That sentiment always felt broken to me, but it really doesn’t make sense anymore in the mash-up enthralled and YouTube enabled present. There’s a wealth of media out there and available at our fingertips now, thankfully including massive archives that go back to the dawn of the mediums. Will people dig deep into the roots and influences of their favorite artists when it’s as simple as a click away, based on smart contextual tagging? I think that if it’s worth discovering (and let’s face it, not everything is), they will.

Russ was a lonely, lonely young man.

Brad and I had a great (and nerdy) back and forth on the topic that fueled this post – I’m just going to provide it here rather than distill, because I think it’s more fun:

RUSS: I think it’ll be interesting to watch how the overwhelming availability and choice of media plays out in the next generation…it breaks up some of that collective pop culture consciousness we all had from listening to the one or two radio stations in our hometowns that crammed Top 40 or Classic Rock down our throats. Smart tagging establishes continuity that to be fair, was a little harder to piece together before the days of the Internet. I saw a high school kid on the street in North Philly the other day with a “Dark Side Of The Moon” t-shirt, clearly of his own selection. That album is 40 years old now. Had I covered a similar time span when I was in high school I would have been wearing a t-shirt from…Oscar Peterson? Eddie Fisher? Frankie Laine? Unlikely.

BRAD: That’s an interesting point. It makes me wonder, though, if that generation of rock (Beatles through what, Zeppelin?) is an anomaly. You don’t see as many kids wearing Depeche Mode or Bell Biv DeVoe shirts, do you? And there is a certain niche culture that lionizes Floyd, the Dead, Hendrix, etc. in ways that don’t apply to the other 99% of acts from their time. There’s no doubt Floyd is more relevant than one would expect 40 years on, but is that more due to their place in music/pop culture history or technology?

Still, I think people who were born long after the recordings do legitimately enjoy Rat Pack-era Sinatra. I’m a big fan of Joplin rags. And while I don’t think I could name any, I appreciate a good 50′s era pop tune now and again. I don’t know if that happened in previous generations.

RUSS: Joplin rags feel like an appropriate soundtrack for you and your doings. Anyway, as for the blog post, I’ve been thinking about what this means for experience design, and have a few thoughts (surprise!). First, those of us who predate the Internet need to be cognizant of the fact that media is no longer anchored in time, if indeed it ever really was in the first place. There’s no reason to assume that Gen Y folks couldn’t possibly know who Paul McCartney is (even if there’s some evidence to the contrary…ahem). There’s no reason to assume you can’t have success with a Shirley Temple remix in a commercial. And it’s harder than ever to pick any kind of currently active pop culture icon and assume your audience will be familiar with them. When you boil it down, it’s about the context, the substance, and the quality of the media – the things that transcend the “popularity” and the timestamp.

BRAD: Yeah, perhaps it’s a positive side-effect of being overwhelmed by media…that we’ve become better identifiers of quality, even if it’s out of “our time”. As for how it aligns to experience design, I think it goes to the point of right time, right place, right application.

Brad then nicely summed it up for me this way: we’re always analyzing our audience and picking the right tools to help them (and our clients) achieve their goals – as this is for interaction and information design, so it is also for media selection/placement.

I love yoga. Actually, I love all forms of exercise. I am a bit of a fanatic. Okay – I’ll admit that I’m obsessed. And I love to share my obsession with others. I can create a fitness class – a great fitness class – in a matter of minutes. Because of my passion, I know all the elements that make a good class and what people want when they come to class. I also know the elements of a bad class and what turns people off or what makes things go south very quickly. I know what I want when I take a class – a great experience that leaves me wanting more…every time.

I know very little about design. Until recently, I knew nothing about design and never really thought about it all that much. What I did know was that if something didn’t work right, or was too difficult to use, I just didn’t use it anymore. Like the shopping cart at my local Wegmans with the cup holder at the other end of the cart away from where I push…whose idea was that? Dumb! Obviously they don’t drink coffee, they don’t shop at 5am and they don’t have children. Luckily, the rest of the experience there is so good that I am willing to forgive the flawed cart.

Yoga @ Think Brownstone

Now that I have spent some time with design friends, I have the ability to recognize ‘bad design’ whenever I see it. It happens to me everywhere, unfortunately, and I think of all the poor people who are forced to suffer through it. My yoga buddies have taught me just enough to be significantly annoyed by bad experience and slightly dangerous with my knowledge. I walk around work (I’m a pharmacist, mind you) praising good experience design and defending the importance of a fantastic UI.

