This guide is for someone that matches two requirements: you have a job in London and you are coming from an European country (or, any other place from where you don’t need a visa). That’s why this is a guide ‘when’ moving and not ‘to’ move. :)

Before landing

Planning is a always a little difficult because everyone has a different way of dealing with it. I have friends that got a plane ticket to London for an holiday and they never went back, others like me planned about one month in advance, and others planned even 6 months in advance.

My planning consisted in booking a good plane ticket, to have some room for luggage, and a hotel to be covered for the first days. However I should probably have checked alternatives, because I discovered later that’s possible to remotely to find a temporary accommodation, like shared rooms (finding a flat to rent was almost impossible to me, even through agencies).

I also landed a few days before starting work, so I had time to find a mobile number, open the bank account and start visiting all the housing agencies I found in the areas where I was interested in.

Transit

If you are going to live in London, the answer is only one: Oyster card. Get it as soon as you land… or even before, ordering it from abroad.
This can be used on almost all the tube and surface lines in London and also on some railways. The difference is huge: paying cash is more than two times as much as using the Oyster.

It’s also important to familiarize with the TFL website, because it gives information on both delays and planned maintenance, and that’s critical on the weekend when they do heavy maintenance works.

Mobile phone

One of the first things that I’d advise to get is a data plan for your smartphone. It will make your first weeks in a new place way simpler. Think about having maps with you, or checking times and informations on the web while you’re moving. While it’s of course possible to do everything without, if you have a smartphone, just do it.

The problem here is that most of the time if you try to get a Top-up card they will ask you a proof of address within UK. That’s a problem because you have just arrived.

This happened with Vodafone, Orange and T-Mobile: all of them required a proof of address. However O2 has the perfect top-up plan and requires only a passport.

It’s a great mobile data plan to start: you top £10 and it gives you the data plan for one month. £10 are added to your credit, so you win two times: it’s cheap, you get a data plan and credit as well. If you aren’t willing to top-up £10 – even if I find it hard to believe since you’re using your phone a bit in the first days – O2 costs just £1 to have data access for a single whole day, when you need it.

There are also other options like GiffGaff, quite cheap and with a good data plan. It might work for you. Some people also reported to me that Three can be a choice too.

My choice:
02 Pay and Go (Top-up) Text & Web
I did this on day 1, just after landing

Bank Account

This is going to be a problem: to open a bank account you need a proof of address, and most of the time to rent a house you need a bank account – or, at least, it makes things easier.

Since it might take a few days to create an account and receive all the cards and code to access, I’d advise to start this process as soon as possible. I created my account at Barclays on the second day I was here.

The good part: Barclays has many banks around the UK, and you’ll be talking with a human being to open the account. The internet banking exists and works well, and as of 2011, they added also international money transfer to it.

The bad part: most of the time you have to go there to do anything extra over the internet banking and even if you try to ask them questions via email they’ll tell you to call or go there.

Doing this is tricky. The best thing is to have a employment contract and an address of a friend so you can just provide them until you find a house.

The contract is useful to lower their barrier, even if I saw it’s not necessary at all, most of the time they don’t make a problem, but having it avoids lots of questions.

The address is useful because for them is necessary to open an account and send your debit card and codes to. Pay attention that the address needs to be residential, they will not accept an office one, even if personally I was able to provide my office address (I’m not sure why). The idea is that your friend will receive your card and codes at his address, and you’ll move it when you find a house.

Once open, I’d suggest to transfer some money if you can, because it might take a few days and you’ll need that to rent a flat and these kind of expenses. You can usually pay with a foreign credit card as well, but it’s better to be covered. Personally I transferred around 5.000 € to be safe, and I was more than plenty to cover the first expenses.

My choice:
Barclays basic account
I did this on Day 2, takes a few weeks to receive the cards

A note about postcodes

The UK the postcodes are organized in a very useful way, because they identify a house up to the entrance door… almost. This means that every household and office block in UK has a different postcode, and most of the time you don’t need much more.

Also, in London and only in London, the first three letters are cardinal points: N, S, E, W.

For example: SE1 4PA means “south-east, area 1″ and 4PA identifies the block and door.

Note however that:

1. Sometimes the first number on the address doesn’t identify the block (like in Italy) but the flat door. It’s important to keep that too.
2. Sometimes tools like Google Maps get the postcode wrong, so when you search it’s better to include also the street address, unless you’re sure it works with just the postcode.
3. Sometimes the block number is replaced by the building name.
4. Even if a lot of buildings have both a number and a name, and the postcode points directly to the building, in some other situations the street address indicates a set of buildings. It’s tricky, you should always check.

As a simple example, see this address:

Flat 66B
The Tall Building
Pennington Hill
E1W 2CZ, London

The strictly necessary information could be just “Flat 66B” and “E1W 2CZ”, everything else adds more detail. Note also the use of the block name instead of the number. Be careful however because as I said sometimes the entrance is in a bad position as as such you need all the details.

House: sharing option

First of all you should see if you want to live alone or if it’s ok for you to share.

If you want to share, there are a few sites you can consult, like:

• SpareRoom
• Easy Roommate
• GumTree / Flat Share

This is quite easy, and you should be able to find a bed within a week. Personally, I was able to find one in 2 days from the start of my searches in june 2010.

Be aware that you might need your own pillow, sheets and some other stuff.

Flat: independent option

If you want a flat all for you, these are the sites:

• RightMove
• Find A Property

For a flat I’d advise you to choose an area checking the web or waking around to see where you’d like to live. It’s a good thing trying to use the websites to know which agencies operate in the area you want, and then go through an agency. While of course it’s nice if you can avoid the cost of an agency and rent directly from a landlord, in my experience I found more time-effective using an agency.

A problem you’ll see if you try to do that online is that most of the time there are “fake” ads by agencies and also some scammers that ask you to “prove” that you have money. If you are able to dig through these, you’ll find also some good landlord. :)

Be aware also that most of the flats you’ll find will disappear in a day, sometimes even in hours.

I built a quick checklist for things that I verified in every house I saw:

1. Internet: check, better before viewing the flat, if the postcode has a good internet connection
2. Floor: check the condition of the floor, its insulation and of course: if it’s wood, it’s better
3. Carpet: as few as possible (this is probably personal taste, but it’s also easier to keep and clean).
4. Windows frames: well closed, better if with double glazing
5. Heaters: check and ask how the heathers work
6. Water heating: check if there’s gas and if not the size of the tank
7. Power shower: a power shower is basically a pump attached to the shower, which compensates for lack of pressure in the pipes. It is extremely loud, better to avoid when possible. At least make sure you try and turn it on while you’re viewing the flat to have an idea of the noise level
8. Kitchen: check the stove
9. Washing machine: check if it’s in good condition and if it has the dryer
10. Furniture: check its condition. Also, mind that the amount of furnishing can vary, and might or might not include things like dishes, pans and bed linen: you might have to buy them yourself.
11. TCO – total cost of ownership (monthly rent + bills + council tax, see below)
12. Contract: check the length and renewal policy. It’s important for example to understand if the break clause is at 6 months (so you have to notify that you leave 2 months before, at 4 months in) or at 8 months (so you have to notify that you leave at 6 months exactly).

From what I understood so far, that the best periods to look for a flat are february and june, because many people move at that time (i.e. resident students and such).

