The Back of the Napkin

Well, I have always said that this blog has been and should be about technology, and yet I just read a book that is about drawing ---- and I am wildly excited about it. The book's name is "The Back of the Napkin" by Dan Roam.

Amazon's review states: “The premise behind Roam's book is simple: anybody with a pen and a scrap of paper can use visual thinking to work through complex business ideas."

And that's where the notion of simple to fairly complex ends. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE this book and will continue to read it over and over again for a long time. Why do I include it here in this blog? Well, if you are a serious student of web development, to me this is an essential book in your tools of the trade. I would also say not to read the book at face value, but to delve as deep as you can into the book for it will make you a better designer.

WHY?

Anyone who knows me knows that I believe first and foremost that the web is ALL ABOUT CONTENT. Yes, design is fun and it pays the bills, but remember the phrase of a famous Kevin Costner movie: "If you build it they will come."

How do you build good content?

Well, you have to have good content (information architecture), which is highly dependent upon UX (user experience design) and context, add to that acceptable "findability" and you are half way toward building good UX.

And , I have always maintained and taught that a good web site --- when done well --- should be a variable toss-up between seven different goals:

• it should be reminiscent of a well written newspaper article (inverted pyramid = who, what, when, where, why and how), and
  
• have a good interface design that has a great amount of well-placed thought toward contrast, repetition, alignment and proximity (CRAP),
  
• should not overwhelm your user with too many choices (7 + or - 2), and
• a good deal of thought toward an imaginative layout and subsequent navigation,
• should always place convenient site aids (Contact, Search, Browse, Site Map, Glossary, Appendix, A-Z Index, and Directories)
• have a good content management system with someone actually using it
  
• and the ability of its users to give feedback

I believe all of these things lead to a good user experience, and to organize yourself toward these goals I believe Dan Roam's book will help you.

Roam's book can be summed up as follows:

1. You can resolve any problem through a picture
2. There are four basic steps toward visually thinking (Look, See, Imagine, Show)
3. Six ways to actually quantify what you are seeing:
   
1. We see objects (Who, What)
2. We see quantities (How Much)
3. We see position in space (Where)
4. We see position in time (When)
   
5. We see influence and cause and effect (How)
6. We see all of the above come together in a concept and ask WHY?
4. There are five key qualifying statements that you can apply to the above to help clarify the direction that your problem solving should be heading:
1. Simple or Elaborate
2. Quality or Quantity
3. Vision or Execution
   
4. Individual Attributes or Comparison
5. Delta (Change) or Status Quo (These all spell the acronym SQVID (to help you remember them.)

Finally, Roam makes the point that the majority of our brain matter (about 75% of it) is fashioned toward the visual cortex, or we like to see thing and so it goes without saying (but I am going to say it anyway) that a picture tells a thousand stories.

This is a fun book. I don't think you will regret buying it, even if you can't draw a straight line. He actually takes that into consideration when he uses a myriad of examples that really are fun to read through and at the same time indoctrinate yourself to become one of Roam's disciples.

I highly recommend this book. (And I am not getting a kick-back through my endorsement of it).