When Think Brownstone asked me to teach a yoga class for the employees of the firm, I hesitated a bit. Yoga for a bunch of Type-A design experts was overwhelming at first. I wasn’t ready to be critiqued on my ‘user interface.’ I said yes, however, because they are my friends. I also know I create a great fitness experience for people, so I put my fears aside. I applied all the principles that they’ve taught me about design and experience.

Phil Demonstrates The Awkward Hieroglyph Pose (Sanskrit name: Geekyasina)

I’ve been teaching the class for over a year now and I have a steady following. I’ve created a great experience for them and, in turn, have learned a great deal about design. Being able to apply those principles to things I do every day has been tremendously impactful…especially to my yoga students!

Think Brownstone Denver!

We are looking forward to many collaborative Think Sessions here with our Denver clients in the years to come. Next time you’re in the hood, stop by and say hello!

“Something wrong?” he said

Suddenly, I felt like a wounded civil war soldier staring down the wrong end of a amputation saw. “Nothing, I’m just surprised you don’t use an EMR.” (EMR is short for Electronic Medical Record system. EHR is short for Electronic Health Record. They’re all the rage.)

Dr. Luddite shrugged and launched into a mile-long list of excuses, none of which involved the quality of my care.

“My family doctor uses an EMR to send prescriptions directly to my pharmacy. No muss, no fuss.” Dr. Luddite wasn’t impressed. After all, that’s MY convenience, not his. Then he reminded me to hand my prescription to the receptionist before I leave so she can copy it and put it in my chart.

Phil Confers With His Crack Medical Team

I think it’s safe to say that we all expect a higher standard of care than we received 200, 100, 50 or even 10 years ago. We live longer, healthier lives because medical technology has advanced at a tremendous pace. Medications, diagnostic tools, surgical processes and treatment regimens have all benefited from technological advances – yet many medical practices still rely, sometimes frighteningly, on paper to manage your information.

This means that when Dr. Luddite refers me to Dr. Cavewoman, he faxes all of my illegible records to her. When she decides I need a procedure, she packs up all of the paper and ships it off to the hospital where Dr. Nighty-Night (the anesthesiologist) flips through the sheets to decide how to knock me out. Somewhere along the line in this game of telephone, someone may not get a complete picture of my condition, my allergy to a medication, or some other important element of my medical history. That’s dangerous and unnecessary.

EMRs and EHRs reduce the possibility of things getting lost, missed or ignored. It’s not a magic bullet, but no medical advancement is. It is a vast improvement over the current situation. Naysayers are concerned about all the right things: privacy, cost, time, backups, etc., but that should be the beginning of the conversation, not the end. Yes, it’s hard to change the way you’ve worked for thirty years, but to be blunt, it’s time to hang up the excuses and get on board. No patient who ends up on the wrong end of a miscommunication that could have been prevented by readily-available tools is likely to sympathize with you. And oh, BTW, we are all patients.

Not too long ago, I led a research session with physicians where 14 of the 15 doctors in the room were crying about implementing an EMR system. None of them had started implementing them. Suddenly, the 15th doc stood up and said, “No one is saying it’s going to be easy. It takes time, you’ll hit snags, but six months after the system is in place, when you’re going home on time because you don’t have to fill out charts all night and EVERYTHING you know about the patient is at your fingertips, you’ll be very happy and they’ll be better off for it.”

How would you react to your dentist if she came at you with a set of rusty pliers? What would you say to your banker if you went in to check your balance and they pulled out an abacus? It’s time to treat our Doctors the same way. I told Dr. Luddite I was concerned and I think he appreciated my feedback. When I go back six months from now, I’ll ask again. If he’s not using or considering an EMR system by then, I’ll let him know I’ll need my records faxed to a specialist who has one.

Earbuds

My latest cheap debacle involved new earbuds for my iPhone. I read reviews, scoured Amazon customer ratings, talked myself out of anything over $100, and eventually decided on an $8 hold-over pair until a nice pair of Beats didn’t feel so…indulgent.

