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Team

We’ve written 20 blog posts about Team. View all topics »

  1. Better Stakeholder Interviews

    5/9/13

    by Chris Cashdollar

    16 Responses

    Remember the childhood game of “Telephone”? One person whispers a message into the ear of their friend, and that action is repeated until everyone in attendance has heard and relayed the statement. The last person blurts out to the group what they heard, and, usually, laughter ensues.

    Everyone understands why this happens. Translation and less-than-pristine reinterpretation damage the fidelity of the message. There is no copy-and-paste equivalent for verbal storytelling. A photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy of an image will always render that image indistinguishable from the original.

  2. Walkie Talkie

    3/14/13

    by Greg Storey

    22 Responses

    “Pick up the phone!” That is my phrase of choice when I hear about a co-workers’ failed attempts to communicate through every means except calling those they are trying to reach.

  3. Making Front-end Development a Team Sport

    3/7/13

    by Jenn Lukas

    24 Responses

    “All code in any code-base should look like a single person typed it, no matter how many people contributed,” is one of the many ideas behind documents such as Rick Waldon’s Idiomatic JS and Nicolas Gallagher’s Idiomatic CSS.

  4. Good work isn’t enough.

    2/7/13

    by Greg Hoy

    625 Responses

    When I was a young designer, I always asked other people how they got noticed for their work. The answer I most consistently received was “do good work.” Now, when people ask me the same question, I respond with the same answer. Good work always speaks for itself. It’s a self-promoting robot.

  5. Re-cognition

    12/20/12

    by Alison Harshbarger

    4 Responses

    As we near the end of December, it’s pretty natural to begin to reflect on the past year. Cognition is the place where we share new processes and create a dialogue around new ideas. In the spirit of reflection and end-of-year lists, here are the top five trafficked Cognition posts of 2012 and some parting thoughts from an alternate point of view.

  6. It’s Tech

    7/12/12

    by Mark Huot

    2 Responses

    If you’ve worked in the theater, you’re probably familiar with the term “tech week.” It’s that magical time when an entire production comes together in a matter of days. It’s a whirlwind week that culminates in a big opening night performance.

  7. Before You Hit Send: A Few Honest Tips for Job Seeking Designers

    6/28/12

    by Chris Cashdollar

    26 Responses

    Hiring a new designer is exciting. The hiring process is not. As someone who has recently been on the receving end of hundreds of applications, I’m noticing a few alarming trends. New graduate or seasoned veteran, it doesn’t seem to matter.

  8. Always

    6/7/12

    by Greg Hoy

    19 Responses

    For this week’s installment of Cognition, I thought I’d share some random thoughts as the president of a small company. Some I heed, some I need to heed.

  9. On-Site Anthropology

    5/10/12

    by Rawle Anders

    2 Responses

    At Happy Cog, we try to use the latest web technologies to bring our virtual teams (and families) together. But sometimes, a virtual meetup just won’t do—most notably, the kickoff meeting to start a new client project. Few things can impact a project’s success like the team building that takes place during the workshop sessions, lunches, and post-meeting drinks of a client on-site visit—after all, raising a virtual toast isn’t nearly as satisfying as clinking two glasses together.

  10. I’m Really Listening

    4/5/12

    by Brett Harned

    13 Responses

    I remember the day I got my first pair of headphones. I was five years old and the Easter Bunny brought me a Smurfs walkman radio. It was the best thing that had ever happened to me. I spent hours with those things on—in the car, in the house, outside riding my big wheel. I can’t really remember what I was listening to back then. After all, I was five, and it was an AM/FM radio, so suffice it to say, it was probably nothing that anyone else in my world wanted to hear. Well played, Mom and Dad.

  11. The Tech Behind Site Week

    3/22/12

    by Ryan Irelan

    4 Responses

    In February we gathered a group together in our Philadelphia office to redesign and rebuild our happycog.com website in one week. The goal of our Site Week was to redesign the website (Greg Hoy covers the thinking behind this in a Cognition post back in Janauary) and to push ourselves to do something different.

  12. Dear Branding Agencies,

    3/1/12

    by Chris Cashdollar

    18 Responses

    You’ve crafted the “big picture” view. The client loves the new branding direction; they can practically smell the future you’ve unveiled for them. Now it’s time to get to work. That means you likely have a bazillion different projects in play to bring this new brand to life: identity packages, brochures of all shapes and sizes, tickets, annual reports, bus wraps, on-site signage, and, yes, the website.

