For the sake of fitting it all in, we sometimes condense (or forget to expand) a design to the point of impinging on hierarchy and causality. Often, the pieces we’re putting together as web designers have relationships that cannot be effectively illuminated through proximity alone.

Debussy defined music as the space between the notes. So should it be with design.

Which Way?

So allow me to register a humble gripe with the print output of Google Maps. Traveling through the Adirondacks a short while ago I printed out some driving directions that made me and several other fairly sharp cookies do a double-take:

Detail view of a Google Maps printout.

It’s the distance bit. Are those distances on the right end of the rows from the locations on the same line, or the distances to them? After a moment of troubling, you can figure it out, sure. But figuring things out is not what you should be doing while winding your way through traffic on a high speed six lane highway.

“Wait. How far until the next—Fudruckers! We missed the turn…”

This layout takes what should be a straight-up linear relationship and introduces a tedious moment of forced cognition—and subsequently doubt—by failing to expand and clearly define the relationships between items.

Change of Direction

While it won’t win any beauty pageants, here’s one possible take on expanding Google’s layout to clearly suss out the connections:

Detail of a revised Google Maps printout design.

An exhaustive, deeply explored treatment this ain’t. And I’m sure any number of bright young design things could pick it up and turn it into something better. But the point should be clear.

By expanding the design, we’ve allowed the opportunity to clearly flag relationships between data in a way that’s unmistakable. You wouldn’t print out this version and be left wondering which way is up.

Give that design a little room to breathe, and we might all find our way.

Echoing points made by Rob Walker towards the end of the documentary, it wasn’t long before someone put the doomsday scenario to the trio: If the hurricane was barreling down upon you, and you only had seconds to save a few treasured items before you dashed out the door, what would you take?

It occurred to me that my own answer really shelves the kind of personal nostalgia this question is typically hunting after, probably saying less about me than it does about the times in which we’re just beginning to live.

I’d grab the same three objects I check are on my person before I walk out the door every morning:

Smartphone. Wallet. Keys. In that order.

That’s it.

Why? It’s about access—and to a slightly lesser degree, authentication—in a world of distributed systems.

These are the means, in compact form, by which I can obtain the vast majority of the other material goods, services, or vital information I might need, both in crisis and everyday life. (Provided the systems that support them are still functional. Which, granted, as of now can still sometimes be a very big “if.”)

Life among truly distributed support systems is predicated on information about the system itself. I’m not as concerned with the items the system delivers as how they can be delivered because, if things are working, the objects can ultimately be replaced at one cost or another. (Touching on sustainability, this also implies the system should be able to reabsorb and redistribute objects and their constituent components accordingly—something we obviously have a lot of work to do on.)

For objects that are truly so imbued with personal stories that the real value in them can not be duplicated at any cost (think, “I’d take Uncle Fred’s old golf clubs. It’s a funny story…”) well, at the risk of sounding cold, better to have saved yourself and ensured you have the means to conduct your affairs and aid others.

Credit to Rashim, the designer of the trio, for pointing out as much. Ultimately the objects are replaceable, he noted, “You are not.”

Surprising, one might think, given that his life revolves around creating so many of the items I’m cavalierly talking about abandoning at a moment’s notice. But perhaps being such a prolific creator as he is, he’s well aware that the object itself is not where irreplaceable value lies.

I hope this meme comes out in the wash. I tried the club soda trick and everything, but no dice.

Okay, so I’ve been tagged for Seven Things. Normally I’d turn my daintily elitist Northeastern nose up at such a thing and demand the house staff see it out posthaste, but this tagging comes by way of drinkerthinker, and hot on the heels of a sensibly populist rationalization from her robotic counterpart. Who am I to refuse?

So let’s make with the reciprocity…

The Rules

• Link to your original tagger(s) and list these rules in your post.
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post.
• Tag seven people at the end of your post, leaving their names and links to their blogs.
• Let them know they’ve been tagged.

The Goods

1. I got my first job at age 14, working as an undocumented farm laborer. We were paid in cash every Tuesday (to ensure our return) and transported to the fields via a van held together with carpet remnants and spittle. Nothing teaches a 14-year-old the value of hard work like shoveling raw manure into an industrial dirt grinder for a fraction of minimum wage.

2. I was accidentally stabbed in the hand by a co-worker at the aforementioned job (no lasting ill effects) and received the second best tan of my life (thus far). I also acquired an aloe plant from my employers that nearly achieved sentience before collapsing under its own colossal mass. It spawned several sequels. 

3. Grace incarnate from an early age, I bear a faint scar on my chin from when I fell off a balance beam in elementary school. Yeah, I’m butch. (Seriously, what kind of sociopath puts a balance beam on a school playground?) 

4. I once broke my ankle in two places and tore the cartilage off the bottom of my femur while playing with some icicles. Really fucking pretty icicles.

5. I have a nearly indiscernible but sizable birthmark on my left iris. Ball’s back in your court, David Bowie. 

6. I was once voted “Most Sarcastic Representative” and “Best Debater” at the same awards ceremony by my university’s Student Association. I am hell on wheels with Robert’s Rules, and still occasionally catch myself blurting out “Point of order!” during office meetings. 