The earbuds I ended up with were made by Samsung. At a basic level they work fine: I plug them in and I can hear the music I’m playing. Not the roundest sound but good enough to keep me happy while commuting (bicycle or train). The base model retails for an astonishing $2.50 (hey, I’m admitting to what Frank Zappa called “cheepnis“) but I ponied up an additional $6, paying just over $8 for the inclusion of “hands-free” controls and a mic. I became addicted to these pocket-free controls while using the horribly uncomfortable (and sonically inferior) earbuds Apple includes with each iPhone. After plugging in Apple’s free earbuds, it took some trial and error to figure out how many clicks did what but soon enough I was skipping songs, answering calls and telling Siri my life story without ever digging for my phone in my pocket.

Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde

Enter the new headphones. The control system that Apple invented seemed so obvious that I assumed it was adopted as convention: change the volume by pressing the outter edges of the button; single, double, or triple press the center of the button for all other commands. And honestly, given the swirl of allegations in the Apple vs. Samsung legal wars, I (unconsciously) assumed that the “slavish copying” issue would play to my advantage here. Not so. After a month I still haven’t figured out what this strange button on my new earbuds is supposed to do, let alone how it actually works. What I do know is this:

• It doesn’t adjust the volume (probably the number one desire of headphone users)
• It can reliably start and stop a song, and occasionally skip a song, but usually pulls up Siri for no apparent reason
• There are two raised bumps on the button that, I can only guess, provide a haptic cue about where the appropriate hit areas are to register different commands. But if that’s the case, it would require such precision and dexterity that it renders their specificity useless while on the move, let alone sitting still.

In a way, this is an unfair critique. These earbuds, presumably, were not designed specifically for the iPhone. But they were designed for some phone. So where are the volume controls? Why is there so little tolerance for error? Why didn’t someone actually try to use these for a week before signing off on them? How do we calculate opportunity cost here? How do we measure the day-to-day frustration of owning and using something that doesn’t work well versus the actual cost savings? The problems that result from going cheap, at minimum, escalate over time…at maximum, bad things happen.

Websites

When thinking about “cheap” we often talk about things like build quality, ingredients, manufacturing, and — a little more often now — design. Most of us can recognize cheap in the digital world…websites can feel cheap, videos can look cheap, music can sound cheap, and the experience of “cheap” doesn’t necessarily correspond with a project’s budget. I’ve been wowed by “amateur” stop-motion videos and frustrated by the on-line ordering process of a multi-million dollar company.

The secret of cheap is its avoidability. As consumers we can hold out for quality, no matter how much it hurts in the short-term. As makers, we should have the pride (and respect for others) to try something out for a bit, and run it through the gauntlet before inviting the rest of the world to join us. If it’s frustrating, rethink it. If there’s a rough edge, sand it down. If it’s junk, trash it. With beta versions and pressure deadlines this type of evaluation can be difficult. We all know that. But managing that is an integral part of the design process. Sometimes we all try to delude ourselves. Our frame of reference for quality can vanish during the blur of progress. We just need to keep in mind that there’s a difference between beta and junk.

I don’t want to talk about any of that.

This post is for those of you who are embedded in a client team for the long-haul. The designer doing a multi-month (year?) tour on a large-scale client project, the in-house practitioner amongst a company of engineers, or the optimistic would-be looking to fuel a transition to a new career. I want to talk to you about keeping your focus, staying true to the ideals that have gotten you this far, and not getting sidetracked along your journey.

Hitting Reset

I’ve been doing project-based consulting work for over ten years now and I don’t think there’s ever been a year in which I didn’t find myself at some point feeling like I was being overwhelmed by everything happening around me; losing focus. We all find different ways to cope at times like this. For me, it involves taking a very deep breath, stepping back, and reevaluating everything with as fresh a perspective as I can muster. From here I can break down all those daunting tasks and issues into more manageable components and take them on one at a time.

Punch out! Punch out!

That all sounds pretty straightforward (and it is—that’s why it works), but the real trick is knowing when to hit that giant reset button. In my experience, there’s usually a week or two before I realize it’s time to punch out. And it’s that timeframe in which you’re most vulnerable to compromising on your foundational ideals and objectives. This is doubly true if you’re working the front lines, preaching the good word of UX design to the wider world. Without the regular support of design-focused peers, it’s easy for your standards and ideals to slowly erode over time. Combine this slow erosion with that vulnerable period before a reset and the value you’re providing to your clients is supremely compromised.

And let’s be clear here…I’m not faulting clients or non-practitioners for challenging us. Whether you’re an outside consultant or an internal expert, they brought you in to provide a skillset and service they both recognize a need for and in which they find value. It’s our job to meet that need and provide that value. It’s also our job to ensure that value is consistent (if not increasing) over time. If you’re not challenging the status quo or asking the hard questions, then I would say you’re not doing your job. On the flip side, if they’re not challenging you or asking you hard questions, then they’re just phoning it in.

