I'm working on an app for the DonorChoose.org Hacking Education Contest. DonorsChoose works by having teachers submit classroom project/supply needs that people can then donate to pay for through the internet. Right now the only way to "share" those projects is through the usual email, Facebook and Twitter; my idea for am app is to create custom printable 4-up (quartersheet) flyers for handing out, and pull-tab sheets for posting-up. Despite the "power of teh internets", I think consideration of local resources and capacity is an important value to recognize---and helping teachers and allies advertise their needs (and the positive outcomes they hope to create) more easily within their physical communities would go far towards advancing DonorsChoose.org's mission.

This project has the typical technical difficulties: my goal is to use the DonorsChoose API to fetch a particular project and then populate an HTML+CSS preview---allowing the teacher to then live-edit the text (both for layout and because writing for a local audience is different than an internet one)---and then use dompdf to convert that HTML+CSS to a printable PDF. The dompdf library is nifty: it supports CSS 2d transformations, custom fonts, images (necessary for QR code hotness), light positioning (no floats, so tables it is), and media-queries  (@media screen and @media print) to fix all the little layout and typography issues in translating from the web to print, as well as dompdf's own myriad quirks. Basically it's everything I need to make a not-too-ugly flyer and pull-tab sheet; the image at the top of this post is the ugly proof-of-concept.

But the biggest challenge is designing a layout scheme that is flexible to the wide range of DonorsChoose project content. Designing for an 8.5 x 11" sheet of paper is way different than designing for the web: creating a balanced---or at least aesthetically-acceptable---design is no easy matter when there is no such thing as overflow. I hope to get around some issues by providing a live-preview so that teachers can fix any egregious text over-/under- runs, but the goal is to get teachers to Click-Print-Post as quickly as possible.

Fortunately I have a designer (the awesome Billy Brown) helping with the layout, but I need to give him some idea of what to expect. Fortunately DonorsChoose made available project data for ~296,000 projects. So I parsed through the lengths for the 4 main pieces of content I want to use in order to get the distribution of lengths. Sure, saying "Design for a title that is 10-50 characters" doesn't have the highest specificity, but it's a whole lot more useful than the alternative of blind experimentation. The data below is charts of those lengths---I probably will have to limit my data to just the past year or so since DonorsChoose has changed their requirements/text-fields over time, but its interesting so far to see the full distributions.

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Rob Haitani on Palm OS from Designing Interactions:

One bit of advice that I gave to people designing the Palm OS was, "If you can really understand the one thing your customer wants to do most frequently, and make that a one-step process, then I guarantee people will like the product."

Just say, "What is the one thing you want to do?" and even if you have to throw out conventions of logic, architecture, and hierarchy, you should make that one step. The more "illogical" your approach is, the less likely it is that it will blindly follow the conventional wisdom, and hence the more likely it becomes that you will be able to differentiate and create a successful product relative to your competition, If you take the conventional approach, by definition you're not innovating. If you just say, "Here are all the features," and you lay them out in a logical pattern, then that's not going to be a successful product.

From Michael Lopp's interview of Instapaper's Marco Arment:

Were there design decisions you made early on in order to manage that? What were they?

Absolutely.

The biggest design decision I’ve made is more of a continuous philosophy: do as few extremely time-consuming features as possible. As a result, Instapaper is a collection of a bunch of very easy things and only a handful of semi-hard things.

This philosophy sounds simple, but it isn’t: geeks like us are always tempted to implement very complex, never-ending features because they’re academically or algorithmically interesting, or because they can add massive value if done well, such as speech or handwriting recognition, recommendation engines, or natural-language processing.

These features — often very easy for people but very hard for computers — often produce mediocre-at-best results, are never truly finished, and usually require massive time investments to achieve incremental progress with diminishing returns.

If a one-person company is going to build a product, it can’t have any of those huge time-sink features. At most, I can afford to have one or two components of moderate complexity, such as the HTML-to-body-text parser and the Kindle-format writer. But even those are barely worth the time that I put into them.