7. When I was a wee tyke I thought the Chrysler Building was the Empire State Building and vice versa. Everyone always talked about how great the latter was, but the former struck me as so much damn nicer. They must’ve meant that one, right? I now live a block away from it (and still think it looks nicer).

Next Victims

The following esteemed gentlefolk may feel free to carry on in like fashion or, barring that, take this nomination out behind a barn and gently smother it. Please note this does not preclude additional shunning at The Next Big Social Event of the Season, where we will undoubtedly stand around exchanging awkward pleasantries and wishing like mad hell the cocktails were stronger.

• Chris Fahey (@askrom)
• Anthony Armendariz (@mantwan)
• Chris Harrington (@octothorpe)
• Erin Kissane (@kissane)
• Mandy Brown (@aworkinglibrary)
• Ron Newsome (@ronsome)
• Pete Brown (@downdb)

Go forth and testify.

We now pause for a brief moment of design reflection.

Consider the following screenshots. The first of the BusinessWeek.com reader comment navigation as I originally designed it (eons ago, it now seems)…

…and the latter of how it appeared the other day when my boss tweeted about a story that’s garnered a whopping 3,000 comments and counting.

Ouch.

As originally envisioned, the design accommodated about 200 or so comments before Very Bad Things started floating the user’s way. There was a time—hefty traffic reports in hand—when that was above and beyond. Pants with two extra inches at the waist.

Clearly we’ve packed on some pounds since then.

Bend Me, Shape Me

How your designs scale with use is one of those things you need to diligently revisit and tweak as products mature. You can’t realistically account for all eventualities at the outset. That brand of clairvoyance eludes even the best of us. But you can plot out probable outcomes and leave hooks behind for those rainy design days somewhere on down the line. (And obviously some of those hooks need tugging on in this case.)

But remember, you need to return again and again, to ensure yesterday’s spacious accommodations haven’t turned into today’s teeming flophouse.

Actually, if you’ve done it right, you never left in the first place.

They have wide, thin mouths, that by some conspiracy of anatomy and lighting appear to extend beyond the borders of their faces, improbable and frog-like. Irritated, emaciated amphibians skulking in plain sight.

“The soup is good, but it’s a little salty.”

Hunched over bowls of chicken noodle, holding court on the finer points of the food service industry. “A lot of diner cooks are smokers. It screws up their sense of taste. They wind up using too much salt.” It’s the wee hours, and they share a table squirreled away in some odd corner of a still odder hometown.

Someone’s hometown, at least. Not mine, certainly not yours. The local diner’s resting place, long since gone ragged.

Later, they don their jackets and walk out back, a scene strewn with empty boxes, grease-streaked and forlorn for lack of their former contents. Moving past the smokers who prepared their meals, all parties puff away silently and eye warily.

“If anything happened to my eyes, man, I’d be screwed.” And yet they’re already malfunctioning in their natural state.

“They’re called glasses. Don’t be so dramatic.”

Make of them what you will.

You open the door of the shop, start to walk in.

But before you can even pass through, the girl behind the counter blurts out a question.

“If you could be anywhere in the world right now, where would it be?”

“Uhhh…”

Bopping along to the humdrum store music, she notes your hesitation, adds a qualifier. “Could be anytime in history too.”

“Umm, well—”

“Me? I’d be on Soul Train!”

“Damn,” you think. Now that’s a good answer.

“I guarantee there’s non-crap out there.”

Lanky and famously kinetic, Jeff Jarvis is holding court at the BusinessWeek offices in midtown Manhattan, conducting a teaching session entitled, “The Art and Science of Blogging.” The room is filled with reporters, editors, and the likes of me; 50-some-odd “institutional” bloggers in all. I’m in the middle of the crowd, nodding my head in agreement as vigorously as I can without making the folks around me suspect I’ve got a medical condition.

Same As It Ever Was

If there really is such a thing as a genuine tension between Old Media and New (for those of us manning the news desks of the former) it’s centered squarely around the meme his quip was addressing. The response to an oft-uttered, yet specious ad hominem about blogs that goes something like, “But there’s so much crap online.”

Oh, really? There may be truth in that, but compared to what? Let’s take a look…

As I type this, the most recent issues of The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, Columbia Journalism Review, Good, Mother Jones, and (of course) BusinessWeek, are sitting on my couch. Yes, I will read all of them. It’s a serious commitment of time and energy. Will I read each and every article? Absolutely not. Because, while there’s plenty of gold in them thar pages, there’s also plenty of noise.

And that’s different from my interaction with online sources how, exactly?

Only by virtue of the fact that online technology enables greater volume and velocity. It merely extends existing conditions in media, accelerates them. (And as with many great technological leaps forward, the scaling-up happened so suddenly that it blocked the obviousness of these parallels for many of the participants.) These factors don’t ipso facto speak to quality. Don’t confuse volume with ratios. (And while we’re at it, don’t confuse a technology—blog software—with a writing style. But we’ll table that discussion for now.)