Remember also that while there are lots of flats that are immediately available, there are others that will be available within one month, and in my experience these were the best ones, except in some lucky occasions.

Council Tax

In the UK there’s a tax that is associated with the house and varies between different locations. It’s called “Council Tax” and it’s paid directly to the council where your house is located, each month.

In London I’ve personally seen this varying between £100 and £180, but I think its variation might be more than this.

This isn’t included in the rent, so be aware that on top of each month’s rent, you have to pay this. However, if you’re living alone, you’re entitled to a 25% discount on Council tax, and if you share it’s usually split.

The good part is that in the UK you get to vote for your council if you’re resident.

Internet

The simple answer here is:

• if there’s a fiber connection, use Virgin. Just make sure it’s fiber.
• if there’s only ADSL, use BeThere.

Of course, even with these two very good choices it’s possible that you’ll land in a bad area. There’s nothing that helps that, you just have to place your bets.

Be aware that you might need to sign up for a British Telecom (BT) landline before being able to connect an internet provider, even if the internet provider will be able next to provide the landline as well.

The whole process might take even a month between the two activations. I had a O2 Broadband key in the meantime to cover it, but sometimes finding a bar or pub near you with wireless connection might work as well.

National Insurance Number

When you start working it’s important that you apply for a NIN number, that’s required to track correctly your income and everything related to UK services, including pension.

You have to book an appointment through Job Centre Plus – phone only – and take a few hours to fill all the paperwork there. You’ll need al the documents you can provide, they ask a lot of things, but I noticed that a few friends made it through with way less data than I provided, so I don’t know exactly what’s the bare minimum.

More informations here:

• DirectGOV: Applying for a National Insurance number
• HMRC: Applying for a National Insurance number

I did this after a couple of months being here, meanwhile they told me a temporary NIN was used for tax purposes on my salary payments. I’m not sure about the details of a temporary NIN: on the details I received the field was empty, while in other occasions I read that you could “generate” a temporary one yourself. I’m not sure about this, but it worked for me.

Medical support: the GP

When coming from the European Union there’s a standard coverage that’s accepted everywhere. However, it’s a good choice to find a clinic in nearest place to your house in case you need anything. This means that you have to register to a General Pratictioner, or GP.

To do this, the most important thing to have is a proof of address, because GPs are local and accept only people that are resident in the area.

Apart from that, the registration is as simple as filling out a form and providing a copy of the proof of address. As far as I know, they will ask also a sample of urine and do a check the first time you register.

The registration will be then completed in a few days, and they will send you a letter with all the informations you might need to contact them, emergency and book an appointment.

For italians: AIRE registration

It’s advisable to move your residential address in London for the italian bureaucracy and government matters. Note however that it’s an entirely italian government detail that doesn’t matter at all from the perspective of the UK government.

Advantages? Well, you can use the consular services from London, so you can have documents replaced here directly and also you’ll receive elections materials directly here without the need to go back to Italy.
But of course, read the website for full informations.

The process is quite straightforward, you have to fill out a form and send it over to the italian consulate, that will add your detail to the expat registry and remove you from your italian registry. You’ll receive an update by mail.

Bear in mind that this process – in a truly italian fashion – can take an inordinate amount of time (last time I checked it was up to 6 months).

Also, while the details aren’t at all clear, moving your residence to the UK should be required to stop having to fill tax forms in Italy.

~

If you’d like to add something else to this guide, feel free to comment below. Thanks for all the updates I received so far. :)

This is not how things work, right?

But it’s exactly how it works on the web. You have to type a password before using your laptop.You have to login before you can access Twitter, you have to login before ordering anything on Amazon, you have to login before using Facebook. And then, if you work in an office and don’t like to mix your job and your personal life in a single identity, you need to log out of all your accounts and log in again to your professional ones.

This is because the web today is based on logins. We are more then 10 years into the internet age and still we are identifying ourselves with usernames and password, a method that has already demonstrated to be incredibly difficult to manage for everyone, because the “good password policies” are too hard to apply for a normal person that just wants to send a photo to his grandmother.

Is the login paradigm a failure? Yes, and you’ll find plenty of evidence online. One of my favourite is this report form Trusteer (PDF) that shows how 73% of people share the critical banking username with other online services and 47% of them share both username and password. From a completely different perspective there are recurring discussions on where’s better to put the registration, because that boring detail hugely influences adoption. Check this excellent presentation by Joshua Porter on this very topic. Of course, this model served us well up until now. But this is not enough anymore.

I believe we should move away from logins, and embrace identities. Or, without getting too philosophical, move towards an interaction paradigm that looks more like real identities and less like cypher codes from Mission Impossible.

I’m surely not the first person thinking and talking about this, and even more there are lots of people out there working directly on this specific topic, taking one stance or another on how to solve the problem. There are products like 1Password and Passpack and there are also big companies like Google trying to push forward solutions, plus efforts like Mozilla BrowserID that are headed in this very direction.

This indicates two very interesting things: first this is a huge problem that’s felt by almost everybody; second, there are a lot of problems to solve before reaching our end.

What I’d like to do here is to connect all these different approaches together under a single umbrella, to help everyone head in the same direction. And this vision is excatly the shift from logins to identities.

Identity

How could we do that? Well, one step at time. The first step is quite simple, and requires an incredibly simple interface in your browser. That’s what I want to propose today, and I’d love to start a discussion, in order to create a better web for everyone. I don’t have all the answers, but I believe that this is the right way to go.

This is how I think identity should appear on your future browser version:

Did you notice the top-right corner?
This browser window, knows who I am.

There isn’t much more to add, that’s what the user has to do to login. Nothing. This browser window is logged in with your personal identity and will instruct any websites you visit accordingly.

It’s so simple that the part about the basic user experience ends here. It just works.

What’s great about this way of managing identities is that you can easily switch from one to another. Plus, you can have multiple windows open, each one with a different active identity.

Private browsing will be just another identity, not a special mode anymore, giving a clear signal that you can still browser without disclosing anything at all.

Switching from one identity to the other might be locked with a password, and it might be possible to add an option to automatically logout to Privacy mode after some inactivity time.

For convenience, let’s use a name for this identity-based approach. Identity 2.0 is taken by OpenID. So, instead of Identity 3.0, let’s use the more meaningful Seamless Identity.

How does Seamless Identity work?

As it often happens with transparent interactions like this, there is a hidden complexity underneath. There are technical challenges that connects with two topics: privacy and security.

While I know a bit of both, I’m not expert enough to have a definitive answer for a service that could potentially work for every person in the world. That’s why I’d love to have feedbacks on the model I’m describing here and build together a solid standard.

One of the API could be a JavaScript API, and could work like this:

1. By default, it exposes a low security identity token generated for a specific domain. So any website will be able to associate data with you and you alone, without any risk to lose it, since that token will be stored with the identity. I imagine that this token will be generated with a cryptographic algorithm in order to be both secure, unique and not sharable between multiple domains. In this way, nobody will be able to track your movements even if your identity is active, because each token will be unique and different (and possibly, revokable).
2. If the website wants to know more about you, it has to ask. It’s not much different than a waiter asking your name to take your booking, and it will be available at the push of a button. I think that the next level up is “email”, since too many services right now need it for things like notifications. Notice however that there could be a service attached to this identity module creating special emails that could be invalidated, protecting in this way your real email address.

