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crinkle-eyed-boo · 4 years ago

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Digging Deeper Meme

Tagged by the lovely @homosociallyyours @a-brighter-yellow and @disgruntledkittenface ...thank you my bbs. Let’s do this!

1. Do you prefer writing with a black pen or blue pen? Usually black, and it has to be like an INK pen that flows easily. No Bic pens or any of that shit.

2. Would you prefer to live in the country or city? I’m a city girl.

3. If you could learn a new skill what would it be? I’d become fluent in other languages. I took Latin in high school and was VERY good at it, but I was shit at Spanish when I took it in college. (I also think I had a bad teacher, but that’s neither here nor there)

4. Do you drink your tea/coffee with sugar? At Starbucks, half and half with sweet and low (I KNOW IT’S BAD FOR ME, I WAS BROUGHT UP ON IT.) At home, I usually have a flavored creamer and a splenda. (THE DICHOTOMY OF ME.)

5. What was your favourite book as a child? Babysitters Club books, The Little House on the Prairie Books (On the Banks of Plum Creek was my fave)

6. Do you prefer baths or showers? Showers. I DREAM of having a big ass tub some day though.

7. If you could be a mythical creature, which one would it be? A Fairy

8. Paper or electronic books? I used to be die hard paper only, but it’s HARD in a tiny apartment, so now I am more of an e-book person.

9. What is your favourite item of clothing? Any one of my nice dresses.

10. Do you like your name or would you like to change it? I spent way too much time practicing my autograph instead of paying attention in math class to EVER change my name.

11. Who is a mentor to you? I always think of my first boss in NY as one. He took a chance on a kid who showed a compulsive obsession with box office results and gave me a job and took the time to teach me.

12. Would you like to be famous and if so, what for? Being a famous writer offers enough anonymity to still keep your life but have money!

13. Are you a restless sleeper? I can be, yes.

14. Do you consider yourself a romantic person? A romantic with a heavy dose of cynicism because my romantic LIFE has been nothing but trash.

15. Which element best represents you? Fire, I think. When I care about things, it’s often all consuming.

16. Who do you want to be closer to? I wish I were closer to my sisters, but a lot of times, it’s like the three of us speak completely different languages.

17. Do you miss someone at the moment? I miss my friends and I miss my city.

18. Tell us about an early childhood memory. It’s not early childhood, per se, but it was the 80s and much more innocent time, because my parents would leave me and my sisters in kiddie movie and THEY would go see a movie for grown-ups. I remember sneaking into their theatre after ours was done, to tell them our movie was done. The movie was Dirty Dancing, and I stood in the back for the entire final dance, captivated. I was 8.

19. What is the strangest thing you have eaten? Nothing is REALLY coming to mind.

20. What are you most thankful for? Right now? My health and my dog.

21. Do you like spicy food? Moderately spicy, yes!

22. Have you ever met someone famous? When you live in New York and work for a long time in the entertainment industry, it’s inevitable. Add in fandom things, and I’ve met many many. I still think Joel McHale may be my favorite, if only for the fact that he stood and talked to us for almost 20 minutes after doing a stand-up show.

23. Do you keep a diary or journal? I’ve never had the discipline.

24. Do you prefer to use a pen or a pencil? Always a pen!

25. What is your star sign? Sagittarius, Taurus rising. I am, in a word, a mess.

26. Do you like your cereal soggy or crunchy? A little bit of crunch. Though I am not really a cereal person.

27. What would you want your legacy to be? That I loved people (and things) fiercely and well. That I was loyal. And that I wrote some good words on occasion.

28. Do you like reading, what was the last book you read? I DO. I have ALWAYS been a reader. As far as BOOK books, I don’t remember because I read so. much. fic. The last one being @twopoppies LOVELY artist fic, which was so awesome to read after writing Artist!Harry myself. And it just showed me why people shouldn’t worry if someone else is writing the same trope as you, because TRULY they all come out different and equally wonderful because different people glean different things from the same trope.

29. How do you show someone you love them? There are few things that thrill me more than finding the perfect present for someone.

30. Do you like ice in your drinks? Yes

31. What are you afraid of? Snakes. Tornados. Fire.

32. What is your favourite scent? Coconut

33. Do you address older people by their name or surname? Usually when I first meet them it’s surname

34. If money was not a factor, how would you live your life? Like Sage said, I would see every single Broadway show. I would get a nice apartment with my dream kitchen. I’d follow my fave artists on tour. And then, eventually, I would fuck off and go live in New Zealand.

35. Do you prefer swimming in pools or the ocean? pools. I hate sand.

36. What would you do if you found £50 on the ground? TREAT YO SELF. I’d probably take myself to a nice meal.

37. Have you ever seen a shooting star? Yes.

38. What is the one thing you would want to teach your children? I don’t plan on having kids of my own, so it is my duty as an aunt to make sure they are properly exposed to pop culture.

39. If you had to have a tattoo, what would it be and where would you get it? I’ve been dying to get part of the pattern of the old carpet at the LAX Marriott, where Gallifrey One is held, tattooed on my inner ankle for 18 months now. Fucking pandemic.

40. What can you hear now? Supermarket Sweep on Netflix

41. Where do you feel the safest? In a puppy pile with my friends

42. What is the one thing you want to overcome/conquer? My BODY ISSUES and disordered eating.

43. If you could travel back to any era, what would it be? The 50s - summer of 1963

44. What is your most used emoji? Currently, it’s the head exploding emoji

45. Describe yourself using one word. Passionate.

46. What do you regret the most? Not loving past me more.

47. Last movie you saw? Eurovision. A JOY.

48. Last tv show you watched? Supermarket Sweep.

49. Invent a word and its meaning. TOO TIRED FOR THAT.

Tagging @beau-soleil-louis @queenofquiet17 @sweetstrawberryheadache if you want a thing to do!!

#me!#this took ages!#worth it!

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shoury01 · 4 years ago

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THE FIVE LEVELS OF REMOTE WORK

COVID-19 has forced companies the world over to enact — or create — remote working protocols. The likes of Box, Amazon, Airbnb, Facebook, Google and Microsoft have all told their employees some variation of “work from home”. But so too are more traditional organisations across fields such as real estate, accounting and local government. Zoom team-selfies, are slowly polluting Twitter and LinkedIn feeds.

But like most things worth doing, there are different levels of proficiency and sophistication to scale. Many newly-remote workers seem to conflate simply downloading Zoom, Slack, and having access to email with having this remote working thing sorted out.

But having a ball and a bat does not make you a Cricketer.

A Case – Automattic Company.

When it comes to swimming in the deep end of the remote working pool, few companies are doing it better than Automattic — the company behind Wordpress, which powers 35% of all websites on the internet. Automattic has about 1,200 employees scattered across more than 75 countries, speaking 93 languages. It boasts a company valuation of US$3 billion and has made several significant acquisitions such as that of WooCommerce and blogging platform, Tumblr. The company does not have an office, with its employees collaborating almost exclusively online.

Automattic’s founder, Matt Mullenweg (hence the “double t” in the company’s name) recently appeared on a popular podcast to talk on what he calls the five levels of distributed teams (he prefers ‘distributed’ to ‘remote’ because the latter implies that there is still a central place of work). Encouragingly Mullenweg’s sentiments echo the fact that the tools are only as good as how you use them. In fact, abuse of tools can actually make us less productive.

