One of the biggest challenges with launching a project on Kickstarter is knowing when to go live with your idea. Ideas change. When you launch your kickstarter campaign you are necessarily only part way through your project. How far should you lock your ideas down before you go live?

Things will change

We all know that ideas evolve. They change over time. The essence of an idea can be preserved, but the detail changes.

In my case a few things changed between launching the Constraints Kickstarter campaign and shipping the final decks. I tweaked the finish of the cards a little. I made the notebooks a little larger, and added a few pages.

One change was a little more significant though. I changed how the box looked and worked. This has actually gone down really well, with some tremendously positive reaction, but a few folk were confused by the change.

I’d like to discuss how I envisaged the box originally, why I made these changes, and talk a little about why I think it’s important that kickstarter provides a place where tweaks are an accepted part of the process.

Not just a tuckbox

So my initial concept for the ‘smartbox’ was to be a step up from a regular ‘tuckbox’. A tuckbox is what you get a regular deck of poker cards in. It’s pretty flimsy, gets bashed quickly, and you wouldn’t want it sitting on your desk.

Functionally I think it’s important that the cards do sit on your desk, so you remember they exist every now and then. Just remembering they exist will remind you of why they exist, and so remind you to think about how you work.

Display stand

Then I had the idea that you could set a card on the box somehow – to have a way to hold the card that’s in play. I mocked this up like this:

I tested a bunch of other ideas involving flaps, magnets, two-part lids, plastic boxes, even cool rubber bands with #LEVELUP embossed in them… There wasn’t a box in the house that I didn’t attack with a craft knife and tape at some point to test the potential to display a card.

The mockup shown in the kickstarter was my favoured design. It was simple and looked cool with the card held at a jaunty angle.

Production reality

The problem with this design was the slot / notch in the lid that held the card. Manufacturing this while keeping a nice robust finish proved to be really hard.

I was keen to stick with a cardboard / paper construction. The paper over cardboard approach works well for solid shapes, but proved to be a real challenge when we tested it with the slot.

To cover the inside of the slot was very difficult, and caused finish problems on the outside surface. Leaving the slot uncovered just looked untidy and … wrong.

Simplicity

So this was really annoying. I went back to the craft knife, cardboard, tape, etc… and worked on some new options. They all failed the simplicity test until I started playing with the dimensions of the box.

By setting the box on its side, and by turning the printing upside down, I could use the box itself as the stand without it looking daft.

This would still be an entirely custom box, because the dimensions were non standard, and the orientation of the box was unusual, but the actual manufacture would be relatively straightforward.

I showed a prototype to a few people, who all thought it was neat and appropriate, so I went with it.

One box

A nice side effect of all this work on the box was that I managed to avoid making the tuck box at all. It turned out to be just a little more expensive to ship all the cards in the final design smartbox than to produce a tuckbox version and a smartbox version.

This gave the basic deck backers a wee bonus, which I really like.

Job done

So my job in delivering the kickstarter was to create the best box I could that satisfied the ‘better than a tuckbox’ and ‘display the card’ requirements. This was more important than delivering exactly what was shown.

The concept I presented in the kickstarter mock ups wasn’t as effective or as robust as the one I shipped, but it was a little more direct and somewhat jauntier in the way it worked. It’s no surprise that a few folk asked “where is my smartbox?”.

That folk were confused bothers me, and I wonder if it could have been avoided.

So would I do anything differently?

Yes, I think I would. Three main things which I think apply to any kickstarter project that has to make a tweak to a design in this way:

Firstly I would have changed the Kickstarter description in the first place. Perhaps I could have said more about the reasons behind decisions and been less specific in discussing detailed aspects of the box that I didn’t need to. I’m pretty sure no one would have thought ‘this is a great idea but the box doesn’t sound like it’s finalised’.

Secondly, I would have blogged about the challenges as I encountered them. I would have canvassed opinion more widely among the backers – found out who really cared about which features of the smartbox – and sought more feedback generally. Validating the ideas as I went along, just being more open about the process would, I think, have benefited both myself and the backers.