Top photo is by Nicholas Zurcher from Designing Interactions.

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Rand: The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me.

Anyway, I've been thinking about an email app built on a principle of Objectivism. At the moment, my email client defaults to doing nothing, and I must intervene to create action (ie, write a reply).

But if I had an Objectivist email app, it would automatically respond to all emails with stock enabling and forceful replies after a period of (say) 15 minutes, and I would have to intervene if I wanted it to not do that.

I shared it in Google Reader and Tom Wolf (who I've quoted before) replied:

This is a neat way to think about building applications. Rather than starting from "let's solve a problem", start from "given this solution, how should it behave assuming I hold X as my primary belief framework?" I'm not sure it's a practical way to build apps for the masses, but it's pretty cool nonetheless :)

And just in minor regards to Objectivism, I inadvertently dabbled in it when I was about 14 but fortunately quickly outgrew it.

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Today I sent another issue of Survival News---"the voices of low-income women"---to the printers; this is my second year as layout artist for the newspaper. At 40 broadsheets (11"x17"), the newspaper is the same size as last year. Published by Survivors, Inc., Survival News is the official newspaper of the National Welfare Rights Union and provides news, stories, advocacy information and 20 pages of Survival Tips---explanations and contact information to help in navigating the complex and crumbling web of social services and support systems---in English and Spanish, and excerpts in Vietnamese.

It's a great group with which to volunteer and the stories and information that's published are invaluable. Also, the group doesn't just stop at publishing the paper; they go into DTA (Department of Transitional Assistance: welfare) offices and volunteer as public advocates for those seeking assistance. This is an excerpt from a DTA Log by Diana Moon:

I started working for Survivor’s Inc. early last 2010. I met many wonderful families and individuals. Thanks to all for sharing their experience with me. Here are a few highlights that I recall from my visits to Dudley and the Revere DTA.

I offered “Survival News” to a woman explaining a little about Survivor’s Inc and also introducing myself. She then told me her story. She worked for many years and had good jobs and was self-sufficient. Last year she became ill with heart disease and was hospitalized. Unable to work she lost her apartment and moved to her daughter’s apartment. She is on a wait-list for housing. She is in today because her disability benefits were terminated because she has a burial insurance policy (which is counted as an asset.) At first she thought surely this must be a mistake; I agreed with her that a burial policy which can only be used at the time of her death should not be counted as an asset (WT**.) Wow... how perplexing! Then she became emotional because after all the years she has worked and all she’s been through it’s really painful to be spoken to by a DTA worker as if she has done something wrong; as if needing financial help or any other assistance or getting sick means a failure on her part. I felt upset too for this very dignified woman to have someone speak so carelessly to her. We must keep trying to be respectful to each other. We reviewed the Survivor Tip section and I encouraged her to contact Greater Boston Legal Services (GBLS). She knew of GBLS and said she would contact them although she informed me she learned there is a Regulation that burial policies count as assets. I hope this regulation will be changed! She thanked me for the paper and after we talked she said she felt a little better and less alone.

I talked with another woman about the Survival Tips section and we had a discussion of private rights and personal space and then what can happen to privacy when you live in public housing. For example, there is talk of making smoking illegal in public housing (more issues to debate). She told me she came in to apply for food stamps. She was laid off her job and then took a position for less income at a CVS. The food stamps are a big help she said. I’ve heard similar stories from other women who either work full time for minimum wage or have a part-time position and come to apply for or renew their food stamps. Food stamps are a great benefit and I feel thankful this is available for families! I think, too, about how many live vulnerably just one paycheck away from the threat of losing the security of their home. Another woman told me, “If I lose my job then I’ll be looking for shelter. I worry each month I won’t be able to make full rent and then I’ll be evicted.” I think about how we hear talk about strengthening families, about empowering families; well, then affordable, safe housing is a good place to start!

The artwork above was contributed by coworker Billy Brown. And I'm still trying to convince them to work on their website.

