The year is over, another one is about to start, and even after being blessed for not being forced to listen to the Brazilian version of John Lennon’s end of the year anthem, I think there’s quite a lot of other incredible things to remember about this year.

Canola2 : the whole year chaos

Canola2 was full throttle. Actually we released it on december 18th. Really chaotic launch, servers down and we were struggling against the bugs. The reviews were quite harsh on the fact that the software was not “ready” or even installable. We kept it going, and today one year later we reached milestone 10 (it’s in the developer repository if someone wants to have a try just ask me).

After changes in the team, canola moving from one office to another it’s finally back on the main creators: Barbieri and Ulisses that now own a company called profusion, are the ones working for us to maintain the goals for Canola. It couldn’t be better. INdT still have the full control over Canola and we are working to release opensource. Everything seems to be ready, we just need the final license / disclaimer from the company. Finally.

Carman

It needed a lot more love. But we didn’t have workforce for that. We tried hiring a company to be a partner on this, but bad (really bad) thing happened to that small company and we were caught by surprise. A chaos force team was set and in a really crazy schedule the guys delivered the new version. I like the way it evolved a lot, but for me it’s clear one thing :
It should not be separated from Canola. Anyhow I like the way the maps scrolls even with lots of transparencies going on on the background.

Carman & Canola evolution, that I have demonstrated on the Maemo summit in Berlin, was a great goal to go for it, but it will have to wait for the tools needed to do it to be ready.

Ux Team Our team grew, and I am quite proud of the amount of talent that we’ve managed to gather. André, Tatiana, Juliana, Hugo were the additions this year in Recife and in Manaus the team started with Abrãao and Glauber that are guided by Miguel who was the first team member I hired almost 3 years ago.

I think the best thing about our team is the ability to really reinvent ourselves, to help each other on the chaos and specially to do not fall for the need of having a closed, solid process. All projects are different and they need evolution daily to be on the top of the quality. We managed to use free-from-process way of working with a really tight and controlled way and found ourselves quite happy in the middle, using the parallel scrum way. While the developers are being selected, the design team runs one month ahead to make sure everything is as clear as possible. This improves the accuracy when estimating tasks, reduces the need for a lot of really not important documentation and focus the team in one goal : creating a great experience in the smaller time possible. The time that is left we use to evaluate and improve, step by step.

Nokia Smart Home Announced in Barcelona (that screen is quite a mockup, see the video for the real thing), it was really a blast to see it public, and the UI being used in the video. The product Owner Mikael has set a incredible team, and in the phone application I had the chance to work since day zero. It has been a lot of work since then, specially because symbian is not easy to deal with as Linux, but I think we’ve managed to squeeze a lot of great stuff from the OS and the guys did some amazing work with openGL to have a really simple UI layer that feels great to use. Of course it could use more time to be even more refined, but that’s the designer… give us more time and we will never finish it :)

Lots of projects, tons of experience, megatons of fun During the year we have been doing a lot of concept proof, and it has been quite fun to explore completely different areas for a couple of months. I had the chance not only to create and guide the creation of a couple of really nice concepts, but also to understand a lot more about the whole product chain, that was a little far from me since I always focused on the software side.

Traveling and Vacations

This has been an unusual year when it comes to travels, but it had a good reason. We were able to close, approve and kick start the projects in a faster way than all the previous years combined. Of course there was a high price to pay, and my wife Tatiana was not happy about it. To make it up to her, I took 2 big vacations in the year:

we explored a little part of Europe (where we spent all our savings, and did that happily) stayed for 5 days in Fortaleza getting to know some family from my father’s side of the family and in June we crossed the south of Brazil to meet her grandmother and grandfather. The year was heading to the end and after a couple of project travels to europe and us, where I manage to get on board of the project 2 of the best Brazilian designers, when we closed the month in a quick visit to Rio and then Brasilia to gather with the guys from Mopa (the cream of the next wave of Brazilian Designers with a happy style that you should check it out), that will work with us in a project next year! Note: I also experimented playing golf for the first time. Having sun light even after 6 is a great advantage in Finnish lands on summer!

Personal Well, apart from what I consider a great professional year, there has been as well a lot of good things happening on the personal side. Maybe that is also the reason why the work was so good this year. After coming back from Europe, I was weighting 102 kilos. For a 1.68cm high guy that is a little over the “fat” level. It was time for a change. 3 months later I was weighting 81kgs and now I managed to stay on 79-82 level. No more snoring, more healthy, less exhausted on the business trips and the best: way more energetic on the office to face the 15h routines along the year :). I also saw the birth of Frau, my wife’s clothing brand. We are working on the website and almost all the dresses have already been sold, even without showing the off our inner circle. I am quite proud of her work. It is also worth mentioning the work that André Cunha did for the Frau logo and graphic material. top notch stuff.

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What’s next?
Now 2009 will be the time to make the work become really solid, focusing on less projects and giving more attention to the level of detail and the chance to innovate in every single task. Each small task will be a point to make the difference for the clients. I commit myself to do way better things this year and we will start by bring one more product to market (if everything goes right of course). The crisis is there and this will be actually good for us. Less travel whenever possible (Even knowing that my trips are more one / year / client ) and more time to study and improve my skills.

also it’s the year to plan for a growth in the family. We have decided that now is time and a little baby will be the focus this year :) Things will change. Less time to video games, less over hour work, and more dedication to the family in all levels.

Wow. Lot’s of stuff, specially without being able to write about the half dozen projects that are cooking and are not public. See you all next year!