I come from a music/audio background. When I was in college, we were taught the Car Test, being budding recordists. The Car Test, for those who are not familiar, is when you take the mix you did on a pair of speakers that are designed for critical listening and play it on the shittiest set of speakers you can find. (This might be the iPod Headphones Test or the Laptop Speakers Test, but I learned it as the Car Test.)

The purpose of this test is to hear your mix the way the average person might, and also to see how it sounds whehn it comes out of the acoustically optimized bubble you’ve been working in.

Now I’m building web applications and software. The current app that my company is working on needs to be simple and intuitive, except it’s being designed by guys who probably have a hugely different take on simplicity than the average person who will be using the site.

We needed a Car Test. We needed to see how the site would look to people, and we especially needed to make sure that it’d be so easy, my Mom could use it. And there it was:

The Mom Test.

My Mom is not a stupid person, by any measure. But she’s older than 30 and uncomfortable with computers in general. So we sent my Mom a still image of our layout and asked things like  “what do you think this button does?” and “how would you ____ based on the stuff you see here?”

She passed with flying colors, as did 3 other Moms we asked.

The biggest problem with the Mom Test was that some moms did all they could not to asnwer the questions we asked, but rather make all the Mom-like observations about how this was spelled wrong, this pattern would look better if it was more French Country, etc.. We specifically said “focus only on the elements we ask about in the questions”, but some went way over the edge and forgot completely about the questions we asked.

I’ll keep using the Mom Test as we press on. I always hated the idea of software engineers testing software. I think the people who test software should be the people who are reomved the furthest from knowing about or designing software. They should be teachers and chefs. Just regular people with regular expectations.

LOOK WHAT THE GTR CAN DO!!!!!!

No seriously, this is horrible, horrible, shit. Horrible. The people defending this as “noise” are fucking idiots. I’ve had the pleasure of working with some great avant-garde artists in my career as a producer, and every person that makes Noise music and is worth his salt would say the same.

I’m also a classically trained guitarist. The people saying “no but they’re really good technically” are fucking idiots as well. You could teach a monkey to play guitar like that. Can you type? You can play like that, too. Let’s hear one of those guys play Barrios’ “Julia Florida”. I bet it would sound like someone having a colonoscopy.

After we found out everyone was safe, two of my illustrious colleagues and I made this video.

Okay. I really want to know. Why do you love or hate this movie? It seems to me that people are absolutely polarized. I can’t think of anybody who just says “oh, that movie’s alright”.

I am in the “love it” group. I was (and am) the kid with the one-track mind, intensely coveting for months leading up to Christmas. I left catalogs on my Mom’s pillow, not so subtly suggesting things I wanted. My grandfather battled the furnace and swore in tongues none of us could understand. To me, these are all universal themes.

Let’s call this a very amateur sociological experiment. Leave your views on this subject in a comment. I’m interested to see what makes people go one way or the other.

In case you didn’t know, the United States government has now passed a law that makes reading Stephanie Meyer’s “Twilight” series mandatory for all persons over the age of 9. Seeing the movie is an acceptable, but not preferred option.

However, offending parties can shorten their sentences with a written or aural examination on the Harry Potter series if they elect to do so.

Ever think about this? You can learn such a wealth of things from this movie- project management, negotiation, business administration. It’s all there.

1. Tools

Your team needs the right tools to get the job done, and you must be receptive to their needs and provide what they ask for. When Robert DeNiro’s character says he’ll need a Colt M1911 pistol, Sean Bean’s character laughs at him and says, “that’s an old gun”. But DeNiro is the baddest dude they have, and that’s all he legitimately needs.

If I hired my Dad as an IT consultant and said, “we’ve got a computer set up for you, what do you need”? he’d say, “Notepad and a command pompt”. It’s true. Every time I tell him about a new IDE or text editor that has syntactical help for 50 different languages, he says, “I use Notepad”. And that’s all he really needs. You can’t scoff that that.

