Last week was a vacation. The Riddler is away this week. There is an abiding peace in the land of Graphical Rich, one that allows me to catch up on work, engage in yet more pooch-screwing and document a past tale of humiliation and embarassment.

At the time of this story, we had just landed a new development project, but had very little direction or definition on the project’s scope or delivery platform. We basically had some cash and an idea of our target audience.

When our crack team began the conceptual phase of development, the Riddler was convinced that the best way to start was to design the GRUI (the graphical rich user interface) and then do the needs analysis and functionality afterwards. Despite repeated explanations that this approach was almost completely illogical and an enormous waste of time, he stuck with it and scheduled a meeting with Wormtongue, eWhore and the HPDEB.

Riddler’s intention for the meeting was to conceptualize the interface. This was to be accomplished by painting abstract shapes on a 12’ piece of canvas he had hung on the lunch room wall and then sculpting shapes in a lump of clay.

Yes, that’s right. Building Play-Doh models of software and fingerpainting interfaces for a program that didn’t exist.

Although I wasn’t present, I have a snapshot in my mind of what the room would have looked like. The Riddler, verbally masturbating all over the floor while he drew big red and blue spheres. Wormtongue, feigning expertise, struggling with the clay, muttering inane catch-phrases as a catechism against his incompetence. eWhore and the HPDEB, refusing to participate, looking sick and soiled in the background.

I managed to bring this debacle up a few months later during another kick-off meeting with a medical expert we had just met. I asked (innocently) whether we were going to start this project by painting on the lunch room wall. Our medical expert wanted to hear the full story, so the Riddler related the tale. The medical expert became one of my favourite collaborators when he paused, then commented in his biting English accent:

Medical expert:
Well, that was incredibly brave. And by that, I mean incredibly foolish.