Web General Archives
A realistic chat about design process
April 18, 2006 | 
5 Comments
There has been all sorts of talk about the role and process of design in various Web design communities of late. in that there’s been lots of differing opinion. Some feel you don’t need any sort of exploratory phases or documentation and that jumping straight to some sort of real deliverable is best. Others feel Information Architecture is a bit redundant as a practice. Still others doubt the value of design all together. I could go on…
I’ve held back from formulating a strong opinion on any of this. I can see pros and cons to almost everything I’ve been hearing as it relates to design process. (Those folks who doubt the value of design altogether are off their rocker.) As someone who has worked within many different processes, from the very, very rigid (Microsoft and Boeing) to the more freewheeling (Blue Flavor) and those in-between (Children’s and PBDH) I think I’ve seen quite a lot.
I’ve also been in the position to change that process numerous times. That’s neither fun nor easy.
Through all of this the one thing I’ve learned beyond a shadow of a doubt is that no design process is perfect. I also think it’s safe to say that your design process need to be able to adapt to the particular project you’re working on.
There is no “one size fits all” design process. It can (and probably should) vary greatly depending on the work style of the designer, the needs of the stakeholders, the budget, ect. Again, I could go on…
In theory I tend to lean towards the process with less overhead. Keep it simple, present “usable” deliverables as early on as you can, iterate often and make small course corrections as you go.
Having said that, I don’t jump straight into HTML. I usually start on paper and usually do quite a bit of exploratory work on my own. This is something I bill our clients for, yet they hardly ever see it. That might seem strange to some, but it’s something I use to get my creative juices flowing. I also like to do quite a bit of discovery with my clients to make sure I understand their problems really well. This often involves documentation of some kind. I know…blasphemy!
All of this works very well with my own working style. It’s really too bad I’ve usually got to work with others…
;0)
At Blue Flavor we try for a very collaborative design process. This means that we need to be very flexible with our clients. Nick and I are usually the players from our team working on the design. He’s much more, let’s say, “documentation”, oriented than I am. However, this often plays to our advantage. One problem with “getting real” to quickly is that when you’ve got to go back, you’ve got more rework to do.
By using documentation you can often get buy off on a direction early, thus saving you rework down the road.
But it’s a balance right? When we’ve got clients with tight budgets, for example, we need to lose some of that documentation and explorative design. Basically they have to trust us to come up with a good solution as we don’t have the budget to get buy off via documentation. As well, certain types of documentation—wireframes come to mind—often present their own problems.
This can be awkward for me as I like to go into the design process full understanding the problem and I like to spend time exploring various solutions. If the budget won’t allow for that, I need to change my process. Be flexible and all that. It’s not ideal for me, but I try and make it work.
The goal of any design process should be to get to the best possible design or solution. (I don’t believe in a perfect solution.) How you get to that design could very well vary from project to project. I try to find patterns that seem to work and stick to those when I feel it’s appropriate. I never go into a project thinking that I absolutely will or absolutely wont do something. I let the project tell me what I need to do.
Since starting Blue Flavor I’ve had a bit of a different design process for every project I’ve worked on. I’m happy (as I can be, when you’re dealing with clients things tend to come out a bit different on the opposite side no matter what you do) with every design we’ve done so far, and our clients are too. (Hopefully we’ll have some stuff for y’all to look at soonish!) I wish I could sit here and tell you how it was done, but I’d have to tell a different story with each project.
I think that’s as it should be.
Filed under: Web Design | 
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WebVisions 2006
April 09, 2006 | 5 Comments
WebVisions is a great Web conference held in Portland, Oregon every summer. I’ve been the last two years, had a great time and I’m thrilled to be attending and speaking again this year.
They upped it to two days (July 20-21 2006) and have already begun to announce some great speakers and panelists. If you’re looking for a small, intimate and very worth-the-money conference, I think it’d be pretty hard to beat WebVisions.
