Grateful

I am grateful for a well-paying job. I read today that more than 6 million Americans are out of work, many of whom are well qualified and have been searching for 1-2 years. I complain that I don't like my work, but in reality, I have great pay and benefits, I don't work overtime, and I generally enjoy my co-workers. Life is really not bad. I am building my safety net in case I become a statistic, but I doubt I will due to the company doing so well. I am lucky. No, fortunate. And blessed. And grateful today for all that I do have.

But this doesn't mean I will stop searching for something better, something more suitable to me. I would love to teach ESL. I would love to write human interest stories and business articles. Perhaps even write about travel. It's finding an editor that's the hard part. I have yet to get a response, but it's a numbers game and a research and focus game. I need to apply myself better. As for teaching, one application to one school won't cut it. I need to get certified this winter, and I need to refocus on a long-term game plan and apply for all opportunities, even if they are part-time at night with no benefits. That's okay. I will make it, and I am giving myself one year to make this change.

Next July, I really want to have moved on from supply chain and business analysis to teaching and writing.

Can I do it? If I truly focus, research, network, apply, and give it all I've got, I believe I can get freelance gigs and make connections in the academic world. Not sure I can land a job by then, given the tight job market and education cuts in Washington and elsewhere. But I sure will try, because I believe I was meant to help people, and language and writing are my passions.

Here I go!!

It's time to chase dreams

Web content and digital media was a big focus in grad school, but I quickly realized I had no desire to make a career out of it. Search marketing, online content and web design do not strike me as interesting enough to spend time on, so I've moved on.

I am still forecasting sales for a big brand name (and thoroughly enjoying its consumables!) but this train has rolled into the station, and the engine is revving up to move on.

I'm searching slowly, methodically, attempting to not make the same mistakes as in the past - jumping from one job to another, thinking it will be better. I have to find the right fit for me, aside from pay, benefits, and other "responsible" reasons.

It is time to chase dreams.

While only an average student in school, I always excelled in writing and language learning. There was usually someone more talented than me, but I enjoyed those subjects so much so that I could write essays on the fly, and really do well.

I scored one of the highest possible points on the Graduate Record Exam's essay section. I wrote a grad school thesis on Indoesian telecom policy reform strong enough to be accepted to an academic conference, where I presented and defended in front of a seasoned academic audience. No PhD required:-)

I freelanced a handful of times for a local community paper, but somewhere along the path I lost momentum. Rarely had I felt that elated happiness I felt when seeing my name in print, even though I was paid very little. The money had almost nothing to do with it. So why am I stuck in a cube in an office doing something which bores me after one hour?

Honestly, why?

Time to scale that wall and chase what makes me feel more satisified day to day.

Where did the time go?

What can I say to make up for 7 months? Summer came and went. I worked hard at my new forecasting position, traveled on 3 business trips, spent a week in Michigan, and then September hit. Turkey! It was awesome. I can't believe I finally got to see Istanbul. I even got to travel throughout western Turkey. I was so pleasantly surprised how beautiful it was, how friendly the people were, and how much history is there to explore. Two days after I got back, work and school started up. It has been non-stop ever since. Tonight I finally finished my final assignment for the quarter - a 25-page Ethics paper. Exhale...

Readability

A firey sun set slowly beyond the Olympics tonight. The sky was a blue-grey blanket of clouds that reached just beyond the city and the sound. It was awesome.

Anyway, on with the reading.
Legibility, ease of reading, and ease of understanding are how George Klare described readability in 1963. True, his lack of mentioning usefulness is one way to differentiate Web readability from traditionally paper-read formats. The author of the assigned article translates "readability" into "audience analysis", an idea with which I agree. But I would not readily agree with Zibell's statement that the only path to success online is to make sites trivially easy to use. Yes, designers should focus on the audiences' exact goals and lead them directly to their specific desires. Yes, the only path to online success is to design for the users. We've discussed this at length already. But every site, every audience, every designer demands a different experience.

To that end, design will channel users' wants and needs in endless directions; some audiences will not gravitate toward trivially easy-to-use Web sites. They will demand the opposite. Or they will demand a mix. Albeit Zibell's article is five years old and Web design has since metamorphosed into more sophisticated, intriguing designs and more savvy audiences. But I think her idea about simplicity is too, well, simple. She makes a good point, but to a certain extent, I disagree. (In several articles we've read, authors have made blanket statements that don't always apply to every situation. This is another example.)

Breaking down Web site design to its most fundamental forms, and funneling all attention to the most specific areas is good design. But the relative meanings of fundamental and specific vary from audience to audience. All Web sites and all audiences require similar attention and end results, but they also vary in form and content. And they should vary. Designers and writers should continuously strive for creative, thoughtful approaches to their crafts in the online world, but not be so obsessed with keeping users' attention that they omit useful information. Sometimes more information is better. Even online. Even to the extent of causing some clutter sometimes. It all circles back to the audience and the goals of the Web site.

