Work Philosophy

Development

I ascribe to the 37signals school of thought on product development as can be read in their manifesto from 1999. Simply put, a product should be launched with minimal features. It should be built in a short amount of time and with minimal resources. Planning should take weeks instead of months; building should take months instead of years. After launch, feature updates should be made frequently and quickly based on need and user feedback after.

Using this method, instead of some of the more bloated methods adopted by many larger firms, I am able to produce many new products in a short amount of time and on a smaller budget. Some of these products will be successful, many will not, but because we use fewer resources and maintain shorter turn-around times, our successful projects become profitable more quickly. Because we don't invest as much into a new product, we are able to abandon it less painfully if it doesn't work. If it does work, we quickly throw more resources at it and improve upon the original.

When I hire developers, I look for someone who is fast on their toes and knowledgeable in multiple languages. Their code must be simple and clean and clear of redundancies. They need to be flexible and able to change directions quickly.

Design [in general]

Design is a marriage of images and words that work together to communicate. If the design doesn't communicate the message clearly, it is a failure - no matter how beautiful it may be.

However, ignoring beauty and creativity will cause a design to fail just as quickly. We are bombarded by thousands of messages every day. Only those that are inventive and unique can grab our attention.

Design software is inexpensive and allows anyone to claim to be a graphic designer. However, filters and effects aren't solutions to design challenges. When I hire designers, I make sure that they are disciples of the basic tenets of design.

Web design

More than any other medium, it is difficult to design for the web. Not everyone sees things in exactly the same way. Everyone has a different combination of operating system, browser (model and version) and internet connection and each of these can affect the way a user views everything from web sites to videos.

I insist on web design that is clean and follows closely (but not too closely) to W3C standards. All work must be checked on multiple browsers and platforms and must be optimized for search engines.

Web designers who can't hand-code need not apply.