A couple of weeks ago, I attended the Front-End Design Conference in St. Petersburg, Florida. I had attended the inaugural conference last year and was looking forward to this year’s event. I won a free ticket to this year’s conference from Fuel Your Creativity blog.

As part of the contest, I had to answer why I attend conferences. Here was my response:

I attend conferences to learn, to be inspired, get away for at least a day to dream, and to meet other Web professionals. Conferences provide a great venue to do all these things, especially connecting with people and expanding your personal network.

This year’s conference did not disappoint. I enjoyed the content and had the chance to meet some sharp Web professionals. I also got to further many relationships with people that I had met at other events like WordCamp Orlando.

Kicking off the day

One of the things that I really like about this conference is that they provide a great venue for getting to meet people right off the bat. They provide breakfast in a very casual atmosphere that makes it easy for an introvert like me to begin meeting people. This is great because I don’t have to face a large room of people trying to figure out where I am going to sit in the midst of a sea of strangers. I made a lot of connections last year through the breakfast and was able to catch up with a guy I met at WordCamp Orlando this year.

Besides some new relationships, here are the three main things I took away from the conference:

No one is a blank sheet designer

I believe each of the first three presenters made a comment about the value of constraints. From a career test I took several years ago, one of the observations is that I am not a ”blank sheet designer.” I work best by having something concrete to start with. I am really good at modifying things.

One of the takeaways from the conference for me is that there really are no blank sheet designers. As Larissa Meek said, “we need constraints to be successful.”

The success of a project is really shaped by the defining stage where you get to know the client and get to know their audience. The more you know about the client’s business goals and know about the primary audience, the more successful your design solution will be.

Constraints begin to define the project and give a place to jump off from as you create a solution. Larissa encouraged me to discover the story to tell through my design solution. “What is the story to tell?” is a question I will be asking myself as I take the discovery research and begin trying to solve the design problem.

I am really excited about my new job with Rise Creative. We have a user experience person and a content strategy person on our team. Together they create a thorough discovery document. Working on my own within a non-profit organization for so many years, I did not have the time and resources to really dig into the discovery process. I believe the processes at Rise will take my design work to the next level because I will have such a wealth of information to provide a solid foundation to build a design solution on.

Larissa’s slides

Be consistent

Lea Alcantara discussed self branding. I became familiar with the subject through the book, Career Distinction, and through the Reach Personal Branding website and audio resources. The takeaway from Lea’s talk was to be consistent. Does the design of my website match my brand? I have wanted to redesign my site for awhile and this talk really gave me a place to start as I begin thinking how I want to represent my personal brand online.

Lea’s slides on Slideshare

Process, Process, Process

Meagan Fisher’s slides were awesome. She talked through her design process. She reiterated some points from the other speakers in the importance of knowing your project and then coming up with a strategy. I liked her idea of making an inspiration board. It is similar to a mood board and is a place for you to put together a lot of different ideas and inspiration.

Frank, a designer at Rise, does a very similar thing. I really like the idea and look forward to using it in my next design project.

I also liked Meagan’s last point of making it shine. This is where you go in and add some texture and lighting to really make your design come alive. She was beginning to go into some techniques she uses in Photoshop by taking public domain illustrations or textures and modifying them. Unfortunately, she was not feeling well and had to end her talk early. I look forward to reviewing her slides when she makes them available.

Work flow

It was great to hear about CSS work flow and see some practical examples of how Jina Bolton implements it in her work. Work flow is an important topic to me as I get my feet wet on a new job. I need to firm up my own work flow process and firm up my standards for how I name files, how I structure my stylesheets, and then integrate that into the existing work flows at Rise Creative Group.

Jina provided a lot of great ideas. She mentioned Modernizer, which is a javascript that allows you to target different browsers depending on their CSS3 capabilities. I have seen others mention Modernizer but had not made the time to check it out. I did take some time to look at it on Friday night.

I sat next to Jina at lunch. I enjoyed listening in as she discussed some different topics that related to her talk including frameworks and object oriented CSS (which I really don’t understand yet).

