Blog – Page 2 – Jeremy Cluchey

Next to ketchup

ketchup bottle Reply All is my favorite podcast. It bills itself as “a show about the internet.”

The latest episode is about diversity in Silicon Valley, approached through the lens of a black engineer who recently quit his job at Twitter. It is fascinating and absolutely worth a listen.

One of my favorite parts is an example that comes around the 23:50 mark. It illustrates the value of having diverse perspectives when it comes to solving problems as a team, and how things like culture and geography can shape that in important ways. I hadn’t heard this concept explained so clearly and compellingly before.

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The remarkable listening gear of David Cohen

David Cohen, a storied activist and leader on campaigns for social and economic justice, passed away at the end of last year.

Between 2005 and 2007, David and I worked together at Experience Corps in Washington, DC. We shared an office for a brief time. At one point, I recall showing him the keyboard shortcuts for cut and paste (ctrl-X and ctrl-V). It was to him an innovation worthy of the highest praise, and I briefly had a chance to bask in his famous graciousness, which felt wonderful.

The thing I remember most about David was his patience, and the care with which he listened to everyone around him. That trait was something he actively cultivated as part of his advocacy identity:

Believing he could be more effective outside government, Mr. Cohen defined an effective lobbyist as someone who “listens all the time, for signals, for code words, for clues,” adding, “Even within the framework of something you are advocating, there is room for difference and room for finding different ways to get to the same place.”

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RIP Alan Rickman

You were awesome.

Anatomy of a social media marketing moment (or, “That time Bates was on The Simpsons”)

A couple weeks ago, Bates College was on The Simpsons. I found out on a Sunday evening via Facebook, where a friend mentioned he had just seen the show poking fun at Bates. Next, I checked Yik Yak, where some of our students were talking about seeing it as well.

Because Simpsons episodes and clips are only available via subscription and aren’t posted until the day after they air, I wasn’t able to view the clip right away. The next morning, I tracked it down:

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An icy dip

The weather for this year’s Bowdoinham Polar Bear Dip was quite a departure from last year. No ice to break up, no snow on the ground. It was nearly 50 degrees and sunny out.

The upshot of all this was that I walked out onto the dock feeling waaay too cocky. The water was so, so much colder than the air. As soon as I was in, I thought, “This was a huge mistake.”

It wasn’t, though. In addition to the great firefighters and EMS folks on site in case anything went wrong, we raised $1,200 for the Bowdoinham Food Pantry. They are using a share of this money to secure their nonprofit status, which should happen soon. Sally will be on their Board once it is in place.

So, another great day in the river.

“Writing, at its best, is a lonely life”

Ernest Hemingway’s 1954 Nobel Prize acceptance speech is a succinct and enjoyable read. My favorite part is maybe the most inscrutable:

Things may not be immediately discernible in what a man writes, and in this sometimes he is fortunate; but eventually they are quite clear and by these and the degree of alchemy that he possesses he will endure or be forgotten.

Alchemy is a fitting analogy for what happens when a solid writing experiment fuses into the best version of itself. You can feel it happen. I had forgotten that feeling until recently; hope to find it more frequently now. Of course, that will require some solitude…

“The spoon had a poor shape”

I was very sorry to learn that legendary font designer Adrian Frutiger passed away on September 10.

After a somewhat painstaking process of research and testing, last month we finally switched to his “Neue Frutiger” as our sans serif font on bates.edu. The response has been very positive, and I love seeing it there every morning.

I learned only a little about its creator in the process. I knew, for instance, that he was prolific — that his fonts appear at airports, on street signs, and in public places around the world, and are recognized as some of the most readable fonts ever created.

I learned more from his obituary. Things such as:

He designed OCR-B, the machine- and human-readable font that appears at the bottom of our checks
He was the son of a weaver
He lost his first wife in childbirth, and two daughters to suicide
He and his second wife subsequently created a foundation to support mental health research

A quote called out in the piece captures quite nicely what I think I’ve grown to love about Neue Frutiger, and why I believe it is so successful on our website (and increasingly in our print materials). It’s also just a fun quote:

“The whole point with type is for you not to be aware it is there,” he said. … “If you remember the shape of a spoon with which you just ate some soup, then the spoon had a poor shape.”

RIP Adrian Frutiger, 1928-2015.

“Unbargaining service”

I have been thinking about this phrase today. It comes to me from a lesson imparted to campers at the summer camp I attended as a boy and worked at into my twenties. Here’s how it is presented there:

Be kind. Do at least one act of unbargaining service each day.

I have always really liked this notion, which I take to mean something along the lines of “service without regard for reward.” It is about doing things for others that they need done, and in such a way that they’re not obligated to take any action in response. They are just simply better off. Without a sense of being beholden, they are actually freer.

Today, I’ve found myself wondering how this concept might fit in with UX, trying to figure out what it means in that context. Continue reading →

Certifiable

A few weeks ago — following four days of training in Washington, DC, on the heels of a fifth in New York the year prior — I completed a set of online tests and received my UX Certification from the Nielsen Norman Group.

I’ve been exploring and learning about the field of User Experience for some time. I find it really fascinating. I think at its core, UX is about empathy — about putting yourself in someone else’s shoes over and over, doing everything you can to understand them and their goals, and thinking through all the reactions they may have to what they see. Then testing, testing, testing.

It’s always remarkable on any user-facing project how so many constituencies are represented up front, except for the end users. Too often they’re a mysterious, silent group from whom we hear little, and about whom we know less (and, upon testing, we are shocked to realize how little we knew, or how wrong we were about what we thought we knew).

Being an advocate for those users in absentia — representing their interests, and trying to encourage a culture where everyone has them in mind — is a role I have come to relish.