It’s interesting to note however that most online services will be able to provide most of their features with just the first level token, since the important thing is to uniquely identify you. The need to provide an email address is in many cases just a byproduct of the login paradigm and its compulsory registration. Think about it: you would still be able to access the whole of Twitter, Facebook or Flickr even if they didn’t have your email, right? The important thing for these services is to know that you are really you, in order to grant access to your data.

PROS:

1. Transparent user experience.
2. Increased safety against phishing: since you never have to type anything or disclose twice your credential to a website, they can’t ask you twice without looking suspicious.
3. Your data will be inputted only once in the Identity Manager provided by the browser, and you’ll never have to type this information again. So, nobody could steal your password, email or credit card, since you’ll never type these details again. This would also allow automatic detail change the next time you visit the website. The browser runtime will protect the data for you (this is an important point of course for the browser implementation).
4. A new class of services will be enabled, and the adoption barrier will be lowered to almost zero. There will be no registration process to slow you down: you’ll open a website and you’ll be able to start using it immediately.
5. Facebook, or other identity providers, won’t be the gatekeepers of your data anymore. They could instead be cloud services offering more services on top of this identity mechanism.
6. It will allow peer-to-peer authenticated exchanges, since the identity is now in the device and not in the service you’re registered with.
7. No website will have to store your credit card data anymore, since it will be provided ad-hoc by the Identity Manager when needed.

CONS:

1. You will still have one password, the one protecting your device(s).
2. The identity will be a cryptographic information stored somewhere: if you lose it, it’s gone with all the accounts you ever created, and you’ll have to retrieve them with site-specific requests.
3. The identity needs to be transferred to every device you own.
4. If you don’t have your identity with you, there’s no way to login by default. Exactly like if you don’t have your identity you can’t buy alcohol, or you can’t get on a plane.

However the cons aren’t so bad and can be easily mitigated:

• Points 2 and 3 might be mitigated by a backend based on a standardized cloud service to store the identity. Data would be encrypted before being stored so that not even the company providing the service could access it (see Passpack as an example of how this has already been done transparently). The service would allow retrieval in case all your hardware is lost. If you think about it, it’s in some way what already happens with Android/GoogleAccounts and iOS/iCloud.
• Point 4 might be a problem for some users, but it might be less relevant since there’s a growing number of users that uses smartphones, and well, a feature like this could be ported to non-smartphones as well.
• Point 4 can also be mitigated by the services themselves, enabling different login mechanisms to allow non-identity based authentication (i.e. sending you an SMS with a token). This isn’t new, and it’s usually well developed in the best password recovery systems.

It’s worth noting an interesting detail: a lot of people are already using the browser built-in feature of Saved Passwords, or systems like 1Password. WIth these you get basically all the cons above, with a minimal advantage compared to what would be possible with Seamless Identity.

Use cases overview

What’s even more interesting is that while SeamlessID is intended and works as a replacement of logins, certain services such as banks might still require additional security systems and ask for nonce passwords. Also, the “password recovery systems” of today, will be “identity reconnect systems” just in case you need a one-time access from remotely or reset your identity connection. These will be provided as today by the services, because they will store different data (a recovery for a bank will be different from a recovery for Twitter).

That’s entirely fine. This is just a first step.

This diagram shows at a glance different use cases and how SeamlessID solves the problem easily.

As it’s now probably clear, there’s no way logins can help you in having the very first level of identity. That’s missing, because it’s too slow. It’s also one of the reasons why a lot of systems like Facebook are closed gardens: once you’re in, that first sight identity is granted. Once you’re in.

All the middle ground of identity is covered by logins as well, however SeamlessID will be simply quicker, by providing information at the click of the mouse and in a more secure way.

Seamless Identity API draft

This is a draft I thought that might enable this kind of service. It’s worth noting that while this is a JavaScript API, it’s possible to suppose that the browser could send the token inside the HTTP request header as well, thus providing this feature on systems without JavaScript. But that’s an advanced topic for another time.

It’s also worth noting that there are a lot of similarities with the Session API from Mozilla BrowserID, even if the Session API is still based on a login model instead of an identity model and seem still delegating the identity management to the website.

window.id.token

This property will provide the unique token to initiate the first level of identity exchange. As said before, this is unique within a domain.

The token could be an alphanumeric string like a md5 hash.

If the domain is blacklisted, or the user is in Privacy mode, the token property will return false.

As you can see this is similar, technically, to what already happens today with cookies, but the difference here is that now is the browser that generates the token from a private key and not the website.

This is huge, because it means that the identity doesn’t expire and the user has control over that identity.

Effectively, it means that you can trust any data created with the token, because it’s already you, and you can at a later time decide to keep that data, reset the token, upgrade the registration with the website or else.

window.id.get(<required>, <optional>, callback)

This will be a function to request the user to explicitly disclose these information. The application can request one or more fields, each one identified by its name.

For example:

window.id.get(['name', 'nickname'], callback);
window.id.get(['name', 'nickname'], ['avatar', 'country'], callback);
window.id.get(null, ['avatar', 'country'], callback);

When this request is issued, the user will see an overlay generated by the window chrome (not the page – for security reasons) asking if they want to allow that domain to access these details from that moment on.

window.id.getOnce(<required>, callback)

This function works exactly like window.id.get, with the same ability of ask for one or more fields from the Identity profile, and the same popup.

The difference is that these informations are returned to the web app only once, and every request needs to be authorized again.

Certain class of values, like credit cards, might only be available under the “getOnce” call. It might also be that this function will work only if the website is under HTTPS.

window.id.<field>

Once requested at least once with window.id.get(), each of the details will then be available directly at API level. This is useful also to handle updates: if for example the nickname changes, the system will be able to lookup it and verify it changed, updating its internal value automatically or after a confirmation.

This works well because we are talking about identities, and when some detail about you change you expect anyone you are in touch with to automatically get that update, or at least ask if you want that update to happen.

Notice also that I used “window” instead of “navigator” because the idea is that each window can use a different identity and this would make it cleared. However this is really just a detail managed by the browser engine itself. It could be “navigator” as well.

Native support

Another important thing about this approach is that identity will switch from being just multiple logins to memorize to being an operating system level feature, like the KeyChain feature in OSX.

In this way, once ready, Firefox, Chrome, Explorer, Safari, Opera and the other browsers could just provide an interface to that identity system.

This is even more relevant because for security reasons it is important to have all the interactions with the Identity Manager to be outside the website part of the screen: in this way they couldn’t fake any interaction with it (even if, as stated, you’ll have to push just one button, not type private data directly in the website).

This last thing is easy on a computer, but it’s hard on a smartphone where most of the screen estate will be used for the website. In this scenario, it will probably need to slide away like happens with the multitasking bar of iOS, in order to show the controls outside and maybe showing an image that you setup, and that a phishing website couldn’t know.

What will it mean for developers

Think about what happens today: you are developing an idea to help people do something. Today, you can’t really start if you don’t have a registration system of some kind. Even if you use a library, you have to take it into account.

Even worse, you will have to find ways to motivate enough your user to overcome the registration barrier and use your service, or create a smart system to allow your user to demo the system before registering, with all the complexity that it might mean.

With Seamless Identity the registration barrier disappears.

For your earliest prototype, you might even just take the token and work with it, without any registration or any additional detail. You will be able to test the platform and build only one code path. There’s no split between app and demo, it’s all app, working, without any barrier.

