Howells.

As perhaps some of you know, I run a small web design and development agency called Kulör, based in London and I have been working under this moniker since later 2010. It was born out my want to work in a collaborative way with many superb designers and developers I have met via siteInspire.

But when I say it’s a small agency, it really is. In fact it’s just me. As such operating under the name has never felt totally comfortable, since it felt like an attempt to look and feel bigger than it really was. Having to explain this to almost everyone I met and discussed it with was difficult.

From today, Kulör is no longer going to operate as a brand, and instead I’m going to operate under my own name since ultimately, all my clients deal with just me, and I am responsible for every part of the work I create.

It also marks a new way that I want to work. When I look at the projects I’m most proud of and enjoy, it’s clear that the direction I want to move towards is the building of compelling user and editorial platforms and apps. Increasingly I want to work with startups and established companies in a consultative manner to help them realise their ideas and ambitions using technology, and help give ideas form and function through prototyping and refinement.

I want the new Studio section of this website to convey more transparency. It no longer uses the “Royal We”: ultimately I prefer my clients to understand that it’s essentially just me that they’re dealing with. At the same time however I’m still as keen as ever to collaborate on projects, and I’m always open for discussion with designers or developers to explore new projects.

So please do get in touch with me if you have any ideas or projects to explore: I always love hearing from interesting people and companies.

I stumbled on a new UX testing approach which is drastically simple. My testbed was my network for creatives, Fiftytwo.

Firstly, I removed the Activity Feed because I (wrongly) suspected it of borking the server, and wasn’t sure how many people used it to navigate content. Almost immediately, lots of people emailed and tweeted asking where it had gone and how to get back to it. I reinstated the Activity Feed shortly after.

Secondly, I recently removed the “Things” functionality, which allowed users to share bits and pieces of content that wasn’t their own, but which interested them that during a given week. Absolutely nobody noticed: no emails, no tweets. Therefore, that piece of design and functionality should never have existed in the first place.

Instead of pontificating how to simplify your product to its bare essentials, don’t ask anybody and just get rid of aspects of your product; albeit temporarily (just remove links to the resource in your views, for instance). You’ll soon find out if was worth being there.

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These sorts of things don’t sit well with me because I worry that I’m not offering any new worthwhile opinions or content (versus it just being a self-promotional thing), but SAY Media kindly invited me to say a few things on their blog, Say Daily, mainly about siteInspire and general web design-y things.

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I have just returned home after returning the keys to the manager of the office I occupied in Clerkenwell for all of last year.

It was in a very charming former clock factory, now called Clerkenwell Workshops. It was full of charming little companies, from television production studios, to the HQ of a betting website, with a sprinkle of graphic design studios in there for good measure. There was plenty of exposed brickwork, and wooden floors. The Clerkenwell Kitchen (which is needless to say, charming) was situated there: a place that – to Alex Nelson’s surprise – only served organic cola (I had no idea there was such a thing).

All very nice. But recently I decided to let the lease lapse, and end my tenancy. Here’s why:

When I started the lease on the office in December 2010, I had an awful lot of projects on the go. Suddenly I felt I was struggling to cope without needing to hire some designers and developers full time, and as such I needed a space to call my own. The studio was small-ish – about 270sq/ft – but could fit about 5 people comfortably: a perfect place to grow into slowly.

But as the weeks and months progressed, my ability to juggle projects and get work done helped by awesome – remote – freelancers increased. As suddenly as I thought I needed a physical space for the studio, I dreaded the idea of hiring, bringing with it the pressure of responsibility, National Insurance contributions, and keeping track of sick days.

The idea of running a traditional studio was now as appealing as my various, old roles in corporate-dom. I’d lose the time I had to learn and develop, and to keep my hand in all the projects I execute. I’d have to take on projects I didn’t find interesting to maintain overhead (and I should say, keeping a studio in Clerkenwell isn’t cheap…).

So clearly the best course of action was to share the space with the awesome people I have been lucky to work with. Rik Lomas, Al Monk, Gemma Leigh, Severin Furneaux and Lawrence Brown all worked from the studio at various points during the year.

Co-working Spaces

Whilst sharing the space was fun, fundamentally the space wasn’t designed to be – and could never be – “a co-working space”. But with that term thrown around so often it’s often tricky to pin down what it means.

The mighty Studiomates in DUMBO is what I consider a co-working space. Everything else that markets itself as a co-working space, don’t come close.

