I was hoping it was a blip. I was hoping 2015 would be the year of performance. I was wrong. Average web page weight has soared 7.5% in five months to exceed 2Mb. That’s three 3.5 inch double-density floppy disks-worth of data (ask your grandparents!).

According to the May 15, 2015 HTTP Archive Report, the statistics gathered from almost half a million web pages are:

The biggest rises are for CSS, JavaScript, other files (mostly fonts) and—surprisingly—Flash. The average number of requests per page:

• 100 files in total (up from 95)
• 7 style sheet files (up from 6)
• 20 JavaScript files (up from 18)
• 3 font files (up from 2)

Images remain the biggest issue, accounting for 56 requests and 62% of the total page weight.

Finally, remember these figures are averages. Many sites will have a considerably larger weight.

We’re Killing the Web!

A little melodramatic, but does anyone consider 2Mb acceptable? These are public-facing sites—not action games or heavy-duty apps. Some may use a client-side framework which makes a ‘single’ page look larger, but those sites should be in the minority.

The situation is worse for the third of users on mobile devices. Ironically, a 2Mb responsive site can never be considered responsive on a slower device with a limited—and possibly expensive—mobile connection.

I’ve blamed developers in the past, and there are few technical excuses for not reducing page weight. Today, I’m turning my attention to clients: they’re making the web too complex.

Many clients are wannabe software designers and view developers as the implementers of their vision. They have a ground-breaking idea which will make millions—once all 1,001 of their “essential” features have been coded. It doesn’t matter how big the project is, the client always want more. They:

1. mistakenly think more functionality attracts more customers
2. think they’re getting better value for money from their developer, and
3. don’t know any better.

Feature-based strategies such as “release early, release often” are misunderstood or rejected outright.

The result? 2Mb pages filled with irrelevant cruft, numerous adverts, obtrusive social media widgets, shoddy native interface implementations and pop-ups which are impossible to close on smaller screens.

But we give in to client demands.

Even if you don’t, the majority of developers do—and it hurts everyone.

We continue to prioritize features over performance. Adding stuff is easy and it makes clients happy. But users hate the web experience; they long for native mobile apps and Facebook Instant Articles. What’s more, developers know it’s wrong: Web vs Native: Let’s Concede Defeat.

The Apple vs Microsoft Proposition

It’s difficult to argue against a client who’s offering to pay for another set of frivolous features. Clients focus more on their own needs rather than those of their users. More adverts on the page will raise more revenue. Showing intrusive pop-ups leads to more sign-ups. Presenting twenty products is better than ten. These tricks work to a certain point, but users abandon the site once you step over the line of acceptability. What do clients instinctively do when revenues fall? They add more stuff.

Creating a slicker user experience with improved performance is always lower down the priority list. Perhaps you can bring it to the fore by discussing the following two UX approach examples …

Historically, Microsoft designs software by committee. Numerous people offer numerous opinions about numerous features. The positives: Microsoft software offers every conceivable feature and is extremely configurable. The negatives: people use a fraction of that power and it can become overly complex—for example, the seventeen shut-down options in Vista, or the incomprehensible Internet options dialog.

Apple’s approach is more of a dictatorship with relatively few decision makers. Interfaces are streamlined and minimalist, with only those features deemed absolutely necessary. The positives: Apple software can be simple and elegant. The negatives: best of luck persuading Apple to add a particular feature you want.

Neither approach is necessarily wrong, but which company has been more successful in recent years? The majority of users want an easy experience: apps should work for them—not the other way around. Simplicity wins.

Ask your client which company they would prefer to be. Then suggest their project could be improved by concentrating on the important user needs, cutting rarely-used features and prioritizing performance.

2015 Can be the Year of Performance

The web is amazing. Applications are cross-platform, work anywhere in the world, require no installation, automatically back-up data and permit instant collaboration. Yet the payload for these pages has become larger and more cumbersome than native application installers they were meant to replace. 2Mb web pages veer beyond the line of acceptability.

If we don’t do something, the obesity crisis will continue unabated. Striving for simplicity isn’t easy: reducing weight is always harder than putting it on. Endure a little pain now and you’ll have a healthier future:

It’s time to prioritize performance.