Jina’s slides

Final thoughts

The day wrapped up at the after conference party. I enjoyed hanging out and talking with different people. One of things I enjoyed was getting to meet Andi Graham, the principal of Big Sea Design and Development. I have been working with her as a contractor since the end of April. I finally got to meet her in person at the conference and I enjoyed hanging out with the Big Sea crew at the after party. I also really enjoyed meeting Stuart, Sarah Parmenter’s fiancee. We talked for several hours about a variety of different things.

Dan Denney and his crew did another awesome job at pulling off the conference. The venue was even better this year as we were in the middle of downtown St. Pete with plenty of restaurants around. This conference is such a great deal for the price, the venue, and the quality cast of speakers that Dan assembles each year.

Sketch Notes

I have always been impressed when I have seen people do sketch notes at conferences. I decided to try my hand. My owl did not turn out well for Meagan’s talk (I forgot what owls looked like). I am glad I tried my hand at something new and look forward to doing more of it in the future.

This was a situation I was faced with last fall. One of the objectives of the project was that the solution would enable the client to manage their own content. Their current site was completely static and they had been dependent on someone who could edit HTML code. They no longer had anyone on their team with those skills and their site had become stagnant.

Because I was familiar with WordPress and the price (free, open-source) was right for this non-profit ministry, I wanted to use WordPress as the CMS solution. But I needed to be able to tweak the default WordPress dashboard to provide a better user experience for the client.

As I searched for CMS plugins, I came across More Fields after reading a post on Kevin Leary’s site. I installed it and began to use it. I really like how it customized the WordPress Admin section for managing page content. I gave me just the functionality I needed. It was just the right solution to give a more usable interface for my client to manage and create their own content. I created a customized homepage that allowed them to post information about different conferences and leadership projects that they sponsor. I created a PDF guide that helped the client to take the site and manage/add new content.

What I liked about More Fields

• It used the existing custom fields functionality of WordPress. I did not have to make changes to my code in my WordPress template in order to use the plugin.
• It added boxes to the page or post editing pages. I was able to put in descriptions and instructions to help my client manage their secondary content.
• It allowed me to customize the page and post editing pages. I had many options of what to show and what to hide.
• It was fairly easy and intuitive to implement right away. I was able to create new boxes and new fields without having to read a bunch of documentation.

But no solution is perfect and there were several quirks in More Fields that did not set well with me. So I was a bit reticent about using it on a recent project.

Here were some of my concerns. Most of these were quirks that were annoying but still functional.

• The plugin had not been updated in quite awhile. This was my greatest concern. The plugin needed a bit more work and I was not sure that its creator was planning to do anything more with it. If that was the case, the quirks I experienced were not going to get fixed.
• The plugin allowed you to hide certain panels when editing pages. Soon after a WordPress upgrade, that functionality broke and several of the panels I wanted to hide were visible once again.
• When adding new fields, after saving changes to the new field, I went to a blank screen. I had expected and wanted to return to the manage boxes page to add more fields or edit current ones.
• The customized panel seemed to create conflicts with the AJAX functionality that allows you to reorder panels and hide/show certain panels on an Edit Page.
• The plugin added the custom page types to the left hand menu of the administrative interface. It created a main nav item with the name of the custom field type and two sub items of “edit” and “add new.” If you clicked on the name of the custom page type on that menu, it would not take you to the edit pages listing but would function like “add new.” This was different than the other main headings on the left menu.

Recent Developments

Recently, I had another project that needed some customization to make it a better experience for the site owner. Because of my concerns about More Fields, I decided to try another plugin. Unfortunately, this plugin had some major issues and the developer was not attending to it.

Then I came across another post by Kevin Leary about new development to the More Fields plugin. I was delighted and excited to check it out. The new version of the plugin addressed all of my concerns. It did not disappoint me. I plan to use it in future projects and would not have any problem in recommending it to others.

Thanks Kal and Henrik for improving More Fields.