Studiomates is a community led by Tina and her gang of fun, inclusive, cross-discipline creatives and do-ers. It is the too-ing and fro-ing of interesting people doing interesting things that makes the place so exciting. The space itself (as enormous and cool as it is) becomes relegated and invisible.

It’s this community that is missing from the self-styled co-working spaces that have popped up in New York and London over recent years. With some notable exceptions (New Work City, for instance), the community – or even simply, the “feeling” – is missing. A sea of reproduction Eames furniture and carefully designed desks doesn’t make a successful co-working venue; it’s the community that uses and underpins the space.

I’m not dismissing the usefulness of such places. After moving from my office I signed up with the excellent Club Workspace (in the basement of Clerkenwell Workshops), but I see it more as a drop-in center where I can use the wifi and drink as much of the free coffee as my nerves can handle. Sadly, the furtive whispers of the huddled people in each corner of the space isn’t enough for me to spend all my day there.

So let’s create a co-working space!

Actually, no, let’s not.

I’ve learnt that co-working spaces are organic things that can’t be started like an engine. The conditions under which a successful co-working space can thrive have to be right. The balance of people, projects, want and will all have to be tended first. That’s what Tina has worked on for years.

Further, the economics of setting such a space in London can be tricky. Recently, Ben Stott and I briefly looked at some numbers. A Central-ish location in London can be staggeringly expensive, and that’s before the Vitsœ shelving installation is taken into account. Without guaranteed sublets, the investment required suddenly looks a touch vertiginous.

So with that said – and while day-dreaming of the perfect collaborative space in which sees stuff happening – I’m looking forward to gate-crash various spaces, studios, and offices over the next few months. Hopefully along the way I’ll meet and work with the people who’ll one day help make it happen.

I’m very happy to announce the launch of a new website that I have been working on with my girlfriend Cecilia.

Cecilia is an insanely good cook, and The Whole Food Diary chronicles her culinary exploits through a series of articles and recipes. The focus is on cooking with whole/raw ingredients with as little processing as possible. And while the blog is principally vegetarian, I can guarantee that – as a carnivore – every recipe is as satisfying as you could ever hope for.

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A recent flurry of tweets spoke to something that really frustrates the dickens out of me: people who are self-employed or who run their own firms, publicly complaining about one or more of the following things:

• Having too many emails in their inbox, saddened at how they can’t possibly reach “inbox zero” today.
• Just how late it is on a Sunday and how much they still have to do, asking rhetorical questions as to why nobody else is working late on a weekend.
• How clients are taking up way too much of their time.

I don’t want to contradict what I said in my previous post about only following/connecting with people you feel don’t whinge, but it’s disappointing that often the same people who complain about work also share superb content and start great conversations.

It comes down to this: if you have decided to work for yourself, it was your choice. And you should be thankful you’re in a very privileged position to create your own destiny and write your own story. You don’t need to shout about the hardships – or indeed the privilege – of working for yourself: this should all be communicated implicitly in the work you deliver. It’s a given that late nights and working during the weekend comes with the territory.

I only recently came across this wonderful article by Kurt Vonnegut, on how to write with style:

Why should you examine your writing style with the idea of improving it? Do so as a mark of respect for your readers, whatever you’re writing. If you scribble your thoughts any which way, your readers will surely feel that you care nothing about them. They will mark you down as an egomaniac or a chowderhead — or, worse, they will stop reading you.

The most damning revelation you can make about yourself is that you do not know what is interesting and what is not. Don’t you yourself like or dislike writers mainly for what they choose to show you or make you think about? Did you ever admire an emptyheaded writer for his or her mastery of the language? No.

So your own winning style must begin with ideas in your head.

And so he proceeds to provide beautiful sage advice about the steps you should take if your writing ever be taken seriously. At the end of the piece, he summarises the article with this pithy list:

• Find a subject you care about
• Do not ramble, though
• Keep it simple
• Have guts to cut
• Sound like yourself
• Say what you mean
• Pity the readers

I realised that far beyond writing, this captures a strategy so applicable to what we do day-to-day. You can think of this list as the seven things you need to consider when shipping ideas and new products with style. Let me explain how I think each are applicable:

Find a subject you care about

A while ago, I was invited by a small group of entrepreneurs to work on a new product whose scope and feasibility in the market was enormous. It was to be a product that would have sold itself, and fitted a niche that every other aged provider simply couldn’t fulfill, having been ravaged by the internet’s pace of change.