The Five Levels of Distributed Teams

Level 1: Non-Deliberate Action

Nothing deliberate has been done by the company to support remote work, but employees can still keep the ball rolling somewhat if they are at home for a day. They have access to their smartphone, and email. Perhaps they dial in to a few meetings. But they will put off most things until they’re back in the office and will be a shadow of their office-bound selves. Level 1 is where the overwhelming majority of organisations were prior to the COVID19 outbreak.

Level 2: Recreating the Office Online

This is where most organisations now reside — especially traditional ones. It is where your employees have access to videoconferencing software (eg. Zoom), instant messaging software (eg. Slack) and email, but instead of redesigning work to take advantage of the new medium, teams ultimately end up recreating online, how they work in the office.

This extends to many of the bad habits that permeate the modern office and suppress the ability of knowledge workers to actually think, with..:-

a) . . . . 10-person video-calls when two people would suffice,

b) . . . . 60+ interruptions a day — now via Slack and phone calls,

c) . . . . the sporadic checking of and responding to email more than 70 times a day throughout the day,

d) . . . . hyper-responsiveness that is expected of all employees, leaving them wired to desktop,

Mullenweg equates lack of redesigning work around the medium. A similar example was with the radio drama of the 1930s, which was essentially the acting out of plays over the airwaves. Adapting the content to the radio medium was not fully considered or appreciated at the time. At Level 2, people are still expected to be online from 9 to 5, and in some cases to be subject to what essentially amounts to spyware, with employers installing screen-logging software on their employee machines to ensure compliance.

Level 3: Adapting to the medium

At level 3, organizations start to adapt to and take advantage of the medium. Mullenweg points to shared documents (such as a Google Doc), that is visible to all and updated in real-time during a discussion, so that there is a shared understanding of what is discussed and decided, eliminating the risk of lost in translation errors and time wasted thereafter.

It’s at this stage that companies start to invest in better equipment for their employees as well, such as lighting for video-calls and background noise-canceling microphones. Effective written communication becomes critical the more companies embrace remote work. With an aversion to ‘jumping on calls’ at a whim, and a preference for asynchronous communication (more on that later), most of Automattic’s communications is text-based, and so accurate and timely articulation becomes key. In fact, Mullenweg says that most of the company’s hiring is performed via text as opposed to candidate phone or vide calls.

When it comes to meetings:

a) Only hold a meeting if it is absolutely necessary and the same outcomes cannot be reached via a quick ad-hoc conversation, phone call, email, text or instant message.

b) Set the meeting to 15 minutes by default, and only make it longer if absolutely necessary (the shorter the meeting, the more succinct you will have to be, and the less time there will be for pointless small talk and rambling).

c) Set a specific agenda and desired outcome going into the meeting.

d) Invite only ‘must have’ people (unless this is a big Type-1 decision, two people should usually do it with three on the rare occasion).

e) Agree on next steps, allocate responsible person(s) and set due dates (this is especially important to avoid boomerang meetings).

f) Never, ever, use a meeting simply to communicate information — that’s what email or IM is for. Many are indeed learning that all those meetings could have in fact been emails.

Level 4: Asynchronous Communication

‘I’ll get to it when it suits me.’ This is the nature of asynchronous communication. The reality is that most things do not require an immediate response. For most things, a one-way email or instant message should do the job, with the recipient responding when it suits them. If something really is urgent, then the mode of communication should reflect that. Pick up the phone, or tap that person on the shoulder, but only if it is truly urgent.

Aside from the obvious and massive benefit of giving knowledge workers time to think, create and get into the flow state (a psychological state whereby we are up to five times more productive according to McKinsey), but asynchronous communication predisposes people to making better decisions. If you want to cut emotion out of the equation, increase your response time. Giving people time to think between question and response, rather than fall victim to blurting out the first thing that comes to mind in a meeting or when tapped on the shoulders, delivers a compound benefit to the organization over time.

In order to avoid tennis games and duplication of effort, ensure that asynchronous messages:

a) provide sufficient background detail, where necessary provide clear action item(s) and outcome(s) required.

b) provide a due date

c) provide a path of recourse if the recipient is unable to meet your requirements.

For example:

“Hey Sunil. Attached is the incorporation document for our new spin-off company. Please sign the document where requested and send it back to me by 4 pm this Friday. If you have any concerns, give me a call on 555 1983.”

Globally distributed teams, who work asynchronously, and master ‘passing the baton’, can get three times more done than a local team relying on everybody to be in an office between 9am and 5pm.

Awaken the Night Owls

Science suggests that our preferred sleeping patterns — our chronotypes — are programmed at birth. People are either night owls or early birds. Several studies have found that about 30 to 40 per cent of the population are night owls, which means that the modern 9-to-5 workday is sabotaging the creative and intellectual efforts of almost half the workforce. Studies show that while early risers are more alert in the morning, night owls show stronger focus and longer attention spans 10 hours after waking than their early-bird compatriots.

Level 5: ‘Nirvana’

This is where your distributed team works better than any in-person team ever could. Mullenweg equates this level with having more emphasis on ‘environment design’, insofar as the organization’s culture, and the physical environment people work in is concerned.

The disadvantages:

Three big disadvantages or concerns that face newly remote teams, and how to counter them, can be found below:

1) Team bonding and building

a) Instead of telling their employees to be at the office 11 months a year, and have 4 weeks off, the script gets flipped. Employees have 11 months of remote work a year and have to make time to travel for up to 4 weeks a year for team bonding and building events.

i) To counter this, organizations can make use of custom-built apps which keep track of who has met who, and then assign seats, say at a dinner party, so that people sit with people they’ve not yet met before.

2) Osmotic and office communication

a) With everybody working online, you miss out on watering hole conversations, overhearing other people say something that you can help with, or just having a general awareness of your team’s activities by virtue of being within earshot of discussions.

i) To counter this, some organizations use an internal blog, and a place where an incredible amount of conversation and activity is chronicled and captured.

3) Security

a) Mullenweg points to endpoint security ��computer networks that are remotely bridged to client devices — and used for BYOD such as laptops and smartphones.

b) The alternative — being inside the office wall, as Mullenweg says —essentially becomes a single point of failure, and compromises depth in defense.

c) What we should be doing instead is rather than over-emphasizing just access control, we need to be protecting against malicious behaviors. With over 70% of IT hacks using social engineering to get inside, he has a point.

Content Curated By: Dr Shoury Kuttappa

***Concept Courtesy – www.automattic.com

#Teamwork #leadership #management #communication #coordination #cooperation #behaviours #remoteworkplace #remoteteam #remotecollaboration #asynchronous #virtual

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bronzestring91-blog · 5 years ago

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Kraken CEO Jesse Powell dumps $11.5 million cash on a Mandeville Canyon architectural

Last month, cryptocurrency tycoon (and SF resident) Jesse Powell tweeted a mini-rant about San Francisco, its “crack-zombies,” and how “you can pay $3k/sqft for a condo but can’t stop people from literally shitting on your door.“

When BREAKER magazine caught up with Mr. Powell for an elaboration on his tweet, Mr. Powell doubled down on his disgust, saying “some people are too far gone“. And when asked whether he would ever leave the Bay Area, Mr. Powell answered in the affirmative — “For sure. I’m considering leaving the city.“

Well, according to Yolanda’s research, it turns out Mr. Powell wasn’t just whistlin’ Dixie. In fact, he’s more than considered a zip code change — he’s already done sealed the deal by purchasing an impressive mansion in one of LA’s priciest neighborhoods. Records show that our boy used a mysteriously-named corporate entity to stealthily shell out $11,500,000 — all of it in cash. USD, that is. No bitcoin here.