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First or Best
October 18, 2005 | 18 Comments
It seems like every day there’s a new social networking site, a new to-do list application, a new aggregator or a new way of “owning an idea” on the Web. Frankly it’s getting to be too much.
When it comes to building a product or brand you want to be:
- The first.
- The best.
- Different.
The isn’t much room for anything else. Sure, you can be second, or maybe third, and still do alright, but if you’re entering a market that is flooded with competition, you better damn well be the best or no one is going to pay you much attention.
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SXSW 2006: Who's Comin' With Me?
October 13, 2005 | 44 Comments
So I booked my trip to SXSW today. This year I’m staying at the Hampton Downtown Austin and I’m staying an extra day. (You hear that Judson? It’s so I can hit up your closing BBQ, so you’d better have it again!) I’ll be in Austin for a solid 10 days of geekin’ out, good conversation, good people, good food, good vodka and good music.
We’re going to be puttin’ on our “Design Eye” show again this year and who knows what Andrei will make us do this time. Last year he had us dancing in the aisles to some of the worst music you’ve ever heard. There are also even more interesting sounding events than last year, and I’ve been hearing rumors of some great parties too.
The highlight, for me though, is getting to see my brother and I’m hoping we’ll be able to hang a bit more this time. Ah, yeah, good times to be had all around. If you can make it down, you should. It’s well worth it. Oh, and stay for the music! It’s quite a different experience than the interactive. Lots of fun.
Don’t believe me? Here’s the photos:
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Search: It's About Quality not Quantity
September 28, 2005 | 10 Comments
Yesterday I stumbled across this story in which John Battelle talks about the size of Google’s index.
Under embargo last week, I spoke to Marissa Mayer about Google search. I do this often, as part of the normal news cycle, but this time was different. After clearing her throat with some 7th birthday news, she dropped the other shoe - Google is now claiming that its index is three times bigger than its competition. “Wow!” I said. “How can you tell?” “Tests we’ve done,” Mayer responded. “But…those are the same tests we’ve been debating since August, right? The same tests Yahoo claims are inconclusive and not to be trusted!”
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Blue Flavor Flav!
September 27, 2005 | 33 Comments
As some of you may know by now I’ve been working on getting a small business off the ground. This business, which goes by the quirky name “Blue Flavor”, hit a pretty major milestone last night: Our Web site launched!
So, I imagine you’ve got some burning questions? What’s Blue Flavor? Who’s involved? Why would I care?
Well, here’s the cliff notes:
Blue Flavor is an experience and Web design company formed by Brian Fling (Strategy, Mobile, Design), Matt May (Technology, Accessibility, Programming), Nick Finck (IA, User Experience, Analytics) and myself (Creative, Content, Development).
We’ve all got a similar philosophy towards work and technology. We’d talked off and on for a while about doing something and about a month or so ago, when the timing was just right, we decided to take a shot.
So far, so good. There is lots of work out there and we’ve already lined up a few small clients. Not too bad for not even having business cards yet, eh? That’s the next thing on the list.
We’re still working on sorting everything out and so far it’s been pretty fun, as well as educational and quite a bit of hard work. It’ll be interesting to see how it all works out and I’ll be sure and share along the way. Also be sure and check out the blog. I promise it’s not going to be a bunch of rehash from our other sites.
Want to know more? Check out blueflavor.com
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9rules, Blogging Networks & Web Publishing
September 22, 2005 | 7 Comments
There’s been a lot of chatter about blog networks of late. It seems like a new one pops up every day. I’ve been following along as I’m able and I find it mostly interesting. I’m most interested in the whole idea of blogging and blog networks as they’re seen outside of the circle of industry insiders.
I mean, we hear all the time how people “in the know” feel about various developments in the space, but I don’t feel many Web publishers have a really good idea of what most people reading their sites really think. Same goes for networks.
I’ve been working with Gawker on Lifehacker and we get tons of feedback. Most of it isn’t really the kind that tells you much of anything aside from a readers opinion on a single post. I think in general the concept of a Blog Network is kind of like that of a TV Network.
