Take heart in redesign stories oh you struggling web worker. It does take one or more years for your collection of persona writeups, wireframes, mockups, prototypes, specs, taxonomies, and that whole shebang to become part of a website with a URL you can easily point prospective employers to. Consider these two stories:

• The Boxes & Arrows Redesign Saga
  • Are We There Yet?
  • Two Designers, Two Years, One Facelift...
• Redesigning the ExpressionEngine Site

Still I ask, why oh why do these projects take forever?!! The ironic thing about the two stories above is that the designs are built on top of content management system engines which are supposed to make the design-to-launch timeframe shorter. Some days, you just want to say, To hell with all that design anality (faciality would be a better term)and let the engine work, for heaven's sake.

Do I hear developers cursing the designers?

Most CMS and blog applications allow users to attach files to their posts but this feature is usually underused. I don't know why. This should be good for collaboration - the blog post gives space for a brief comment or abstract and the attachment feature would give a fuller treatment of the topic.

I'll try attaching Word documents here. Somebody got me interested in ephemera and suggested that my pile of documents related to my job search would fall under that category of collections. Rather than deleting or throwing them out, find a way to put them together that would have a more lasting value than my current need. Beyond reflecting on the good and bad points of how I'm conducting my job search, I'm still thinking how to reuse these unsuccessful job application materials. But here are some ephemera on top of the pile (examples of application materials before any real consideration of the applicant and which applicants should carefully weigh if it's worth giving even a single second of their precious time):