I found this video interesting on 2 levels.

• First, I thought it was a creative and engaging. I enjoyed hearing the person talk. And the amazing drawings did such a great job of supporting the speaker. Being a visual person, it really connected with me.
• Second, the content of the presentation. It is very interesting to hear this perspective. It reminds me of many of the things I read recently in Seth Godin’s book, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? This presentation hit on several things that Godin has observed about what companies need today and what qualities a person needs to have to be indispensable.

The change will affect me. It has been a least a couple of years since I embraced “Web site.” One of the main reasons that I embraced that change was because of AP. The AP Style book is a bible to many content creators. From the way I understood it, the reason why Web was capitalized because it is an proper noun or object that is short for World Wide Web. This made sense to me as to the capitalization. I decided to take my cue from this authority of style. Once I embraced this style, I have stayed very consistent with it throughout my writing.

Before that change, I used “website” for at least 3 years. I had been reading several of Gerry McGovern’s books and in The Web Content Style Guide, his usage was “website” as one word. I am not sure what style I was using before that, but I thought it would be a good idea to embrace some sort of standard and be consistent. I had determined that instead of deciding on my own what style to use, I would take the advice of those who had a more professional opinion. I respected Gerry’s work so I embraced this style until I came across the AP style.

My background is not as a journalist major or English enthusiast. I do care about language and content and look to others to take my cues on proper usage. I find this issue interesting in that a recognized authority embraced a change and how that affects those who care about language and usage a lot more than I do.

For me, I am going to embrace the change. It will take me a while to feel comfortable with the change but I will get use to it. I have debated on whether I am going to make changes to content on my Web site, oops (old habits are hard to break), I mean website to reflect this change of style. I think my strategy will be to change the content on my “pages” but keep the style in my “posts” to reflect my accepted usage of the style at the time I shared my thoughts.

While we are on the subject–is it “e-mail” or “email?” My preference for years has been the latter.

Shout goes out to Kristin at Covenant Communications. Her post who gave me the idea for mine.

Web sites are not “done” once they have been designed and launched. Successful sites need attention. Sites are more like organisms, they are dynamic and alive. I have seen so many sites over the years launch and then become stagnant and obsolete because they were not cared for and given ongoing attention.

Josh Porter wrote about this same issue last summer. It was the first time that I saw someone identify and address this issue.

One agency that is addressing this issue is Merge in Greenville, South Carolina. They have developed what they call a “partnership model.” I don’t know as much about it as I would like to, but I am intrigued by the little bit I have read. I am excited that Merge will be putting on a Webinar on April 21 called A New Way to Web. They are going to share more about the model they have developed.

I am looking forward to hearing how this new approach is working and hope that is the first of many innovative approaches to address this issue. I invite you to join me. You can sign up on Merge’s Web site.

MacWorld has an article, “Apple reveals its list of ‘iPad-ready’ Websites.”  The article brought some interesting questions to mind:

• What do you all think about the difficulty of upgrading websites that use Flash, to a more iPad friendly HTML5 + CSS + Javascript?
• Does upgrading mean that the design of the website must change?
• Is there a design-process for taking a UI developed in Flash and converting it into HTMl5 + CSS + Javascript?
• What does this mean for local (Florida) sales/marketing sites that are Flash heavy?  Should they move to become more iPad friendly HTML5 + CSS + Javascript?
• Will they be judged by potential clients, as being inferior, if their site appears broken on the iPad?

I think there is a much bigger question than just making sure things work on the iPad. If you follow Web standards thinking, I think we are hitting a point when we need to consider how anyone is accessing the Internet. Much more is happening through mobile and other devices such as the iPad. I am not so sure it is a good thing to move in the direction of proprietary development. PPK addressed this on his blog in February with the obsession he has seen with the iPhone.

If we embrace the fundamentals behind Web standards, then I think we owe it to our clients to educate them to the broader issues. iPhone is still a small percentage of the overall mobile market and smart phone market. How widespread will iPad really be? I think it is unwise as a business decision to not look at how to deliver the best experience over the wide-range of Internet devices that now exist and will only continue to broaden in scope in the years ahead.

