Here at the LGBT Technology Partnership we subscribe to the philosophy of Occam’s Razor and from the looks at the picture above, Facebook’s User Experience Lab Blog seems to apply the same concepts.
Occam’s razor is the philosophy that the simplest solution is the one that should be applied to most problems. As the photo shows, Facebook engineer’s used printer paper, Post-it notes and a big blank wall to develop its new News Feed. It seems like a surprisingly low-tech way to develop such a sophisticated and trumpeted new feature but it struck a chord with us specifically for that reason. You see, here at LGBT Tech we are slightly obsessive about productivity products. You may say we are productivity junkies. We spend a lot of time online researching new apps and products that can help us work faster! More efficiently! Better!
One of the missions of LGBT Tech is to make sure that our subscribers are aware of the technology and tools that will make their lives easier. Whether traveling internationally to a fierce destination or working hard at the office, there are a lot of new technological innovations that are continually released. But it can be overwhelming. To that end, we are launching a regular Tech Hack column. Our tech hack posts will focus on those technologies that can make your lives easier and allow you to spend more time focusing on the things that matter most. It is our hope that by highlighting products that we find particularly useful or are excited about you might find something new that works for you.
This column will be wide-ranging and responsive to your needs. To that end we encourage your feedback and suggestions for products we should try and review. In the coming weeks we will start with more in-depth reviews of some of our favorite productivity tools. At the top of that list is Evernote, a deceptively simple note taking application that could easily become the repository for your digital life. People either love it or hate it but it’s definitely something you should know about it.
We will highlight security and privacy issues here and will introduce you to Lastpass, a fantastic password keeper that will free you from the tyranny of having to remember multiple password ever again (it is that good!). We will also show you our favorite cloud storage solutions (SkyDrive v. Box v. Dropbox v. Google Drive) and show you some smaller Google Chrome and Firefox extensions that may make your browsing easier.
But back to the Facebook Post-its. There are two things that you should keep in mind as you think about your life. First, different technology tools will have varying degrees of success for different people. There is no single right answer and a system that is right for everyone. It is important to keep experimenting with different systems until you find the right one for you. The ironic offshoot of the above rule is that you also have to be careful to not spend all your time examining and implementing new productivity systems (that’s what we are here for!). Second, low tech does not mean low quality. As Facebook and Occam’s Razor has shown, sometimes a blank wall and some Post-its, the simplest solutions, are all you need to create brilliant work!