Table 2.0
Tuesday, August 8th, 2006 | 12 Comments »Many of you remember last summer’s experiment with home improvement. I certainly do. Sometimes I dream that I’ve been sitting for a long period of time at that slightly-too-tall table and I wake up in a cold sweat, arms asleep from the shoulders down. That Mags gritted her teeth and worked at that table all summer is a testament to her can-do attitude and OSHA’s inability to arrest me.
Anyway, after agonizing over how such a well-planned intentioned project could have turned out so lackluster, I realized the fatal flaw. The solution was so obvious!
We needed shelves this summer for all those books that we read two chapters of in college and just keep around now to impress friends. Armed with my own righteous sense of direction, we headed again to Home Depot, purchased the requisite lumber—no pressboard this time, thanks to a 3rd place finish at CHI—and found hardware more suitable for joining wood than last year’s shelf brackets. We returned home and consulted the drawings one last time.
After an in-depth examintion of user needs—taking special care to understand the environmental factors and cultural contexts into which the shelf would be born and from which it could not possibly hope to disentangle—it was time to put my new plan into action. I grabbed the drill, a bracket, and a few screws. I handed these things to Mags.
"You probably should start on that end."
"Mm-hmm."
And with that, our new bookshelf practically built itself.