It’s worth noting that I do fear that this kind of regular ‘over-sharing’ can annoy people though, some of the projects I’ve backed have posted almost daily updates. Fun at first, but you get a bit overwhelmed in time.

Lastly I’d have added something to the packages to explain the change. I was so excited to get shipping that it didn’t strike me until I’d actually shipped that folk might need to be told how to display the card.

Ensuring that folk aren’t confused is a really big deal, I should have seen that.

Finally

Finally I’d like to really thank everyone who has taken time to give feedback on the various aspects of the project. It’s been great to hear when packages arrive, what you make of the different elements, and how you are using them.

Kickstarter backers are really making a difference by supporting projects like this.

Projects that otherwise would be unlikely to get off the ground.

I really hope that Kickstarter can keep the ‘projects’ feel for as long as possible before it inevitably turns into ‘Amazon for pre-orders’ where even the kind of minor tweaks I had to make would be frowned upon.

On Saturday 14th of December, to coincise with Global Day of Coderetreat, we’re running our annual Webretreat at the University of Aberdeen.

“What’s the big news this year?” I hear you ask?

Badges – We have badges. And t-shirts, assuming they arrive on time.

I’ve also just packed up a bunch of Constraints decks and logbooks for the webretreaters and coderetreaters to play with on Saturday.

If you haven’t got a ticket yet check for any cancellations at the eventbrite page or hassle @ianisted until he lets you come along.

You can find out more on the Webretreat website, at this post I wrote when we ran the first one last year, and at the webretreat github repo.

Now that Constraints Cards are (finally) landing on folks desks it’s time to take the wrappers off the new Constraints website and shop.

On the new site you can play online by simply picking a card from the deck in the footer. You can download a PDF and print a deck at home/work. You can email / tweet / share cards easily. You can buy a deck, or some extra logbooks. You can even discuss the cards, and how you’ve used them on the card by card discussions.

Creative Commons

I’ve released Constraints under a Creative Commons licence. I’ve done this for a few reasons, but mainly because I love CC licences, I think ideas should have room to breath when they reach other peoples brains, and CC licences largely provide that room.

With a couple of restrictions (link to the original and don’t profit from your derivative work) you can do what you please with Constraints now. If you want to translate it into Welsh, make a version using ascii art, replace the words ‘focus on’ with ‘forget about’ on half the cards – please go ahead.

Remix Constraints as you see fit. You can grab the Illustrator friendly PDF here, and find gif versions of the deck and other useful things on github. Don’t forget to show me what you do so I can share it here.

Feedback

I’d love some feedback on the site if you have a moment to fire me a note with your thoughts. This is the bare bones of the new site in some ways, but now that the decks are delivered I can think about putting some time into developing some of the other ideas for it.

Under the glaring eye of three cards of course.

We all consider ourselves to be creative, yet we’re all likely to struggle to define what we mean by ’creative’.

For me, it’s having the ability to seek out and consider the widest set of options for solving your current problem.

Many of us, if we’re honest, don’t do this. We have a set of go-to solutions that we always start with. We adapt them to the current problem, sure, but the core approach is the same. It’s Bootstrap syndrome. Breaking away from these start points is hard. They are the on-ramps to the motorways studio
through our mind. They are the path of least resistance, and we’re always in a hurry.

Many of us focus on adding new skills to our armoury in order to extend our options. This gives us more on-ramps. This is clearly necessary, but I don’t think it’s sufficient.

Roadblocks drive creativity

Obeying your work constraints forces you to think creatively by closing those mental motorways.

Some constraints are easy to identify. Time, budget and scheduling constraints are all well understood and feature in your projects already (I hope!). A great idea that takes a month to implement will be dismissed if the budget isn’t there. You loved that first idea but you will find another, more appropriate idea.

There will be other constraints that are just as real that you perhaps don’t commonly identify.

Some will be technological, but most will relate to the user of this project. Perhaps a majority of site users have English as a second language. A third type is the self-imposed constraint. These are my favourite as we are in control of them. Things like ‘no hover states’, ‘one button’, ‘better labels’ or ‘one typeface’ are great examples of these. Adding these to your hack sessions will block those motorways, forcing you into mental side streets you normally avoid.

