{"id":165,"date":"2010-01-01T16:37:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-02T00:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/?p=165"},"modified":"2010-01-01T16:37:00","modified_gmt":"2010-01-02T00:37:00","slug":"let-my-people-design-great-products","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/2010\/01\/let-my-people-design-great-products\/","title":{"rendered":"Let My People Design Great Products"},"content":{"rendered":"

I finally read Let My People Go Surfing<\/a> because Bill Buxton<\/a> told me to. Actually, he told everyone at CHI 2008<\/a> during his keynote address. I actually wrote it down and found the reference later — personal information management for the win!<\/p>\n

In his keynote, I remember Bill saying something like, “it’s a pity about the book’s title.” The author, Yvon Chouinard, is the founder of Patagonia (the outdoor clothing company). Let My People Go Surfing is the name of Patagonia’s employee benefits package, which is not all that exciting.<\/p>\n

The reason Bill mentioned the book to an auditorium of human-computer interaction professionals is because of its incredibly compelling chapter on product design. Chouinard’s goal is to “make the best products.” But realizing how abstract and useless that phrase is by itself, he delves much deeper and lays out an insightful “philosophy” of product design standards. Below I’ve selected the ones that also apply to software, in my view.<\/p>\n