The house in question is one of the most private properties in Brentwood’s star-studded Mandeville Canyon area. Though originally built in 1971, the property was radically renovated and expanded over the last three years by the fine folks at ANR Signature Collection. It’s basically like a brand-new mansion.

If the ANR name sounds vaguely familiar, it’s probably because these are the same design peeps responsible for the $12 million Hollywood Hills mansion just sold to Drew Taggart and the $13.5 million Beverly Hills (Post Office) estate recently purchased by Little Miss Kylie Jenner.

But we digress — before we start dissectin’ the residence, here’s some background on our boy.

Crypto king

For those of y’all uninformed, Mr. Powell is a very big deal in the crazy cryptocurrency world. As the CEO and co-founder of Kraken, he presides over one of the world’s most well-known bitcoin exchanges. Founded in 2011, Kraken has grown to become “the largest Bitcoin exchange in euro volume and liquidity and also trading Canadian dollars, US dollars, British pounds and Japanese yen,” per their website.

Kraken now employs more than 800 humans and is currently headquartered in the heart of SF, though Mr. Powell has publicly stated he will soon open a SoCal office in or around LA’s Silicon Beach nabe.

Now in his late 30s, shaggy-haired Mr. Powell also keeps a (infrequently updated) personal blog where he mostly posts about bitcoin and his love for video games. The blog’s headline, hilariously enough, reads “this blog has been intentionally left janky.” So there y’all have it.

Mr. Powell is a college dropout from Cal State Sacramento and founded Verge Center for the Arts — which is now Sacramento’s largest commercial fine art gallery — at the tender age of 27. He was also the founder of Lewt, Inc., which made money primarily by buying and selling items related to the video game franchise Diablo. Or so we gather. It’s also been described as “an equivalent of Amazon.com” for some video/computer games.

To be perfectly honest, Yolanda knows next to nothing about our boy’s background or family. We don’t know where he grew up, whether he’s married, if he has kids or not. That bugs our OCD-addled brain, but oh well. Maybe we’re off our game, or maybe Mr. Powell keeps that stuff on the DL. We hope it’s the latter.

Mr. Powell in Japan (photo: japansubculture.com)

Perhaps somebody who knows this dude will write in and inform Yolanda about his personal details. Until then, y’all will have to content yourselves with perusin’ pics of his fancy new Westside digs.

Oh — by the way, in addition to his dislike for San Francisco, Mr. Powell is also no fan of New York. Back in September (2018), he blasted the entire state, saying (in part), “NY is that abusive, controlling ex you broke up with 3 years ago but they keep stalking you, throwing shade on your new relationships, unable to accept that you have happily moved on and are better off without them. #getoverit.”

Good gracious! Yolanda hope Mr. Powell finds LA more agreeable, else he’ll soon run outta places to live.

Although Mr. Powell’s new mini-estate has a Mandeville Canyon Road address, the house is actually located well off the main drag and set on a wee cul-de-sac. At the end of the street, a steep private drive shared with three other properties transports you to the residence.

The privately-situated house features a gated motorcourt, a security system, and garage parking for up to five vehicles. This is also a “smart home” with a (very expensive) automation system by Savant. Our Mr. Powell can control everything — pretty much — remotely, from the touchpad on his iPhone.

Anyway, the house features airy interiors done up in ANR’s trademark sophisticated, contemporary style. Walls of disappearing glass (they’re actually Fleetwood pocket doors) flood the living areas with California sunshine and blur the line between indoors and outdoors.

The main house features 6 beds and 7 baths. Two of the bedrooms are located on the main level, one of them suitable as a guest/spare room and the other as maid’s quarters. Also on the main floor is a enormous kitchen that features two center islands amid acres of blondish hardwood, and elsewhere is a family room with canyon views. Somewhere tucked away is a large movie theater.

Upstairs are four en-suite bedrooms, including the elephantine master suite with its vaulted ceiling and dramatic, pentagonal wall of glass that provides a distant city lights view.

Check out that shower in the master bath! Well, hot damn. That’s big enough for half of Kraken’s workforce to shower together! Take team bonding to the next level, Mr. Powell.

Also, that bathroom floor looks slippery. Watch your step. Nude dancing (or dancing of any kind, really) should be undertaken only with extreme caution.

Other amenities include an office (outfitted with two iconic Egg™ Chairs by Arne Jacobsen), an upstairs gym, attached guesthouse with another full bedroom and bathroom. The self-contained compound weighs in with a mansion-sized 9,393-square-feet of living space.

Out back, the .69-acre property features dual staircases leading down to a sprawling deck, plenty of space for al fresco dining, and a black-bottomed, irregularly-shaped swimming pool with inset spa.

Yolanda believes Mr. Powell also owns a residence in San Francisco — we doubt he rents — but can’t find any trace of it in property records, and not for lack of lookin’. Sorry, kids. Don’t mouth off to your gurl. It’s Christmas so just be glad you’re getting this story rather than a box of coal.

Listing agent: Santiago Arana, The Agency Jesse Powell’s agent: Aaron Kirman, Compass

Source: https://www.yolandaslittleblackbook.com/blog/2018/12/24/jesse-powell-house-los-angeles-kraken/

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fishmongeringstudies · 3 years ago

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thirteen: an ode to my second-floor window

when explaining the structural qualities of my dorm building to friends who had come to visit for the first time in the spring i often likened it to a very large and very disproportionate T-pose or, if one prefers the crude arts to the fine ones, a really interesting dick. it is basically a straight line with a short, squat rectangle extending from its center, like a mushroom with a very large cap. it is like one of those buildings people design when they are asked, abruptly, to draw a building. here are some windows. here is a lounge, but only because you asked for one. and here is the door.

people live in the long flat cap of the mushroom because that is where all the real shit happens in college. the long and flat mushroom cap is so long and so flat that they had to split it in half to make sense of it- north wing (i point in a vague north-east direction), south wing (i point the other way. then i wink, though you miss it). for the spring semester i lived in the south, towards the end of the hallway where a set of swinging double doors leads to the stairwell. my room had a view of the parking lot, half-obscured by trees, and the squat, snow white-styled lodges on the other side of the winding path. it was on the second floor.

on my first day there i found a black sports bra stapled to the notice board outside my room. above the bra was a sign made out of several sheets of paper upon which, in times new roman font size two hundred, the words 'the hall of good driving' were printed. below that was a sign that said 'watch children'. beside that was another sign, printed in cursive: there are so many beautiful reasons to be happy. and someone's driver's license. and a black and white cars screenshot. and a formula one racer, waving at the camera.

one day in february i found someone standing in front of that notice board, looking it up and down with a curious expression on his face.

''sup,' i said. 'what're you doing?'

'appreciating fine art,' he replied.

