(Link)

This is actually a difficult question – which philosophical texts are best for beginners? But it’s also one that I get asked pretty regularly. I typically suggest starting with Plato, and occasionally delve a bit deeper into the topic, but admittedly haven’t devoted the thought and attention it really deserves to give a proper answer.

Sorry. I cannot read past that, it makes me shudder. Honestly, the best way to learn philosophical thinking is to question, anything and everything. Then go to a book store, to the philosophy section (or religion or semiotics or anything else that sparks inspiration) and look for a book or title that fascinates you. Read that. Go from there. A path will open itself, coz philosophers have the (sometimes) annoying tendency to quote one another. Boom, rabbit hole.

Honestly, start with the classics if you want to show off. They are important to read if you study philosophy I guess, academically. But all thoughts are always repeated, so if Plato speaks your language cool, if you prefer something more modern, try Nitzsche (also his poems which are beautiful and unjustly maligned). The ideas don’t change, the wonders don’t change. The language does change and the people writing it.

And make an effort to seek out women / differently gendered thinkers. They are you there. And usually better thought out.

My last priest, the one who performed my Confirmation, told me a great wisdom: every thought is a prayer, because God, no matter their name, their number or their ascribed actions, lives in everything we do, in us, so every thought is a word in gods ears, a mirror (perhaps darkly) of our self.

Philosophy is like the air we breath and the food we eat. Everything is philosophy, everything is thought. And if you have a faith, a prayer.

For an academic or perhaps a young intellectual, I may be too tainted by Sophie’s World (the book, which remains amazing).

In the end, we all ask ourselves, why those dancing shadows on the walls are reborn every morning and how we can escape that endless cycle.

2020/2/4 – 5, to and inspired by Anna!

Hi, I am Philipp.

I am a unicorn who started out as a dressmaker, then learned Photoshop and consequently web design, moved on to Front End Development and web analytics and finally morphed into a Project / Team and Operations Manager. Currently I am once again focused on UX / UI Design and Front — End development, while project managing my own design sprints.

The important part here is:

I am a unicorn [...]

(Hi, I am looking for a job as UX designer, or realted ideally in Tokyo, and I am happy to code HTML / CSS as well, if needed, my portfolio can be found on my site. 😃)

She wanted to know why I am starting with “I am a unicorn”.

There are 2 reasons:

1. My skills and experiences are rather unique, as I hope I outline in the paragraph above. I do not have a traditional education, I am fully autodidactic and (sadly) I am not specialised in anything. That makes me perfect for Startup jobs, because I can fill a lot of roles, but startups are a rate thing where I live, in Japan and I have to imagine that in most other countries my skill set(s) are also not very common.
2. I am a (mediocre*) white man. That means, in tech I am pretty much the norm and I need to stand out if I want to be able find work and not go under in a sea of people looking like me. — In order to work, I need to stand out in a busy and competitive market.

My “Brand” name / logo “taotsu” or 田小津 (in Kanji in Japanese and I really with Medium Engineering would support ruby text input) was originally a joke, but turned into an ideal branding exersise. Most of what you can find with DuckDuckGo (or google if you must) when looking for ‘taotsu’ is me.

Though, self branding like this does not work with recruiters to introduce me to prospective employers (👋🏻); it’s too unique. Being unique (or better rare) in my skill set led to unique → unicorn.

I am not all rainbows and sunshine, but I do bring a lot of fun and laughter to the table and skills to the team.

Branding is important, especially if from the outside, one does not look particularly interesting.

* One note on mediocrity: most people are mediocre and either do not care or do not know. Some can overcome it by sheer luck and doing the right thing at the right time. Others need to work hard to overcome.

I am working every day to not fall back into lukewarm mediocrity: I study, work, listen, engage and fight inequality. And not to say: hey I’m better then you, but to satisfy my need for knowledge and self improvement.

Before writing about my (experience based) how to, let me address why working with stakeholders instead of convincing them.

If you are focused on convincing someone about something it is usually, because you are in a real or perceived adversarial relationship (commonly it’s the latter). Instead of trying to come to a shared goal, you are trying to bring them around, show them the light, tell them what’s right.

This can surely work, but you have to start over at every step of the way and gaining someone’s trust is so much harder.

Working with stakeholders expressly means you try to pull in the same direction. It does not mean you will agree at all times and you must not just follow their wishes. But it is a good basis to come to a shared understanding, build on a shared set of values and in turn, manage to have a good and speedy process to come to an agreement.