And all of this will cost you a single call to window.it.token.

Wouldn’t that be amazing?

Could you imagine all the services that could exist thanks to this?

Adoption

While I was writing this article Google published a very similar idea to handle multiple Chrome users. You can see their solution here. This is a good early confirmation that this approach is good, even if I’d put the login on the right corner because it’s where we usually expect it to be and I don’t want it to be confused with the app itself. However Google Chrome’s solution vision is limited to Chrome. What we are talking here instead is a new layer for the open web.

I think that Mozilla has the right culture, technology and freedom to move forward this shift to identities and create a standard that will be adopted by all the other browsers… and hopefully operating systems as well.

Mozilla is already working on BrowserID, and this could potentially be the backend for this kind of identity shift, and after reading this article by David Ascher now I’m even more sure of this.

There’s of course a risk: the risk that each browser manufacturer will try to create walled identities, forcing users to use only one browser forever, with no ability to switch. You can clearly see that this will basically kill this concept, and will delay the adoption of an improved identity system for more years.

It’s important, if not critical, that the identity is easily transferrable, with a one-click way to do it: “Do you want this browser to use the Identity X?”, done. Even better if it will be a OS-level library. And BrowserID is again already trying to solve this problem by federating the concept of identity.

Otherwise… it will be just a way to trade one kind of fragmentation for another. Let’s work together. This should be a standard foundation for the future web. Identity must be in your hands, not in the hands of some external entity.

Even if I believe that Seamless Identity is the correct next step, I’m not focused on this specific implementation, just on this specific user experience and the fact that the code usability needs to be excellent, but even that is open for discussion. I believe that identity needs to make a step forward in being seamless and transparent, and that’s what I want to see. If it’s delivered in a different way, that’s still great.

~

If you think about this, the switch from logins to identities will also close another gap between native applications and web applications. Today you don’t have to login to an app you downloaded on your Android or iPad, and why should you if it’s local?

Moving from logins to identities on the web will allow this seamless experience for web apps as well, everywhere, on mobile and desktop. And on mobile it will be even more powerful.

I see a huge potential.

Do you know any browser developer? Participate in the discussion (on Twitter we are using the #seamlessID tag), link this article to them. I’m sure they will be interested, and you’ll help to change the web. ;)

Updates from the comments

1. Storage: what wasn’t clear enough probably is that this system by default stores everything in a secure space on your device. There’s no need to sync or put it on the cloud, you are in complete control. This already happens with Password Managers. If you want to think about this in a different way, SeamlessID simply makes transparent and more secure your Password Manager.
2. Device-less access: on the completely opposite side, there might be situations where you either don’t have your device, or you can’t access one. In this scenario, it’s also simple, because SeamlessID doesn’t mandate any restriction on the fact that the account might also be synced remotely. You might be able to log-in temporarly with a remote account, like a special privacy mode. The stress point here is that the browser should handle this layer of complexity, not the user. This already exists: OpenID logins, Facebook logins, Twitter logins, Google Account logins are all doing this.
3. Is it a replacement? No, not at all. Yes, this idea is designed to completely replace logins for normal usage, but logins will still be available as an alternative. Consider also that with SeamlessID in place you might still need a way to access a service without your authenticated device with you. The way will be the equivalent of the current “password recovery”, with the difference that will generate a one-time access instead of resetting the password.
4. Identity vs Identity certification: the fact that today we are using logins means that when someone says identity they often refer to “identity certification”. However, that’s a different thing: one thing is the neighbour that knows you by sight, another thing is the airport check-in that asks for your passport. That’s why SeamlessID has different access levels and doesn’t mandate any certification: it might be added, or not. The important part is automating the task so it’s not anymore the user that needs to remember that, but the Identity Manager in the browser or operating system.

You probably saw already this kind of interaction on YouTube ads. It’s quite simple: after a few seconds in, you can skip the video.

It seems quite effective, given what Bruce Daisley, sales director of YouTube and display at Google, said:

According to YouTube, for standard pre-roll (no choice to skip), users spend 48% of time highly engaged with the ad content.
For skippable pre-rolls (choice to skip) that have been viewed through, users spend 85% of time highly engaged with the ad content, resulting in 75% more engagement when the choice to skip is offered.

This is very relevant, because it tells us a lot how a simple interaction can influence behaviour. My thinking is that to skip an ad you have to recognize it and you have to actively take an action, something that requires a different attentive status.

But what’s the business perspective? Well, if you are a business seeing that your video is “skipped” isn’t a really good metric, also because given the analysis above, it’s better if they skip. What if, then, we could add the same interaction, but in a way that gives the user the power to tell something to the brand, at the same interaction cost – one click?

The idea could be as simple as this:

As you can see, in both cases you are able to skip the video with one click. But with this second interface, you are able to give an actually useful feedback to the business, something that could translate to some nice actions to improve the advertisement, make it better, less intrusive and at the same time more effective.

With no added interaction costs: one click. :)

Debunking the bullshit

Do you remember in high school that poor kid that constantly had low grades in math but brush in hand will be able to blow your mind by drawing? And do you remember the kid that has excellent grades in math, but was incredibly awful in drawing anything, even just a straight line? And the other kid that looked all the time annoyed and had overall low grades, but everyone listened amazed at their stories? And that kid that everyone knew, that talked with everyone, all the time? Have you ever seen the difference between the kind of people that follow an Engineering class and an Art class? And between a nerd and a jock?

Do you know Howard Gardner? It was 1983 when he defined his Theory of Multiple Intelligences. He was able to define in a brilliant way that there are different kinds of intelligences, identified by their brain localization, their place in our evolution, the susceptibility to symbolic expression, a distinct developmental progression, the existence of savants and so on. The intelligences he found are:

• Spatial
• Linguistic
• Logical-Mathematical
• Bodily-kinesthetic
• Musical
• Interpersonal
• Intrapersonal
• Naturalistic

Then for the last 28 years, we read things like:

A designer who does not write markup and css is not designing for the web, but drawing pictures.
— Andy Rutledge (2011)

My short answer is “Learn code.”
— Frank Chimero (2011)

Honestly, I’m shocked that in 2010 I’m still coming across ‘web designers’ who can’t code their own designs. No excuse.
— Elliot Jay Stocks (2010)

Designers must have a solid working knowledge of at least one modern programming language (C or Pascal) in addition to exposure to a wide variety of languages and tools, including Forth and Lisp.
— Mitchell Kapor (1990)

Do you get what’s wrong here? Coding and Designing tap into two very different kinds of intelligence – it’s even more complicated than this, and Gartner is just a widely understood example, but let’s simplify for a second. We even have different stereotypes and jokes to identify the two categories lifestyles!

So, please stop: this recurring debate is harmful to both professions.

It’s harmful because since it tries to create hybrid professionals, that by themselves are good, but maybe there were just exceptional specialist professionals. Because it forces young designers to learn coding, when they should study for example cognitive psychology and social psychology. Because it slows down designers in becoming excellent in what they are paid for. Because it creates the expectations that “designers should code, so I don’t need a frontend developer” (harming also frontend developer specialization).

So, please: stop this bullshit.