(i made that up. in truth he said something along the lines of 'i don't get to see this board a lot because i don't live on this floor, you know' which i obviously knew as i lived on this floor and therefore would be expected to know who else did. anyway we don't talk anymore and i might have blocked his number (or was it someone else? one day in may i decided i had had enough of being sent cryptic and ridiculously blunt text messages about topics i no longer cared for) so i suppose it doesn't really matter.)

earlier today i went downstairs to refill my water bottle. on the way up, i stopped on the second floor, on the north end of the building, and stared down the empty hallway. both sets of swinging doors were open at the time so i thought my stare might make it to the other end of the building, past the lounge with the half-functioning a/c. but halfway there, the path curved out of sight. and then the realization: this building is not a straight line. it is a crooked one.

it makes sense, then, that its inhabitants were just as crooked. a straight line looks like a smear of ink from exactly two points on the map. too bad i got held up in the middle. too bad i saw everything in between.

so let's say you're standing outside of hell then, peering in through satan's window. let's say you're standing outside my dorm, phone in hand, fidgeting, waiting, wanting.

the items which can be found outside of the south entrance of this hall are as follows:

a plastic straw. single-use dental floss. a very short knitting needle, yellow, pointed on both ends. a boba bottle (not shattered, half full). an apple core (oxidized). an empty doritos wrapper.

if you head up the short flight of steps in front of the south entrance you will find yourself in a narrow stairwell. there are floor to ceiling windows on your left and there is a carpeted hallway on your right. walk down the hallway and you will reach the lounge situated in the middle of each crooked floor of this crooked building. it contains several armchairs, a three-seater sofa designated at present for one, and two swivel chairs. there is a cubbyhole of a kitchen built into the wall opposite the windows, also floor-to-ceiling, desperately trying to suck up light that stops trickling in in april and will not come again until the coming fall. in it are a fridge, a sink, and some cupboards.

the bathrooms on the first and second floors are gender-inclusive; the ones on the third are not. there are two bathrooms on each floor, one for each hallway, and there are two hallways per floor. each bathroom has five toilet cubicles and five shower stalls.

this dorm is perfectly symmetrical. everything on one side of it is a mirror image of the other. you can spend your whole life not knowing what it's like to touch a doorknob on the right side of a door.

my favorite shower stall was the fourth from the right when you walked into the bathroom on the south end of the second floor. it was my favorite because its shower head was jammed at an angle which meant my hair washed out fast but the plastic shower curtains did not and it had a ledge in the corner that i could leave my soaps and shampoo bottles on. i insisted on showering there for about eight weeks, until the stall started flooding each time i stepped inside because the drain wasn't draining anything and the water was just pooling in that flesh-colored plastic box, the soap suds gathering around my ankles, looking like weird little flowers. so i stopped using that stall and moved to another.

to clarify: not everyone was crooked. when i first crash-landed on mars and i could not breathe for fear that a foreign god would cut my tongue open (a/n: this is a metaphor for anxiety) this building held quiet and conversation apart from each other until they were ready to meet. and when they finally met things got better very fast, and i was ready to be very happy and very hopeful, and then mars cracked open like a big hard-boiled egg and i fell down that rabbit-hole, down, down, down, arms flailing, throat torn out of my throat, heart burnt right out of my heart.

but i met good people there. and i also met bad people. life is nothing without the highs. it is also nothing without the lows.

you want to go up? then acknowledge the dirt at your feet. look rock-bottom in the eye, and tell it you're going to leave.

i don't plan on coming back here when i'm gone. the rooms are big and airy and the view from the back is even more gorgeous than the front, a fact which i am slowly unpacking like an elaborately wrapped gift. but there are no doors on the closets. can you believe that? the closets don't have any fucking doors. they're just these spaces carved into the wall with a rack which indicates that yes, this is a closet and a ledge above the rack which nods its head furiously as if to say yes, this is a closet, and walls on either side which scream at you with bloodshot eyes saying look at this closet, damn right it's a closet, damn right you're going to live here. for four months i lived in the long flat cap of the mushroom.

my residential assistant moved out in the middle of the semester. i was always too intimidated to speak to any of the residential assistants in my dorm even though they were just older students with taller shadows, the one in my hallway included (a/n: this is also a metaphor for anxiety), but in a weird way i missed his presence. he took down the signs on the noticeboard before he left. without them we stopped being the hall of good driving, and started being just us again. just a bunch of kids, playing at being smart, playing at being happy.

sometimes i wonder if he liked the hall he lived in. every few weeks he'd take down the signs on the noticeboard and put up new ones. one time he set up a chair in the hallway and sat there with a pair of scissors and some paper, working late into the night. the next morning there was a t-rex pinned to the notice board, its jaw cracked open as if to scream, or yawn. do your readings, he said. dinosaurs did not read. now they are extinct.

the microwave on the third floor looks like something died in it a long time ago. the student responsible for the ridiculous amount of spiritual damage it sustained graduated three days ago, in the bleak, drizzling cold. we're all that's left now. easy mac, empty takeout containers, empty windows.

next year new blood will move into these sun-washed rooms, afflicted with the same wide-eyed, honest curiosity. next year there will be new children, carrying new mistakes and new ways to stumble helplessly into them. college is nothing without the corpse screaming outside your window, you know? you've got to embrace it. you've got to embrace the crooked fucked-up humor of it all.

so i peel the photographs off the wall, fold my ghosts into the drawer, and get ready to leave in the morning.

06.02.21

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kadobeclothing · 5 years ago

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12 Modern Trouser Styles All Men Should Own