They don’t care all that much as long as the shows are good.
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Introducing 43...
September 16, 2005 | 16 Comments
…43 reasons to be sick of 43. Just kidding.
What is the deal with 43? I mean, we’ve got 43 Folders which I really love and is probably the only 43 I pay any attention to. Then there are 43 Places, 43 Things and today I got an e-mail from 43 people? I mean, seriously. I’ve never found much use for those sites and I darn near hate it when they show up in my Google results, but I suppose they’ve got a use of some sort. Still, I’m sick of 43. It’s getting kind of silly now.
What’s next? 43 Songs? 43 Pets? 43 Recipes? 43 Aliments? 43 Ways To Leave Your Lover? 43 Signals? I’m surprised nobody’s gone there yet.
I read somewhere that in Web 2.0 land it’s a new rule not to use a number in your company name. I’d second that. It’s getting kind of old. I know, I know. I’ve got 7nights and I’m a member of 9rules, (with To-Done) but we’re old school. I mean, I got my number name to make sure the old 7nights Design showed up high in directories.
That was SEO back in 1996 baby. Web .02.
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Web Publishing Tip: Write Clear Titles
September 10, 2005 | 20 Comments
I’ve mentioned this before, a few times actually, but I thought I’d mention it again. With emphasis.
One of the easiest & best things you can do when publishing on the Web is to write clear, meaningful titles for your posts, pages and articles. Then, once you’ve written that title, put it into your title tag.
If you want people to find, read and/or link to your work, you must start with a good title. I’m a big fan of del.icio.us and more recently populicio.us and I’m amazed at how bad some of the titles are. I miss good articles quite often because of a poor title.
A good title will help you with search relevancy, readability, linkability and findability. I can’t stress enough how much clear titles mean. It’s my #2 SEO tip, #1 being provide good content. The rest of this article is something I published back in ‘03, but I thought it might be helpful for some folks. Read on if you want more on titles!
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Vonage Online Cancellation? Why The Heck Not?
September 08, 2005 | 17 Comments
My trials and tribulations with Vonage (etc. — see this for reference) have really hit an all time low when it comes to customer experience.
This is worse than my experience with Overstock. I never did get them to actually take my gift certificate. Anyway, back to Vonage…
After wasting about 3 more hours trying to get the service working and after trying a new router and running into several new problems and several new dead ends, I decided to give up. I mean, this was a supreme waste of my time and I was already so mad that I just wanted it to end.
So I logged in to my account (which I created online) to cancel my service. After much hunting and pecking I got to this message:
If you would like to cancel your Vonage service please contact us at 1-VONAGE-HELP (1-866-243-4357) or 1-732-650-6699 for further assistance. Our Cancellation Department is available to assist you Monday-Friday 8:30 a.m. - midnight EST and Saturday 11:30 a.m. - 8:00 p.m. EST
WHY THE HELL DO I HAVE TO CALL YOU? I don’t want to talk to you any more! Argh. I just want to put an end to this fiasco, but no, now I’ve got to wait until tomorrow to waste more time trying to cancel this service that I didn’t even get to use. It’s not bad enough I’ve got to take the hardware back to the store, where I’m sure I’ll have to fill out all sorts of paperwork, now I’ve got to relive the whole god-awful experience with yet another clueless customer service person.
It really bugs me that they’ll let me create an account (all of which went very smoothly) by myself and provide me with almost all the help I could ask for when giving them the information they need to take my money. But as soon as they’ve got that info they do nothing to help me get the service I paid for, and worse, they make it doubly hard to simply put an end to an already really, really bad experience.
It’s almost like they’re rubbing my face in it. But this post made me feel a bit better.
UPDATE: Oh my god. What a nightmare. Please, please, if you are reading this, take my advice do not ever sign up for Vonage. In addition to the previous problems I had to jump through more hoops and deal with more BS than I ever would have expected to get this cancelled. I mean, as if I wasn’t mad enough, they pretty much called me an idiot because I couldn’t get it to work and tried to bully me into “advanced tech support” to try, yet again, to get it running.