It’s a variation on a great zinger someone shot my way over a cup of coffee once: “Crap is media agnostic.” (Rearranged for those with delicate sensibilities, it could run, “Every medium has equal potential to inform poorly.”) Turn on the TV or walk into the local bookstore and you’ll find much the same as you do online (as Jarvis went on to point out). Plenty of twaddle to go ‘round. Plenty of value too, if you know what you’re digging for.

How Do I Work This?

And therein lies the point. In order to be a savvy consumer of those magazines sitting on my couch, or any other medium, I need to develop a style of looking. Otherwise I’m destined to drown on the business end of the metaphorical fire hose—whether its dead trees or ephemeral electrons doing me in.

People already know this. Ask most savvy consumers and they’ll tell you they never expected everything being shoveled their way would be fit for consumption. They understand the need to be informed consumers—finicky eaters—in order to pan the gold dust out of the stream. (Mixed metaphor alert.)

So why do people forget this when they start talking about online? Why are sweeping dismissals still so common?

This Is Not My Beautiful House

My own pet theory is that the filtering mechanisms people have built up for other mediums are so well established that they’ve become transparent. Nearly automatic and unconscious, some don’t even know they’re doing it. Then this new package arrives (same contents, mind you) and suddenly they’re seeing the forest for the trees again. Taking in the totality of what it contains, they’re shocked.

Seeing the same phenomenon in a new form forces people to witness it with fresh eyes. It’s a lot like coming home after a long vacation and finding your home a little unfamiliar. (“Wow, we really should throw a fresh coat of paint on these walls…”)

But don’t confuse the content with the conveyance. It’s the same old story, just in a different box. There’s piffle, there’s pay dirt, and then there’s the part you choose to pay attention to.

If you’ve been to BusinessWeek.com lately, you may have noticed our article pages sporting some nifty new functionality. One of the first fruits of our partnership with LinkedIn, we’ve officially taken the wraps off the LinkedIn Company Insider tool.

Now a quick click inside our articles tells you if you’re connected to folks at companies in the news. Reading a BusinessWeek story about Ford’s effort to sell Jaguar? Click. Pop. Look, Ma! Turns out you’re connected to 8 people at Ford—through folks you already know on LinkedIn.

I’m jazzed about this not just because it showcases the mighty network effect of LinkedIn right where our users benefit the most from it, but also because it’s an article tool that’s gloriously contextual. The results you get spring directly from the specific news you’re reading.

The Usual Suspects

Let’s face it, tons of news sites out there sport a box, zone, region or seeming jimjam somewhere on their articles that’s chock full of “article tools”. It’s pretty much obligatory. These are the links that “do something” with what you’re reading. But the options haven’t shown much in the way of new thinking for years—to say nothing of being truly compelling. A link to print. A link to e-mail. A link to share on the Web 2.0 flavor of the month. Zzzzzzzz…

It’s not that these items don’t serve a purpose. It just bothers me intensely that these tools typically don’t affect or interact with the content in terribly meaningful ways.

Well, consider this our little effort to shake off some of that dogmatic dust and get folks thinking about these tools again.

Savoir Faire, Everywhere

The tool itself is added via the DOM, which is worth noting for those of you out there that are (or aren’t yet) hip to Web Standards. When it came time to to do the deed and flip the big switch, all that was needed was a change to a single script file to add this feature to thousands of articles on BusinessWeek.com—past, present, and future. And by “thousands” I mean, “all of them.”

That’s huge. No Maalox moments charting CMS changes. No heinous text grinds. And no compromising on showing new features on some pages and not others. All this equals time and money saved (and made), in more ways than one. If you’re not clueful yet, do yourself a favor and spend a little quality time with folks that can help you out. If this exercise proves one thing, it’s that Web Standards are far more than a hobbyist’s pursuit—they’re a competitive business edge.

But that’s enough talk for now. Go check out the new tool and have some fun with your soon-to-be-expanding network!

Watching the news the other day, flickering images of Kosovar independence, I couldn’t help but drift back to memories of an old friend of mine.

A seasoned cameraman with a major broadcast network, I had already lost track of all the warzones he’d blown through by the time he landed in that region. It was already tearing itself to bits, and his crew covered the turmoil out of an armored truck adorned with a latticework of bullet holes. Multiple calibers a standing reminder of the bounty on the press.

Close to the end of his tour there, on a beautiful day, he did something he knew was stupid. Leaving his flak jacket and helmet in the truck, he walked up a hillside to set up his equipment, silhouetted from behind by the sun. The camera was rolling as the sniper fired at him.

Watching the footage it captured, you see the silent valley he was filming. Then you hear the fugitive streak of something evil searing past. Then the image buffets stiffly, the sound of muffled panic and bodies scrambling to the dirt audible in the background.

That was everyday life in Kosovo.

He’s on the other side of that image. The bullet never touched him. But the pressure wave as it skimmed past his head was enough to leave him with permanent hearing damage. He was one of the lucky ones.

I’m glad my friend made it back.

But it seems that, even when they heal, some bones refuse to mend straight.