There’s been much talk lately in the IA mailing lists about tools: which do you use, what are their shortcomings / advantages, that sort of thing. With yesterday’s news of the Macromedia acquisition, I’ve been thinking about the tools I use to get my job done. Which are indispensable? What dependencies do I have on third parties? What would happen if x company were to shutter? (See Lou and Donna’s recent spam filtering woes for examples.)
I’ve prepared a shortlist of the tools I simply couldn’t do my job without, from most important to least…
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- Paper – Any kind will do, but I prefer loose leaf 8 1/2" x 11" white bond. (Note: manila folders are also important when working with loose leaf paper, as is some kind of folder container.)
- Writing instrument – Doesn’t need to be fancy. Currently I use a Pilot Dr. Grip Gel (yes, the name is awful) black ink pen. I can also work with regular wood pencils, and do so regularly.
- Mobile phone. – It doesn’t need to have bells / whistles. (Well, maybe bells.
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- Post-it notes – I buy them in bulk from PriceSmart. Highly recommended: Rapid Problem Solving With Post-it Notes, by David Straker — it’s like having an operating system for Post-its.
- Big, bold, black permanent markers – Sharpies, which I also buy in bulk at PriceSmart. I suppose any brand would do. Note: must be careful when using on Post-its tacked on the…
- Whiteboard – Actually, any large wall-mounted rewriteable surface will do. Blackboards, however, don’t play nice with Post-its, so whiteboards are much preferred. (I also like having an assortment of colored dry-erase markers for the whiteboard. Color is important in part so that I don’t confuse the markers with Sharpies.)
- Laptop computer – No, I can’t use a desktop — my computer needs to be lugged around to around to customers’ offices. I currently use a 15" Powerbook, but in the past I’ve used Thinkpads, Dells, Compaqs, Toshibas, and even a Canon, and can do OK with any of them.
- Fast internet connection – I also need air, and occasionally some food and water.
- Email / Contacts / Calendar / Tasks – I use Entourage, everyone else in the world uses Outlook. Evolution would be OK too, or even Emacs using one of its many guises.
- A good text editor – Currently BBEdit (and Dreamweaver, for some specialized XHTML things), but if need be I could always return to Emacs.
- A good spreadsheet app – Like most everyone else, I use Excel. I’ve tried OpenOffice, and for my needs it’s been alright. However, it falls apart when opening documents sent by third parties — that just won’t do.
- A good word processor – Word. See previous entry.
- A good diagramming app – In the Mac world, this means Omni Outliner Pro. In Windows, Visio. Are there any other choices?
- An image editor – Currently Fireworks. (Hence my preoccupation with the Macromedia / Adobe debacle.) I lived in Photoshop for a long time, but find FW more closely aligned with the needs of web designers. I’ve also tried using The Gimp, but it has many limitations, especially when coming at it as a previous user of either of the aforementioned apps.
- Google – No, not just any search engine will do.
- A PDF writer – OS X does this natively. There are many alternatives in the Windows world.
- Presentation software – Powerpoint. See previous entries on word processing and spreadsheets. (Note: I don’t need frills. No animations, etc. It does need to open third party files without too much distortion, since many people seem to think PPT is a native image format.)
- Digital camera – Huh? Basics? Actually, I use it for taking pictures of the whiteboard — saves incredible amounts of time, especially at meetings. My current tool of choice is a Canon S50: its resolution is just good enough to record the writing on Post-its when shooting the entire whiteboard, and it’s small enough to always be in my backpack. (OK, I guess I could live without it — if I had to. In any case, some day in the future a mobile phone will come along with good-enough resolution camera to make this item redundant.)
- Unix shell and its little friends – I’m approaching “nice-to-have” land here. However, Bash & Co. have saved my neck too many times; I can’t leave them out. There’s a good Windows alternative.
I think that’s it… I’ll update the list if I can think of any more. However, one thing’s become clear to me: I’m not as dependent on commercial software as I thought I was. Google, and the diagramming and image editing apps, are the exception. And like most everyone, I’m MS Office’s bitch. (However, I could live without it if I had to.) On the other hand, the first six items in my list — arguably the most important ones — don’t even require a computer.
I’d really like to know what tools you consider indispensable.
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