When I told them that at this point it was a matter of principle and that I was so frustrated with previous efforts to get it up in running that I just wanted it to end, I was questioned as to my motivation and to my previous efforts. I pretty much had to yell at the tech and tell him I didn’t want to hear another word from him except that my service was being shut of and my money refunded.
He said the service was shut off and hung up. No apologies, no “thanks for trying Vonage” and, most importantly, not confirmation that my money was going to be refunded. Now I’ve got to check to make sure that’s happening. What a nightmare.
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Web Publishing Tip: Permalink Your Titles
September 08, 2005 | 17 Comments
I’m not sure why people don’t do this. Maybe it’s got something to do with technological limitations with sIFR and/or some blogging software. Anyway, something that’s been bugging me quite a bit lately is when people don’t permalink their titles.
It ranks right up there with not having any about information or showing a date when something was published. Oh, and not having a permalink at all.
It’s not a huge usability issue, but for people (like me) who tend to come into commonly visited sites via the homepage it creates needless searching and scanning of the page. I’m used to simply clicking on a title that sounds interesting (and hopefully has meaning) and then scanning the article. This goes for articles and posts that are fully displayed on the homepage as well. If it’s a good article, chances are I’ll add it to my del.icio.us links, in which case I need the permalink.
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Inman's Mint
September 06, 2005 | 7 Comments
I’ve been playing with the much talked about and eagerly awaited Mint Web site stats program.
It’s really cool. And nicely designed, easy to use and read, useful, quick and chock full of referrer information that I find actually valuable. At $30 it’s not exactly cheap (re: free) but it’s well worth the price and I, for one, am more than happy with it already. The only downside was the install was a bit of a pain for me and the instructions weren’t totally clear. But I suspect most folks will be able to get it up and running fairly quickly.
In any case, I thought I’d give my hearty recommendation and a public nod to Shaun for his hard work on this. Great work man. Thanks.
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The Perfect Publishing + Community Tool
August 31, 2005 | 32 Comments
No, I don’t know what that is. I don’t think it exists, unfortunately.
I’ve got a few projects I’m working on, and I’ve been trying out various technologies (Movable Type, Wordpress and Drupal so far) trying to hack something together that fits my needs. Mike recently brought up some good points about where blogs as CMS are lacking. This got me thinking about what I’m missing myself. Below is a bit of a brainstorm, be warned…
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The Web Is Still Mostly Unusable
August 30, 2005 | 17 Comments
It amazes me that some of the most popular, most successful Web sites and applications out there are hard to use, poorly designed and generally over complicated. I’m a firm believer that extreme simplicity is the wave of the future, but Web 2.0 and the worthy concept of “doing one thing really well” hasn’t seemed to catch on in a widespread way.
While on my honeymoon I had some real trouble with Expedia. I booked my trip through them and I can safely say I’ll probably think twice before doing it again. Why? While they do things pretty well up front, the second you’ve got a problem, like say the airline changes the time of your flight, things go straight to hell. Without boring you with the details, their system is simply to complicated and “feature rich” to deal with some very common, and very simple, problems. As well, while they have the technology down, their behind the scenes processes are a joke.
But I guess it works for them…I think they’re the biggest online travel agent on the Web.
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What's Up With LinkedIn?
August 30, 2005 | 24 Comments
I’ve always thought LinkedIn was a pretty nice social networking service. It’s got a good design, is fairly easy to use, is low maintenance and serves a good purpose.
I’ve been “linkedin” since just after it launched, but never really made that much use of it. I’d accept connections every once in awhile, and I’d got a few decent leads, etc. But it was pretty intermittent and I figured it’d stay that way.
Well, in the last few days I’ve seen a ton of activity via LinkedIn. Contacts, requests for connections, requests for endorsements, job offers, freelance inquiries—the whole enchilada. This is all great, but I can’t help but wonder why all the sudden interest in LinkedIn. Anyone know?