There will always be stakeholders who need to be convinced, but do not allow this to become the modi operandi. Instead work towards working together and arrive at a common set of rules and understanding.

When you start working with a new shareholder, first try to understand their needs and their frame of reference.

You could start by asking the following questions:

• What is their frame of reference (a business mindset, an engineering standpoint or a design framework of thought)?
• What is their most important goal (a KPI, a timeline, a price, etc.)?
• How much do they know about the project? (Which is really important and difficult to ask, but a good question to establish trust, because you show you care.)
• What do they expect from you and how can and meet their expectations? (If their expectations are not realistic, guide them to an understanding. You will have to compromise and they do too. You will have to be careful, positive and make clear you will do your best to meet their expectations.)

For each question there may be a need to share information or discuss how to meet their needs and expectations; try to be prepared as much as possible.

If you need to push back on something, do so friendly and back up your reasoning with data and / or research. If you cannot do that, say so. And instead of letting this become a source of conflict, make clear you will follow up regularly and report and feedback on progress.

Doing so allows you to show them you are not just pushing opinions, but you are coming at a situation open minded and interested in archiving the common goal.

Finally make sure everyone is on the same page. It is quite natural to be short on time, so keep discussions short.

What can help is writing on a white board and erasing withdrawn ideas, keeping what is agreed upon.

Make sure to take notes, and compare them with minutes send out. If no minutes are taken, try to sum up what was decided and send it to everyone, so you can be sure you are all on the same boat.

When working in multilingual environments it may help a lot to compare notes with peers to make sure you got it right and of cause ask stakeholders to send comments.

This will likely still fail from time to time and there will be misunderstandings.

When that happens, remain positive and sort it out. That can be really hard (I’m a pessimist and I can be bone headed, so I’m struggling, too, but try and do not give up), but it’s worth it.

One note on ongoing relationships you might have: try the above if they went bad. If nothing helps, try to speak with peers and managers and if that does not help you might have to find another department or job.

But more often then not, a friendly question and a thank you can turn a shop around. 😄

To sum up: don’t be a fork, don’t sting. Be respectful, honest and always take care of yourself.

Working with stakeholders was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Chats are hard to code. Apparently there are no common best practices or common standards.

For my work at tripla, I needed to create a chat interface, which has a conversational, question and answer based interface, as well as actions, similarly to what you would find on Facebook, and other platforms.

Researching this, I found there is no common standard. There once was a <dialog /> element in HTML(5.0), but it never saw the day of light; before that we had the idea of using <dl /> (see What it should not be used for), leaving us with some wonky recommendations. (Example 9 would work in a flat conversation, but appears to not be applicable in this case.)

As chat widgets become a more and more a common occurrence, let me share my insights and approach in hopes it will help others.

The following were my requirements as I tried to find a sustainable solution:

• needs to clean and accessible code
• needs to be expandle
• needs to as accessible as possible (it works, but I need to put more effort into it)
• needs to work effortless with vue.js (the whole widget is a vue app)
• no div soup

First of all, what is that others are doing?

• Intercom: div — soup
• FB messenger: div — soup, but they at least use the <time /> element
• GetSiteControl: div soup with customised elements (they use a <w-div />, which I assume is based on some JS framework and utterly destroys any meaning a div might have)
• Chatwee: div soup (also, I have never heard of them before…)
• Slack: div soup with some inline elements

Nah, son!

Looking around for other possible solutions I compiled the following list for discussion with the companies Front End developers:

Using <blockquote />

Using <blockquote /> would only make sense, if we were quoting from other sources. This would work, whenever we want to repeat back what a customer has chosen (for example in an action), but it is not scalable as a general element to wrap each conversation piece. Plus, if we need to quote, a simple <q /> would suffice.

Also, always repeating the action a customer has taken is not great, as it does not make a for lively conversation.

Using <article>

From MDN:

The HTML <article /> element represents a self-contained composition in a document, page, application, or site, which is intended to be independently distributable or reusable (e.g., in syndication). Examples include: a forum post, a magazine or newspaper article, or a blog entry.

I took issue with independently distributable, because this is not the case. Pieces of a conversation are very quotable, but do not make sense as standalone content. Furthermore the html spec states:

A general rule is that the article element is appropriate only if the element’s contents would be listed explicitly in the document’s outline.

