Every once in a while a simple little innovation comes along that is just so useful you wonder how you every lived without it. Draft dots—little round circles of drafting tape, neatly dispensed from a convenient box—are now a can’t-live-without collaboration tool, as critical as sharpies and stickies.

Draft dots are intended for use in drafting applications to hold sheets of drawing paper. Dots have enough adhesion to firmly hold the paper in place but, unlike scotch tape, can be removed without damaging the paper. This removability makes them perfect for temporary, no-damage wall displays or, my favorite, using them in brainstorming sessions to fill the walls with people’s ideas.

You can buy draft dots at many art supply stores like Flax, Pearl Paint or Dick Blick. They are typically located in the drafting supplies area, along with templates, compasses, and grid paper. You can also order dots online.

1. Make Ideas Visible
During brainstorming sessions, it’s critical that you work visually and in quantity. Getting ideas off the table and up on the wall can inspire the team and give the team a sense of momentum and accomplishment.

2. Turn Any Wall Into a Work Space
With draft dots, you can make any wall a workspace. I’ve facilitated collaborative work sessions in shiny conference rooms with no whiteboards, tacking ideas and artifacts to windows, tables, and closet doors.

3. Build Layered Paper Prototypes
Take one of those draft dots, fold it into a little tube adhesive side out and you can make removable layers of paper. This can be great for quickly communicating state changes.

4. Display Artifacts from a Work Session
After a work session, it can be good citizenship (and great for the acceptance of your work) to make your progress visible. Be a rogue and use draft dots to temporarily attach your ideas, models, concepts, or interface designs to a visible wall in a highly trafficked area.

5. Make Larger Work Surfaces
Play Macgyver with your office supplies. If you need a large work space for drawing, attach several pieces of 8 ½ x 11 together.

“While a man, infatuated with the promises of greatness, wastes his hours and days in attendance and solicitation, the honest opportunities of improving his condition pass by without his notice; he neglects to cultivate his own barren soil, because he expects every moment to be placed in regions of spontaneous fertility, and is seldom roused from his delusion but by the gripe of distress, which he cannot resist, and the sense of evils which cannot be remedied.”
Samuel Johnson: Rambler #163 (October 8, 1751)

I am conflicted about idleness, sometimes to my creative detriment. Isn’t idleness laziness? In truth, though, I know that my creative output is richer when I balance it with daydreaming and wandering. I simply know I can’t be on and creative all the time — I need to regenerate.

So do teams. How, in a team environment, can you cultivate your team’s barren soil? Do you need lots of uninterrupted time together? Or time apart? Should you allow for individual idleness or idle together — maybe go to the movies as a group?

Happy weekend, people. Go be idle.

Cecil Vortex, on Conversations About Creativity, interviews artists, writers, and others on their creative process. This month, he has an interview with visual artist Tucker Nichols, creator of Postcards from Vermont and the What a Day web site.

I pulled out some of the things Tucker, a self-supporting artist, does to keep his creative juices flowing:

Routine
Tucker start his day the same way – feeds the cats, eats breakfast, does a new drawing for his What a Day web site, has a morning “status” meeting (see below).

Idleness
Idleness, so undervalued in our do-do-do culture, is critical to creativity. Tucker works in his garden and takes long walks to clear his head and give his mind space to work and play.

Conversation
On the What a Day site, several people have started using his daily drawings to spark their own creative work. This dialog enriches Tucker’s own work.

Experiment with Context
Tucker draws wherever he goes—even at the dentist’s office. He looks at the effect those environments have on him. (He trashed his dentist drawings – they sucked, he felt. So now he knows what it’s like to draw at the dentist!)

Morning “Status” Meetings
Tucker works alone but has his own team meetings each morning. He lets all the staff members in his head report in on what they are doing and what their next steps are.

Failure is relative.

For my friend Brandon, I was looking for quotes on the role of failure in creative work.

First, I found this definition in the dictionary:

Fail

be unsuccessful in achieving one’s goal,
be unable to meet the standards set by [whatever, whoever]

Then this in Scott’s book.:

“The dirty little secret—the fact often denied—is that unlike the mythical epiphany, real creation is sloppy. Discovery is messy, exploration is dangerous. No one knows what he is going to get when he’s being creative. Filmmakers, painters, inventors, and entrepreneurs describe their work as a search: they explore the unknown hoping to find new things worth bringing into the world. And just like other kinds of explorers, the search for ideas demands risk: much of what’s found won’t be satisfactory.” (Berkun, The Myths of Innovation, p. 86)

So, failure is relative. You set your goals. You set your standards. Others set goals and standards, too. You meet them, you don’t. One person’s total failure is another person’s progress.