For All You People Who Have No Clue What A Strategist Does

What is strategy?

On almost every LinkedIn profile today, you’ll see a skill for some sort of ‘strategy’ capability listed. Strategy has become the modern day buzzword for ‘senior professional’. Anyone who considers themselves in a senior role will generally map out their skill set around having strategic leadership.

When you move from the digital to the real world and ask someone, though, often those same people can’t provide a clear and concise understanding of what good strategy is and why it is important. And then there’s the wave of strategists across all sectors — PR, corporate, digital, communications, social. The list goes on and on and on.

As a professional strategist this is somewhat frustrating for a two reasons:

• Everyone thinks they can do my job.
• But no one actually knows what my job is.

It’s particularly frustrating because when hiring, people often don’t know what to look for in a strategist (other than ‘smart’). It also makes quantifying and selling in strategy exceptionally difficult. Clients will often, in the agency world, get strategy for free as part of the pitch to woo them over.

So what is strategy and why is it important?

One of the best books on strategic thinking is by Richard Rumelt (Good Strategy, Bad Strategy). Rumelt is a Professor at UCLA in management and defines strategy as ‘finding the most effective way to direct and leverage your resources’. It’s been a book that I’ve (largely) taken to heart in exploring what strategy actually is.

Michael Porter, the author of Competitive Strategy, gives us a similar (if more well defined) version of this statement: “It means deliberately choosing a different set of activities to deliver a unique mix of value.”

Whilst both definitions vary slightly, really it’s about directing resources to a more efficient outcome than your competitor. In an even playing field where both parties (whether they be businesses or otherwise) have 10 units of resources, a good strategist will be able to amplify the impact of those units many times more than the competitor can.

Strategists in many ways are professional opportunists, then. They find the best opportunity, create a plan to take advantage of it and plan/direct resources to make the biggest impact possible.

It’s funny when you hear titles in front of strategists, then. Digital strategy (as an example) has been one of the rising stars over the past few years of the ‘strategy’ world. Generally, though, a strategy type is a little like the difference between a drama or an action movie. Sure, they’ve got a different look and feel, but underneath it all you’ve still got the same Hollywood Three Act Structure.

The above is also why you rarely find good strategists coming from conventional backgrounds. They’ve always got a quirk or a reason to see the world differently to others. Without that, they’d never find ‘the way’ that is an outlier to traditional thinking.

Incidentally that’s also why so many strategists are contrarians. Peter Thiel, arguably one of the brightest strategic thinkers today, puts it this way: “Consider this contrarian question: What important truth do very few people agree with you on?”

It’s often critical thinking that leads you to those important truths.

From this, we can at least understand what the strategist does. The strategist is responsible for finding the most effective way to use a current set of resources, amplifying their effort significantly.

What then should good strategy look like?

• It should understand and define the problem.
• It should articulate the factors affecting/inputting the problem.
• It should make a judgement as to which factor to tackle first, or identify an opportunity to quickly impact many factors with one fell swoop.
• It should develop a clear set of plans and actions to begin actioning that opportunity.
• It should clearly be able to measure success.

A good strategist will be able to take the above, though, and frame it in unconventional and contrarian thinking. And when you apply to above to the traditional outputs of strategy departments you can see the outputs often align to the above.

• Creative strategists (creative briefs): tell the creatives what to make, what insight to use and why.
• Digital strategists (digital strategy roadmaps): tell the devs/UXers/designers/marketers what we’re building and why, what the priority order should be.
• Corporate strategists (planning documents/forecasts): tell the company where to invest their money and why, identify/plan for restructuring.
• Content strategists (content briefs): tell the writers what to write and why.
• M&A strategists: tell big companies what to buy and why, what acquisitions have most synergy in market.

You can see that whilst the symptomatic skillset and context each strategist operates in is different, the underlying principles are the same. They’re often directing the flow of resources to an opportunity and doing so to maximise the return on effort.

How do you find a good strategist?

The best strategists are by their nature instinctive. Given most strategy is, to some level, interacting with or understanding people/their motivations, you’ll often find them as students of humans.

Basically — there’s no hard and fast formula. What you’re looking for is a person who can identify the problem, find an opportunity to fix it and create a measurable plan for other people to action. That’s a good strategist.