While I’m at it, what do you think of LinkedIn? Like it? Use it much? If so, how do you use it?
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Global Web Design and Publishing -- Your Take
August 28, 2005 | 15 Comments
So I’m curious about how people around the world see, use, read, design and publish for the Web. I spent quite a bit of time over the last few weeks before I headed out to Mexico looking at Web sites that were built and maintained by people who probably didn’t speak English as their first language and who’s audiences were probably a good mix of English and non-English speaking people.
I also know that quite a few people who visit this site do so from other countries and speak English as a second language. They don’t call it “World” Wide Web for nothing and I’m really interested in learning more about how people around the world—people with different cultural backgrounds, different languages and different perspectives from my own—use the Web.
As an American designer and publisher I often feel there is so much more I could do to accommodate global readers and I’d really like to try and do that. One of the beautiful things about the Web is how close it brings people from all over the world to each other. It’s all about people to me, and the world is a big place.
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Movable Type 3.2 System Overview
August 28, 2005 | 2 Comments
I upgraded to MT 3.2 today and spent some time poking around. It’s a nice upgrade. The interface looks very nice and the changes they’ve made are pretty easy to get used to, which is significant because some of them are pretty major.
The upgrade was pretty painless, so far it’s gone as smooth as possible and it was easy enough. One thing I noticed right off was that rebuild seems much faster, and simple management functions like searching and displaying comments and entries seem much, much faster. Still, it’s new and I’ve not tested everything.
If you see anything strange let me know, but I think it’s all intact. While I know there are quite a few new features, I wanted to point out one I feel is really worth the upgrade-the System Overview pages.
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Getting Linked: Authors, Titles and Dates
August 01, 2005 | 14 Comments
I’ve got three great tips for anyone who is into Web publishing and wants people to link to them:
- Make sure you let the reader know the author is. By this I mean include a name, or some “about”-type information with every post. A clear link to the site’s about page helps as well.
- Use clear, descriptive titles. I don’t know how many times I’ve skipped an entry because I couldn’t tell what it was about from the title.
- Provide published-on and updated-on dates for everything you publish. It really bothers me that so much information out there is undated. It’s really hard to grasp relevancy when you don’t know when something was published.
Do those three things and you’ll be better off than most Web publishers out there.
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Fixing (RSS/Atom) Newsfeed Subscription
July 27, 2005 | 24 Comments
There has been a whole bunch of talk about how unusable the blogging subscription/syndication model is. The problem is that it’s not an easy thing to explain, and many developers and designers have gone and made it harder by spreading around terms and conventions that don’t really work.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot in the last few weeks, and I’ve actually been out there, in the real world, doing some “gorilla” research into this stuff. What I’ve found wasn’t really a surprise, but at the same time I think it hammered home how hard some of this stuff is to grasp for some people.
I want to talk about what I found a bit, and then explore some solutions.
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Blinksale Goes Live
July 26, 2005 | 2 Comments
Big props to Josh and crew. First there was the cool and unique Firewheel Design Re-design, now they’ve upped the ante with the launch of Blinksale, a lightweight, easy to use, online invoicing application.
I’ve been able to play with it a bit and so far I’ve got nothing but good things to say. It’s easy to use, very functional and just the right size feature-wise for most small businesses. If you’ve been looking for a better way to do your invoicing, you should do yourself a favor and check it out.
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Things I've Learned From Blogging
July 23, 2005 | 31 Comments
I just realized that in my recent chaos I’d missed this old blogs birthday! It was 3 years ago this month that I launched this blog. At the time I’m not sure if I even knew it was a blog, I just wanted an easier way to publish my infrequent writings. I felt that an easier process would help me want to write more — little did I know how much more!
It’s been a fun three years. I’ve made lots of new friends, met some great folks, been introduced to all kinds of new things, made many mistakes and in general I’ve learned a whole bunch.
