Notes from intermission: positioning, curation, structure
One of the wild things about intermission is how many people have been interested in my shutting up for a while. “Inspirational.” “Awesome.” “This is the best move.” I don’t quite know how to take that, but thank you! Everything I do is good, in fact, including intermission. If you have any suggestions for what I should talk abut or focus on in the coming months, please let me know.
In the meantime, we’ve made a lot more progress. Let’s talk about it!
text book
First, I’ve compiled all of the essays that will go into our next book. I need to edit everything, then typeset it, which will take the bulk of my time. The book will be published a little unconventionally for us, which I’m excited for. It might be the most Draft-y book I’ve ever done?
Project Haystack
Next, my assistant & I have been poring through the past eight years of content to determine what to put together for an evergreen launch course.
There is a lot of content. Much of it is geared to members and hence a little dated. I’m also looking exclusively at qualitative work, now that quantitative research has reached its permanent & definitive conclusion, so that cuts back a lot more. But if you remove all of that, you’re still looking at an archive of work over 200,000 words long.
The goal is to introduce our point of view to newcomers, and hopefully drive some people to our workshop & books in the process. I’m one of those people who hates hard selling. I would rather just do what I do and hope the business side works out. I know I’m leaving money on the table this way, but I’m also growing things more slowly & deliberately, and finding people who are really receptive to our work.
I’m also certain that our work has driven readers away over the past year. In fact, we actively nudge people to unsubscribe if they think that design will be replaced wholesale by machine learning, or if they’re “dashboard bros” who seek only quantitative improvement. Who is left? Those who actually align with our work and truly give a shit about us.
I would always rather have a smaller audience who gets it. I don’t want to find viral success or make a huge name for myself. I want to keep my head down, do the work, and then after it’s all done I want to close my laptop, stare at plants, pet dogs, and vibe.
This course will hopefully be written in that spirit. The goal is to teach first, give value, and then sell – but only with the greatest of care, honoring that people are all in their own process and may not be ready to receive deeper work quite yet. There is a time for everything.
I’ll just be cleaning
Because of our renewed focus on software-forward independent business, we’re in the process of scrubbing all mentions of ecommerce from our positioning.
We exist, above all else, in right relationship to the practice of design, which is sacred. While we’re well aware of our ability to get outsize impact with any store, we’re taking one look around the industry, speculating as to what direction it’s heading, and wondering, quite frankly, why we’re still here. In April, I went to a small conference for independent business owners, said I was available for work, and quoted in enough work in a single afternoon to fund my life for six months. We seek deep structural alignment, receptivity to the practice. And so therefore the scrub, the rework, the chinscratching about how to talk about ourselves.
The scrub does not include work that’s specifically about ecommerce, like Store Design; or case studies, obviously. But I’ve combined the whole case study list to incorporate non-stores again, and I’m working on generalizing all of our “about”-related content.
This does not mean we’re refusing ecommerce work. It does mean that Draft changed outfits while you weren’t looking, and we hope you think we look nicer. Heck, we’re still working for five stores at once right now! If we find the right people who are interested in consultative design in a way that is actual, then we’ll make their numbers go up. Lord knows we have the pedigree for it, what with our existing for a third of all of ecommerce’s history and all.
You probably think I’m insane to go general. Specific positioning wins, after all. But we’re also in a period of deep transformation, and the first thing we need to do is be receptive to what kind of work comes in. We’re also in a world where the expansion of one’s design practice allows them to exert more soft power, allowing for greater structural leverage in any orgaization. So while I don’t expect this to be a permanent thing at all, I’m excited to see what kind of work comes through for us.
Because work begets work. If you work for stores, you’ll get more work for stores. If you work for software, you’ll find yourself working more in software. The more work you do of one kind, the easier it is to position towards that work, too. It’s abundantly clear that it’s time for us to seek new work, new ways of nourishing the practice. This is a matter of archetype and will not be negotiable.
Moving one house, eventually
I want to consolidate my private work with this list. Right now it’s on Circle, which by definition will always get less engagement than email. Now that Buttondown allows for paid lists, it’s time. Same fun, different spot.
After some exploration, that will require a few technical reworkings on Buttondown & Memberful’s end, so now I am tracking GitHub issues and hoping that we get the right infrastructure in place soon.
By the way, I redesigned Buttondown’s site. Like it? Find a bug? Let me know.
Reading
Lots of good work has come through lately.
This piece on POSSE, which I imagine I’d do if I ever worked with unpaid software.
This universally correct piece on machine learning.
All-timer human Erin Kissane has started a design studio, centered around the topic of right relationship.
Software development models being anti-design is nothing particularly new, but this excellent post from Charles Lambdin hits why. A follow-up.
I also went to the world’s largest corn maze and got to every checkpoint in under two hours. Please congratulate!