  13. I Went to Site Week and All I Got Was a Better Future.

    2/16/12

    by Greg Storey

    7 Responses

    I grew up in the small farming town of Palmer, Alaska. Aside from Alaska being Alaska, not much happened that made the evening news. Not even our weather was exciting enough to ever be called out as “the coldest spot.” That honor was always reserved for villages hundreds of miles up north. We finally landed on the map one winter when a group of developers, contractors, plumbers, electricians, painters, interior decorators, and furniture store owners attempted to break a world record by building an entire house in 24 hours, just across the street from our high school.

  14. Redesign Week

    2/2/12

    by Greg Hoy

    18 Responses

    What do they say about the cobbler’s son? The dude is always barefoot? Or the carpenter’s house has no roof? Stupid carpenter.

    Yeah. That’s kind of us right now with happycog.com. Granted, we have shoes, and we have a roof. But the shoes have some holes in the soles and the roof leaks just enough to make your hair wet.

  15. Streamlining Internal Communications

    1/19/12

    by Helenita Frounfelkner

    5 Responses

    Three and a half years ago, I left the world of traditional print marketing and entered the world of the Interwebs. My old company said “No!” to video chatting or instant messaging in the office and worried more about proper email subject line etiquette than finding the best ways to communicate with each other. Change was in store as I entered the land of Instant Messaging (IM) and Skype, Basecamp and Campfire, but was it a change for the better or do more lines of communication further complicate things? I found myself being asked a similar question by a couple folks at a Dribbble holiday meet up this past December. I was asked how I manage projects, how we communicate as a team, and more specifically, how I manage communications in a virtual environment.

  16. Holiday Gifts For the Young Web Designer Who Doesn’t Have It All

    12/22/11

    by Kevin Hoffman

    10 Responses

    The field of web and application design is deep into a fantastic and complex evolutionary stage. Browsers have adopted more support than ever for the same standards, yet the bleeding edges of those standards are constantly staining our screens with new approaches to the ways we interact with information. Platforms, frameworks, methods, and opinions about them are myriad. It can all be a little intimidating for someone just getting off of the school bus.

  17. Make Sweet Systems Sweeter

    8/4/11

    by Allison Wagner

    10 Responses

    At Happy Cog, process is not sacred. We respect process, but we are constantly looking to improve the way our projects run; especially with regard to transitioning between project phases. Last week, Yesenia Perez-Cruz described how she crafts sweet systems and digital cupcakes. This week, I’m going to show you how we turn those cupcakes into a well-built tower of yummy cupcakery.

  18. Sweet Systems

    7/28/11

    by Yesenia Perez-Cruz

    21 Responses

    To most, it’s just the sugary centerpiece to a child’s birthday party—but to me, the Cupcake Cake is systematic genius. A balance of consistency and variety, each cupcake is decorated with the same delicate piping technique, from a carefully selected color palette, with no drop of icing wasted. The result is surprising, delightful, and the highlight of the party.

  19. Illustration by Yesenia Perez-Cruz

    What’s the ROI on Cool?

    7/14/11

    by Joe Rinaldi

    36 Responses

    Industry creative folks I’m friends with personally and respect professionally have uttered the following to me on multiple occasions:

    “I want to make cool shit.”

    I’ll be honest, I just don’t get it. To be fair, it’s safe to say I don’t get “cool” in general. I routinely dress like I’m headed to a corporate team-building ropes course, and I’m still waiting for Firefly to be picked up for season 2. So maybe it’s no surprise that the quest for cool escapes me. I don’t get the allure of making something cool for the sake of it being cool. Further, I don’t understand how you sell that to clients, or more importantly, why they would pay for it.

  20. Suit Illo by Yesenia Perez-Cruz

    The Cult of Personalities

    6/9/11

    by Dave DeRuchie

    7 Responses

    In a service industry like ours, we work with a lot of people. Certain people bring out the best in us; others, not so much. Consider your last difficult workplace exchange. How would that encounter have been different if you had a better sense of your own personality? What if you understood the person you shared the encounter with better?

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