I did not feel this is the case here. On the one hand, the widget itself is not indexable. And on the other we do not create an archive, but an active conversation. Hence, this does not really meet requirements.

Finally: Using <figure />

To quote MDN:

The HTML <figure /> element represents self-contained content, frequently with a caption (<figcaption />), and is typically referenced as a single unit.

It is not perfect, because a piece of a conversation is hardly self-contained, but in combination with the group role, it should be good as we can use it for widgets as well:

Authors SHOULD use a group to form logical collection of items in a widget such as children in a tree widget forming a collection of siblings in a hierarchy, or a collection of items having the same container in a directory. [...]

Following this research and some discussions with our main Front End developer, we settled on this:

<figure role="group">
  <p>Here is a chat message from us.</p>
  <ul>
    <li>add actions, sliders, etc.</li>
  </ul>
  <figcaption>Name of Chatbot &ndash; <time datetime="2018–04–27T13:32:05">13:32</time></figcaption>
</figure>

<figure role="group">
  <p>Customer message</p>
  <figcaption><time datetime="2018–04–27T13:32:05">13:32</time></figcaption>
</figure>

Since a sizeable amount of messages includes images, <figure />was an obvious solution.

It does give the chats a much needed structure and with proper aria-roles, the whole thing is more accessible then not.

You can see it here in action, as well as in other places. It is not yet perfect and we do need to conduct more testing with text to speech, but it is on the right track.

If you know of or are coding a semantic & accessible chat widget, let me know here or on twitter. I am eager to learn more. 😄

Good designers write.

Good coders write.

I do fundamentally disagree with people who think that good design speaks for itself, simply because it’s a total misconception of reality.

Design is not created in a vacuum. Design is created in context and (imagery) conversation with the end user / customer / Developer (if there is one) / printer (if there is one) / engineer (if there is one), etc.

Good design needs documentation. And good documentation means good writing.

I am reworking my portfolio right now. It’s an exercise in writing as much as it is in pushing vectors and some pixels. It is also good training.

In my current job (as UX designer) I have to write a lot, even if I develop stuff myself. There will be people interacting with my designs, with my code. It should help them to know what I was trying to do.

But for crying out loud, as much as I love writing; keeping myself short (which makes for good and understandable documentation) is hard. I am a really bad editor. Hence, I sometimes really hate all the writing that comes with (good) design.

The one thing I sometimes really hate about good design is all the writing. was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Posters. As a child of East Germany, propaganda posters jump me.

There was:

• Responsive, responsive, responsive!
• Think around the corner!
• Speed speed speed!

And others. Singed as “Mickeys Voice” (mickey being Mikitani Hiroshi, Founder and CEO of Rakuten).

As is with all propaganda, everyone ignored them and most people did not even notice when they changed.

Speed. That one was big in Rakuten. Speed. Don’t loose time. Don’t waste time. Speed.

Fuck

Since I live in Japan and not Silicon Valley, I don’t know how much the scene there (or in Europe) is infested with this idea of speed. Here it’s a virus and basically an antidote to social ills (people work insane hours, but that’s mostly forced and inefficiency and another story).

I have worked here in many different companies, small to big, restaurants (as a dishwasher; literally), schools, startups and enterprise. The one shared value was speed.

Now, speed is a good thing. But speed must not equal haste. And here is the issue:

People mistake speed / haste as an antidote for taking too long, for not succeeding, for wanting to reach a goal faster.

Lets take any number of start ups here: they have fallen prey to the idea of living fast and dying rich (or young, which is more likely).

In the US that may mean: working long hours, sleeping on the floor (that happens in Rakuten too; Rakuten / Mickey like to see themselves as a startup), crunch, loads of energy drinks and not seeing your partner or friends for a while. All for the dream of gaining some stock options (not even equity, just options! 🖕🏻) and making it rich. The modernised version of the so called American dream that has ever only worked for a select few white men.

Anyway, in Japan the idea is much the same. If you are lucky and work for a founder of foreign shores, you might see crunch and relax times. (As it should be!)

You Might!

If you work for a Japanese startup, you are more likely to be trust into 8 to 10 hours a day crunch time, every work day. Japan has a word for death from overwork. You might also just not have holidays, sick days, etc.

You might just work for a Black Kigyō.

The results are of cause globally the same so I won’t list much here. Only:

• Quality does not exist
• You will never be happy working
• You might just die.

