Too many stimuli – too many interruptions – too little focus – too little thought?

For those of us who find neatness and organization an ever present challenge, our screens – whether computer, phone or tablet, may offer no refuge. Littered with icons, busied with backgrounds, riddled with ribbons – the typical Windows landscape.

My inspiration for this essay comes from an iPad / iPhone App called Zen Brush. Written by folks in Japan who live near the center of the 2011 earthquake, it presents a drawing surface elegant in its simplicity and execution. It presents so few controls, yet render strokes with a delightful.

Zen Brush Screen from iPad

As a tool for a purely visual activity, the wordless experience when drawing with Zen Brush works well. Just two brush shades, brush size, erase and a packaged set of themes are all the tools presented. For $2.99, try it and enjoy.

The iPad experience and the pleasure of Zen Brush inspired me to take a fresh look at Windows techniques that  minimize visual clutter, and help focus thought and work on the task at hand. Before trying these, try to sense how you interact with a computer. These suggestions may work better if the name of a program triggers thought more easily than an icon. If you can click on an icon without thinking at all about the name of the program, more visual cues may help. My strategy uses both – starting with names, then using fewer visual cues in their appropriate context. These suggestions assume a Windows 7 environment, without the touch screen enhancements coming in Windows 8.

First Step – Clear the Icons
Clear the icons off your desktop. As an experiment in near zero clutter, trying clearing everything but the Recycle Bin. (It resists removal anyway.) Mousing to an icon, especially when there are many of them, is slow and a demanding hand / eye coordination activity. The visual benefits of icons are reduced when they rearrange or move.

To launch programs, use a combination of the task bar for just a few of the most frequently used programs and Windows Search for less frequently used programs. I prefer Windows search to the Start Menu. It is fast, and it triggers the brain’s association with the name or a program, without having to mouse through a menu.

Second Step – A Peaceful Desktop

Simplify the desktop, using an image or theme with minimal distraction. While it is most tempting to populate the desk with the delicious smile of offspring, that will also reduce  focus on work. Enjoy those photos in their appropriate time. For your desktop, choose a photo or artwork with low detail or just a soothing color or gradient.

Third Step – Hide the Ribbons

The ribbon interface – officially in Microsoft Speak the Fluent User Interface – can be hidden. I prefer to toggle it with CTRL F1, but there is also the caret icon in the upper right corner of the ribbon. When needed for a task, the detailed collection of tools presented by a ribbon can be very helpful. When not needed, hiding the clutter of icons  lowers stress and distraction .

Fourth Step – Magic Keys

With Windows 7 we have a tool for managing the cluttered pile of too many open windows . The combination of Windows (Start) key (between CTRL and  ALT ) plus D toggles the open windows with a clean  desktop – instantly.  Though the Show Desktop region to the right of the time in the task bar does the same thing,  keystrokes remove the need for mouse precision. The Windows key plus TAB cycles open windows in a dramatic visual that also presents an uncluttered and focused way to view and choose a window. Together, showing the desktop, then Windows TAB to a desired window offers a clear clean focused way to navigate.

Let me know whether you find this strategy helpful.

With fall’s colors sprinkled among our forests, it’s a good time to share a summer’s worth of webinars and presentations. Follow the links to view the programs and articles.

July  brought Technology Guided Drafting and Review,  a webinar devoted to the tools that help lawyers drafting transactional documents maintain the accuracy and completeness of complex negotiated documents in practices pressed for time and fees.  The webinar illustrated and expanded on the discussion in the white paper Technology Guided Drafting from Opportunity to Imperative. Both webinar and white paper feature the new product from Microsystems, Eagle EYE, The Agreement Checker. It has been a great pleasure to work with the team at Microsystems to learn about this product and to  help to explain it to lawyers and their staff. Precise drafting requires careful and exact use of language throughout each agreement and often among many agreements. Speaking to my colleagues and friends who continue to bear responsibility for this work, the kind of computer guided help that assists drafting by our friends in architecture and engineering. These presentations develop the theme that with a program such as EagleEYE, lawyers drafting agreements can be assisted and protected by similar technology guidance.

August. Leading up to the ILTA Conference at the end of August, I had the pleasure of working with Glynn Fluitt and Kenneth Henry of Cravath, Swaine and Moore as well as David Neesen at Greenberg Glusker and  Toby Adamson at Microsystems. One of the best parts of preparing workshops for the ILTA Conference is the chance to develop and present ideas together. Our workshops, Metadata – Deal with It! and The iPad as Laptop Replacement? gave us a chance to challenge listeners with refreshed perspectives on familiar and not so familiar technology of metadata and the opportunities and risks associates with the surging interest and use of iPads.

September  brought another webinar, You Let What Go Out? – Protecting Today’s Transactional Lawyer. Presented by American Lawyer Media with Lynn Frances of e-Discovery Writer and Bonnie Reid of Microsystems, the webinar looked at trends in practice and the risks and opportunities associated with technology guided drafting, mobile and tablet based computing and metadata management.

In the mail in the last week of September, the Probate and Property publication of the American Bar Association’s Real Property, Trust and Estate Law Section featured iPads and iPhones: Tools for Practice. This article offers insights into the experience and use of the iPad and iPhone as practice tools for lawyers, with special emphasis on the work of property and probate lawyers. It explores the potential for Evernote as a tool for field work and due diligence, highlighting the use of geotagging.

Reopening a conversation

A blog can | should liberate one’s mind and fingers to express thoughts that matter, to share ideas tested and untested. I hope to reopen in this blog the online and in person conversations that began some years ago when Woody’s Office Watch published my columns called “The Word of Law.”

This renewed conversation began this year with webinars and presentations at ILTA (the International Legal Technology Association.

Enabling

My interest and commitment to technology has always been to help lawyers and those who support them. Technology must serve the practice of law. Perhaps (not so perhaps?),  technology seems to govern, to demand, to overwhelm. We technology evangelists must remember to remind ourselves of our responsibility to serve.

Here “enabling ” should be read as a strong positive – techniques, tools, strategies that support the practice of law instead of overgrowing, even crowding it out.

Why  rethis and rethat?

It seems to be the right time, personally, professionally and in the industry for fresh thought about technology and the practice of law. As a profession and industry (and personally), we have pursued technology’s application to the practice for a human generation. What the equivalence in technology generations might be is harder to measure. Moore’s Law would measure the generations (doublings) since the dawn of legal technology (let’s call it 1976) at  24.

We want to become unstuck – to find and use the tools, techniques and strategies for technology that, in the words of Apple’s Human Interface Principles are “beautiful, intuitive, compelling” and not “unattractive, convoluted or illogical.” We buy and become emotionally attached to iPads in ways that have long eluded us when using technology for our practice.

For that to happen, it is time to rethink, to re-enable the tools, and especially the ways we use technology to practice law. I hope my voice will make that our story now.

Bob Blacksberg
October 1, 2012