Mint Digital

In order to explore interesting topics around mobile and meet new folks working in mobile in New York, Mint Digital and the Pocketmints crew are hosting a series of monthly talks.

This month Mari Sheibley, the lead designer of foursquare, is joining us to discuss Mobile UI Patterns.

Early this year when we set about to "find our feet" in the mobile landscape, we went about it in the typical Mint way, simply jump in and try to make stuff. Past experience has taught us that this hands-on, "rubber meets the road" approach always lands us in new territory.

Buoyed by the success of our iPhone app building weekend exercise, the fantastic response to our World Cup real-time visualizer, and the confidence from working on production projects in the mobile web space for blue-chip clients, we are ready to declare our mobile division open for business.

"How much success?"

Throughout the history of our client engagements, there is always a slightly uncomfortable moment when this question rears its ugly head.

"How much traffic do you think the site will do?"

On the 15th October, Mint was confronted with its 10,000th case in FogBugz, an imposing visual landmark of four consecutive zeros across our computer screens. An outsider’s reaction might be that Mint has made a lot of mistakes in the last couple of years. Surely 10,000 bugs in roughly two years for a company the size of Mint Digital must be a bad thing, no?

At Mint, the 10,000th bug is not only a positive milestone, but also a time for reflection on our development process, our accumulation of collective expertise, our desire to involve all team members in all projects. Instead of a liability, it represents on one hand the accomplishment of the volume and diversity of Mint’s work. Perhaps most importantly, bug 10,000 captures the dogged commitment to a process that has provided a practical foundation for Mint’s core values.

Today, on August 1, 2008, both the UK and US offices of Mint Digital internationally celebrated the first Ron DeVera day. Simply put, Ron was the first employee hired by Mint Digital to sport a mustache. Since his arrival at Mint, he has ascended to near legendary status through his relentless work ethic, peerless HTML/CSS/JS skills, and his total domination in all company award categories. All these traits are personified by the tasteful choice of facial hair that has endeared Ron to Mint.

In the quest for the secret to the DeVera mojo, Mint Digital requested that all employees cultivate what is known simply as "the look". All the entries have been digitally documented and uploaded to Mint Digital's photo challenge site which was developed at this year's WebApp Weekender. Anecdotally, Mint has found that the mustaches have improved the collective morale, increased individual productivity, flattened the learning curves for difficult technologies, enhanced creative output both qualitatively and quantitatively, and have provided numerous unspoken benefits outside of the office as well.

Personally, I must say that I was confronted with aesthetic choices of uncommon weight and subtlety. When I fashioned my mustache early this morning, there was a temptation to be outlandish, a seduction towards the theatre of the garish.

However, I reflected and stopped myself immediately. This was no banal mustache-growing competition one might find in some underfunded regional circus.

This was Ron DeVera's day.