Statement jackets and the latest sneakers are always going to be top of men’s lust lists, but don’t let high-wattage clobber blind you to the essentials. The right pair of trousers can be the most quietly powerful item you wear, but get it wrong and you’ll instantly dull the shine of the trending pieces you spent so long chasing.Yes, it’s easy to simply plump for your tried-and-tested slim-fit black jeans for the umpteenth time, but there’s a whole wardrobe full of top-notch trews that’ll look just as slick given half the chance. Here are some of the unsung trouser styles that you might not have considered, but definitely should.Corduroy TrousersOnce strictly the preserve of fictional (and real) inhabitants of academia, corduroy is one of the most underutilised materials in men’s style and, if worn correctly, can make for an indispensable pair of trousers. There’s a 1970s revival going on in menswear, too, so there’s never been a better time to cover your legs in cord.Cord is a textile composed of woven, twisted cotton or wool, resulting in parallel lines (called ‘wales’). Wool corduroy is the most durable type and wears particularly well. So, as well as bestowing a bit of superficial intelligence, cord trousers will withstand a fair bit of rough and tumble. The Indiana Jones of legwear, if you will. They can get a bit warm, though, so it’s best to save them for when the cold really starts to bite.Contrary to its sometimes stuffy connotations, corduroy is brilliant when dressed down and worn casually. Try teaming a pair of dark corduroy trousers with a sweatshirt and practical leather sneakers to signpost that you’re not actually a fellow at Oxbridge.This stripey fabric also does an excellent job of adding a touch of personality to more formal attire. A slim-cut corduroy suit will make an excellent companion for a light-gauge roll neck and monk-strap shoes come party season. Swerve the shirt and tie, though – Doctor Who has rendered that combo unwearable everywhere outside of Comic Con.Key PiecesWool TrousersA firm favourite of fashion bloggers (the kind who don’t dress like anime astronauts, that is) and art directors the world over, wool trousers offer a throwback to the days when jeans weren’t the de facto king of legwear.Perfect both for styling with other tailored separates or smartening a casual getup, wool trousers have been a mainstay amongst industry insiders for years – and their popularity isn’t showing any signs of waning.While you’ll often see them dressed down with a pair of sneakers by arbiters of cool hanging outside loft offices leisurely puffing on roll-ups, they work just as well styled in a more traditional way. For inspiration, cast your eye to Pitti Uomo where they’re often grounded with a pair of brogues, Derbies or double monks.Key PiecesTwill ChinosA good piece of workwear puts in a shift if you want to assert your old-school masculine credentials. In twill chinos, quality craftsmanship meets reliability and style in a perfect ménage à trews of cool that’s still exceptionally wearable.Cut from heavyweight cotton, woven to create a surface comprising diagonal parallel ridges, twill is a traditional material that, if invested in, will give excellent cost-per-wear calculations thanks to its hardy nature.Plus, every scuff on a pair of twill chinos tells a story – even if the only ‘work’ you end up doing in them is loafing about on Twitter. In twill the beleaguered chino also breaks out of the realm of ‘Ibiza lads on tour’ into an altogether more grown-up sense of place and tradition.The style is still, strictly speaking, a casual trouser so wear them with an easy-going pair of shoes (such as anything with a contrast Vibram sole), a T-shirt or piece of knitwear and top with an overshirt or denim jacket for an effortlessly cool off-duty look.Key PiecesRelaxed-Legged TrousersThe skinny jeans backlash is officially on. Tired of indecently outlined genitalia and trying (and failing) to remove our skinnies with dignity after a night out, relaxed-legged jeans and trousers are looking more and more appealing by the day.Harking back to 1950s-inspired garments, the Levi’s 501 cut is firmly back on the radar of menswear’s most stylish and the model has brought its mates along for the ride, too.While they are perfect for providing a platform for a standout piece of footwear, looser-cut chinos and trousers need to break perfectly. Too long and they’ll look like the floor-dragging bootcuts, too high and you’ll look like you’re wearing three-quarter lengths. The main objective is to avoid a pooling situation, so we’d suggest aiming for the hem to fall somewhere between the top of your shoe and its first set of eyelets.When it comes to styling, contrast the extra fabric below by keeping your top half fitted to avoid any accusations that you’ve been playing dress up in your dad’s wardrobe.Key PiecesLinen TrousersNot so long ago, linen trousers were sweaty, misshapen bloomers that had no place in a modern man’s wardrobe. Thankfully designers have done a lot of work to rehabilitate them in recent years. Gone are the shapeless cuts, replaced by tapered, modern leg-lines that flatter every body shape. And linen blends make them a lot more practical, less prone to impossible creases – while still being as breezy as ever.Try them as part of a linen suit for a dapper old-timer vibe, but the more modern way to wear them is cropped, with sneakers and a plain T-shirt.Key PiecesDrawstring TrousersWithout wishing to be overdramatic, smart drawstring trousers are the best thing to happen to menswear in a decade. Until recently, drawstrings and elasticated waistbands were confined to sportswear and generally considered to be a sign that you didn’t care. That’s stupid, of course. What a revelation it’s been to sit down for a large plate of pasta and not feel like your trousers might slice you in half by the meal’s end.These days, drawstring trousers come tailored and in a lot more materials than jersey. Wool and linen offer the best options at the smarter end of the spectrum. Once you’ve felt how comfortable your dressed-up wardrobe can be, you’ll never go back.Key PiecesSlimline JoggersThere have been some excellent hybrids over the years: the shacket, the snood, er, Kimye, but none boast as much staying power as athleisure, which is a rare example of fashion and function joining forces for the greater good.The sports-luxe movement is still a draw Stateside, and while UK labels took slightly longer to catch up, young Brits have taken the look to their hearts. Combining the “it feels like I’m wearing nothing at all” comfort of joggers with the slim-fit of a more contemporary work trouser, they’re equally at home in the pub or the gym.While there could be an argument made for the right jogger matched with the right overshirt, we’d suggest keeping the streetwear vibe going with a logo T-shirt from the likes of Palace, Stussy or Undefeated, a low-profile lifestyle runner on the foot and a slightly smarter bomber jacket.If you’re not on a streetwear flex, step into some box-fresh white lace-up trainers and stick on an (impeccably ironed) Oxford shirt to inject some sharpness into the look.Key PiecesCropped TrousersAnkle swingers, as some want to call them, are here to stay – and with good reason. Allowing your ankles to breathe in summer while still giving airtime to your footwear in cooler months, cropped trousers are a great way to spice up what can be a tired formal outfit. Disclaimer: by cropped trousers, we mean shorter than your average, displaying a sliver of ankle or sock, not to be mistaken with pantaloons.In addition to giving your footwear a platform to shine, a precise crop accentuates the line of your trews – because there’s nothing worse than puddling material at the bottom of your ankle. Getting the length right is crucial, though. Unless they fit perfectly off-the-peg, go to a tailor and take their advice, but if you’re feeling braver, anything up to three or four inches above the ankle is a safe bet.Cropped trousers lend themselves well to both formal and off-duty settings, though you’re undoubtedly in safer territory with the former. Cropped chinos in a sand colour will work well with a simple white shirt, premium suede bomber and white sports-luxe trainers on the weekend. Meanwhile, for more formal occasions, black cropped trousers worn with a grey blazer, charcoal roll neck and oxblood dress shoes is ideal for a relaxed business-casual office.Key PiecesCargo PantsCargo trousers have enjoyed something of a potted history, going from army essential to early noughties oversized monstrosity. Now, enough time has passed that things have calmed down a bit and they’re back in a big (and much more stylish) way.The key to getting cargo trousers right is ensuring that they hit the middle ground between slim and spacious, so think tailored. Sure, you can technically fill their big ol’ pockets to the brim, but in this case clean lines trump practicality, so leave them empty.Standard-issue khaki green pairs well with just about anything in navy so consider an overshirt (another workwear workhorse) for a weekend look that grafts. Meanwhile, if light layers aren’t an option, a pair of contemporary black cargo trousers can be recruited alongside a white Oxford shirt, grey sweatshirt, navy overcoat for a look that passes inspection.High-Waisted TrousersUsing your nipples as a marker to align the waistband of your trousers to used to be a dead giveaway that you were either A: 90+ years of age, or B: Simon Cowell. Today, however, it’s much more likely to signify that you’re the type of gent who frequents Pitti Uomo and owns more than one set of cufflinks. High-waisted trousers are quite literally on the rise. And while a well-styled pair can be a one way ticket to sartorial nirvana, get them wrong and you’ll look like a kid playing dress up in his dad’s suit.The key to hitting the sweet spot lies in nailing the length and the cut. If you’re going for a wide-leg style a cropped fit ensures you’re not drowning in fabric. Conversely, if mankles aren’t your thing, a tapered cut will allow the leg openings of the trousers to sit nicely with your chosen footwear.High-waisted trousers may be tailoring technically speaking, but they’re still super relaxed and the rest of your outfit should follow ‘suit’. Up top, opt for either a fitted polo or a loose T-shirt, tucked into the waistband. You can layer this with a matching unstructured jacket and even a wool overcoat when the mercury plummets. Footwear wise, try mixing things up a bit with a canvas high-top or a suede desert boot.Pleated TrousersAs trousers make their way way back up to men’s natural waistlines once again, a long-forgotten tailoring detail is being thrust back into the fashion spotlight. The pleat was not long ago a style detail reserved for your grandad. A quirk chosen for its comfort rather than its aesthetics and frowned upon by those in the know. However, here in this age of smart joggers and oversized tailoring, comfort is no longer a dirty word. Pleated pants are back in style and now is the time to introduce them to your wardrobe.When you’ve spent the last 10 years forcing your legs into jeans akin to sausage casing, the idea of playing with less fitted silhouettes can seem a bit daunting. The trick here is to strike that balance between fitted and airy. Your trousers should be breezy and comfortable, but you shouldn’t have clown-style pools of fabric obscuring your shoes. Opt for a tapered cut for best results and selecting a cropped style is never a bad idea either.In terms of styling, stick to relaxed tailoring in the jacket department, layered over a white tee. A tucked-in Cuban collar shirt can work nicely too. For the footwear stick to Derby boots, brogues or, if you’re feeling adventurous, white canvas trainers.Tracksuit BottomsWhen sporty slacks first began making their way off the running track and onto the runway, the long-time suited and booted menswear crowd shared a quiet sigh of relief. Finally there was a way to look put together in something that offered a level of comfort comparable to pyjamas. It was the break everyone had been looking for and couldn’t have been more welcome.There’s a wealth of variety when it comes to tracksuit bottoms. You can opt for a side-stripe trouser style and pair them with tailoring. Or alternatively, you can go full nylon and go for that 90s, head-to-toe vibe. Whichever you pick, go for a slim cut and if the cuffs aren’t elasticated then opt for a slightly cropped leg.Traditionally, tracksuit bottoms have always been best off paired with sportswear. To wear a pair with brogues would’ve been a style crime of unspeakable proportions. Today, however, things are different. A cropped side-stripe trouser can be paired with a smarter shoe just as effectively as it can with a luxe trainer. Throw on a plain tee and a bomber and you’re good to go.If you want to keep things more street then go for the full nylon tracksuit and wear it with chunky trainers and a dad cap. Source link

