a clear and friendly way really helps distinguish them from other professionals in their field. I think designers and programmers can take a lesson from this. Sometimes we get so wrapped up in our little world of technology buzzwords and designer lingo we forget that our clients aren’t apart of that same crazy world. You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a acronym in our business.  Here’s an example of a typical conversation.

“We’ll be taking your XHTML and .ASP files along with your css and image directories and uploading those up to your host domain through a FTP program. It’s behind our a secure firewall so it may take a while. Shouldn’t be a problem though.”

All the client heard was “blah blah blah.  Shouldn’t be a problem though.” 

So let’s say that in some terms they can better relate to.

“We’re about ready to launch yourname.com once we upload the files to your website. We’ll have it live on Wednesday by 5pm so your customers can get  started visiting it then.”

There, done and to the point. The client doesn’t need to hear how you did everything or your fancy technical terms. What they do need to know is how it’s affecting their business in clear concise words and what the next step is in the process. You are also not talking down to them and if they want to know the nitty gritty details, you can help guide them through those as needed. Remember they can teach you just as much about their business as you can teach them about yours. Great business relationships are a team effort so make that client apart of your team. Save the Klingon talk for the next Trek convention.