In her article about wireframes Christina Wodtke, the author of “Information Architecture – Blueprints for the Web” discusses the use of wireframes in the design process. I agree with some of her thoughts, but in my view she missed one.

The first argument against wireframes is that they emasculate the designer. Yes, they do and I think no designer wants to get your wireframes and just paint by numbers. On the other hand designers need to have something to design. And that’s what from my experience should be in wireframes. The should inform the designer about the content that should be on the page, in the form etc. I have been working with some good designers, one of them Nina Wilke, who sometimes tell the IA that they missed this function or that information. But that should be the IAs job – to gather and structure the content – not to visualize or design it.

In addition, if you already have a good visual design and an running site, wireframes are sometimes just enough what a developer needs to get the page done. There’s no need to create designs for every aspect and thus be faster in the design process.

In his article “Why Design Thinking Won’t Save You” Peter Merholz discusses business and design thinking in helping in innovation. While business thinking is a lot about spreadsheets and data analysis, design thinking is what all the creative people do when ideating new concepts.

At the end of his article, he concludes that you not only need need a view of both, business and design, but also other disciplines such as journalism, arts, library and so forth. I agree with that because a limited view is always something to avoid. Instead one should focus in thinking outside the box, with box your business, design, or any other thinking.

As an example he mentions Brandon Schauer who has an MBA and is a Master of Design. Hence, he is trained to have at least two, sometimes opposing, views. But what if you don’t have two degrees and can’t get another one?

The key is now to get many views in a single person, so it’s actually something one has to do on his own. How? Take every chance to do something that you haven’t done before, buy a book about a topic that draws your attention, go to places you would usually not go, or talk to people that are not part of your normal live. Just be open to new things and curious. Or as Steve Jobs says it in his 2005 commencement address: “Stay hungry, stay foolish”.

Over the last months and even years I have registered with a lot of sites. Most of them I just try to check out because they are pretty new and are apps that seem to be worth using. However, I assume 90% of sites I register with I don’t use more than 2 – 3 times. Then I would really like to delete my account. Most of the time it’s hard to find how to delete your account, but sometimes it’s just impossible.

Today I wanted to delete my wordpress.com account. Why? I just don’t use it. I searched for a way and found a faq-page which told me something I just couldn’t understand.

Why would the software or database crash if an account is deleted? If you write your app code properly that won’t ever happen.

This question is a very important question, especially if someone thinks about OpenID. Can I unregister from a webpage. What happens to my data? Any suggestions?

Chicago based 37signals just launched Highrise, an online shared contact manager. It looks quite similar to their existing and successful applications, Basecamp, Backpack, Campfire and completes the “suite” of easy to use personal and business web applications.

Unlike Google or many others, 37signals does not try to replace currently existing desktop applications, such as Word, with a web version (Word will be around for some more years, so competing against is really hard and maybe even sensless). Instead, they create products that solve problems better than many others by making it just simple, easy and a pleasure to use.

Since Highrise is out just a few hours ago, I won’t give any detailed review yet. However, one feature I already like. Adding categories to tasks:

This makes the task list a lot easier to view. Also, look at the grouping in GTD style.

One of the best books I read this year is free for everybody now. It’s 37signals “Getting Real”. After reading their weblog for more than 3 years now, using almost all of their products (except Ta-Da lists) I have become a big fan of theirs.

The insights and opinions in their book are amazing, groundbreaking and helpful. I have been struggling with same problems when programming and after using some of their techniques it makes a lot more fun.

But be aware, after reading this book you might get big problems with the old-habbit people that don’t want to change.