source https://www.kadobeclothing.store/12-modern-trouser-styles-all-men-should-own/

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dillshake45-blog · 5 years ago

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Kraken CEO Jesse Powell spends $11.5 million cash on a Mandeville Canyon architectural

(NOTE: Scads of photos of Mr. Powell’s new home can be seen here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.)

Well, according to Yolanda’s research, it turns out Mr. Powell wasn’t just whistlin’ Dixie. In fact, he’s more than considered a zip code change — he’s already done sealed the deal by purchasing an impressive mansion in one of LA’s priciest neighborhoods. Records show that our boy used a corporate entity called “Silver Nile LLC” to stealthily shell out $11,500,000 — all of it in cash. USD, that is. No bitcoin here.

If the ANR name sounds vaguely familiar, it’s probably because these are the same design peeps responsible for the $12 million Hollywood Hills mansion just sold to Drew Taggart andthe $13.5 million Beverly Hills (Post Office) estate recently purchased by Little Miss Kylie Jenner.

But we digress — before we start dissectin’ the residence, here’s some background on our boy.

Upstairs are four en-suite bedrooms, including the elephantine master suite with its vaulted ceiling and dramatic, pentagonal wall of glass that provides a distant city lights view.

Check out that shower in the master bath! Well, hot damn. That’s big enough for half of Kraken’s workforce to shower together! Take team bonding to the next level, Mr. Powell.

Also, that bathroom floor looks slippery. Watch your step. Nude dancing (or dancing of any kind, really) should be undertaken only with extreme caution.

Out back, the .69-acre property features dual staircases leading down to a sprawling deck, plenty of space for al fresco dining, and a black-bottomed, irregularly-shaped swimming pool with inset spa.

Listing agent: Santiago Arana, The Agency Jesse Powell’s agent: Aaron Kirman, Compass

Source: https://www.yolandaslittleblackbook.com/moguls/2019/04/08/kraken-ceo-jesse-powell-spends-11-5-million-cash-on-a-mandeville-canyon-architectural/

#read more #see more #check it out #interesting #learn more

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thecoroutfitters · 5 years ago

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Written by R. Ann Parris on The Prepper Journal.

Starting, expanding and maintaining a garden can be expensive, but it doesn’t have to be. From developing and increasing soil tilth and fertility to what we grow in and the tools we use, there are plenty of ways to save money. Some of them are handy for saving time, too.

Free Fertilizers

Leaf mold and compost can be done in any sized yard, just about, even without turning to keyhole gardens, worm towers, or tumbling bins that speed the process and keep it compact.

Mow over leaves or rake them up whole, stick them in a bag, and in 3-15 months there’s rich organic matter full of nutrients to serve as powerhouse amendments and mulch. Composting can also be done by digging a trench right in our gardens, covering it as we go.

There are still easier ways to boost our gardens.

We can add coffee and tea right to the surfaces of pots or planters or plants out in larger plots. Leftover brewer’s mash also works, although there’s a bit of a smell. Algae is a powerhouse of nutrients, and can also be collected and spread right on the surface around our plants.

Mulches

Mulching helps us in numerous ways, making soils, crops and our time much more productive. Different types of mulching accomplish different things, but there are freebie and lower-cost options available for almost anyone.

Cardboard from liquor and appliance stores or newspaper and shredded paper we source from recycling bins are excellent weed exclusion barriers for both rows or beds and for walkways.

Grass clippings can form dense mats that also function as a weed barrier. I typically only use them around perennials (I don’t love the decomp and they typically have seed heads by the time I mow). However, others very successfully use them in the garden.

Just poke them with a hay fork or run a weasel over the top (just enough to puncture, not really stirring it), because that mat solidifies much like shredded office paper, and can create a rain/irrigation barrier and anaerobic conditions.

If we’re after lowered irrigation and evaporation, or the ability to water faster, straw, leaves, pine needles, and chipped wood all work well.

If you’re buying either straw or bagged bark mulch, comparison shop locations, and check out alternatives such as shredded and flake animal bedding.

When our local Big Box and smaller stores put “real” bark mulch on sale, it’s typically four or five for $10, working out to be about $1-$1.25 per cubic foot (some are doing bags of 1.75 cu/ft instead of 2 cu/ft now, so watch that, too).

Tractor Supply, Fleet Mills Farm, and others all carry animal bedding at about $6-$8 for 8-10 cubic feet, working out to well under $1 cu/ft.

That pine bedding is less likely to have odd bits of painted furniture and big chunks left in it, too, and is typically heat treated and animal safe, making it a good option for people who worry over chemicals in their gardens.

It’s also light to carry and haul, even though it’s tight packed, is less messy to spread with less dust/mud in it, seems less attractive to slugs and ants, and eliminates the big chunks that poke holes in the bags.

Buying in loose “bulk” loads by the bucket, pickup bed, tarp-lined trunk, or dump-truck drop-off can also help lower costs if no DIY options are available.

They’ll all last differing amounts of time by climate and soil health (the happier and more active our soil biology, the faster our mulches get incorporated into the O layer).

Woody types and whole leaves last longest; green leaves and grass clippings the shortest. Newspaper and cardboard typically fall in the middle. The depth we use also affects lifespan – deeper layers last longer.

Tool Shopping

Depending on what we already have, tools can really add to the cost of setting up a garden shed. Buying secondhand can significantly reduce outlay.

Many pawn shops have sections with our basic construction tools (see if you can get a 7-10 day if not a 30-day return/exchange/credit guarantee on power tools). Some thrift stores will also periodically carry garden-oriented and basic household-yard management tools, but it’s usually worth calling instead of popping in to find out

Flea markets, yard sales, and estate sales are even more likely to yield everything from our rakes and spades to clippers and pruners.

While shopping for wheelbarrows or garden carts and cultivators or watering cans, repeatedly scan the full materials list for anything we’re building, and stay open to suggestion.

Pre-owned step ladders, carpenter’s squares, levels, and somebody’s can/jar of mixed nails or screws can seriously reduce our Lowes/ACE/Walmart bill. High-test fishing line and rotten electrical cords can form trellises and plant ties instead of screws/nails or cord, sheets can be slit for plant ties or used as frost blankets, loose-woven curtains become bug barriers, and old hoses work as row cover supports or drip irrigation lines, further reducing the cost of our builds, expansions, and upgrades.

Internet Hunting & Gathering

We can source all sorts of materials for gardens without paying a penny. Check classifieds for yard sales, too – near the end of the day and the next day, many become open to deep discounts and there’s a fair chance of curbside pickups.

