“Don’t promise what you can’t deliver,
and deliver everything you promise.”
Richard Branson

Sir. Richard was talking about brand when he said this, but it fits into any customer service situation such as designing and developing websites for clients. Recently, I’ve been involved in projects where we end up breaking our backs trying to accomodate near-constant change request from clients while not moving, or being allowed to move, our milestone dates for completion.

The situation becomes increasingly unsustainable, a certain amount of flex in inevitable in all projects and we do build contingency into our timescales to accommodate a reasonable amount of delay and minor changes but we need to be more careful when managing our clients during the build to ensure these change requests don’t become overwhelming by being up-front, honest and most of all, firm but fair with the client by asking them to make the decision of how they’d like these changes to affect their project. For example: If a raft of content changes come through, can they do these themselves when the site goes live? if not, are they willing for their go-live date to move back a day or two to accomodate this extra work.

“Complexity is your enemy. Any fool can make something complicated. It is hard to keep things simple.”
Richard Branson

This is something our clients, more often than not, are completely unaware of. Simple is hard, especially when it comes to websites and there are so many aspects which need to be treated with care an attention that are seen in the end as an “easy to use website”. I’m wondering about the best method to communicate this to our clients, any ideas?

And finally, this isn’t in the book but I came across it recently and it struck a chord with me:

“Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.”
Albert Einstein

Do you have any favourite quotes or mantras? Reply below and share them!

First, let me state, this isn’t a fanboy post, I don’t actually care that the device is from Apple, I’d have the same opinions if this was released by any other manufacturer.

I’ve lost count of the number of people who have said “I already have a phone and a laptop, why would I want this?”, which to me is like saying “I already have a car and my legs, why would I want a push bike?”. The answer is: You might not need this! This product, just like any other consumer electronic product is not meant for absolutely everyone on the planet, you might not need it, so why publicly moan that Apple hasn’t released something you absolutely positively have to have to make your life complete?

The iPad isn’t meant to replace your laptop, or your phone, it’s a coffee table device. Something that sits in your living room for when you need it, maybe you pick it up to look through your TV guide and set some programs to record on your Sky+ without messing about with the remote control, maybe you sit with your partner and do your weekly food shop from the sofa, or flip through your DVD collection to find a film to watch which when you’ve found one, starts playing on the TV at the tap of the pad, if it’s getting late and you’ve not finished the movie, take the device upstairs and carry on watching the film from where you left it. It’s for those tasks and situations where a laptop is just too much.

On a morning it might be sat in a cradle on your bookshelf, a large format display tells you the weather forecast, the headlines and your schedule / to-do list for the day while you’re sat across the room eating your cereal. In the evening it might stay in the cradle and act as a photo frame pulling photos from your families Flickr accounts like most WiFi frames do these days.

The applications while travelling are fairly obvious, you might want to take a laptop with you if you want to work, but for most trips you might take your iPad instead, sat on the beach with it in a (relatively) water and sandproof case which would be more possible with this device than a laptop.

Yes, your iPhone can do a lot of this already but browsing, reading or watching for extended periods of time isn’t comfortable, and it’s not meant to be. You wouldn’t take an iPad with you everywhere you went, I think most of the time it would sit in your living room and do most of the things you’d normally sit on your laptop and do in a casual-computing form.

“gestural interfaces will eventually change the way we work,
these are the first steps.”

For me, as a designer I can also see me taking this to client meetings to demonstrate website designs, or to re-work flowcharts or information architectures by dragging things about with the client. Yes, a laptop can do this, but that’s not the point, gestural interfaces will eventually change the way we work, these are the first steps.

Too many people are concentrating on what the iPad does *right now* and not thinking about what the device will be capable of once the developers get their hands on it. You’re going to moan about multitasking but I’ll put money on that being supported down the line.

This, to me, is the first consumer product that starts to really demonstrate the technologies that Microsoft envisioned in this amazing video which I saw at dConstruct.

Opinions? Want to call me an idiot? feel free, the comment box is below