Designing Some New ~ Purging Some Old

I have spent the last couple of days working on the Striving for More website design document. Since writing design documents is what I spent a good part of my career doing, you would think that this would come easily for me. But it isn't. You see, when you are writing design documents in the professional world, you gather requirements from your customer. I am good at asking people questions and then asking them follow up questions to turn their ideas into a design.

However, during the last few days, I have figured out that when the ideas are in my own mind, it is much harder to pull them out and put them down on paper. Then I remember that many years ago, Vince and I worked together at AT&T. I came up with ideas for how software systems would work better and I would write the requirements and he would write the software code for it. So we sat down together for a while yesterday and talked about the web design. It was like old times, it was fun.

I also remembered that I heard a non profit podcast that said don't design a web page based on what you think the visitor wants to see, design a web page by asking "what does the visitor want to learn about your organization". So, I thought I would throw that out to all of you. Email me and tell me what you would like to learn by going to a Striving for More website.

I heard on this same podcast that people spend an average of 8 seconds making a decision to click deeper into your website or leaving your website so I want to make sure that I get this right. I am anxious to hear from you.

As for purging... I just finished cleaning out a kitchen drawer (full of liquid medicine syringes) so it seems to be an ongoing process of removing visual reminders of Colleen. Not the meaningful ones of course. Just dumb ones that cause little stabs in our gut unconsciously every time we open that drawer to get out a measuring spoon. I guess it takes a long time. For some reason, it never even occurred to mean to clean out that drawer until today. There are other things like that looming in other drawers, in other closets. Waiting for us. I guess God makes it so it processes a little bit at a time or it would be way too overwhelming to realize all that you had to deal with immediately after a death. I guess that is what I should be thankful for today.

I am also thankful for my friend Laura who offered to work on the graphic design of the Striving for More website even though her hands are really full. She followed Colleen's journey and her passion for helping are shining through.