We all like to be right. Sometimes in the web community we are too keen to be right. We avoid trying different things for fear of the dreaded “LOL, you didn’t use X” tweet from a peer. Don’t let that stop you. Pick up your last project, set aside an hour and take away that ‘correct’ option.

See what you come up with. You never know, it may just be better. If not, blame the constraint and try to identify something you learned.

Then, pick it up again and remove all hover states. Now identify the issues this causes. If no issues arise, you didn’t need those hover states. If the design collapses altogether, maybe you were over reliant on them.

Pick it up again and remove something without ‘breaking’ the core purpose. If you can’t remove anything you either have a perfect design, or you are being too conservative.

See how the constraints of Twitter’s 140-character limit delivered a better experience than many of its competing social media offerings.

Image-sharing social network Instagram only allows square photos. That constraint was more important than all the other technology. The constraint directly impacts the user.

RWD constraints

Responsive web design has a fundamental constraint at its core. That one code base should deliver the site to all devices. It is this constraint rather than media queries that defines RWD. I would argue that it has improved the web as much as the web standards movement did (web standards being, of course, a set of constraints).

It did this by blocking the old motorway and creating a new one.

Working with self-imposed constraints builds your ability to identify project constraints that you may be missing today. It’s this ability to understand and respond to project constraints that has creative benefits in any role.

When working on ideas for your next project, work through a series of self-imposed constraints to investigate more original solutions.

Could this site work and be better with just one button? Could it be the next Instagram with just one button? Try it and see.

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Back in the summer I wrote this article for netmag around the topic of constraints. Not the card deck as such, more about the wider aspects of constraints. I don’t think it’s likely to turn up on the netmag site now that it’s been rolled into creativebloq, so here it is in full.

This year I’ve helped out with organising and running the Northern Lights conference. For those that don’t know, Northern Lights is a modest tech conference held in Aberdeen each autumn with a simple manifesto – “to inspire geeks of all creeds to improve themselves, and their communities”.

I particularly enjoyed helping make the event look more polished with banners and lanyards carrying some new creative work from Owen at work. It gave everything a more legit feeling, without detracting from the community feel that has always made Northern Lights so great to attend.

I could write up my take on the speakers, but better to point you at an attendee for the unbiased take on events. Tom Ireland @tom_ireland on twitter did a great write up of his experience at the conference.

The best part of the day though, was that I got to catch up with a bunch of folk I haven’t seen in a while. The openspace section of the day gave a great opportunity to talk shop during the sessions, and catch up during the runarounds without feeling time pressured. I suspect openspace is here to stay for Northern Lights – it worked really well – despite most attendees never having taken part in openspace before.

I’ve posted a bunch of photos to the Refresh group on Flickr. I’ll add any other coverage here, and on lanyrd.

We’ve already started planning next years event. The current forerunner for the theme is “context”, but if you came along last week please do chip in your ideas by tweeting @northlightconf.

So, dot net mag were kind enough to ask me to write a piece for the magazine back in summer while I was working on the constraints cards kickstarter campaign. Rather than write about the deck, I decided to write about some of the principles behind the deck.

The article was published this month. As a direct result, I’m now being refered to as ‘the creative block’. Aren’t workmates hilarious.

I’d link to the article but I don’t think it’s online yet (at all?). Who knows, following the whole creative bloq thing this last month. It’s in the issue with the huge wordpress logo on the cover.

I thought I’d post a quick update about a small design decision I’ve just made, while you all wait for your cards.

One of the main reasons I did the Kickstarter for Constraints Cards was to let me create a deck of cards that would last.

Cards that could take the kind of damage that comes from rumbling around in a Crumpler bag, being blu-tac’d to the wall occasionally, being shuffled absent mindedly for hour on end, and being thrown at colleagues from time to time.

Cards that would still look and feel great after a lot of use. They could age, everything ages, but they shouldn’t look broken. They shouldn’t just collapse or look bad suddenly.

