I graduated with cum laude, I speak several foreign language and I’m not an idiot, but still they rejected me… I was lucky, there was a test which did not need any medical test…. I passed it and now I work as a local civil servant. I still had to take the medical test, but it was just for formality…. This is very rare, I cant imagine people who are completely color blind in Indonesia…….. live would be unfair to them.

Here, you can’t study science subjects, medical, even geography at college. Your world will be small…. what I can do in life is keep trying my best, live is short, options are limited…. just do the best in what ever your job……….

In order to , would like to .

Placing value first instead of last?

Brandon

I totally agree that the formal models tend to lend themselves very well to communication and in many cases, I think those models can be generated. If the model is used to communicate the architecture, that model can certainly be generated from the current codebase. The big advantage there is that it never gets out of date and is always “telling the truth” about the underlying application.

But Ben, I would argue that no matter what format you use, everything starts off as a blank canvas, a “whiteboard”.

“Whiteboards” in a room exist in physical space. Therefore, augmenting a “whiteboard” with a digital tool is really ideal. We are running projectors, video conference tools, and exploring using computer vision through a simple web cam wired with Processing or OpenFrameworks apps. Point is, it is digital technology ambivalent and can be extended very easily if needed.

Why “sketching” is effective in a collaborative setting is:
1. There is only so much you represent with a fat tipped marker on a smooth surface
2. It is accessible by anyone, instantly, and requires people to rely on simple semiotics to express themselves. It forces simplicity.
3. On a macro level, it is easy to erase.
4. It is inherently low-fidelity so when you are designing high level models, it forces you to look at high level assumptions.
5. Easily transferred to a schema or digital tool since it is almost always based on words (#2)

Why “sketching” is not-effective:
1. Limited by spacial constraints
2. No digital meta schema
3. Can not handle inherent complexity of systems design
4. It cannot be parsed
5. Once a modeling format becomes evident in the sketching, you are stuck with it.
6. It cannot handle the formal gestalts of information design when done with marker alone.

We did a session yesterday that involved a entire wall coated with a whiteboard surface. So it was huge, space wasnt an issue. We had several people modeling there understanding of a system on their own. Both of us were doing it differently, because we think differently. This is really why Larry Constantine is focused on driving the UML committee to extend the model into information design. It gives anyone the means to slap their own taxonomy onto s system. BUt back to the point here, one person was using markers and drawing lots of grids and 4 quadrant graphs, I was using multi-colored sticky notes and building affinity diagrams.

ALl well and good, I was happy to walk away from the meeting with a portable model of the system. The other person had to take a picture like you did. The problem with the latter is I have never seen anyone that wasnt in the meeting actually try and look at a whiteboard sketch captured as an image. I like stickies because i have a color, shape, and size nomenclature and it forces be to use semiotics in a very small space. It is also inherently adept and being parsed into a digital system, with UML, right after a meeting. That allows anyone to take the source material and do whatever they want with it.

When it comes to systems modeling, this is why formal USer Environment Design Diagrams are so useful. They are simple and can be expressed on a piece of paper, a whiteboard, or parsed into a formal meta schema through Visio.

I think I made some sort of point? The challenge is understanding the advantages and disadvantages of collaboration mediums, and focusing on the schema and use for distribution and aggregation into more complex representations. That first transposition of the whiteboard into something digital. That very first digital representation has to be useful to any kind of future collaborator, and instantly editable and extended in a way that is pushed through the system.

So, as a consultant, it is critical to focus on that inbetween step. When an analyst takes it into Visio, there is a “living organism” that precedes it that is the DNA of that system. I am exploring URI’s as the easiest way to handle this. It can be transformed into UML and XML and then consumed by any tool for any purpose and visualized in any manner.

I need to pick up that book and read it. I’ve browsed it, but haven’t read it cover-to-cover yet.

Thanks for pointing out your post

I wrote a post quite some time ago about the same topic. It’s based on popular author’s Timothy Ferriss’ distinction between effectiveness and efficiency. Check it out at: http://edgehopper.com/effectiveness-vs-efficiency/

Cheers,

Chris

Your post is both efficient and effective. But it is confusing.

Personally, I embrace chaos, chance, and difficult situations. Life is rich because it is flawed. I turned down the opportunity to take classes this summer at The Illinois Institute of Technology because the central project was about improving wayfinding in urban Chicago within a new version of ELITO research methods. I like getting lost, getting in trouble, and experiencing the unexpected. I think I read to much Henry Miller.

You are so deep into process Ben, you need to step back and look at what software and development are in the big picture within the concept of Progress and Survival. Neither of those things has anything to do with efficiency, good process, or effectiveness. It would be a very boring and predictable world if it was.

I would suggest reading “Holy Fire” by Bruce Sterling. Hope you are having fun up in Toronto. Make sure you go do design and art things while you there. The entire cyberpunk culture lives there now

I’ve been googling this and have found a bunch of sites that give you crazy walkthroughs on how to manually add the handlers….

I am glad I gave up on them thinking there must be an easier way! YOU ARE THE MAN! (or women)