So, I figured, as a tribute and belated happy birthday to Asterisk, I’d post a list of things I’ve learned from blogging.
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Domain Names For Small Businesses With Creative?
July 21, 2005 | 8 Comments
I’m not usually down with cookie-cutter creative, but what dotprodomains is doing is pretty cool. They offer an “open” domain complete with the associated logo, etc. and even give you a quick idea for a business.
For example, right now they’ve got an offer up for resumefly.com. The pitch:
This month, dotprodomains.com is pleased to bring you resumefly.com. This dynamic url can be used for a number of online business ventures: resume templates, resume building consulting, job board, etc.
No all they need to do is offer hosting and they’ve pretty much done all the work for you. No having to go to Yahoo or whatever the average small business person uses to register their domain. No having to agonize over what to call your business and deal with finding the open domain.
They only do one a month, so chances are find a match for your small business is pretty slim, and frankly most small businesses wouldn’t have much use for a system this canned, but it’s an interesting idea.
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WebVisions 2005 Round-Up
July 18, 2005 | 3 Comments
As it was last year WebVisions proved to be a great event. Brad and his staff did a great job organizing and keeping everything running smoothly. The sessions seemed to be good and our Future of Content panel, while it didn’t go exactly as planned and I felt we could have used another few hours, was interesting and kept me thinking well after we were done.
Since I’m kinda swamped at the moment (my life is extremely complicated right now — in a good way) I’m just going to give a few shout-outs and a quick recap of highlights.
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Zeldman Wonders Where The Content and Usability Are
June 23, 2005 | 39 Comments
When Zeldman talks (which isn’t all that often any more) people (hopefully) listen.
Today Zeldman talked a bit about his involvement with the May 1st Reboot, an event that sees Web designers all over the world launch a redesign once a year on May 1st.
I’ve had minor problems with the whole idea, but in general find it to be pretty fun and interesting. This year he had some critical things to say about the work and the overall “package” many of these designers are presenting. These are concerns I agree with.
“There was little content and even less user science. Many sites submitted had no concern for the user on the most basic levels. Rarely could you identify an idea or purpose behind the site, or name a possible user goal the site was intended to facilitate. There was no flow, no legibility, no usability. It wasn’t so much that the designers had contempt for their users as that they seemed never to have been taught to think about users at all. One gets the feeling that the web design curriculum at too many colleges and universities consists of little more than tips on how to use Flash to imitate sites that won awards five years ago.”
Well no shit Sherlock! :)
I’ve been harping on this for years now and I’ll tell you why I think it’s still like that.
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Ads In Feeds Removed
June 20, 2005 | 19 Comments
I’ve decided to remove the Google Adsense ads from my feeds. They weren’t generating any revenue and I figure there isn’t much of a point to advertising that isn’t working right?
So, they’re gone, probably for good. I also figure I’ll leave them full text as I don’t think that makes much of a difference either. I always doubted that folks who actually clicked though to my site would pay any attention my my ads. The numbers seem to back that up as well.
I tend to wonder how any sort of advertising in feeds will work, unless it’s somehow placed right into the content, which, while I’d not rule out, I’d be reluctant to try. Still, it’ll be interesting to see how it develops.
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Web 2.0
June 09, 2005 | 33 Comments
You might have been hearing lots of buzz about “Web 2.0” lately and if you’re like me, you still might not fully understand what all the fuss is about. It’s not surprising as “Web 2.0” is one of those hard-to-nail-down, is-it-really-just-a-buzz-word things.
To help clear the waters Will Pate and his pals at Raincity Studios have started a Web 2.0 community site. There are several definitions of Web 2.0 there, as well as the potential for some discussion about Web 2.0 and what it means.
For my part Web 2.0 is about content and media. It’s about providing enabling technologies (that are Web standard and open source) that enable the creation and distribution of content to the widest possible audience in the easiest possible way. But that’s just part of it. It’s about access, reuse, redistributrion and more. Open Web services, syndication, and standards are all part of Web 2.0.
