park life

ace and i each sell our houses under our own brand names, but we do so alongside each other, and often work together trading ideas. so we have this “umbrella” brand which covers us both: five points.

this is a reference to le corbusier’s les 5 points d’ une architecture nouvelle, or 5 points of new architecture. these points were a system of features which were his vision of architecture for the future: the foundation lifted off the ground, floating walls in a flexible, open space, a floating facade, a long, horizontal front window, and a rooftop garden.

while i’m influenced by his work and like to incorporate these concepts into my own, i don’t adhere to them as rules, nor find that they can always apply to my current project.

reading a 37signals blog post about focusing on the permanent features got me thinking about my own features central to my business. and there just happen to be five of them

so here are park life’s five points:

designed for use: never forget what the next owner will do with your product, especially when you’re designing it. does it really need every feature? sometimes it’s best to simplify and reduce options to make it easier to use, or to redesign them from their perspective. this doesn’t mean dumbing it down. it means your customer will spend most of his or her time using things you didn’t make, and will likely not want to learn a whole new system. when i design houses, i make them livable. ceilings that are a comfortable height for sl. menu options that are clear and not overwhelming. use your judgement and get to know what your customers need.

customer service: do your best, and treat people with respect. i am always striving to improve this area, even though i make mistakes. i lose im’s sometimes. i forget things. and i can’t satisfy every request. but it’s very important to me that my customers trust me. do the right thing and they’ll return.

fair prices: price for what it’s worth, and provide options at various price levels. not everyone will buy your top of the line item, but if you have products at lower prices you satisfy more customers. i don’t believe in artificial rarity, where the price is set high just to make it exclusive.

efficient building: like it or not, everything you create adds to lag and load times. the responsible thing to do is make as little an impact as reasonable. reduce prim count, reduce texture count, reduce script lag. research, experiment with new ideas, and provide lower resource-intensive alternatives when design or customer use requires you to do something inefficiently.

attention to detail: a good product is a good idea, and a collection of a lot of details done right. spend the time to get them just right. go through and find misspellings, gaps in prims, misaligned textures, and colors which just don’t look quite right. sometimes sl throws you a curveball but spend the time and your effort will show.

because these are so central to my business, there is a lot i could say about each of them. i will follow up by writing about some of these specifically. these are from my perspective, building houses and interior decor. but i would like to see more of these five points from every business, in sl and out.