All sorts of furniture comes apart to help us build beds or serve as stakes. In other cases there are blankets, curtains, or clothing that works as mulch, hoses and tubing we can repurpose, or specific tools for breaking ground, building, or maintaining our veggies.

Bed frames, old bikes, and mattress springs become trellises or fencing. Canoes, bathtubs, sinks, and totes can be planters or rain “barrels”. Laundry baskets, clothing and shoe organizers, lamp shades, cookie jars, bookcases, and even boots can also serve as planters.

Baby pools, trampolines, buckets, and pallets have entire articles and whole websites devoted to their usefulness, many of which apply to the yard and garden.

Whatever we’re looking for, hit the internet to see if there’s a same-shaped item that can be had simply for detouring on our way to work or while we’re out shopping and running around anyway.

Trash to Tasty Treasures

While we’re poking around upcycling, don’t forget to eyeball recycling bins and broken goodies that can have a very different life. Hollow bed frames or busted lamps can the watering tubes for sub-irrigated planters, but so can plastic bottles.

There’s a million and five ways to turn former food containers into both irrigation assists and small container gardens for herbs, companion flowers, strawberries, greens, and peas.

Everything from puppy-chewed wicker baskets to badly worn jeans can be planted in, and curtains, blankets, or badly stained and ripped towels or clothes all work as weed exclusion cloth in our gardens, or can be rigged to provide shade or frost protection, keep mosquitoes out of our water catchment, or serve as wicks and water sinks for our planters and beds.

Sticks & Saplings

If we don’t generate our own, chances are, somewhere nearby somebody is pruning trees or there’s a road verge, power line cut, or abandoned pasture in early stages of succession. Early succession means small saplings that are nice and straight, and pruning means smaller branches we can use to fill in around them.

With those offerings, we can build beds several different ways, provide supports for our plants, and fence it all in.

With smaller, supple sticks, we can also make squirrel and bird exclusions and frames to support netting around brassicas and berries, or form the hoops for season extenders.

(Bamboo is also a good one if you see any driving around somewhere – don’t plant it.)

Those freebie sticks can also be easily cobbled into frames for curbside pickup windows and storm door screens, creating cold frames and insect exclusions for beds and rows.

Cheap Out to Do More

There’s plenty to spend money on when it comes to preparedness. Starting, expanding, and maintaining gardens are only part of the draw on our finances and time. From our soil amendments to garden tools and equipment, taking a frugal route can alleviate some of the inputs required, so we can produce more groceries, faster, and with less stress to our budgets.

The “fugly” solutions can be of issue for some, although there’s usually a relatively inexpensive fix (just about anything can be painted and-or tied up in old Goodwill or yard sale sheets/curtains, or surrounded by old house paneling).

Sourcing lower-cost items and learning to see things anew has other advantages as well, especially for preppers. Both personal crises and national/international issues can upset usual supply lines. Training ourselves to accomplish our goals with whatever’s at hand is a pretty good life skill across the board, and even handier in tough times.

These are just a handful of ways we can apply that to our gardens, from secondhand shopping to freebies. Even just gardening, there are plenty of others. Before spending, run some searches to see how others are saving money on the same project.

Be sure to check out The Prepper Journal Store and follow The Prepper Journal on Facebook!

The post Survival Gardening: Cutting Costs appeared first on The Prepper Journal.

from The Prepper Journal Don't forget to visit the store and pick up some gear at The COR Outfitters. How prepared are you for emergencies? #SurvivalFirestarter #SurvivalBugOutBackpack #PrepperSurvivalPack #SHTFGear #SHTFBag

#SHTF #TEOTWAWKI #MARTIALLAW #BUGOUT #PREPPERBAG #USAF #USSOCOM #ARMY #NAVY #SurvivalFirestarter #Sur

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iyarpage · 7 years ago

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Why CEOs Don’t Care About UX and How to Change Their Minds

“UX design doesn’t work…And it won’t make us money.”

Business executives aren’t all that fond of UX design, or even design in general. It’s an incredibly common problem.

Too many executives see good design as an inconvenient expense. At a certain point, executives see UX design as an unnecessary cross to bear. A burden they’re expected to tolerate. If another department needs more money in their budget, design departments are hit first.

You know the value of good UX design, they don’t and that’s the problem.

This Isn’t a Problem for Design Driven Companies

What do Apple, Coca-Cola, Herman Miller, Disney, and Target all have in common? They’re all design driven companies.

The bad news?

Out of the pool of publicly traded companies evaluated by Motive, only 15 companies met the criteria of a design driven company. Others have found the same. So what does this tell us? Most companies aren’t all that interested in good design. UX design and design in general just isn’t a priority.

But you know good UX matters. You see the difference good design can make. It’s obvious, anyone can see it if they’re paying attention, so why can’t they?

Executives can’t see it because they don’t care. Not even a little bit.

They aren’t interested in design as a whole. In fact, most are looking to spend as little on design as they can. Because in their minds it’s just not worth their time.

But why?

We need to get inside their heads if we want to know the answer.

As Designers, We Speak a Weird Foreign Language

We use words like opacity and kerning and descender as a normal part of our everyday conversations. We argue about design trends, which ones are worth embracing, which ones to avoid. We obsess over tiny, seemingly insignificant details, because we understand the importance small details make.

We’re critical of ourselves and other designers in general because we understand the consequences of poor design on a deep and intimate level.

It’s intense.

And none of that matters. Not a single shred of our world matters to the vast majority of executives. That’s a very big problem.

When it’s time to teach executives about the value of good UX design, we choose the wrong approach. We use the wrong vocabulary. Instead of speaking their language, we speak our language.

Almost immediately, executives glaze over and tune out.

This inevitably leads to:

Your ideas being ignored or rejected;

A loss of income for you, the company, your customers or all of the above;

Dwindling budgets as other departments fight for more money from your department’s budget which means department layoffs;

A terrible experience for customers, who spend less money or shop elsewhere, making it harder for your organization to survive.

This wouldn’t be happening if executives understood the value of good design, but most aren’t even willing to hear us out. How on earth are we supposed to change their mind?

Grocery Stores Show us How to Win Hearts and Minds

The competition in your local grocery store is fierce. The shelves are lined with thousands of competing products, all focused on one thing: Getting customers to buy their product instead of a competitor’s.

The grocery stores themselves are competing for your attention and your money. It’s a cutthroat environment that only a few stores and some products can survive in.

Their secret? Design.

Your local grocery store is filled with lots of subtle design elements, these elements are used to get you to buy:

Customers bought more bananas if their peels were Pantone color 12-0752 (Buttercup) vs the slightly brighter Pantone color (13-0858 (Vibrant Yellow). Growers altered the color of their bananas to produce the desired color.

Store layouts are designed around the user experience. It’s a common strategy for grocery stores to show you the produce section first. The bright colors, fresh produce and pleasant aromas lead you to conclude the store is an inviting and ideal place to buy food.

Product designers mark up prices strategically on products with strong brand loyalty. Remember the Pepsi Challenge? Pepsi conducted a blind taste test, asking consumers whether they preferred the taste of Pepsi or Coca-Cola. Pepsi won, but consumers continued to buy Coca-Cola. This happens all the time. It’s why people consistently choose the $90 bottle of wine over a $10 bottle, even if the only difference is price.

Grocery stores are designed to be traps. A well known study found that people spent 34 percent more time shopping in stores that played music. These stores hide time cues to keep you inside. No clocks, windows or skylights. The rationale goes like this: The longer you stay the more you’ll buy.

