I have a 12 foot target (porch) on my house and the delivery person can’t hit it! If newspapers really cared about the news they’d fix that. They don’t care about the news.

I quit the Star Tribune and they’ve likely spent more money calling me twice a week for 3 months than I’d pay them a year to get the printed paper. All they ask is if I want the printed paper. I don’t know how to be more clear with them. If they cared about the news they’d ask me what format I wanted it in and then offer it but they don’t care about the news.

I happened to glance at an interesting article in a printed paper today so I went online to take a closer look. Here is my experience… just imagine trying to read the article… they don’t care about the news.

All of that flashing and movement is worse than trying to close on your first mortgage at the age of 21 while also watching the circus live. What is going on here? Oh, they don’t care about the news!

If you all cared about the news… you’d stop stabbing yourselves in the chest with these crazy practices. Get your delivery people to get it to the door! Limit movement in your banner advertisements or in the very least only put one moving ad on a page. Charge a premium if the ad moves. Offer the paper for purchase on the Kindle asap and build a wonderfully pleasing iPhone app. Oh, wait… you don’t care about the news because your own balance sheets are all jacked up because you recently refinanced.

Let’s shift to all digital newspapers like the Seattle Post Inquirer . But, if the delivery is so distracting that we can’t focus on reading the content then your committing suicide, Yo! I don’t think we want you to die but what can we do? You’re killing yourselves.

There is a wall… what does it take to take it down? Then what?

Ceiling fixing is a total mess and a huge market. There are so many ceilings that need fixing. Lets make it easy — huh?

Bus as Car Replacement Transportation? Not quite yet, but it could be.

I got on a Metro Transit (Minneapolis and Saint Paul) bus not knowing where it was going or how to use it a number of times in the last month. I have never ever had the problems I have had in my own city while using transit in other cities (NYC, London, Paris, Milan, Florence, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco). This could be different… it could be better.

Insight
We educate people to transport themselves in cars! Learning to use the bus is not part of the class (drivers ed). Going to work and back does not encompass the emotional or the realistic demands people have for a preferred transportation device.

The bus is not helping itself by educating users on the full picture. Rather they toss silly ad campains at us. It is not enough to say “replace your car,” “save on gas.”

Further people don’t want to risk social embarrassment that can be inflicted when faced with screwing up while using the bus wrong or not knowing the system. It is not unlike ordering at Starbucks the first couple times. I think graphic design and strategic thinking can minimize social risk for people and build easy ways to actually use the bus for more than point to point transportation (like we use our cars).

Problems — but not all of them… just some of them.
The information provided for the bus system is not organized well, to the point where every person using it could easily access the information. A couple examples included, one, Fares are posted inside the Bus not at the stops. Two, routes are found in pamphlets organized with stop times as the highest priority. They are not located at the stops or in an easy access macro paper map or quick download file for mobile devices.

Implication
The Bus can replace the car but only if the users are educated and helped along the process and it is made clear that the bus can be used for more than point to point but for the pre-duringand post work transportation demands.

Think of the volume increase in ridership if most people were one, comfortable they understand the bus gig and two, know the risk of social embarrassment is minimal.

Solutions… but not all of them:
One) Build a macro map for all routes that is small and portable and easily accessed on mobile devices. Think about a map that looks like directions to a graduation party.
Two) Post the route(s) map with weather resistant application methods to the back of each BUS stop sign and in each shelter.
Three) Post the fares and the transit help telephone number at all stops.
Four) Promote the use of a skateboard vs a bike for transit extensions. You don’t have to lock up a skateboard, you can easily bring it on the bus and into wherever your destination is.

I think that if these changes were made I could see myself as well as a mass of others start to swap their cars for the bus.

Recently, I started following quite-a-few more feeds. Safari shows numbers in the bookmarks bar for updates but it does a poor job of letting the user interact with a large number of feeds. Moreover, you have to load each page individually or use the rss reader from the feed:// option within the browser but for whatever reason, that had been acting up for me lately.

I found an OPML exporter for Safari and imported my feeds into Google Reader. So far I like it, maybe it would be good for you to. What, in your attempts at simplifying, has actually become more complex?

I received a reply to the email I sent my favorite place to stay on the North Shore of Lake Superior. After I read it I could only think that people running companies need to be people first before they are “running the company.” I feel like we need classes or training camps on how to be personable with our technology before we are “corporate” with our technology. Yet, I don’t think teaching it is the way out of our nasty hole. I think people must first want to be real people for our situation to get better verses what they seem to want as “poser people.”

Get rid of your email if you can’t use it for doing good to your customers. People, please be honest and authentic. I and others like me know when you and/or your form response is responding to me. I don’t want a sugar coating! Even worse is when you don’t address the concerns I raised, BECAUSE YOU OBVIOUSLY DID NOT READ THE EMAIL but you were sure to included your logo and links to buy your stuff again and your corporate Title.

Why do you think this is ok? I don’t care that you are V.P. of Operations if you don’t do me the human kindness to read what I took time to write you!

So, if you the corporation want to have an email open to the public you must be willing to learn how to use it so that you are first a human being and then the corporation. If you don’t you will damage your brand!

I once herd an administrator at a revered design school talk about the goal of the school being the redefinition of “design.” He said they were intent on changing the role of designers. In the past designers found their place at the end of the process deciding how to make things look good. To this administrator’s mind the future was for designers to be at the “Table” where the decisions for what gets made are made.

At first I wanted to embrace that notion. I mean, wouldn’t that be great to have a say in a product as a designer that also had leverage on it’s existence as a person at the table that deals with how money is spent? Wouldn’t it be great to be respected in the same way others are respected? Yet at the same time what would be given up? What about the current relationship is good? Is there another way where designers can advocate for a different kind of relationship? Is there another way where the business minded might relate differently to designers? Can there be a powerful working model without switching teams, with out switching Armies?

Dan at Adaptive Path posted recently about this, here. His take is that the table may get bigger or even better, smashed, if designers do their job right, e.g. create great things. It seems the table is not the problem but rather the relationships and assumptions about the relationships that each side holds about themselves and the other.

Maybe to be Allies would be better than to have a spot at the table. After all, if all you have is a spot and no respect and no Allies then what good is the spot? You don’t have to be in their army to be fighting together for the same outcome, but you do need to be Allies. In this sense, then it is not about the table, or a spot at it but rather its about relationships. What are you doing to both build great things and great relationships?