I think as Web professionals, we need to be looking for innovative solutions like Video for Everybody. This HTML embeds HTML5 video into a site with fall backs to QT and then Flash. This solution may not be perfect yet but I like the idea of a solution that offers options, if one video solution does not work–fall back to another and so on.

I think that companies that rely heavily on Flash need to rethink their strategy. Those solutions just don’t work well throughout the spectrum of devices and do not really consider the context for mobile use. There have been plenty of posts since the announcement of the iPad that have reexamined the short comings of Flash and have called for new solutions. (Zeldman and Jeff Croft)

I think Web sites will be judged by whether they work across the spectrum because there will always be users on different platforms. To be honest, I am not a huge fan of browsing on my iPhone because  sites do not really work well with that platform unless the designer/developer has made it more iPhone friendly. But again, I think that same thinking needs to consider other Smart phones and devices.

The reality is that developing for the Web continues to be complex and continues to throw new problems at Web professionals that need new solutions. Let us embrace the challenge. That is part of the thrill of being in this industry. There is always some new facet to explore and new problem to solve. I hope that we respond by embracing the challenge and using our skills and talents to meet these new challenges with great solutions. Yes it means more development time and that we have to have a greater breadth of knowledge, but to move forward we need to embrace this reality and use the same passion we have in the past to make great Web experiences.

I like the point that Dan Mall makes. He says we need to approach a design project with the mindset that “I am going to design a Web site.” Not “I’m going to design a WordPress site”. Or “I’m going to design an Expression Engine site” or insert any CMS into this sentence. CMS systems are a tool but they should not define how you do a design. It limits the creative process.

I would much rather design a site and then figure out how I am going to pull it off using the tools I choose to implement the solution in. This is the approach that I have taken in my own design projects. I did not change anything about the way that I approached a design that utilized WordPress as a back end solution. If anything, WordPress just helped me to simplify the development process. In fact, several of the sites I have designed were moved into WordPress after they had been static sites. So WordPress did not even factor into the design decisions that were made in those projects.

I would not consider myself a “WordPress theme developer” or designer in the sense that my main goal in a design project is to create a WordPress theme. A WordPress theme is only a vehicle for me to implement a visual design solution. I do offer WordPress solutions but I am not sure I would feel comfortable calling myself a WordPress designer. Of course I wouldn’t call myself a PHP designer either. To me WordPress is just a solution.

What are your thoughts? Do you think designing for content management systems has lessened the creativity of Web designers? What do you think of Dan Mall’s approach on designing for a content management system?

I saw that Jared was going to be in town speaking at a conference so I invited him to join me for lunch. I really enjoyed our time together as we talked about:

• the Red Sox and baseball
• what Jared looks for in a conference speaker
• ethics in UX design
• my experiences at past UI conferences
• career and resume advice

Jared is just as personable in person as when he speaks to a larger gathering of people. One of the things that I really like about the Web industry is that speakers, writers and leaders of our industry are so accessible and approachable. I really appreciated that Jared took time out of his busy conference schedule to meet with me.

It was a real treat. I enjoyed engaging Jared in various topics and appreciated several nuggets of advice that he gave me. He took a genuine interest in me and offered help as he could.

Related posts:

• Read about my experiences at UI12 conference in 2007
• My original post on my Web design superheroes
• I hope to write a post on UIE’s podcast soon