I have tried to counteract that in every company I worked in, as individual contributor, as a team member and as manager. Actually, I welcome deadlines and clear planning (yay scrum!) and I welcome working on a tight deadline if it makes sense, coz it can help me with being creative. (This project for Slush Tokyo was done in a couple of weeks and highly successful for example.) But no one can do that all the time. It’s insane.

Many founders, CTOs and CEOs have told me:

In a startup only speed matters.

The answer is obvious: 🖕🏻. But I generally like to respond:

Sorry, but you are mistaken. Sure speed is important, but not what matters most. Ideally you have a good and competitive idea, but to get anything of the ground, you need good execution.

Good execution means:

• Know what you want to do
• Plan well
• Build a good team
• Good fast when you have to and relaxed (not slow) when you can. And relaxed should be the majority of the time.

Of cause, with this you might not magick a unicorn company, but that chance is so small, that I won’t entertain it.

All of this is to say: if your boss / co-worker / friend or lover demands speed, it’s high time to move on.

And that, if you can, pronto.

Speed, speed, speed was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Things like this or this. Animations, flying in, flying out, spinning around.

I am old enough to remember the times when we had <marquee /> and <blink />. I also remember the blinking gifs, the geocities websites, etc.

We got rid of all that in some areas as those animations where simply too much. I really only understood that when my uncle was copying some data for me on a Floppy disk on his custom build PC, running Windows 95. He looked at the copying animation and exclaimed: this bloody animation probably burns through a lot of CPU cycles that could be spend on other stuff, like copying faster! (The fans were spinning loudly.)

I doubt he was right, but the animation made him feel like everything took longer then it could.

In Web design, we have used animations to show people something is happening. I remember the first time I saw some content dynamically loaded into a page with Ajax, while showing a spinner.gif. That was really impressive.

Nowadays (again looking at animation inspiration like here) I see 2 things that really really annoy me:

1. The trend goes to animate everything.
2. All the animations look the same.

Animating every interaction on a page looks cool, congrats for your portfolio, but it does not really serve a purpose. Personally I find it distracting and since many of those designs are for websites, I also worry about performance. Not even speaking of the dance one has to make to pull those animations of (coding time...) and potential accessibility issues.

iOS allows people to turn of animations for good reasons, they can be jarring, they might cause health issues and they can just also feel incredibly slow. We live in a time where we can preload content, where we do not have to wait.

I can see a clear value in transitioning pages, but if I see stuff like this:

I am getting concerned. Too much is moving, the content is getting lost and in the end I do not even know of sure what the content really is. I know that in reality this will likely be triggered by some interaction. But just watching this, I feel like we are marching forward some modernly designed geocities style dystopia.

As for all of them looking the same, go and check the Muzli UI Interactions of the week they publish each week. Just go the most recent one as of the time of writing.

I am always happy to see great design and many of the things they showcase look good. But if they are not usable, they should not be produced.

Since I cannot stop thinking, I meditate to music. (Thank the gods for Walkman / Diskplayers / MD players / the iPod!)

I figured that out in 1997 while on a trip to better mental health. Back then I was reading the Tao Te Ching and mostly listening to “Trip Hop”, Goth and Metal on an Aiwa Walkman (cheap) with AKG headphones (not cheap) usually recorded to 120 minutes tapes. The sound quality was really bad and with good ear and good cans even worse, but just like records, it had its own charm.

As I discovered, trying to clam to be able to meditate, the biggest success came with Marilyn Manson’s Antichrist Superstar and Tricky’s Pre Millennium Tension

Since then, my tastes have changed, things got different.

Nowadays these albums can calm me, both in meditation sessions and whenever I read shitty code, racist shit or when sexism is thrown around as if it was normal.

Here is a little list of things that relax me. It’s also a bunch of (partly maligned) great music.

• Tricky is still top
• Pre Millennium Tension.
• Nearly God
• Zeal & Ardor Devil is Fine (Avantgarde Black Metal / Blues / Gang Chain Chants, just buy it!)
• Deafheaven Sunbather (Avantgarde Metal)
• Alva Noto + Ryuichi Sakamoto Insen (electronic)
• Daphne Oram / Andrea Parker and Daz Quayle Private Dreams and Public Nightmares (Avantgarde, Musique concrète, Electronic)
• Opeth Morning rise (Avantgarde Death Metal)
• DJ Krush The Message at the Depth (Avantgarde HipHop)
• Cappablack Façades & Skeletons