The ratio

But wonder what? It’s more complicated than that. People that suggest that designers should be able to code are suggesting a solution to a problem they see, before analyzing the problem itself. Once we look at it, we notice that there are two components of the problem:

1. Know what code does
2. Know how to code

Knowing what is very different by knowing how. This takes us to the usual questions: do architects need to know how to build a skyscraper? Do car designers need to know how to build an engine? Do a movie director need to know how to act? Does a surgeon need to know how to build a pacemaker? Of course not.

But yes, they need to know what these things do. How they perform. What are their limits.

And yes, learning to write code is able to build both these knowledges.

But not both knowledges are required for designers and that’s why the whole “designers should code” is bullshit. The sentence should be: “designers must know the capabilities and limits of their media”.

And wonder what? That’s exactly what happens in other kinds of design! A print designer that has never seen a type foundry will still be able to create wonderful prints. An industrial designer that has never seen a lathe will still be able to create wonderful objects. It happens every day.

And here we’ll reach the second point: teamwork.

Because how should a designer learn the limits of his media? There are two ways: use it and collaborate with people that build it.

The digital team

Let’s see what happens in a near industry. Around 1960, William Bernbach had an interesting idea: instead of having art directors and copywriters in two different departments, with huge difficulties to communicate, let’s create creative teams: one art director and one copywriter together working on the same design at the same time. His company went from $1 million to $40 million thanks to his creativity and these structural changes. Today there are almost no agencies that split art directors and copywriters. They are teams.

In this digital world – no, I’m not just talking about the web – there is another kind of team, and if you have ever met a situation when this team was able to live you know how well it works. The team of the digital era is a designer / developer team — well, not exactly, but let’s stop here for now. Also, the missing copywriter here is a huge problem in my perspective, but I’ll talk about teams and creativity another time.

The reason is simple: in this way they talk and collaborate. They learn the limits of each other’s profession without knowing anything about how actually do it. Because it’s not a requirement for either of them. It’s more efficient, and well… it’s healthier as well to have someone to talk with and get a different perspective.

Is it all wrong then?

If you read so far you should know my answer. Yes: it’s more complicated than that. ;)

There’s still a good point in suggesting that designers should code (“Why, it isn’t possible to do that? I’ve seen it done by Facebook!” – argh it looks simple but it takes ages with this platform here!). Exactly as there’s a good point in suggesting that developers should learn some design basics (“Stop asking me to do it pixel perfect” – argh it’s not pixel perfect what I’m asking!).

The reasons are simple:

• It’s way easier to learn the basics of how to code than learning how to build a skyscraper.
• It’s one of the ways to balance over-specialization and be a better professional.
• In small teams or startups it surely makes the difference if you know both.

And the reverse is valid for developers too.

In any field, if you expand your view to know all the ecosystem around you it’s beneficial. You can’t know everything, because even in a single discipline there is enough knowledge to fill a couple of lifetimes, but knowing a little bit more helps a lot. And I’m not talking just about designers and developers, but all the things that happens in a project. Knowing about budgets, timeframes, clients, market, advertising, SEO, health, food… all things that are able to increase efficiency, satisfaction in the client and quality in the final product… and satisfaction for yourself as well.

So: you don’t have to learn a bit more outside your discipline, but you could.

However, please, please, please: before coding learn some cognitive and social psychology! It’s more important for your profession!

If you want to read more, there’s a great post from 2009 by Lukas Mathias about this same topic: “Designers are not Programmers” (I told you it’s an old and recurring topic), and thanks to Mark, Chris and Mike for the excellent discussions we had on this topic. Thanks also to Sean McCabe for a nice infographic to explain better the concept above about know what/know how.

Once understood the difference between “have to” and “could” the next step could be then a good explanation by Mike Rundle on the values of both generalists and specialist.

Q&A from the comments

• “HTML/CSS is not coding” or “Neither markup nor CSS are exceptionally difficult to learn” [1]
  I know that formally HTML/CSS are a different thing from a language like JavaScript, Ruby, Python or C++. But it is only in the eyes of someone that knows code already. It’s a distinction that goes missing to someone that doesn’t get it. Here, please, you have to understand that there are different people, with different mind, skills, and talents. Sure, there are designers that could code and aren’t doing that, but there are also designers that won’t be able to code at basic level in any way. There are people that can be wonderful specialists, and people that can be excellent generalists or T-shaped generalists. We are different, please, try to understand that before getting into a crusade.
  You might also want to have a read of this article by Jeff Atwood from 2006, describing a research paper about a test to separate programmers from non programmers: “Most people can’t learn to program: between 30% and 60% of every university computer science department’s intake fail the first programming course.”, or event better: “the act of programming seems literally unteachable to a sizable subset of incoming computer science students“. It’s a little superficial because the problem probably lies in the way the subject matter is taught, but it helps contextualize a bit this problem.
• “I think there is a semantic issue here on the definition of ‘designer’.”
  Yes. I kept the article vague, because that is a completely different argument, and I thought – but I might be wrong – that would have diluted the argument above. But YES, that’s another good point. There are very different kinds of design, but the overall criticism usually is triggered against any designer that works on the web, and that’s why I called bullshit. Working on the web doesn’t mean that you have to code, just that you could code, and that is valid if you are a “web designer” or “graphic designer” or “ux designer” or “ixd designer” that works on the web.
• “Gardner”
  A few people started arguing about the theory I cited. Yes, there are criticisms, but it’s not the point, it’s just a starting concept to frame a little better the article with the support of a quite widely known theory. As Domenico correctly suggested me, you can have a look at other researches as well, like the CHC Theory, the WAIS, the Hebbian theory or a more widely known author like Daniel Goleman. It surprised me that this was the central problem for a few people. :)
• “to really take art to the next level, you really have to learn to code.”
  Yes. To really take to the next level. Exactly like a painter can paint, but then can start creating his own paints, in every profession you can benefit for digging both deeper and wider in nearby fields. I can also argue that to take it really to the next level, you should learn cognitive psychology,  social psychology, gestalt theory, marketing, copywriting, information architecture, usability, economy, statistics, science of materials, architecture, and so on. Yes, all these things will benefit a designer. Actually, since we are talking about designers and not developers, I prefer to suggest first some of these other things than coding – some of them are HUGELY missing from design skillsets – but as you can see, there are lots of things that could take you to the next level. It just depends what next level are we talking about. The point of the article, however, isn’t that there are no “next levels”, is that you aren’t less of a designer if you can’t code. You are just choosing something else (hopefully!).
• “some example showing why designers should code”
  Most of the people that are using examples are showing problems in teamwork, collaboration and communication. It seems that lots of people think that by knowing better you’ll solve the problem of having “an arrogant designer telling you what to do”. Such a designer is bad, but if he learns coding it just get worse. Such a designer is bad because he doesn’t have the correct teamwork skills to cooperate properly, and the same problem could exists in the developer as well. So, improve teamwork skills before coding skills, and without such an ass in the team, the overall mood and productivity will increase for everyone. ;)
• “So, in the end, they should or shouldnt?”
  The summary, is that there’s no answer to this question. As I said repeatedly: it’s more complicated than that. The answer isn’t “yes” and isn’t “no”. The answer is “choose”.

QR Codes, Semacodes and other similar technologies are a very tricky topic to address, they’re also subject to quite intense waves of hype that repeat themselves every few years.

