“The Guy” is a concept I heard about years ago. The Guy is that one person that the company absolutely cannot live without — The Guy cleans up the messes, works incredible hours, fixes things no one else can fix, and is indispensable. If The Guy is on vacation, work doesn’t get done. If The Guy gets sick, or has a family emergency, no one’s sure how to pick up The Guy’s work.
Thing is, no company over a certain size should have a The Guy. I’ve seen many situations over the years where The Guy was the result of a manager who didn’t want to staff up or provide adequate support, which forced The Guy develop. I’ve also seen many situations where people made themselves The Guy by putting so much personal pressure on themselves that they became The Guy just because.
Neither of those is healthy. My July 12 post on The Interconnected explains why, and what to do about it.
I’m doing a lot of writing design guidelines at work right now — essentially codifying in words the things we’re already doing. Paving the cowpaths if you will.
My June 28 post on The Interconnected is about where to put design guidelines when you write them, what application to write them in, what to put in them, and why nobody’s going to read them but you.
My June 2 post on The Interconnected came from a conversation at work about how some “hot” new design projects were really just a way to suck money out of people… and how it reminded me a lot of modern art which was intended to shock and cost money, but not really add anything valuable to anyone’s lives.
It also touches on some accessibility elements — like the fact that many As Seen on TV products are actually products that solve problems for people with disabilities that the rest of us benefit from.
A screenshot of two items in my grocery store’s online ordering system. One is red, the other green. Guess which one is on sale?
Colors carry the weight of a culture with them whether we like it or not. They also carry the weight of the user’s previous experience.
My grocery ordering system, Peapod.com, is doing a fantastic job of proving this true, to their detriment, right now. I’m in America, where red means “stop” or “don’t do it” or “negative consequences”. In the financial industry, for example, it’s generally used for a market loss (generally considered a bad thing). In traffic, it means stop. In the office, it means “power” or “aggression” – men wear their red power ties and a woman in a red dress is trying to stand out.
Only in our Chinese (or similar) neighborhoods is it considered lucky or good.
Green on the other hand, means many positive things – a gain in the financial markets, the ability to “go” in traffic, a soothing and natural and back-to-nature feel in most other things. Green paint is calming, green foods are healthy, green means good.
And yet… maybe to give all prices a sense of good?… all of the prices of food at Peapod are in a green font. That’s an interesting design challenge right there. If someone insists all prices are good, and green indicates good, then it makes sense that all prices would be green. But then when something goes on sale, that’s better than good… but there is no greener green (or at least Peapod doesn’t use one)… so items on sale are… red?
The red certainly stands out against a sea of green prices, but rather than encouraging me to buy, it throws me off. I don’t want the red thing, red is bad, except here red is good, so I do want the red thing, but red is bad, and ow my head hurts.
If it were me, and it’s not, I’d fight hard for “normal price” being black and “sale” being green and maybe “super sale” being extra bright green or something. Because fighting an entire culture of learned experience in a design is a difficult position to win.