Some unconventional indicators of great strategists that I’ve found in my time (often they’ve been great mentors):

• Club promoters: often have a high degree of emotional intelligence and understand how to drive large amounts of (often disparate people) to unified action.
• Anthropologists: students of culture generally have a good insight into what makes people tick.
• Politicians: have an intrinsic ability to identify opportunity for themselves. If it can be converted into thinking outside of that, often a winner.
• Philosophers: philosophers are generally inquisitive and have a good understanding of critical thinking.

It’s a pretty broad list, and I’ve seen great strategists come out of all of those backgrounds. Your MBA-types are trained strategists. The above are more likely learned strategists.

Undercurrent, one of my favourite companies, has a great post on what to look for in strategists written by @ClayParkerJones. You can find it here for more detail.

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A Year Ago Today

I got a rejection letter from Medium…but started a publication and met Ev a year later

Improper use of “whom” instead of “who.”

A year ago, I was looking to be a part of something big so naturally, I thought of Medium. Ev’s story and the values of Obvious Corp, resonated with me, so I applied. I really wanted it but I didn’t get it, so I did the next best thing and met Ev yesterday, a whole year later. See, I was never formally trained in design, never worked for a large company and my longest job was working as a technology teacher at a democratic school. Truthfully, I never graduated college either, though I completed all my coursework, the college failed my basic English proficiency exam, for reasons I’ll never know nor do I want to know now.

While all that is not the accepted criteria for a designer, it wasn’t until I met Mikko-Pekka Hanski — a former teacher and one of Finland’s most influential designers—that I realized the strengths of being an outsider, namely perspective. I was pretty determined to move my design career forward, so I did what any underemployed millenial would do.

I stop waiting for doors to open, I hustled and made my own way.

I designed as many apps as I could, I learned more code and built throwaway projects like typelift, “a typographer’s sandbox.” I also worked for cheap, sometimes for free while applying to jobs. At the same time, I was struggling to define myself as a creative as I’m a generalist, a tinkerer who’d been doing graphic design since high school yearbook. I think over that summer I’d also realized that hiring was broken in Silicon Valley, that it was as elitist as the old guard, where Facebook is the new IBM on your resume. Which is why I’m heartened when Jack Ma says;

“Don’t hire the most qualified, hire the craziest”

Luckily, Silicon Valley has companies that hire for crazy, and eventually I settled into a role as a product designer for Verdigris, working on machine learning & smart energy. It filled a lot of criteria that I was looking for — a world changing problem, staff diversity & appreciation of design thinking. I’ve learned more working with this startup in 1 year then I have in the last 5. I also got to execute on everything from branding to agile product management, if you want to move far in your career, work for a Seed or Series A stage company.

But funny thing, I couldn’t shake rejection. I was simply unwilling to accept that companies like Medium, Twitter, VSCO, Nextdoor, Heroku…found my skills lacking. To be clear, I’m not saying that the candidates who were hired weren’t qualified…but I am saying that when I applied to jobs using my first name, Dominic, I tended to get a lot more responses. So let me go on the record and say:

My name is Dominic Vikram Babu,
I’m not a vegetarian nor am I a developer.
I’m a beef eating, product designer, musician & publisher.

True story, most folks find it hard to believe that a South Asian can be anything other than a doctor, engineer or computer scientist, let alone a creative. But so jarring was this experience around Western perspectives of people of color with uncommon names, that I had to do something. Letter of rejection from Medium aside, the social reawakening in America around #BlackLivesMatter, along with a request from a friend to publish his writings, led me to turn a little tape blog into a radical publication.

MLK Jr. 5'x6' Watercolor @yungrama

I remember thinking that starting a publication around social justice, diversity of ideas and critical of technology, from the heart of Silicon Valley, could be bad for my career — I didn’t care and had little to lose so… I still think the best thing I’ve written was “A Letter to Peter Thiel about Diversity,” where I pen a letter pretending to be a South Asian tech fanboy who is confused about Thiel’s views on “The Diversity Myth.” It played out his/my cognitive dissonance between his/my love for Thiel but his/my feelings of rejection as a person of color — so much so that he/I drew a watercolor portrait of his anti-idol.

