April 30, 2005
re-invention
There’s a bit in The Hughtrain I’m quite fond of:
: There7 Responses to “re-invention”
Hugh MacLeod
I'm a cartoonist.
I sell limited-edition prints.
I wrote a book.
I'm CEO of Stormhoek USA, which markets South African wine in the States.
I also draw private commissions.
Prints |
Opening | Current |
|---|---|---|
Bluetrain |
$900 | |
We Need to Talk |
$650 | |
Portfolio #2 |
$300 | |
NY NY |
$275 |
For years I’ve been working at the culture/technology coalface (is that metaphor still valid?). I’ve used all sorts of approaches, frameworks and models to help but still don’t have one that I’m happy with. It’s something I’d like to take up again though.
It all started when I wrote user guides for technology ‘solutions’. Most of the time I was expending enormous amounts of effort describing things that users would find completely alien (the same things seemed fine to C++ developers). Soon I realised that the users never read the manuals anyway — so instead of 200 pages I wrote 6 – 8 pages. The users read ALL the pages. They even asked where the rest of documents were. By giving them less I’d caught their attention. The process was hard work though — knowing what to leave out and what to put in required a lot of thinking about (though my fellow authors thought I was just taking the piss).
To cut a longish story short since that early grounding I’ve been passionate about working in that space BETWEEN people and technology and of course the real issue isn’t usability or interface design or process design it’s the user culture.
Will keep an eye on the Culture/Technology debate.
Love the sketches by the way — Brilliant!
That’s my favourite cartoon! Brilliant!
Hi Hugh
I recently joined a photo agency in Paris that does stock photography. This is an old business gently reinventing itself to all digital.
Clients still prefer good film to of poor digital images and good human service instead of cold internet. Business should reinvent themselves on time but should not change for change’s sake.
I agree, Roman. But…
You sound like a good, Hegelian dialectic in action to me. Love that. Go, Hugh!
Seriously, this particular chunk of the Hughtrain works in the meta sense, as well (as does most of the Hughtrain, which is probably why it resonates with so many people).
Truly reinventing anything is always (well, okay – almost always) harder than starting from scratch. Who was it who said “Beginnings are always lovely”? Because it’s true true true. As I posted on Evelyn’s site a bit ago, it’s far easier in many ways to be a great actor in the beginning than it is once the bloom is off the rose. It’s almost inevitable that you will be encumbered by your tools and technique before you master and integrate them into your process.
And, to apply your paradigm more directly to general human endeavor, doesn’t the climbing divorce rate speak in some way to the ease of starting anew vs. renewal?
Of course, some things become moribund for good reason and should be discarded. But recycling is such a nifty, neat proposition, I really think we should be doing more of it.
Awesome cartoon!
Very funny cartoon.
T-shirt worthy?
(Though I am an American and and as such I refuse to shell out big bucks for high quality product that wasn’t made cheap overseas by eight year old girls.)