I was excited at first, mainly about the dollars. But after a week or two’s thinking and planning, there was a major hurdle: the industry sector that the product catered for didn’t interest me one iota. If I couldn’t muster even a morsal of enthusiasm for the industry, how could I engage with the product’s strategy, care about the design, and above all, respect about the end user.

So if you’re planning a new project, just make sure it’s topic is something you genuinely care about it.

Importantly here, Vonnegut says he is not urging his reader to write a novel, “A petition to the mayor about a pothole in front of your house or a love letter to the girl next door will do.” Think about projects as small or as large as your ambition: just make sure you care about it.

Do not ramble and Keep it simple

…William Shakespeare and James Joyce, wrote sentences which were almost childlike when their subjects were most profound. “To be or not to be?” asks Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The longest word is three letters long.

In our analogy, this is about scoping a project and maintaining focus. Just because you have access to, and can integrate with, an API for a newfangled service that doesn’t mean you have to, and similarly just because your users are likely to be signed up to every single social service under the sun, doesn’t mean you should ask them to include it in their user profile. It’s unlikely to be necessary, and is the form design equivalent of rambling.

Have the guts to cut

Even though you have spent hours on creating a killer feature of a new product, it doesn’t guarantee success.

I can’t count the number of times I have slaved away at a certain feature or gimmick that is simply ignored by the user. When something doesn’t work out, I quietly shelve it, and see the time spent on it as having been spent on learning something, not being wasted.

Sound like yourself

I myself find that I trust my own writing most, and others seem to trust it most, too, when I sound most like a person from Indianapolis, which is what I am.

A great example of this is the work of Cameron Koczon: the guy behind Brooklyn Beta, Teux Deux, and Gimmebar. Each of these things is imbued with his character and wit, and because I know him well I know precisely where he has influenced the copywriting, or some functional flourish.

I think this relates to the first point – if you talk about your ideas with others, with passion, the end result should sound (or feel) just as convincing. If you’re witty or frivolous, make your product witty or frivolous: don’t try to make it feel formal.

Say what you mean

Readers want our pages to look very much like pages they have seen before. Why? This is because they themselves have a tough job to do, and they need all the help they can get from us.

Be understandable so your product can be understood. Hold your user’s hand with direct messaging and communication. This is incredibly hard, especially when you have lived with an idea in your head for so long. I’m struggling with this right now with Fiftytwo: while the idea and rationale behind the service is so clear in my head, often it can become a little convoluted when I communicate its benefits. I need to try harder to elucidate the site’s concept more directly.

Pity the readers

This is one of my favourite parts of the article –

They have to identify thousands of little marks on paper, and make sense of them immediately.

Our users have to identify thousands of little pixels on screen, and make sense of them immediately.

At the end of the article, Vonnegut recommends reading The Elements of Style, by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White as further reading. I’m wondering what our equivalent might be…

I’m going to apologies for the deluge of Fiftytwo related blog posts over the next few weeks, but I think some of the learnings from the site’s young life are fairly interesting, and may spark some discussion points about how we’re using online services.

This is how I consume a new web app:

• Connect with as many people from my Twitter and Facebook connections as possible, as quickly as possible.
• Observe the resulting output, hoping it’s a fabulously rich mix of content and stuff.
• Become pretty overwhelmed with how much stuff I’m seeing, and retreat from the site and not contribute any more.

From the results of my unscientific research, this is how you probably consume new apps too. Our instinct seems to want to connect as much as possible to yield as much stuff as possible, while forgetting the value that connecting less might bring.

Fiftytwo launched in what I’m calling “sort-of-private-beta” a few days ago, whereby if you are invited, you are free to go ahead and invite as many or as few others that you feel will enhance your experience of using the site. This turned out to have a nice, slow, and organic increase in its user-base, but a comparatively steep growth in the number of connections (I’ll furnish this post with stats when I get the chance). What people have been doing is exploring the user list and adding as many connections as they can, while individuals who have received relationship requests have tended to accept them without a thought to whom the individual or company is.

This is at odds with my, and Ben’s original thinking that of course everyone will want to curate and cultivate their connections to only those they feel close to. But, in fact, I’ve even had questions about what a user should do if they have been connection requested by someone they don’t know. My answer – resolutely sticking to my cosy idea of curated connections – is to ignore them (and then come back to the ignored request later if they want to). They then reply saying they accepted them anyway, often because it would be rude not to.