Re-Orienting

I found myself in a such a position recently and it took a genial—but firm—talk with a more grounded co-worker to help re-orient me to my role and the standards I was tasked with upholding. In all honesty, it was probably less of an issue than I’m making of it, but it really started me thinking along these lines. How do we maintain our standards when we’re out on our own? What kinds of touchstones can we use to periodically recalibrate our senses? And who can we count on when things get dicey and we need a strong dose of common sense?

The last question is probably the easiest: find a manager or mentor you can turn to on a regular basis as a sounding board. If you’re an independent contractor this might be a bit trickier, but not impossible. Even if there’s no formal question to ask, sometimes it just helps to talk a situation through with a knowledgable outsider (to the project, anyway).

The other two issues are likely dependent on your work style. For me, it’s a multi-step process. For maintaining standards, I think it’s important to have a reference list to which you can regularly refer (monthly? quarterly?). In my case, the list I’m building looks something like this:

• Am I proud of my work?
• Are my deliverables of a level of quality such that I could present them to a first-time client?
• Would I hire me to do this job?
• Imagine one year back and one year forward: what would I think of my current deliverables?

Kind of cheesy and self-helpy, I know. But I have a feeling it’s questions like these that will force me to reconsider what I’m producing at any one time. They’re meant to be a bit annoying and jarring (or at least off-putting) to break me out of whatever funk I may be in at that time. And if I’m not in a funk and all is well? No harm, no foul.

As far as touchstones go, I feel like doing my regular blog and book reading is a good start. These help keep me current with other practitioners and industry thinkers. The other piece, of course, is to schedule regular trips back to your home office. Use that time to catch up with your peers, get a sense for what they’re working on, and what challenges they’ve been facing. At the least, be sure to attend any regular monthly or quarterly status meetings your company may hold, they’re a great way to quickly see what everyone else has been up to.

What Doesn’t Kill You…

Working in an office full of like-minded peers is great in terms of support, easy access to a wide knowledge base, and expanding your UX skill set. I would make the case, however, that working offsite—playing the role of embedded expert—can have equal, if slightly different, benefits. You’re the go-to resource, so you’ll quickly become used to the spotlight. Because of this increased scrutiny, your ability to sell an idea—making your points clearly and persuasively—will either make or break you. Finally, being surrounded by non-practitioners will force you to reevaluate what in different company might have been blindly-accepted truths. That is frequently a good thing.

So take heart you solo knights-errant of the UX realm. You fight a noble battle, and whence you emerge on the other side you will be all the stronger. And if you find yourself lost along the way, look to the universal standards flying on the ramparts above and carry on the good fight.

After thinking about this for some time, I believe the problem for me was that the exhibit was so fully curated that I didn’t get the time to engage with it at my own pace and on a more personal level. The dots were being connected for me wherever I went, the audio tour was telling me how I should explore the works, and the supporting exhibits were telling me what links I should make between his works and other artistic endeavors. The resulting feeling from all of this was one of leaving a lecture, and I didn’t feel that emotional connection that I think I should have.

The Road Menders - A Personal Favorite

As a UX nerd, this problem immediately resonated for me in the world of user experience design. It’s the same problem all UX designers face on a daily basis; how to create an experience that is engaging for users, that supports their learning or achievement of goals, and makes complex concepts seem simple and intuitive. And, much like the situation with the Van Gogh exhibition, there is a fine line in UX design between supporting users and guiding them through interactions with a product, while still making the systems engaging. The temptation from a system perspective is to load a design with tool tips and tutorials that explain every interaction possible with the environment, but the risk is that you rule out any chance for the user to explore, play and discover things within the environment.

User discovery is an essential part of user engagement that is often overlooked, and can mean the difference between a successful product and just another good idea that didn’t get off the ground. By allowing users to explore and discover functionality within an environment, they connect with it on a deeper level, and are more likely to adopt it. Moreover, if a given product is intuitive, it should be easy for the user to discover how to navigate through it, and they will be rewarded for their intuition and become more invested in it. An obvious example of this is of course the iPhone; Apple designed a UI that is intuitive, supports play directly through its interaction, and rewards its users intuition. They don’t overload the interface with unnecessary instruction or tutorials; they instead went to great lengths to ensure users could navigate the basic functions and trusted that they would discover the rest as they played with the device. I still remember being excited when I discovered by accident that I could swipe messages and delete them, and telling my friends (who had all figured that out already and laughed).