The hype in this case isn’t completely unfounded, because creating the connection between the physical and digital worlds is something everyone is aiming for, and something that will be able to trigger huge changes in the manipulation, usage and interaction with services and people.

Where are we coming from?

To understand the reason behind past failures we need to go back to Japan, where in 1994 QR Codes were born. However nothing really relevant happened in QR Code development until 2002, when the top Japanese carriers (NTT DoCoMo, J-Phone) and handset makers (Panasonic, NEC, Sharp) started pushing mobile phones with QR Codes built in. By 2006 almost 100% of mobile users had a QR Code enabled phone.

This means that we cannot use Japan as an example, their technology was already years ahead before they decided to implement QR Code use (the market penetration was already at 100%). Today everyone is familiar with QR Codes and anybody can use them with any mobile phone straight out of the box.

In the past there were companies that tried to explain what QR Codes were, how to use them, which applications to install and the eventual benefits of doing so. Unsurprisingly, this was an expensive practice that didn’t pay off. People just didn’t bother with QR Codes.

So, the only way to market QR Codes was to make them the “next cool thing”, spicing it up so that early adopters would experiment with it.

Most of the analysis made in this specific field were misleading because they didn’t have any comparative value: you either had pure QR Code marketing campaigns (so, no URL for example to see what people would have used in comparison) or both QR Code and URL campaigns which pointed to the same trigger, counting as the same thing. Most of the time the campaigns were well received, but when they lost momentum so did QR Code adoption.

Unfolding Easy

To create the connection between physical and digital worlds we have a few user experience elements that we need to address:

1. Understanding: I need to know that I can do something, and what.
2. Simplicity: it just works.
3. Usefulness: I’ll get something useful out of it.

Understanding can be solved is a very straightforward way: it’s not hard to create a campaign that tells people what a QR Code is. At the same time making it useful depends a lot on the company and the services it wants to offer to the client, it’s not an inherent problem in the usage of QR Code. So if we give these two as granted, what’s left is: simplicity.

To understand better why making it simple is hard we have to compare it to what people are doing right now. Most of the time people are doing one of these two things: noting down the URL/text or taking a photo of it. So, to make it easy we need to optimize the process of QR Code capture, making it more efficient than taking a photo.

Of course, the first step is making sure that everyone has an application to read QR Codes installed. Today, this could be solved by the OS providers or, market pressure great enough to persuade everyone to download an application on their smartphone.

Huge steps could be made here, but it’s completely in the hands of mobile OS designers (Apple, Google, HP, Nokia, Samsung, Intel, etc): the ideal scenario would be something like a built-in service inside the default camera application: when the camera detects a QR Code, it shows an interactive dot on the screen that you can tap.

This solution will also solve the second problem: the application needs to be the quickest solution possible, it could be quicker than a camera if you don’t even have to take the photo: you point at it and it’s there. It just works.

There are already applications that do this: Bakodo is a free iPhone app and Google Goggles is a multifunctional tool for Android and iPhone that also uses realtime QR Code recognition.

What can be done?

Unfortunately these problems are currently outside the control of businesses, so what can be done?

A good starting point is to address the three elements I explained above:

1. Understanding: create a campaign or a service that quickly explains to the user what they should do, and why.
2. Simplicity: study the quickest ways of enabling the user to bridge the gap between the physical and digital world in the specific scenario you are building.
3. Usefulness: give value to your user to compensate for the effort they contributed.

Note that the “compensation” is reduced the more that element 1 and 2 are considered, simpler and quicker, but today probably isn’t time to give lower-value content, or content that people are already happy to get elsewhere. When this “connection” becomes more transparent there won’t be any problem and these suggestions will be less relevant, but today you have to take extra care.

As Jed was saying a few days ago, this is the right time to drive adoption through experimentation, and be prepared for the future.

The future

We need to understand that QR Codes are just one of the many choices ahead of us to bridge the gap between physical and digital. In recent years many projects have tried to do just that, from smart sensors to smart cameras, from mesh protocols to glasses.

The two following emerging technologies are very interesting and worth researching, and even experimenting with in the future.

Augmented Reality (AR) is a term that includes many techniques to bridge the gap, usually adding virtual contents to the physical world. To use with this today you need to download a specific application which you then use to point at a special tag. A similar chicken-egg problem we have with QR Codes, however the interesting part is that they might be connected to QR Codes as well, and may not require anything at all to be used, just more computing power and detection algorithms.

Another interesting contact point will be the upcoming NFC technology. A technology that like QR Codes was tried a few times – most notably by Nokia – which was adopted in Japan as a payment system – again, thanks to top-down pushes. Now the protocol seems more standardized and bigger companies like Google are including NFC support and development tools inside their operating systems.

The future is difficult to predict, but experimenting with these is already possible with good results, be just sure to set your expectations right.

Updates

• Sean X Cummings (10/2011) “Why the QR Code is failing”.
  As I hinted above, there were a few waves coming from various industries that tried to make people adopt QR Codes “like in Japan”. The last one seems today happening in USA, and again, it’s failing. This article looks like a mirror of mine, with another excellent perspective.
• Eismann Oreilly (10/2011) “QR Codes Viruses: Should we panic?”.
  Lack of transparency is a big issue, and here’s a good explanation of a what could happen due to this.

I’m going to present you something obvious. Why? I think it’s interesting exactly because it’s so obvious that usually nobody thinks about it, and it’s dismissed easily. But nonetheless, if you start thinking that this concept exists it can help you a lot in many problem-solving activities and you’ll start seeing it everywhere.

Everywhere.

Let’s start with some example. The computer modeled upon Von Neumann’s architecture is basically a black box with a CPU and a memory that processes an input an returns an output, iteratively. The user centered design process in the ISO 13407 standard is a four phases loop: specify context, specify requirements, design solutions, evaluate. The problem-solving approach of Action Research is split in three iterative phases: plan, action and result. Agile methodologies have the concept of sprint, where you start with a sprint planning, you do a few days of development and then you end with a retrospective. Looking at a different discipline, in biology many systems are based on the concept of stimulus, elaboration and reaction, where in an amoeba we have a chemical process while in a cat the whole loop is mediated by the nervous system. The embodied cognition explains that the process of knowing is a loop between behavioural interaction and perception, between the action on the environment caused by a motor system and the perception of that same environment by a sensory system (thanks Gian). In the nervous system you can easily see the same pattern again in each and every neuron, and within the neuron in every synapse and down to every chemical receptor. In cybernetics you have the analogous feedback concept.

Once you start, you can go on with many different examples from different disciplines just looking around you. Are you starting to see the pattern here?

The Dot Loop

From those examples you can notice some interesting common traits:

• they are all loops, no inherent ending
• they can be all synthesized in three phases
• they exist at very different levels, often one inside the other (think about a living being and its own cells).
• every loop is short, in its own context

Hence, we can abstract it and call it the Dot Loop: do, observe, think. This loop exists everywhere you see something that works.

Why is this important? For three reasons:

• It’s a baseline for processes: any process you are going to use or build needs to have those three levels, nothing less than those, like a dot in geometry.
• It’s a validator for processes: if the process you are looking or the one you are building is missing one of those steps, then something is either wrong or hidden behind something. If it’s hidden, it’s better to understand why and make it more explicit.
• It’s the minimal building block: you can’t have nothing less than this, but also if you have something right like this then you need to go deeper, because it’s not enough, it’s too abstract and needs to get practical. For example you can say that one phase is “Design”, but unless you know how you are going to do that (card sorting, wireframes, visual layouts, prototypes) then it’s too abstract to be useful.