• Cookie Cutter Web sites — This post from Think Vitamin is a challenge to create sites that reflect the personality of the company, product, or person we are designing for. The author’s presupposition is that more and more Web sites look the same. The challenge is to think beyond the standard “recipe” and not just follow the pattern of everyone else. What I like about the article is that she goes on stating the problem and gives some very practical advice on how to think past the cookie cutter. She states several of the conventions we typically follow and challenges the reader to consider how to do things a bit differently. She includes many great examples of how other designers have challenged the conventions or just stretched them a bit to create a site that has a unique personality and distinguishes site from the many others out there. I came away with a list of things that I want to think about as I approach any new design project in the future.
• Content is King — Colin James Firth challenges designers to consider the content and the message of the content when creating a new Web site. Colin argues that too many designs weaken the message of the Web site by not taking the content into account in the visual design. He encourages designers to think about how to present the message of the Web site through the visual design. He believes that copywriters can help us become better communicators. This article is a great companion to the cookie cutter article I have already mentioned.
• CSS3 — There have been several articles of late about CSS3 and specifically CSS3 animations. Smashing Magazine highlighted 50 Brilliant CSS3 and Javascript Coding Techniques. There are some really inspiring examples of what some designers are achieving with CSS3 animations. Web Designer Wall showcased 47 Amazing CSS3 Animation Demos.
• Neutron Creations Blog — I came across this site last week. I really like the work of Elliot Jay Stocks. I am a Firefox user. I liked the design of this blog so I wanted to capture it in Little Snapper. When I viewed the site in Webkit built into Little Snapper, I noticed a CSS animation that really added to the personality of the site. I encourage you to open it up in Safari and have a look. Nice job Elliot.
• Web Owners Need more than a Web designer — Paul Boag outlines the need for generalists in the Web design industry. He argues that being a Web designer in the 21st century involves more than building a Web site. They “need to have a good understanding of business practices, site analytics, marketing, copywriting, social media and more.” He encourages Web designers to broaden their knowledge in these areas. I would consider myself more of generalist so I appreciated the article. I have a variety of interests and enjoy being involved in more than just the Web site. I was very encouraged by one client’s recent comments to me. She said she appreciated me challenging her team to think more about the content and the strategy of the site we were working on together.
• In Defense of The Jack of All Trades — I appreciated this post by Mindy Wagner back in October. She outlines why being a generalist worked for her. She outlined several qualities that she thinks makes a successful generalist. I found that I shared those qualities. It gave me more confidence to embrace who I am. I just recently left a job where I was a jack of many trades. I had to be to get things done because there was no one else there that could or would do it. I enjoyed that role. I hope in my future employment to find a place where I fit well and can contribute out of my strengths and broad knowledge base.

I was delighted by this commercial last night as I watched the Super Bowl. It is a great example of storytelling. I was totally drawn into the story that this commercial tells.

As Paul Boag points out, “They take something very mundane like a search engine and give it real emotion and personality. This ad connects searching with living your live and makes it an intrinsic part of day to day living. Brilliant!”

Paul has been reading Made to Stick and recently mentioned it on his podcast. I started reading this book in the fall but had put it down. I am motivated to pick it back up.

This commercial is “sticky.” It connects to the viewer’s emotions. It is concrete because it connects with something most people come into contact everyday–a search on Google. I agree with Paul that they have done a good job of making something mundane into something that we connect with and will remember.

The challenge he laid down was to take time each day to practice your design skills by actually designing something. His challenge was to try this every day for a year. What I really liked about the article is that Jad gave some very practical advice on how to get started.

He suggested just setting aside 20 to 30 minutes a day to practice. To me, this is very do-able. It does not have to be a polished design. I even had the idea that I could work on something a little bit each day.

I like the idea of Jad’s challenge. When I was younger, I practiced the trumpet each day to get better. I think I spent 30 minutes a day with my trumpet. I also saw how practice made me athlete in a variety of sports that I played.

Why not take 20–30 minutes to work on a design idea?

I have started to practice my design. I have not been able to do it everyday but I am making progress. I decided to post my creations on Tumblr as a way of keeping myself accountable. Typography has been the theme running through my designs this month.

Are you up for the challenge?

Maybe just try it for a month? Or like me, just try it as often as you can.

Note: If you like this, you might also want to read my post, Great Designers Steal Practice. It was inspired by several posts by Cameron Moll and other reading I was doing at the time. I had a couple other ideas on how to practice design including wireframing other people’s designs to learn from them and trying to recreate other people’s work as a means to practice (not as design theft but as practice).