I launched Absurdist sometime in January, with the support of a few trusted people, Ethan Avey and George Babu, deciding that I would bring issues that needed representation, here to Medium, in a clever way. I figure, if you’re going to fail, fail in a big way. But we didn’t fail. Quite the opposite, this is what the last 24 hours for Absurdist have looked like…

1. I moved back to Oakland
2. Got keys to Absurdist’s new HQ, 339 15th St, Oakland, CA
3. Met Ev William and talked briefly about our plans
4. Had David Pescovitz and others, tell me they were fans of Absurdist
5. Got Saul Carlin stoked on the future of “on demand publishing”
6. Hired Amol Ray as our new Editorial Director
7. Have one of our pieces reach the most recommended on Medium
8. Reach 5,000 followers on Medium

That’s not a bad run for a crazy idea borne out of pride, disempowerment & and a vision quest. If you’re wondering what the secret to building a popular publication on Medium…it’s populism. It’s not me but the writers we publish. It’s finding the voices that speak truth so clearly that it stands out from all the noise. It’s celebrating the diversity of thought that make our communities better. It’s being really honest about your story. Hope you will follow us as we build an even better Absurdist in the coming months.

A year ago today, I got a rejection letter from Medium.
How about that?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on publishing & social impact, @yungrama

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Brain waves and their potential for use as human biometric identification, which we first covered in 2013, have risen to the surface once again, as hacks, Internet hoaxes and scams, and phishing attacks have become all too common on the Web. Humanity knows the password isn’t secure enough to remain the universal standard forever Examining so-called ‘passthoughts’ can already serve as a way to distinguish humans, but a new study from Spain points to word meanings as a specific type of identifier. A team lead by Blair Armstrong, head of the Basque Center on Cognition, Brain, and Language, recorded the brainwaves of 45 individuals as they read through a list of 75 acronyms such as “DVD” and “FBI.” The team scored a 94% accuracy rating in using the brain waves of the patients to distinguish their identities.

Word meanings are often more “set in stone” in the brain than isolated memories, such as when a person trips and falls on a hard surface, or sprains an ankle sliding into first base in a college baseball game. Some memories haunt us with emotions we can’t shake. Other memories, once deemed horrific, serve as stepping stones to greater awareness of ourselves as time passes. While these memories (called episodic) can change over time as our interpretations of such events change, the meanings of words don’t change as often. We may find ourselves in a new career as compared with where we were five years ago. But the meaning Americans attach to the word “dollar,” or Europeans attach to the word “euro,” doesn’t change – even if currency exchange rates do.

Meanwhile, no two fingerprints are alike — but fingerprints, like passwords, can be manipulated with some know-how and mastery. Hackers have shown in recent days how fingerprint scanners, such as the ones on the Apple iPhone 6 and Samsung Galaxy S5, can become targets for hackers. Fingerprints are more secure than passwords, and especially passcodes (which often have just four numerals). But fingerprints are still subject to possible extrapolation from the surface of mobile devices. Passthoughts can’t be visibly touched, but reside within an individual.

To make the case against fingerprint security, Armstrong recounts a 2005 Malaysian carjacking where a victim’s fingers were cut off to gain access to his car starter that was fingerprint-guarded. With Apple’s and Google’s decisions to encrypt newer iOS (iPhone 6 and 6 Plus) and Android devices (Android M, with its native fingerprint security), consumers could find themselves in legal situations where they’re prompted to register their fingerprint to unlock a device for law enforcement access. Such evidence uncovered during a fingerprint unlock event could be used in American courts to indict or convict a suspect. Passthoughts could not be subjected to legal statutes as easily.

Passthoughts could become the measuring standard for biometric identification in the days and months ahead, but the concept needs some work before becoming a form of mainstream security. Could brain waves indict an individual in the future? We sure hope not, since the acronym “IRS” would betray the thoughts of every American taxpayer alone come April 15th.

By Lucy Dotson

I got sick of holding nebulous, time-consuming meetings. So I asked three design managers how they approach the meeting problem.

Design practitioners love to loathe meetings, and I’m as guilty as the last. Meetings mean more time spent talking, and less time spent designing. They often involve explaining old ideas rather than generating new ones. At their worst, meetings waste time and drain project momentum.