Can you define Web 2.0? What does it mean to you? Maybe an “exercise in clarity” is in order. Can you define Web 2.0 in 10 words or less?
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An Exercise in Clarity: Blogging
June 03, 2005 | 39 Comments
Stealing a page from SVN I’m interested to see how y’all would define “blogging” in 10 words or less.
(And, yeah, there is a point to this. Happy Friday everyone!)
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A Few Tips On Estimating Web Projects
June 01, 2005 | 20 Comments
If there is one thing I’ve had to struggle with at my new job it’s account management. To be quite frank, I don’t like it and I don’t think I’m very good at it. But I’m learning, as making mistakes is a great way to learn, and some of what I’ve learned my be of use to y’all.
Today I want to talk about how to estimate projects and ensure that your estimates work for you as well as your clients. I’ve found this can be really tricky and if not done correctly can cause real headaches down the road. A proper scope assessment is key to the success and smooth going of any Web project and the project estimate is a big part of a good scope assessment.
As well, how that estimate is handled and used throughout the process can have a great effect on the bottom-line of the project.
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Adsense For Feeds, etc.
May 23, 2005 | 19 Comments
With the news that soon publishers will be able to server ads in RSS feeds, I’ve seen quite a bit of discussion regarding ads in the last few weeks. Much like when Adsense broke. Anyway, it’s something that quite a few people have an interest in. I’m actually going to try out Adsense in my feeds and I’m curious to see how it works. My hope is that by moving to full feeds with ads, it might be a win-win, but you never know when it comes to advertising.
The decision to try this out has one I’ve been expecting to make for awhile, and don’t do with out a bit of trepidation. Ads are a touchy subject for some reason, so I thought it best to open it up to see what people think.
So, let’s have a frank discussion about advertising on the Web. I’ll share my thoughts and then open it up to you.
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Content Brief
May 16, 2005 | 8 Comments
I’ve written about, and we’ve talked about, the difficulties in dealing with content for the Web. I think many of you agree with me that content is probably the hardest part of getting any kind of Web site up and running and that it’s made especially so when it comes to working with content outside of your own control.
I know that over the years this has been the single largest source of headaches for me when dealing with clients and internal stakeholders. Even at Boeing, where I had dedicated writer and editors, the content issue would present itself as an almost daily problem.
At my current gig it seems that getting the content we need is the single biggest barrier to making sure our sites are as good as can be. I’ve been trying very hard, to varying degrees of success, to find ways to make our experience with clients and content easier.
One that shows great promise is the use of a content brief.
Filed under: Content | Permanent Link
New Blood
May 12, 2005 | 33 Comments
It seems that lately there’s been a shift in my online reading list. Many of the sites I used to read have been slowly fading away to be replaced by new sites. Lack of updates being the primary reason. I feel like there are very few writers, especially in the Web design community, who’ve been able to keep it going. I don’t see this as a bad thing—or a good thing—it’s just a thing.
I’m curious to know if anyone else is seeing this? Who are you reading now? Are there any great sites out there that you’ve been excited about, new or old? I’ve got a few, currently near the top of my blo.gs page are:
- Garrett Dimon
- Scrivs — Disappeared for a bit, but is back now and always an entertaining read.
- BD4D
- Peter Flaschner
- Khoi Vinh
- B. Adam Howell
There are more of course…
I’ve also been reading lots of sites that don’t talk about Web design and the like. Much more than I used to. Either way, my readng habits have really shifted over the last few months. But I’m always looking for good content.
Know of any?
Filed under: Web General | Permanent Link
Learning WordPress
May 09, 2005 | 47 Comments
It’s kind of funny to be posting about Wordpress from my Movable Type run site, but I’m learning Wordpress and I’d like any advice, tips, tricks or hacks you might have.
I’ve got a few sites (iPodarmy.com is the first of a few) in the works and thanks in large part to Dreamhost and the ease of the 1-click Wordpress install, I’ve decided to dive in and try WordPress for these.