I’ve had various samples going through just that kind of use and abuse for the past few months, with mixed results. Some have been actual printed test decks, some have just been samples of existing cards using different processes / stocks / finishes. They’ve all been rumbling around in my bag together.

On day one my favoured finish was a smooth paper with a matt lamination. I love the look of a matt lamination finish, it feels great to shuffle, it seems to make the cards feel stiffer, it looks amazingly rich, and generally makes the cards awesome.

That is the finish you see in the sample shots on the kickstarter page.

The usage I put my cards through was a little too much for the laminate though – it started to give up – to rise – and to peel away. The cards look pretty old within a few months. They looked like they were dealing with the aftermath of some serious sunburn.

This was mainly down to mistreatment I think, but we all know things get mistreated. They get thrown in your bag at the end of a hack (‘I’ll put them in the front compartment with my keys – they’ll be ok – I’ll box them tonight’), shuffled around on your desk endlessly, used to prop up your mac when it sounds like it’s away to overheat.

So that kind of lamination is out, lovely though it looks.

Uncoated paper is out too. You have to be able to shuffle cards, and after a decent amount of use, any uncoated paper is going to fray enough to make shuffling an absolute frustration. And people suffering from absolute frustration don’t learn very quickly.

The hardest wearing finish has been a straightforward playing card style plastic coating. Still on a flat smooth paper stock. This gives the cards more of a ‘poker’ feel when using them, which I actually like, but doesn’t go as far as the linen texture and super thin paper.

They’ll feel a bit slicker / smoother, and look a little more glossy than the matt finish prototype in the kickstarter photos. Overall though, I think they’ll look and feel great, and I’m confident that they’ll stay that way for a long time.

I’ll post some pics as soon as I get a hold of the latest test deck using this new finish, which I suspect will be the finish I go with. Fingers crossed!

Shameless plug time – point your chums at the Constraints store to pick up a pre-order if they missed the kickstarter.

In an attempt to give Refresh Aberdeen a more varied calendar later in the year, I gave the first Workshop Workshop this weekend.

A small group gathered at 17 to work up outlines for their own workshops – to be delivered later in the year. Over the next few weeks I’ll be finalising dates and workshop outlines with the participants and publishing them over at the refresh website.

If you would like to take part in the next workshop workshop (and I’d really encourage you to) just fill your details in here and you’ll be informed when places are available.

Any topic that touches on anything creative, and/or digital is welcome. You don’t need prior training / workshopping experience, just a passion for your subject and a willingness to share.

As ever, if you have any questions you can find me on @stevenmilne and steve@refreshaberdeen.com.

I’m giving a talk at Lean Agile Scotland 2013 in September, here is the outline:

The story of how I developed the ideas that led to the creation of Constraints Cards – the card deck for web designers. I think constraints get a bad rep.

In this talk I hope to persuade you that not only should you identify the inherent constraints in your project – you should consider adding voluntary constraints to help achieve a more creative solution, to help improve your teams learning speed, and to keep life fun.

I’ll also discuss ways in which using Constraints as an individual, in any role, can level up your design thinking more quickly.

This isn’t a Theory of Constraints talk. This is an investigation into how creativity in the broadest sense benefits from the application of even the most arbitrary of constraints.

It’ll be great to have an outlet for all the constraints related stuff that’s been rattling around in my head while working on the card deck!

As ever, if you have any questions you can find me on @stevenmilne and steve@refreshaberdeen.com.

It looked touch and go with a few days remaining, but Constraints Cards got funded. Due to my inability to organise my life, the deadline passed while I was in the highlands of Scotland with the family. If you’ve ever relied on highland mobile signal you’ll know how that went!

Lots of iPhone waving while looking for signal.

Huge thanks to everyone who backed the project, and to the hundreds of you that shared the project on twitter.

I’m working on a post to share some stats, and some thoughts about what went well, what didn’t go so well (not much) and what I’d do differently were I to repeat the endeavour. But for now, I just wanted to say hurrah.

I’m in the middle of the hard part now, actually getting everything printed and made.

As ever, if you have any questions you can find me on @stevenmilne and steve@refreshaberdeen.com.