It’s very interesting because it’s something that inside a process can be repeated multiple times at multiple levels. Think for example the sprint in the Scrum Agile process: at the top level you have the building of a software: the client asks something, the team builds it, and it gets released back to the client. But inside that very high level (and not very useful) explanation you have a lot of iterations, again matching the Dot Loop, and inside each one of those each user story is prepared, developed and accepted. Again a Dot Loop.

Notice also that the starting point isn’t fixed. You might think that a project starts with the Observe phase, or analysis. But from another point of view, the clients starts with a request, so it’s a Do phase. And usually you can go back the loop more and more, without being able to define a starting point.

Notice also that in every following iteration each phase can do different things: for example the Observation phase at the beginning could refer to the business scenario, in the middle could refer to user interaction testing and in the end it could be the feedback from the users.

The Dot Loops within Agile: Scrum

The Agile Manifesto explains the four core elements of the discipline: individuals and interactions, working software, customer collaboration, responding to change. Even from this point of view, you see that a Dot Loop process intuitively matches Agile.

If we take the Scrum methodology alone we can get into some details and see that a single sprint is exactly a Dot Loop:

• the sprint planning: Think
• the sprint itself: Do
• the sprint review and retrospective: Observe

But also, if we look inside the Do phase, we notice that the developers are:

• designing the solution of each user story: Think
• coding the tests and the solution: Do
• testing the solution: Observe

It’s obvious now, right?

Of course, if you go even more in depth things start getting a whole more complicated, but if you are doing things right, you are still working in different Dot Loops at different abstraction levels. Jacopo Romei, an Agile coach friend of mine, modeled the agile process as a sequence of feedback loops in its Software Feedback Loop, I think that’s an interesting higher-level perspective.

Some other examples

But how can something so obvious be useful for you? You don’t have to be a business engineer to use this simple and basic concept. Managers, designers, developers, and many more can apply the Dot Loop to their own field.

Think about a company starting to deploy a new intranet. In a typical scenario, it’s going to choose the technology, building the service and then releasing it one day with a communication through mail. As you can see, it’s missing a critical step that’s easily spotted once you see this through the Dot Loop: there’s no feedback, no following Observe phase after the release and probably not even tests with final users during the development of the application.

Another good example is made when companies see the new world of social media and start to use them straight away, creating pages on Facebook, accounts on Twitter and starting to push content through them. Even if the loop goes on, it’s missing the Think phase in between, that would have aligned the company strategy with the correct communication.

Think about the typical waterfall model, that leads so often to mediocre products. This basically happens because it’s like making one single Dot Loop, instead that taking the output feedback from the Do part and analyzing it to perform a following new action. Even when the feedback is take into account, often it’s just “check if we reached our objectives” and nothing after that. Instead creating a virtuous cycle is the correct way to both solve problems and evolve existing solutions.

If you want to build or evolve a social network the biggest error is going to be to start developing it assuming a specific behaviour of the users, but this rarely happens. You need to plan a social network in a sequence of iterations where you check what’s going on and adapt each step to the community evolution that surely happens each time.

You probably don’t have to look around much to see companies and consultants that are proposing their own “magic” process. With the Dot Loop you can have a first insight if they are saying something worth listening, or not: is there a missing step in the process? Flawed. Is it not a loop? Flawed.  It stops with the three steps? Too shallow. It has these three steps, or more steps that could be synthesized in Do, Observe, Think and they go in-depth describing what they do in each one of them? Great. They probably have something. The technical term I use in consultancy for this is “bullshit detector”. ;)

Notice also that sometimes this knowledge can be hidden. I’ve seen once a company that was delivering high quality products, but its formal model was waterfall. In the end it was again a Dot Loop – very similar to agile – but placed inside a structured process that in the end was just a logical explanation, not a process by itself.

As you might guess, the list could go on a lot and every one of those problems could be avoided understanding the Dot Loop, since it’s the minimal possible process.

What I mean about the design process is how we go from having some kind of basic idea for our app to getting at some concrete screens and getting done some real design into running code. In 37signals we are never happy unless the thing we designed are actually running in a live application.

— Ryan Singer (2010) Video “The Design Process of 37 Signals“ at FOWA

Interesting approach, very pragmatic and focused (incremental sequence):

1. Model
2. Screens
3. Design
4. HTML/CSS
5. Live code

Seeing their specific model is interesting for me because I think that there isn’t such a thing as an “universal design process”. Ryan shows a process that fits perfectly what’s know about 37signals skills and clients.

The best process is the simplest one that keeps adapting to the people skills, without constraining them. And that’s exactly what they do.

(thanks to Creonomy for the link)

In a 1981 paper published in the American Economics Review, the economist Sherwin Rosen worked through the mathematics that explains why superstars, like Pavarotti, reap so many more rewards than peers who are only slightly less talented. He called the phenomenon, “The Superstar Effect.”

Though the details of Rosen’s formulas are complex, the intuition is simple: imagine a million opera fans who each have $10 to spend on an opera album. They’re trying to decide whether to buy an album by Florez or Pavarotti. Rosen’s theory predicts that the bulk of the consumers will purchase the Pavarotti album, thinking, roughly: “although both singers are great, Pavarotti is the best, and if I can only get one album I might as well get the best one available.” The result is that the vast majority of the $10 million goes to Pavarotti, even though his talent advantage over Florez is small.

— Cal Newport (2010) “From CEOs to Opera Singers – How to Harness the Superstar Effect”

The Superstar Effect once explained is simple to get, but of course hard to do: it’s hard to get at the top and to compete to be the superstar.

But the article is also about “hacking” the Superstar Effect. In fact, Cal adds a corollary:

The Superstar Corollary
Being the best in a field makes you disproportionately impressive to the outside world. This effect holds even if the field is not crowded, competitive, or well-known.

The concept might seem strange but again it’s quite obvious to understand. However I’ve got an issue about this.
It doesn’t make things simpler.

Even if we are going to assume that it’s completely true, it’s still quite hard to be such a person. In some ways, it’s even harder than being the first of the class, because the first of the class needs just to “follow the orders”, while to be the first in your field you have to build your own path.
And that’s a talent by itself, exactly like being the best at something.

But still, if you consider the suggestion in a smaller, daily dimension, it can be inspiring. Cal adds that to facilitate your effort you should:

1. Sloganize: the field you want to conquest must be precise and easy to explain (communication and focus).
2. Apply the 1000$ wager test: check if you’re willing to bet 1000$ about being able of succeeding in 6 to 12 months. If not, then you aren’t maybe ready and you have to build up a bit more before trying.
3. Negations diligence: instead of hard-work doing one thing, try just not doing other things.

The part about sloganize reminds me the theory of social representations by Moscovici and a core step to create an efficient communication of what you’re doing – because without communication power you won’t be a superstar: unfortunately the point is that talent alone isn’t enough.

The basic rules are:

1. Have all the styles inline.
2. Have a graceful text-only fallback: think always how the text will appear without any CSS or markup.

Safe CSS properties

Full support by: Outlook 2003-2010, Windows Mail, Apple Mail, Entourage 2004-2008, Thunderbird 2, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo Classic, Google Mail, MobileMe, iPhone, Android, Palm.
Note: items market with * are supported by almost all clients with the specified exception (boundary “safe”).

