I spent a couple hours this afternoon reviewing several large folders full of project papers with our art director and information architect Jessica Moore. Complex web development projects that span many months not surprisingly generate lots of documentation, but it's the hand notes scrawled on meeting agendas, printouts of e-mails, and interim versions of deliverables that provide the "color" and "texture" to the backstory. What makes collections of papers like this even more useful is when the owner of the artifacts is detail-oriented as Jessica.

Yesterday, I finished the last of about a dozen informative one-on-one meetings with team members. It's interesting that several people were apologetic about the piles of papers on their desks. I reassured them that I'm a "piler" too. I'm reminded once again of an archived blog entry with a quote on how piles of papers on a desk are not the sign of a disorganized mind, but of one that is contending with many complex and unresolved ideas. The quote, from a paper on the social life of paper, asserts that piles of papers serve as a rapid-access mental map of many pieces of information. This idea rings true again as the piles on my new desk are already proliferating while I wrap my mind around our web operations.

- mike lee -