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Build, learn, organize, subvert

A design by Ryan Jenkins of Troy, NY. My colleague Carolyn Braunius had this screen-printed on a shirt at the Prometheus Barnraising.

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I think paper is just this wonderful medium; it’s been honed for a thousand years. It’s really great! To try to do what you do with paper, with just drawing—line width, sketching, and so on—it’s very hard to get a good experience. Where the tablet type of computer really shines is where you’re not trying to capture the paperness of paper, but you’re trying to get the electronic or the back end of it. Form filling is a great example, because actually forms are pretty hard to do on paper. You never have the right space, it’s hard to know where to put things, there’s not enough room for instructions. So, there’s an example where an electronic version of a paper equivalent would be better. But in terms of the general idea that I’m going to sketch, draw and have a free-flowing paperlike experience—I’m skeptical about that.

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Since November I have been working on print layout for the Winter 2009/2010 edition of Survival News. "The voices of low-income women", Survival News is half-yearly-ish compendium of news, personal stories, and advocacy information. Nearly half of this edition is devoted to Survival Tips, a collection of services and advice from legal aid to food programs in 3 languages (English, Spanish and Vietnamese).

At 40 tabloid-sized pages, this edition is 52 square feet of pictures and copy. Survival News has a circulation of 4,000, so altogether that's enough newsprint to cover 1/3 of Boston's tallest skyscraper, the John Hancock Building: papering it to the 20th floor. Not bad.

I don't often find myself in InDesign, the layout program I used, but I still had fun with the project. Due to time and process constraints I couldn't be as free with the design as I would have liked, but I am proud of the outcome. In keeping with the existing style and editorial demands, my goal was to normalize the ideas and voices within the text. I am sympathetic to criticism of this approach. From David Barringer in his essay "Left Wanting", writing on the conservative design of liberal magazines:

Timid political art. Stale design. The money excuse. The market dynamic in which political speech is toned down for a presumably thin-skinned public. Artistic cowardice masquerading as commercial sensibility. These are the charges, but what is the role of design in political magazines? Is it to perpetuate a stylistic template? To signify stability?

...

"Design is order, economy, teaching people beauty, creating individuals," says [Mirko] Ilic [designer for the Village Voice]. "Good design is subversive. And because it's subversive, good design is left wing."

If I do the next edition, I hope to be able to spend more time on good design.

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Designed as a dialogue, this piece is, as Barringer says, “a hybrid mess of a literary shenanigan, inspired by the dialogues of the philosopher Denis Diderot (1713–1784). If you think I took the conversation too far, see Diderot’s Jacques the Fatalist (1782).”

Jumping in…

Ego: So, to sum up, anyone with the intent to design can claim to be a graphic designer in our messy age of design pluralism. You don’t need the degree, the tools, the status, the employer, or even a client. You certainly don’t need to be good or even competent. You just need the intent. So what is at stake, and for whom, in defining the identity of the designer? Credentials are one way to define identity, and credentials matter to some. They signify to potential employers; signify less to potential clients; and always make our mothers proud. But what is at stake for the individual designer? I think that’s where we need to go next.

Devil: I agree. Design pluralism recognizes the diversity of individuals working in some measure in a field we’ve agreed to call graphic design, itself a broad category, its membrane permeable enough to absorb the practitioners of the year’s latest digital arts. Together, this pluralism and the attendant technological advances that impact the practice of graphic design disturb the discipline and unsettle the individual. In a steady profession and stable economy—

Ego: Both concepts being theoretical— 

Devil: Many are content to let their jobs define them. Who am I? I am my job. But graphic design is not a steady profession, and the economy is not stable. Uncertainty is the order of the day. Undeterred, people may cling to a mere skill set as an indicator of who they are, defining themselves in ever more narrow and conditional terms. In a moral panic, a designer might crave the next seminar in web design as if it were a personality upgrade, the next slogan from the best-selling business pundit as if it were a reprieve from a death sentence. Why? Because today’s skill set is tomorrow’s software template. And today’s job is tomorrow’s downsized nod to the stockholders. 