• background-color
• border
• color
• clear — *Outlook 2007/2010
• display — *Outlook 2007/2010
• float — *Outlook 2007/2010, Android
• font
• font-family
• font-style
• font-variant
• font-size
• font-weight
• letter-spacing
• line-height
• margin — *Hotmail
• padding
• table-layout
• text-align
• text-decoration
• text-indent
• text-transform
• width — *Outlook 2007/2010
• word-spacing — *Outlook 2007/2010

Enhance-only CSS properties

Styles unsupported by many clients but that could allow a look enhancement when used on the enabled clients without modifying the layout.

• background-image
• border-radius, -webkit-border-radius, -moz-border-radius (add all of them)
• opacity
• text-shadow

How to make CSS email signatures in Apple Mail

Each client might or might not allow you to add email signatures styled with HTML and CSS. On Apple Mail you can, but you need to follow a few steps.

1. Create your signature in a single HTML file without body and head.
2. Open the HTML in Safari and save it as a Web Archive (File -> Save as… -> Format: Web Archive).
3. In Apple Mail: Mail -> Preferences -> Signatures and create a new one clicking on “+”.
4. Close Apple Mail.
5. Open the folder: ~/Library/Mail/Signatures (it’s under your account).
6. Locate the .webarchive file you just created (it’s probably the one with the latest modification date).
7. Replace the .webarchive file with your .webarchive exported signature.
8. Open Apple Mail and test the signature.

The road to a good signature

There’s a strong opinion that emails should be “text only”. I disagree, but still I think that when you add some styling to your emails you should think very well before doing it and also you should consider what happens when it’s going to be displayed as text-only. To check this you can just send an email to yourself in Apple Mail and then open it using View -> Message -> RAW Source.
Consider also that I’m not talking about newsletters: for those you should use a tool like MailChimp.

Designing a good email signature is even harder, because it shouldn’t be intrusive but it should still convey in some ways the personality of the author or the company.
While it seems obvious, the important part of the email is the body, not the signature. Yet, you often see email with signatures going from 2x to 10x the length of the email content (and no, the legal disclaimer isn’t enforceable, drop it!).

Also, different signatures needs to convey different contents:

• A business signature requires name, surname, company name, a link to the company website, maybe the role and the phone number. A great idea would be a link to the author’s profile on the company website, where you could add all the details that you need to without creating huge signatures (and it’s also more flexible).
• A personal signature probably doesn’t have any requirement, but it’s nice if it contains at least the name and maybe some kind of characterisation of the person.

Some tips:

1. Keep the font size on par with the body, or smaller. Think three times before increasing the font size: it could become ugly really fast.
2. Images shouldn’t be embedded, use CSS but remember that not every client will see them.
3. The ideal number of lines should be around 2, with a good balance for business signatures around 5. More than that should be always avoided.
4. The signature should be noticeable, so I can find it immediately when I need it, and I can ignore it when I’m just reading the text, but not too much, since it’s not the important part of the email.
5. You can use characters in the signature to improve it without adding images, but remember that non-ASCII ones could be visualised in strange ways, so check them before use.

Examples

I’m sure there are a lot of ways to create stunning signatures within those CSS limits. This is a small and simple showcase of what you can do to express your unique identity.

If you’d like to send me an email with your amazing CSS signature, I’ll gladly add it here. ;)

Why is it so often that the best people are stuck in the middle and the people who are running things—the leaders—are the mediocrities? Because excellence isn’t usually what gets you up the greasy pole. What gets you up is a talent for maneuvering. Kissing up to the people above you, kicking down to the people below you. Pleasing your teachers, pleasing your superiors, picking a powerful mentor and riding his coattails until it’s time to stab him in the back. Jumping through hoops. Getting along by going along.

— William Deresiewicz (2010) Solitude and Leadership

Marvelous. A must read.

But let’s go on, there are more interesting parts:

We have a crisis of leadership in America because our overwhelming power and wealth, earned under earlier generations of leaders, made us complacent, and for too long we have been training leaders who only know how to keep the routine going. Who can answer questions, but don’t know how to ask them. Who can fulfill goals, but don’t know how to set them.

I would add a detail here: setting goals is one of the most important things, all around. It’s a matter of making our own life better. Setting goals is a skill, of course, can be trained. But it’s also an instrument for our happiness.

The other side of this medal is that you can see clearly why those kinds of hierarchies and midsets creates discomfort: the people going up the hierarchies are harming their peers to move up, and they are being told how to do instead of thinking and making choices for their own day.

No wonder those places are the hive of frustration.

And then the central passage:

No, what makes him a thinker—and a leader—is precisely that he is able to think things through for himself. And because he can, he has the confidence, the courage, to argue for his ideas even when they aren’t popular. Even when they don’t please his superiors. Courage: there is physical courage, which you all possess in abundance, and then there is another kind of courage, moral courage, the courage to stand up for what you believe.

Great definition, I agree. I don’t know if it’s exhaustive, but it’s good enough. I would even add: and turning it to reality.

Multitasking, in short, is not only not thinking, it impairs your ability to think. Thinking means concentrating on one thing long enough to develop an idea about it. Not learning other people’s ideas, or memorizing a body of information, however much those may sometimes be useful. Developing your own ideas. In short, thinking for yourself. You simply cannot do that in bursts of 20 seconds at a time, constantly interrupted by Facebook messages or Twitter tweets, or fiddling with your iPod, or watching something on YouTube.

Then he cites an interesting study (Nass et al, 2010, Cognitive control in media multitaskers) made by Stanford and published in july. I’m not sure if today we are measuring the multitaskers in a correct way, so I’m not sure if the results will hold the test of time. I don’t think that multitasking and monotasking skills are exclusive, at this time. But even considering this, the objection holds: the ability to be concentrated – monotasking – is a great skill to have.

It seems to me that Facebook and Twitter and YouTube—and just so you don’t think this is a generational thing, TV and radio and magazines and even newspapers, too—are all ultimately just an elaborate excuse to run away from yourself.

Another detail that I think it’s worth for one’s life, and not just about for the ones that are pursuing real leadership. I see every day this problem in myself and in many, many people around me. You tell yourself “just 5 minutes of TV” or “I’ll just read the latest updates from Friendfeed” and bang. Your focus is blown away, a storm of thoughts comes in.

Sometimes it’s worthy. Sometimes… not.

And then, he shows a little more depth in the extreme simplification of ‘solitude’ adding a great exception:

So solitude can mean introspection, it can mean the concentration of focused work, and it can mean sustained reading. All of these help you to know yourself better. But there’s one more thing I’m going to include as a form of solitude, and it will seem counterintuitive: friendship. Of course friendship is the opposite of solitude; it means being with other people. But I’m talking about one kind of friendship in particular, the deep friendship of intimate conversation. Long, uninterrupted talk with one other person.

I’ve experienced this kind of action in a deep friendship, it’s something that adds a great value to the results of a solitude thinking, but I think that it’s not a substitute for solitude thinking by itself. It’s a great integration.

It’s a great lecture, indeed.

Setting goals.

Concentrating thought.

We need to find a balance.
And it’s not just balance for balance’s sake. It’s the fundamental value in thinking about how much of anything is good for me.