2. Team

Just as your team needs the right tools to get the job done, you need the right team to get the job done. These guys in Ronin have to steal a breifcase from a Russian mobster. You figure you’re going to need to drive, shoot, know the terrain, gather intelligence, and use pretty advanced communication technology to stay one step ahead of your adversary. A tricky job with a lot of incongruent specifications demands a team where all of those gaps are filled by each member’s unique abilities.

However, you don’t always need to hire ten guys to do the work that could be done by two. We see the virtue of DeNiro’s strength when he is forced to basically go it alone and adapt to limitations. When he can’t do something alone, he reaches out, but not until then. He gets shot in the abdomen, navigates his way to a friend of a friend (Drax from Moonraker, nonetheless) and patches himself up. Hell, he even tells them how to do the surgery while they do it.

3. Risk

A basic principle of negotiation: people who take risks generally will want to be proportionally compensated for doing so.

DeNiro: “If it’s gonna be amateur hour, the price has to go up. I want x dollars a week in my bank account here and then y dollars when we finish.”

This happens after Sean Bean’s character nearly gets them killed in an arms deal. When we came into this job, it was a hit and run. Now we’ve got this guy over here who I don’t trust and who almost gets us waxed. We’ve got to renegotiate the terms based on this new risk that has been introduced.

We can learn a lot from that- knowing your worth, being okay with walking away from the table every now and then, etc.

4. Know Your Opponent

This could be anybody- a prospective business partner, a competitor, anybody. DeNiro probes his adversaries with care and diligence to find out what makes them tick before he engages them. He goes to the hotel where this Russian guy is and decides to test his security by cleverly placing a sign on a luggage cart that he then has pulled away, the sudden noise causing the target’s bodyguards to react and enabling him to photograph their tactics.

McDonalds doesn’t know who you are if you go there every so often. Union Square Hospitality Group has reservation staff trained to log things you might say during the reservation process that could enhance your dining experience. They casually pick up on things like birthdays, professions, anniversaries, and log them into a database so that they can better serve you.

The airline Eos used to Google the entire passenger list of each flight to gather information for the flight crew. That way, they knew what you did, what nickname you liked, and a host of other information to improve your experience with them.

5. Shoot Randomly at Children to Show Your Resolve

This is just a good lesson, in general. Wait. What?

Look at JetBlue in the airline industry, for example. You give people a TV, leather seats, new planes and treat them like human beings, and you’re the best of the bunch. Certainly easier said than done, but obviously not impossible.

JetBlue was untouchable with service and features for a number of years, and the legacy airlines were struggling to turn a big ship with an absurdly small rudder to go the direction needed to compete with this new product.

But now, Virgin America is poised to take the flame from JetBlue. JetBlue will stay in business of course, but will find its rudder too small to change direction to compete with Virgin’s list of features and services.

The iPhone gave birth to the touch screen phone, which serves a purpose greater than looking sleek and cool. Having all the controls based in software rather than hardware makes the phone an incredibly versatile device. New features are easy for developers to add, and less moving parts mean less mechanical flaws. That’s just the beginning.

It’s no coincidence that other manufacturers scrambled to release phones with an increasing number of touch features after the iPhone was introduced. It’s also not surprising that most of these phones hid their now extinct button-keyboards (with actual buttons) and had their limited touch functionality touted in advertisements.

When you fly JetBlue, your TV does not always work, and the flight attendant is not always as nice as you think he should be on the 6AM flight out of JFK. But they’re a better airline than the one that booked you in a seat that no longer exists because you’re flying a different airline’s plane that has only 40 seats and not 56 and will still make you pay for a Diet Coke when you get on the plane to where you wanted to go 14 hours after you were supposed to get there.

My iPhone still can’t send MMS messages and didn’t come with a voice recorder built in. Even the phone they practically beg you to take when you get a phone plan has those things. But you see where I’m going. I think those oversights and inconsistencies are inherent to industry-changing catalyst products, and they’re still more complete than incomplete.