Product placement on shelves. This study found kid friendly foods are placed at kids’ eye-level. The characters on cereal boxes make eye contact with kids, a clever way to increase influence and sales. Expensive items are placed higher while inexpensive items are placed near the bottom shelves.

There are thousands of examples like these. The process, environment, imagery, ambiance and displays in grocery stores are all designed.

And here’s the interesting part.

Grocery store executives support these design conventions wholeheartedly. Their executives have fully embraced UX design.

Can you see why?

Designers and executives spoke the same language. Executives don’t care about design for design’s sake. Rather, they view design as a means to an end. A way to attract more customers and sales. A way to grow their business.

But the examples above are manipulative and sleazy!

I completely agree. Does that mean you need to approach things the same way they did? Of course not. It goes without saying, you should be honest and above-board with everything you do. But to change an executive’s mind you’ll need to think and talk like an executive.

What Exactly Are Executives Thinking About?

They’re thinking about results. They have a very specific set of problems they’re required to solve on behalf of the company. An executive’s thought process basically boils down to three basic problems.

Will this save money?

Will this make money?

Will this cut costs?

The vast majority of their desires, goals, fears, frustrations and problems tie back to these three problems in some way. Getting customers, selling more product, making more money, it’s all part of it.

An executive’s language is based almost entirely around one of these three core problems.

What does that mean for you?

A request that’s focused on “What’s best for users” is far less likely to work. A request that’s positioned and presented properly is far more likely to succeed.

Here’s what that looks like:

“We’ll be able to blow past Q3 projections if we make these four UX changes.”

“We’re losing $467,891 a month. We have some UX problems here, here and here that would stop the financial bleeding.”

“We can get a 1/3 increase in revenue overnight with these UX design ideas.”

“Right now, we’re losing 8 out of 10 customers on our site. With the right UX design, I can get that down to 4 out of 10.”

“We can get 1/4 of our customers to spend $250 more per order, per month if we make these UX changes.”

See what I did there?

I know, I know it’s loathsome. The last thing many of us want to do as designers is talk business, sales or marketing. Anything but that. I get it.

Here’s the thing. When you speak the same language as executives you communicate value in a way they can understand. They aren’t as worried about looking stupid, protecting their egos or acting as if they understand the finer points of your job.

They’re focused squarely on the things that matter to them. Get these details right and they look like the hero.

Do this consistently, and they’ll slowly begin to understand

They’ll begin to see why good UX design matters. Why design, as a concept matters far more than they think. And more importantly, they’ll understand why design can help them hit the goals they’re desperate to achieve.

Pitch your ideas the right way, get inside the mind of your executives and you still may fail. That’s part of the risk. That risk drops dramatically however, if you’re focused on them.

Pursuing things this way sends an important message. It shows executives that you understand them. That you’re willing to take their concerns seriously and you’re willing to invest in them.

This is huge because it shows you have potential, that you’re someone they can count on for the future. All because you decided to speak their language.

Executives Think UX Design Doesn’t Work

They’re wrong, but they don’t know it. Their subconscious impression is, UX design doesn’t work and it won’t make us money.

Business executives aren’t all that fond of UX design, or design in general. It’s viewed as fluff, an unnecessary cross to bear.

It’s up to you.

You know the value of good UX design. You can change their perceptions, but only if you can speak their language. Start small, showing executives you can make a difference. With consistent effort and lots of patience, your company can become a design driven company.

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webbygraphic001 · 7 years ago

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Why CEOs Don’t Care About UX and How to Change Their Minds

“UX design doesn’t work…And it won’t make us money.”

Business executives aren’t all that fond of UX design, or even design in general. It’s an incredibly common problem.

You know the value of good UX design, they don’t and that’s the problem.

This Isn’t a Problem for Design Driven Companies

What do Apple, Coca-Cola, Herman Miller, Disney, and Target all have in common? They’re all design driven companies.

The bad news?

But you know good UX matters. You see the difference good design can make. It’s obvious, anyone can see it if they’re paying attention, so why can’t they?

Executives can’t see it because they don’t care. Not even a little bit.

They aren’t interested in design as a whole. In fact, most are looking to spend as little on design as they can. Because in their minds it’s just not worth their time.

But why?

We need to get inside their heads if we want to know the answer.

As Designers, We Speak a Weird Foreign Language

We’re critical of ourselves and other designers in general because we understand the consequences of poor design on a deep and intimate level.

It’s intense.

And none of that matters. Not a single shred of our world matters to the vast majority of executives. That’s a very big problem.

When it’s time to teach executives about the value of good UX design, we choose the wrong approach. We use the wrong vocabulary. Instead of speaking their language, we speak our language.

Almost immediately, executives glaze over and tune out.

This inevitably leads to:

Your ideas being ignored or rejected;

A loss of income for you, the company, your customers or all of the above;

Dwindling budgets as other departments fight for more money from your department’s budget which means department layoffs;

A terrible experience for customers, who spend less money or shop elsewhere, making it harder for your organization to survive.

This wouldn’t be happening if executives understood the value of good design, but most aren’t even willing to hear us out. How on earth are we supposed to change their mind?

Grocery Stores Show us How to Win Hearts and Minds

The grocery stores themselves are competing for your attention and your money. It’s a cutthroat environment that only a few stores and some products can survive in.

Their secret? Design.

Your local grocery store is filled with lots of subtle design elements, these elements are used to get you to buy:

There are thousands of examples like these. The process, environment, imagery, ambiance and displays in grocery stores are all designed.

And here’s the interesting part.

Grocery store executives support these design conventions wholeheartedly. Their executives have fully embraced UX design.

Can you see why?

But the examples above are manipulative and sleazy!

What Exactly Are Executives Thinking About?

Will this save money?

Will this make money?

Will this cut costs?

An executive’s language is based almost entirely around one of these three core problems.

What does that mean for you?

A request that’s focused on “What’s best for users” is far less likely to work. A request that’s positioned and presented properly is far more likely to succeed.

Here’s what that looks like:

“We’ll be able to blow past Q3 projections if we make these four UX changes.”

“We’re losing $467,891 a month. We have some UX problems here, here and here that would stop the financial bleeding.”

“We can get a 1/3 increase in revenue overnight with these UX design ideas.”

“Right now, we’re losing 8 out of 10 customers on our site. With the right UX design, I can get that down to 4 out of 10.”

“We can get 1/4 of our customers to spend $250 more per order, per month if we make these UX changes.”

See what I did there?

I know, I know it’s loathsome. The last thing many of us want to do as designers is talk business, sales or marketing. Anything but that. I get it.

They’re focused squarely on the things that matter to them. Get these details right and they look like the hero.

Do this consistently, and they’ll slowly begin to understand

Pitch your ideas the right way, get inside the mind of your executives and you still may fail. That’s part of the risk. That risk drops dramatically however, if you’re focused on them.

Pursuing things this way sends an important message. It shows executives that you understand them. That you’re willing to take their concerns seriously and you’re willing to invest in them.

This is huge because it shows you have potential, that you’re someone they can count on for the future. All because you decided to speak their language.

Executives Think UX Design Doesn’t Work

They’re wrong, but they don’t know it. Their subconscious impression is, UX design doesn’t work and it won’t make us money.

Business executives aren’t all that fond of UX design, or design in general. It’s viewed as fluff, an unnecessary cross to bear.

It’s up to you.

4,000 High-Quality Graphic Resources – only $17!

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