In project work, I am frequently called upon to share work in progress with clients and their co-workers. Sometimes the same material is shared with different stakeholders, each with their own personalities, agendas, and pet peeves. When I work with a client in a large organization, the diversity of audience can become even greater.

I use this checklist to make sure I have all the information I need to make an effective presentation and satisfy the goals of the call.*

audience
Names, roles, titles, relationships to each other, hot issues and touchy subjects.

purpose
Why is the presentation happening in the first place? To keep someone informed? To get someone’s thoughts or ideas? To test an idea? To persuade someone?

desired outcome
What will happen as a result of this presentation? Are there specific answers needed or next actions to be taken?

anticipated discussion
Are there issues, questions, or concerns that might surface during the discussion?

modifications to material
Does the language, order, or content need to be changed in any way to better support the discussion or more effectively speak to the audience?

* By asking these questions, you might find out that there isn’t a clear goal or desired outcome for the presentation.

Scott Berkun, author of The Myths of Innovation, takes an honest look at the types of development methodologies actually in play in the world of software development. His post, “asshole driven development,” had me rolling on the floor this morning.

My favorite?

“Development By Denial (DBD) - Everybody pretends there is a method for what’s being done, and that things are going ok, when in reality, things are a mess and the process is on the floor. The worse things get, the more people depend on their denial of what’s really happening, or their isolation in their own small part of the project, to survive. “

Denial is truly a powerful methodology but denial wastes people’s precious time.  I’ve experienced teams (my own and those around me), that, even when it seems obvious to everyone around them that something isn’t right, won’t admit to themselves or others that something has gone horribly wrong. If a team can admit to each other that something isn’t working, there is a chance to correct it.

Denial by a group, may come from a lack of trust and communication (surprise!) amongst team members. Fear of what others will think, fear of being seen as negative, fear of failure are powerful driving forces. It’s up to the team to foster a safe, honest environment.

Some ways to beat denial that come to mind:

Check Your Motives - When making decisions, are you serving the best needs of the project? What’s driving you?

Ask Others - If you have uncertainty or doubt about the way a project is progressing, ask others what they think. You never know what you can learn about your own attitudes and processes by listening to others.

Encourage Others to Share - Is there someone in the room or on the team who is quiet but has a unique point of view on a particular problem? Encourage that person to share with the group.

Make Room for Regular Dialog - In addition to working meetings, make some space in the project for a “How are things going?” discussion.

Solicit Quick, Anonymous Feedback - I’ll be writing a post this week on a method for gathering quick, anonymous feedback. Check back!

UX Week 2007 is going to be great - and not just ‘cos I’m the program chair.

UX Week (Aug. 13-16 in Washington, DC) is Adaptive Path’s opportunity to host smart people with great ideas about user-centered design and user experience. Changes in technology and process are forcing us to re-think some of our favorite tools. Out goes the waterfall model, in comes agile development. Out go wireframes and in come rapid prototyping. Out goes evaluative research and in comes generative research.

Of course, we don’t want you to throw out the baby with the bath water, but rather to look critically at the way you work and find new ways to achieve the best user experience you possibly can.

Check out the program and if you decide to come (you know you want to), use promo code FOSN (friends of Sarah Nelson) for a 15% discount.

These punctuation bookmarks look like fun. They are intended to be used as bookmarks but they have light adhesion so they could be used anywhere you use stickies. Haven’t tried them myself but love the iconic design. Can’t you see them visually identifying participant quotes in user research analysis or clearly marking question areas in a sea of stickies?

By nature, I am a solitary being. I enjoy time alone, tinkering, experimenting, and playing with ideas. Early in my user experience career, I was drawn to solitary pursuits - coding, graphics production, site maps and content inventories.

As I have progressed in my career, working alone no longer seems like a viable, let alone desireable option. From strategy development with clients, to design work with teams, to participatory design with users, working with others skillfully is critical to the success of any complex design project.

This blog is about navigating the world of collaboration. through methods, tools, techniques and ideas. I’ll share both my experience working with teams, clients, and users, methods and tools I’ve tried, resources I come across, and inspiration to help you do your best work.