So, while there is definitely a time and a place for tutorials, tool tips and user manuals, it is important to make sure we don’t get in a user’s way. In the digital world where a competitive product is only a few clicks away, it is imperative that we as designers support the needs of users as they interact with a product, but at the same time respect their intelligence and give them an opportunity to discover and learn on their own terms.

Asking any consulting agency about their process is akin to asking someone in an interview, “What is your biggest weakness?” We will always be prepared to answer the question and most clients know the standard responses. So, why do they ask? Here are just a few of the reasons you may be asked this question:

Education: They genuinely want to learn how you do what you do in order to build a strong partnership. These are some of the best business relationships to build. Approach them with an open mind, and learn from them as much as they learn from you. If you handle it well they should, eventually, become one of your most trusted clients.

Comparison: They may want to compare your process to a competitor, or they may want to discuss how their scenario doesn’t necessarily fit into your process. In this case, stress flexibility and collaboration and they can still be a great partner.

Sadism: They are looking for ways to argue your process because they get off on watching vendors squirm. If you discover this is the case, I’d recommend either turning down the work or charging a premium and putting your thickest skins on the project. If they’re willing to pay you to challenge your expertise regularly, it’s their dime, and you may learn something new along the way.

Process? Yeah, We've Got That.

Let’s Be Brutal Here

Regardless of the reason the question is asked, I’m always tempted to respond, “Our process is that we’re really smart.” I never do for fear that I’d be regarded as a smartass and ruin the relationship, but there is some truth to that answer.

One of the hardest things to get across is that any project process should be treated as a guideline. It needs to be flexible, not a checklist.

Years ago I worked with a project management consultant named Dr. Bob Graham. I have written about Dr. Bob before. I learned more about project work from him than I ever did in school. When asked to define project work, he often used this analogy:

Building an automobile factory is a project, right up to the point of the first car rolling off of the assembly line. After that, every other car is the result of process work, not project work.

To Dr. Bob, project work was about producing a unique solution for a unique challenge. Process work is about producing identical results from predictable circumstances. This makes sense: factories need to produce consistent results for every unit that rolls off the assembly line. Projects are about meeting the goals set out by the folks initiating the effort. Even though you just finished creating the best online banking site possible for Investments-R-Us, chances are Pixelpushers Federal Credit Union will have a completely different set of business goals when they ask you to do the same thing.

So, what is the right answer to “What is your process?” At Think Brownstone, we outline a broad process that applies not only to user experience projects, but to any business-oriented project. The phases (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation) are set in stone. Some tasks along the way are non-negotiable – like articulating your business goals or describing who your users are. Other tasks, such as when and how to conduct user research, are dependent on the client, project, budget and environment.

Is our process the “secret sauce” to our work? The opinions here may differ, but I would say no. Following a structure for the work you do is just good business. Having rules around what is flexible and what you’re not willing to compromise is important to protecting your brand. Being smart enough to know when and how to veer from your process – that’s what differentiates smart designers from factory workers. That and talent are the secret sauce of any good design agency.

Smart companies (like our new client) understand that good usability is table stakes for a modern product. But we also know that good design doesn’t end with good usability. In his classic 2002 essay “Emotion & Design: Attractive Things Work Better” Don Norman purports that “good design means that beauty and usability are in balance.” Stephen P. Anderson takes this line of thinking another step further in his 2009 article “In Defense of Eye Candy” where he points out that “if we shift the conversation away from graphical elements and instead focus on aesthetics, or ‘the science of how things are known via the senses,’ we learn that [the] distinction between how something looks and how it works is somewhat artificial.”

This Is How We Do It

At Think Brownstone we won’t “put a new coat of paint” on an interface that is poorly designed and isn’t working well. Our UX designers don’t hand off their wireframes to our visual designers to be “skinned.” Rather, our interdisciplinary design team works together throughout every project to ensure that function and form are working together in harmony. As a result our solutions are logical, beautiful, and they just work.

If you’re a visual designer in Philly or Denver and this is also how you roll, take a look at the job description below and get in touch!

