the onda

An artist friend once told me that in painting class you learn to trust yourself with the mantra: "first stroke, best stroke" which is a paraphrase of something that Picasso apparently used to say. This blog post reminded me of that today— after a long week of reviewing "vintage charts" at work (multi-year masturbatory exercises in predicting the future)— and made me reconsider something I've learned about building products on the web.

At one end of the product development spectrum you've got what I'd call the "Apple myth:" a long slow slog to get every pixel perfect, every swipe just so, every transition amusing. At the other you've got the "build it quick, iterate like a madman and hope that they never catch you" attitude that has dominated Web 2.0 world since the launch of Flickr. This failed many a me-too startup, but the approach had its merits. The piece above reminds you that after enough experience, you too can become like "one take Frank," belting it out just so on the first try, especially in mediums that allow for that kind of pliability (like the web as opposed to say hardware).

Making stuff is hard, and no matter how much we may try to disguise the in-predictability of getting it right behind things like "ethnographic studies," or even— dare I say it— "usability tests," it's good to be reminded that sometimes it just pays to go with your gut. Oh yeah, and build up a lot of experience along the way.