So what does this mean for a site like Fiftytwo, whose premise is about sharing work and content with a close group of people?

It potentially means that people will retreat from the site, feeling that some content isn’t appropriate for a wide audience, whereas the benefits of sharing content with a select few on a forum like Fiftytwo would definitely yield the benefits it set out to offer.

This starts to sound awfully like Facebook and Google Plus, which is something I’ve personally wanted to steer away from, but I’ve now realised that – like in real life – we need to group our relationships. What I thought was rather arduous on G+ is actually a necessity.

So high on the long list of priorities for the next iteration of Fiftytwo is Groups, whereby you can add connections to one or more groups that you cerate, and then share with – or hide from – the groups you that specify. It means that you share Work In Progress with just your closest colleagues, but share New Work with everyone else.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, and what else you might like to see with regards connection and group management, on Fiftytwo or in general.

Update: thanks to Darren who kicked off this conversation.

I’m absolutely exhausted. Today I opened the faucet on new users just a little bit and suddenly loads of people were using the new app, which is extremely exciting and I received some really kind feedback about it and some super useful bug reports and bits and pieces.

But also there were a few questions, which I’ll list and document here, and add to over the next week until I have them properly posted on the main site:

• I got a connection request from X and I don’t know them. Should I accept it? – personally, I’d say no. The aim of Fiftytwo is to have a space where you can share new work, questions, and so forth with a trusted group of people you either know in real life, or are close to each other in other networks. One of the major objectives with Fiftytwo is that there are no follower counts so this doesn’t become a competition of numbers; it’s purely about sharing for its own good.

• Can you find new people with Fiftytwo, or is it only for connecting with people you know? – again, personally I hope the tool will evolve such that I can discover some awesome new people, so there are features in the pipeline that will help on this discovery aspect: one is referrals, which is there right now (but without notifications), and the next will be a recommendation feature where people in your network can big-up people they have worked with and can recommend.

• Can I have a beta invite? – I’m slowly going through the list of @52network followers and inviting those folk whose email addresses I know. Any current beta members can invite other people, but I must reiterate that since we are in beta, please only invite a limited number of people who you know personally, and who you feel will make a great contribution to the network in the early days.

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I have a bit of a problem, which I’d like to talk about.

As a group of individuals and small companies who work however loosely in the creative industries we have literally never been more connected. I keep in touch with all my friends, contemporaries, and people whose work I respect via every possible medium: Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and so on.

Yet the problem is that I have no idea what my contacts have been doing.

The moment, say, Dan Gray mentions he’s designed and is about to print some lovely new posters, it’s likely that the tweet will suddenly disappear in a sea of other links to funny cat videos. Unless Dan continues to talk about his poster series continually for the next week (which as some people on Twitter prove can be incredibly annoying) I’m likely not to know about it.

This is a problem I know other people share, and is something I’ve been trying to solve via a new product which I’m due to launch very shortly.

Let me introduce you to Fiftytwo. It’s a new network for creative professionals, which allows you to share just one piece of content – across five broad categories – per week. You can post a piece of new work, some work in progress, some general news or opinion, a question, or an opportunity (for example, a job opening at your agency, or a call for some help).

By restricting the rate at which content can be shared, the amount of noise you have to wade through to get a sense of what your contacts have been up to over the past few weeks. Hopefully then you can offer help, feedback, or just have an open discussion.

The second major feature of the network is that it is private. I personally baulk at the idea of sharing new work, questions or work in progress with people I don’t know nor trust, but if I knew exactly whom I was sharing the content with I’d feel far more comfortable. Fiftytwo requires you to have bilateral (i.e. Facebook-style) connections, so you know exactly who you’re sharing with. This may be particularly useful for freelancers, who fear sharing work in case their client isn’t happy about it being in the public domain.

Finally, I want Fiftytwo to be a conduit to find and meet talented people and great companies through a formal referral process. For instance, if I know that one of my contacts in my network is looking for a developer or designer, and the ideal person for the job is also in my network, I’d want to introduce them to each other and hopefully instigate a fruitful relationship.

The web app is in an early alpha right now as we iron out some of the major bugs, but I’ll be opening up for beta access soon. Hopefully it’ll be a tool you find useful, and enjoy using. Follow @52network on Twitter to keep up to date.

I should also take this opportunity to thank Cameron Koczon (for being Cameron Koczon), Ben Stott (for the rather lovely identity), Al Monk (for his design input), and Rik Lomas (for parting with his Rails wisdom).

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