Position: User Experience Designer (Visual)

Responsibilities:

• Create beautiful user interface and visual designs for web, mobile, and touchscreen applications
• Come up with solutions to clients’ problems via design and usability recommendations
• Work collaboratively as part of a creative team that includes both clients and internal colleagues
• Build and maintain positive relationships with clients
• Facilitate creative brainstorming sessions with clients and internal project teams
• Stay up-to-date on the current and best UI and visual design practices and trends; stay up-to-date on current web technologies and innovations

Requirements:

• Bachelors degree or equivalent
• Fantastic presentation, verbal and writing skills
• Advanced skill in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator or equivalents
• Solid understanding of how front-end code (HTML, CSS, Javascript, AJAX, etc) is employed to translate visual designs into interactive digital interfaces

Bonus Points:

• Previous professional interaction, user interface, and visual design experience
• Skill in Web Standards compliant HTML and CSS development
• Experience designing interfaces for iOS applications (iPhone, iPad)
• Obsessive attention to detail
• Project management experience or willingness to take on some project management responsibilities

Job Perks:

• Competitive salary
• Excellent benefits: health, life, disability, IRA, PTO, etc
• Awesome creative workspace in downtown Conshohocken: walking distance to great local restaurants, easy access to Philadelphia via regional rail
• New similar workspace opening soon in Denver!

Apply: If you’re a talented Experience Designer with a focus on the visual/aesthetic and a stunning portfolio that highlights your interactive experience, send an email with a cover letter, resume and link to your online portfolio to work@thinkbrownstone.com with the subject line, “I Think I’m a Brownstoner”. We look forward to hearing from you.

On January 25th, the New York Times published a lengthy piece focusing on the “human costs” of Apple’s manufacturing process. The piece is structured around the May 19, 2011 explosion at a Foxconn factory in Chengdu, China. The explosion was determined to be caused by the combustion of aluminum dust that resulted from the polishing of iPads that the site assembles. Authors Charles Duhigg and David Barboza do a nice job illustrating the human side of the amazing manufacturing feats that are achieved to help Apple and other electronics manufacturers turn out new products at a breakneck pace. It clearly hit a nerve, as Tim Cook issued a company-wide email soon thereafter in response.

I’m writing this post on my MBP that is currently charging my iPhone. It’s a challenge for me to simply watch a TV show without referencing my iPad at least once to look something up or wait out a commercial break. As a lover of Apple products, I couldn’t help but feel some level of guilt as I read about this incident (not to mention the day-to-day situation at these factories). I like to think that I make a lot of conscious decisions about how I can live my first-world life in a way that reduces my impact on others. Winter aside, I buy the majority of my produce from a local farmer. I drive a car that gets over 40mpg. My household recycles far more than we throw out. You get the point. So again, my concern: was my Apple habit supporting the exploitation and endangerment of others? Yes and no.

If you simply read Duhigg and Barboza’s piece, you’d be right in thinking that Apple is taking advantage of developing countries like China, squeezing them to work an inhuman pace to satiate our need for new iStuff. Pull back a bit, though, and you get a more measured view. Forbes had a nice reaction piece, citing a lot of economic theory that is still making my head spin. Thankfully, they reduced it into a bite-sized infographic (which Forbes is mysteriously no longer hosting). Also, dig deeper and read Apple’s Supplier Responsibility Progress Report from 2012. You’ll find that many of the numbers in the Times piece were reported by Apple. Dell and Samsung, the first two comparable electronics manufacturers that popped into my mind publish no such detailed reports that I can find. Dell makes something of an effort. Samsung…sends letters?

"C'mon, Apple."

Look, in comparison to their peers, Apple’s report is pretty impressive. If it’s an attempt to greenwash the issue, then it’s a damn good one. Having said that, as (retconned) Uncle Ben told us, “With great power comes great responsibility.” Apple just had the second most-profitable quarter for any company…ever (the most-profitable quarter on record is held by ExxonMobil). I think that comparison is worth pondering a bit.

Oil companies are frequently pilloried for raking in huge profits while their customers, employees, and others are forced to pay either through their wallets, lives, or environments. If Apple is now reaping similar rewards, why not hold them to this same standard? They’re talking a good game, let’s see if we can make them follow through. Nike, for all the flak they took in the 90’s, is now showing some positive examples of how to improve working conditions in the developing world. I have to think that was achieved through a combination of public outcry and dedicated corporate leadership. Today’s Apple seems to be in a similar position to 90’s Nike. Their leadership appears to be saying the right things and taking the right steps. Now it’s up to us as their customers (and contributors to that record-setting quarter) to ensure they know what’s important to us.