I have not had phone envy until recently. The first pangs of jealousy came upon seeing a friend’s phone with Android running on it. Pretty cool. Still, a close second to my iPhone. Then came the Blackberry Storm. I think I might want one. I think. I felt a little weird thinking those thoughts about another phone- almost like my iPhone could hear me and felt like I was cheating on it.

But then it occurred to me that my jealousy meant the iPhone had done to the mobile industry what it came to do. Apple set the bar a notch higher with the iPhone, delivering a product that had such superior innovations, the rest of the pack had no choice but to catch up or die trying.

There’s a place that makes shirts for Ruby/Rails geeks called RubyRags. The above picture is a rough sketch of my idea for a Ruby t-shirt. Maybe I am adding this to the list of jokes I need a whiteboard and a laser pointer to explain?

I was just watching an episode of Food Network’s “Iron Chef America” where Tiki Barber was featured as a judge. To give you an idea of how it went:

(Iron Chef serves the dish, explains in detail his intent and execution.)

Judge A: I think this is delicious. Your use of these bright, acidic citrus flavors really cuts through the darkness of the duck breast.

Judge B: I agree. And the bacon blended with the citrus really takes any kind of gamey taste out of this. Well done.

Tiki: I like bacon.

(Next dish is presented.)

Judge A: I’ll bet you this is going to be dry! I never think turkey is cooked moist enough.

Judge B: No! I think it’s just right- just the right amount of moisture. And I’m impressed that the moisture you were able to hold onto didn’t make the skin soggy.

Judge A: But look how long you have to chew the meat! That means it’s dry!

Tiki: My shoes are real comfortable.

I consider myself very fortunate to be making a decent living doing several different things with music. This morning, I was reflecting on some very simple things I’ve learned over the last 5 or so years of being a real “professional”. I wish it didn’t take so long to learn these things, but I suppose such is the nature of being in a profession where you never stop learning. Here are a few things to start the ball rolling.

If you happen to stumble upon this, I hope it helps.

1. How To Get Paid

Ask to be paid.

Yep. That’s it. Everybody does stuff for free, me included. You have to give to get sometimes. But when you feel like you are done with that, all you need to do is ask for money in exchange for doing something you are very good at.

If a certain client never wants to pay you, that’s probably not the best relationship to be in. There are a lot of people out there who understand that people should be paid in exchange for useful services (yeah, I know- take that however you want), and it’s not impossible to find them.

Asking to be paid also gives you a reputation of being one of those guys who wants to be paid to do stuff. Believe it or not, this isn’t such a bad thing.

2. Projects Must End

Or the client has to pay you for keeping it going. Some projects might have a very long timeline- say you’re scoring a film or something. That stuff takes ages. But there is a time, relative to every kind of project, that the project must end.

Things Clients Are Always Coming Back To Me 6 Months After Sessions For:

“I know we said we absolutely didn’t want that track of Greg the drummer playing the cello for the first time, but can you find it or our mixer…”

No. No I can’t. Not unless you pay me. Even then, it’s going to be difficult, because I have worked on other stuff since you said “Yeah, awesome. We’re totally happy and done with this” 6 months ago.

“Can we just tweak one thing on track…”

Sure. Pay me more money. Don’t expect that I can jump right back in. Again, I do work on other stuff.

3. Don’t Be Responsible For Data That Isn’t Yours

Every client should bring a storage drive if they are even a little serious about their project. If they didn’t bring a drive, you can always burn DVDs of the work data, and make it explicitly clear that in t days, weeks months, years, their project data will be wiped from your system, because you do work on other stuff.

People worth maintaining a relationship with will totally understand this, or will show up with a work drive and not expect to house their material in your storage. People that are not worth carrying on with will make you feel like a jerk for not housing their project.

I’d like to do more posts like this, because there are definitely more things to talk about here. Any ideas? Questions? Comments? I’d be glad to hear all of the above.