Ego: So this is why self-definition is so urgent and infuriating. The economic is personal. Who you are today may not even be who you are tomorrow. 

Devil: I’m an expert in Pagemaker. I mean, Quark. Oops, InDesign. Flash. No, wait, I’m a problem-solver! A branding consultant! A, a.… 

Ego: In this environment, you are not saved by what you know. 

Devil: What you know is only what you knew. And that’s why it feels, to me, like there is no such thing as art or design, jobs or retirement. There is only the work that you do and the you who is doing it. What is at stake in all this is the individual designer’s self-definition. 

Ego: And let me guess. What we are dismantling here is the overarching myth of the self-taught, which is that the label of being self-taught no longer functions as a meaningful symbol of the designer’s identity, whether as a romantic symbol or a derogatory one. Regarding yourself as self-taught, as a self-motivated learner, as you said before, is more and more coming to be an essential component of that self-definition, no matter what kind of graphic designer you are. 

Devil: Did I say that?

The section of the book that includes this is entitled “Design is a hug at a distance”.

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I'm reminded as you discuss this of the arrangement of texts in a traditional manuscript copy of the Talmud. Most printed copies are a bit different, but originally a Talmud page was divided into nine squares like a tic-tac-toe grid. Sometimes the central box was further subdivided, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

The central box served as the location of the primary text to be analyzed in the original Hebrew — usually it was a Torah or Haftorah portion. The boxes to the left and right were explanations of the vowel-pointing for this piece of text; in other words, they were commentaries on what the Hebrew ./meant./ — what actual words were in play here, along with a brief definition of unusual or rare words. The boxes above and below the main text were set up to act as containers for alternate versions of the story, or stories that played off of elements in the center box.

The four corner pieces were commentaries on the main text from Rabbis Hillel, Gamaliel, and the other two — eminent masters riffing jazz- like off of the core beat at the center, or arguing the left-right interpretations, or further explicating the up-down side-stories.

All of the boxes — ALL — would shift size on the page to accommodate all the various elements. If there was a long commentary from one of the rabbis but little else, that box would expand, and the Torah portion would shrink until it was only the verse, or even the word, relevant to that commentary. Conversely, (though it didn't happen often), if there were a long story in the Torah with little commentary, several verses would get squeezed into one large box, with eight small and almost empty boxes circling it.

The point was, there were nine books crammed into one. Hillel always occupied the same square on the page. The Babylonian Haggadah (stories) was always above the Torah, the Palestinian Haggadah always below. You could read one commentator exclusively, or read the Torah or Haftorah exclusively, or try to read all the commentaries on all of Torah simultaneously.

Ed also posted some more visual links:

An annotated page:

http://www.ucalgary.ca/~elsegal/TalmudPage.html

Talmud style layout in HTML (with fixed size boxes, so not precisely)

http://www.ucalgary.ca/~elsegal/TalmudMap/Samples.html

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Update: this functionality can now be achieved with the iTweak_upload module . Thanks to Damon for the tip!

I made a custom override for Drupal 6.x's Upload.module's attachments table that is displayed at the bottom of a node when you create file attachments. That table is, in my opinion, one of the ugliest common and default presentations in Drupal core. Below is an example of the before and after:

To use it, unzip and drop the included folder into your active theme's directory (e.g. /sites/default/all/garland), it should take effect without any other modifications---though you may have to reset the theme cache (goto admin/build/themes and click save without making any other changes).

Click Here to Download (shiny_upload.zip)

Also, I don't know what the name is for these types of theme overrides: it's not a module, and it's not a whole theme. I posted this to a Drupal Group that, I think, calls them "Themer Packs".

The icon code is based on the CCK filefield module---but the current 6.0 version is kind've clunky and I wanted to port it to the core Upload module. The namespace is "shiny_upload".

Also, as an aside, the reason island94.org doesn't currently have this enabled is because it's still running on Drupal 5.x branch

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