A great meeting, on the other hand, is like an espresso shot: brief and energizing. It provides everyone with a clear understanding of the project goals, each person’s role and responsibilities, and the immediate next action.

If your meetings elicit eye-rolls, vacant stares and covert texting, you’re in luck. You can take a few steps to dramatically improve the experience for designers and non-designers alike.

I reached out to four design managers at successful mid-sized startups to learn how they approach design meetings. Here are a few steps to get you going:

First, determine if the meeting is necessary.

Sometimes a meeting lacks momentum because it doesn’t actually need to happen. Figuring out what people hope to get from a proposed meeting is an important first step.

Jono Lee, Lead Product Designer at Disqus

“Before putting a meeting on the calendar, I ask around to make sure it’s actually necessary. I’ll ask myself why I want to hold the meeting in the first place, and identify a specific goal. Then, I consider whether the goal is achievable through a quick chat, a meeting, or another channel. I only set up a meeting if I know that we will get something out of it in the end.”

Andy Montgomery, Head of Design at Recurly

“One of my core philosophies around design and leading other designers is doing everything I can to let my team focus. Fewer meetings yields more focus, and more focus yields good design work. I try to keep meetings at a minimum, so my designers can make good design decisions, immerse themselves in the work, and iterate to create good work.”

Then, define high-level goals and an agenda.

High-level goals can guide your team through the murky parts of a complicated meeting. In addition to defining what work to talk about, define values and what you want to achieve.

Jono Lee, Disqus

“I start [preparing for a meeting] by clearly delineating a specific goal. I send out material beforehand, and make sure that everyone reads it. People tend to focus on what’s in front of them (a button color, a line length), so before I show stakeholders anything, we talk through the high level goals.”

Andy Montgomery, Recurly

“An agenda that delineates what’s happening and what you want to accomplish is essential to a successful meeting. It looks something like: the purpose of the meeting, a productive period in the middle, and then discussing next steps. I hold meetings early on in the process, so that everyone can get clear on the project goals, the problem we’re trying to solve, and a few potential solutions. In these early meetings, the team gets the tools and answers they need to move forward.”

Strike a balance between talking and doing.

A common complaint about meetings is that they eat into productive work time. Incorporating workshop elements into your meetings boosts engagement and excitement.

Bryan Keller, Director of User Experience at Adaptly

“My favorite types of meetings are workshops. In a typical meeting, the conversation takes place in one dimension — only one person can talk at a time, and there’s not much that people can put their hands on. UX problems are difficult to work through in one dimension. Whereas meetings are generally boring and unproductive, good workshops are fun and very productive.”

Jono Lee, Disqus

“A good meeting walks the line between talking and doing. The project lead is responsible for facilitating decisions and shepherding the project through all stages. At some point in a meeting, you’ll have to come to a decision, and sometimes it’s hard for people to do that. The project lead can drive that decision-making by bringing people’s attention back to the goals at hand.”

Andy Montgomery, Recurly

“When in a design meeting, start whiteboarding as quickly as possible. It provides both documentation and structure for the conversation, and it keeps the meeting from spiraling elsewhere. When in doubt, you can return to the board and point to things.”

Break bad habits.

If you’ve been holding bad meetings for a while, your team may have developed corresponding bad habits. If so, you may need to reset behaviors either inside or outside of the scheduled meeting time.

Bryan Keller, Adaptly

“If the team has developed bad habits around meetings, it’s helpful to put a working agreement in place. Establish some ground rules you can all agree on. For instance, if not enough people show up to a meeting within 5 minutes of the scheduled start time, then the meeting gets rescheduled. There should only be one conversation happening at a time. No phones or laptops allowed, and so on. Make sure everyone knows and can see these rules.”

Andy Montgomery, Recurly

“Occasionally in a meeting, people get into a cycle of opinion expressing. When that happens, I go back to the goals, and lean on them pretty heavily. I also require designers to be articulate about the decisions they make. This encourages them to reach out to stakeholders to get answers, and ultimately leads to greater precision.”

Want to be featured on Designers Say? Email me at lucy@tradecrafted.com.

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