No ideas should be left behind yet. Simplicity definitely matters in design, but it can also kill potentially great work. The more ideas and new approaches to Web design and online writing that are implemented, the better off we'll all be. I guess what scares me about the simplicity concept is the idea that so many designers and writers focus too much on dumbing down their work for the least savvy users. I say we should strive more for the middle of the road, so online writing and designing doesn't end up like mainstream American broadcast journalism in the past 15 years; we don't want to simplify to the point of simply trying to keep people's attention with trivial, useless crap. Whatever content we add to our Web sites, it should be meaningful to the audience; that doesn't always translate into trivial and easy to read.

Digital Asset Management

Digital Asset Management is an important topic for organizations trying to keep control of the flow and organization of their digital media assets. And if they aren't spending time thinking about it now, they will need to do so very soon. Most content, including files, emails, records, correspondance, memos, financial documents and many other types of content need to be stored appropriately so the data is not lost. Employees need to be able to easily access archived or filed information without taking all day to do so. Legal departments need to track who can access which digital content, when, and how. Companies today are concerned with who is able to access their confidential information. They are concerned with losing valuable digital documents. In fact, an entire industry is now in place to support both large and small organizations in tracking their hard and soft files, organizing and archiving them, supporting privacy, and knowing when to let go of old files.

The problem now is keeping pace with technology. Many companies are not up to speed in terms of understanding available archiving systems and digital content rights and restrictions. Organizations also need to maintain control and understanding of the legal aspects of sharing or restricting digital content.

Fixity versus Fluidity

David M. Levy's paper on Document Stability and New Media is yet another unique take on the rapid transitions happening within digital media. He argues that the commonly accepted notion of all communicative documentation moving from fixity to fluidity is false. He says the claim arises from a misperception of the nature of documents, both on paper and in digital form. Paper (books, papers, manuscripts) is not necessarily stable, permanent, or inactive. Digital documents are not necessarily unstable, fluid, or changeable. The more I read, the more interesting the topic became.

Levy says fixity is not forever, and the speed and the ways in which documents change are governed by the purposes they serve. Documents provide variable fixity for a purpose. In terms of hypertext documents, we as a culture need to work out what is fixed, why, for whom, and when and how it can be changed. For those who believe we are completely transitioning from fixed to fluid, their argument is based more on the increase in the rate of change than on a loss of fixity. Everything is just happening faster. To that end, it is imperative that we come up with creative alternatives to our current archiving systems. The Library of Congress, universities, and other organizations need to focus now on preservation of digital photos, papers, books, hypertexts and other formats.

I like the author's example of Joyce's Ulysses. The novel was written over the course of seven years, with hand-written notes; it was typeset by non-English speaking printers; at least 18 editions have been published; but the average reader may believe Ulysses is, and always has been, one fixed document. Fixity and fluidity are relative. They can either conflict with or complement each other.

In terms of hypertext, no two readers need follow the same path. In comes fluidity. We have to consider that the readers and visitors of our Web sites may not start of the same page; but we are responsible for keeping them fully informed, regardless of which pages within the site they visit.

The author argues that the desire for versioning comes from the desire to keep something fixed. And the presence of and need for versioning is sufficient in itself to challenge the claim that fixity has disappeared from hypertext. Interesting.

Ultimately the hypertext developer, the author, and the reader all have choices. They can decide what is fluid and what is fixed. The two are interchangeable; I agree with the Levy's premise. I think one's view on fluidity versus fixity depends on purpose and on point of view.

Aesthetic Design

Aesthetic design affects every aspect of our lives, from our homes to our personal style to our judgments to our choice of retailer to our trust in a Web site. In Emotion Design, Don Norman raises interesting and legitimate points from research studies conducted on the connection between affect, emotion and cognition. My question is this: What is the definition of attractive? Sure, studies found attractive things make people feel good, which makes them relaxed and creative, which makes it easier for people to find solutions to problems they encounter because they're less focused on something that frustrates them, and more open to ideas. But stating that attractive things work better still seems false. Attractive things can sometimes seem to work better because of people's positive perceptions. And attractive is a relative term. In Web design, it's more important to fully research and speak to the audience in whatever style they want, rather than focus on making it easy or attractive. It is too loosely defined that way.

The article referred to the Japanese study on ATM machine interfaces, which reminds me of an anecdote. When I first arrived to teach English in Japan, the school's American manager took me to the bank to set up an account, and introduced me to an outdoor Japanese ATM machine. I could not read all the Japanese kanji on the keys, so I asked him how to check my balance. He told me, "Just keep hitting buttons until money comes out." I looked at him, and he was completely serious. I eventually figured it out, but I wonder how he survived. Some people.