I was a bit put off at first, mainly because it’s just different than Movable Type (and probably because I know Movable Type very, very well) but now that I’ve played around there are some things I really like about WordPress. I’m not going to stop using Movable Type altogether, but hey, I hear good things about WordPress so why not use both?
Regardless, I’m still kind of starting from scratch, and although I’ve found the WordPress Codex very helpful so far, I still thought I’d throw a call for advice out there and see what comes back.
Pretty much what I’m looking for are tips, links, tricks, and other usable stuff about WordPress. What are some cool plug-ins? Got any links to great themes? Do you now any great sites with tutorials and the like? Also, anyone know how to have a different meta title on the home page from individual entries?
If so, post a comment here and help me, and possibly other WordPress newbies who come across this, get the most out of WordPress.
Filed under: Web General | Permanent Link
Backpack First Impressions
April 30, 2005 | 120 Comments
Today I was lucky enough to receive a “Golden Ticket” from Jason Fried and the folks at 37Signals to check into their new product/service—Backpack. While I’ve not spent a whole lot of time with it (an hour or so) and I’m not able to utilize every feature, I am able to give y’all a pretty good snapshot of the product and what it’s all about.
It seems in many ways to be a personal version of Basecamp. It’s got some of the same features, a similar UI and the philosophy behind it is basically the same. It’s a personal information manager and organizer. It’s got a to-dos, notes, calendaring, reminders and thing like that. Pretty much what you’d expect. It’s also got the 37signal’s style—ease of use, simple yet useful, etc.
Filed under: Web General | Permanent Link
Blink and Digital Communication
April 26, 2005 | 10 Comments
Ever since I read Blink by Malcolm Gladwell I’ve been thinking quite a bit about how people communicate online and how easy it is to have your message lost when it’s turned to bits and bytes. If you’ve not read Blink, I urge you to do so. It’s an easy and thought-provoking read.
I finished it up a few weeks back and have been tossing it around my brain ever since. It’s all about inter-personal communication, snap judgment and mind reading and it shares all sorts of illumination stories about how we make decisions and interact with each other.
What it doesn’t do is get much into how we interact digitally. Here we have a writer that is able to give me a sense of him and his message within the first few paragraphs. But he’s a writer, and very good one, by trade. And he should know how to help put a clear picture in one’s mind quickly as he wrote the book on it. But what about the rest of us? What do people think when they read our e-mails, our posts and our Instant Messages?
He talks about the concept of “thin-slicing” which is “the ability of our unconscious to find patterns in situations and people based on very narrow ‘slices’ of experience.” The Web is the ultimate playground for thin-slicing. Your average Web user thin-slices everything they see and it’s just soooo damn easy to move on to something else. The same goes for e-mail, etc.
All of this creates some unique challenges for the digital communicator. All we have are narrow slices of experience and quite often the pattern doesn’t do a good job of reflecting the person or situation behind it. We’re usually missing some essential clues due to the nature of digital mediums. The clues may be there, they’re just different to what most of us are used to.
Filed under: Web General | Permanent Link
Asterisk 2: A Few Details
April 16, 2005 | 23 Comments
I’ve had a few questions about some of the details of the redesign. Instead of answering them in a comment I’ve decided to do it in a post.
I’m still tweaking quite a bit. I’ve got a few things fixed and displaying properly, but I’ve still got a whole bunch of tinkering left to do. Speaking of fixed, one of the things most remarked on was my favoring and going with a fixed layout. Well, I’m not going to get to much into it even though I know it’s a “hot” topic right now. We’ve covered that ground a few times before.
Let’s just say I like fixed but I’m hard at work at a liquid version that’ll be accessed via a style switcher. I hope that’ll help make everyone happy. It’s a bit tricky going right now — the fact that I’ve got a header image that is a fixed width is making it a bit funky. But soon…soon.
Filed under: Web General | Permanent Link