What are Web Standards

This video is a very good introduction to the topic. Jeffrey Zeldman really led the charge of this movement with his book Designing with Web Standards.

Why I use Web standards?

Almost every professional industry starts with standards. They are agreed upon best practices and principles that all the players in an industry follow. It makes for a common language and allows multiple people to collaborate.

Back before Web standards, different browser vendors would implement HTML differently. It was hard for a designer to build a Web site that would function well across many browsers because the rules would always change. Now there is a common environment that we can build upon to make great experiences for the Web user.

Here are some reasons I advocate using Web standards:

• Quicker and easier development and maintenance — Using structured and semantic HMTL and CSS makes it a lot easier to understand code that was written by me or by someone else. I often have to revisit code that I wrote a year earlier. I can quickly get in and make my edits because I understand what I was doing in the past. I can also figure out what others were thinking when they coded their pages so I can learn from them or contribute to their work.
• It is forward thinking — Using standards future proofs your site for changes in the browsers. Standards gives you a solid foundation which will keep your site from breaking and allow you to implement new code and features as they are implemented in the browsers.
• Leaner pages - Separating content and presentation allows for less coding on your individual pages. I was able to cut the code on one legacy site down to a third or fourth of what it was when it was coded with tables for layout. Leaner pages load quicker which is a win for your visitors.
• Better accessibility - Using semantic HTML makes it easier for assistance devices to correctly interpret content. It also makes it easier to develop different versions of your site for different devices including mobile. You just serve up a separate stylesheet to each device.
• Highly adaptable — Separating presentation from structure makes it much easier to update a design or apply a new design because you only update one or more CSS files to update instead of updating code on every page.
• It saves time and money — This is the major business case for using Web standards. Leaner code means less bandwidth which saves money. Semantic code can improve your search engine rankings. It takes less time to develop and maintain Web sites using standards which saves the site owner money.
• I am joining other professionals in my industry in using agreed upon guidelines - Using standards makes it easier to work with others in my profession. We speak a common language and can contribute and collaborate with one another because we are committed to the same standards.
  

As I looked for some items that we frequently buy, I had to look a lot closer because I was not able to use the visual cues that I have come to associate with these items like color and look of the former packaging.

I was reminded how important visual consistency can be. You can really disorient visitors to your Web site if you drastically change the visual interface.

Several of the design experts I follow advocate realign or making small incremental changes rather than drastic redesigns. One of the reasons is the very thing I experienced today–I was a bit disoriented because the visual cues I relied on to find products quickly had changed. The same thing happens to users on your Web site. They get use to page elements being in a certain place. Color can serve as a cue. The consistency creates a mental modal that you break if you make too many drastic changes.

As many designers do, I like the challenge of a redesign. I am more familiar with my design than anyone and I can get bored after a while and want to redesign. But it can do a big disservice to the audience of the site. I like the thinking of Cameron Moll because he challenges designers to have really good reasons for wanting to change the look of a site in a dramatic way. It is much more effective to make small changes over time.

What do you think? Do you like to redesign? How do other site redesigns affect you?

Helpful resources:

• Cameron Moll’s Good Designers Realign
• Jared Spool’s Podcast Avoiding Redesigns

It was the second straight time that I had received this message after pumping gas at a neighborhood station. Doesn’t that sort of defeat the whole purpose of paying at the pump. I want convenience. I want to be able to pump my gas, get my receipt, not have to interact with anyone, and then get on my way. I wonder if they do this on purpose to get people into the store, where they are enticed to buy something sweet.

A poor customer experience.

Tonight on the way home from the office, I was at my neighborhood Walmart. One of the things I like about this store is that it is close to my house and it is convenient. One of the reasons for it’s convenience is self-checkout. But on recent visits, those lanes have been closed and only one register is open. So I have to stand in line when I want to be on my way home.

Tonight, they only had two of the four self checkout lanes open. It meant I had to stand in line there, or go to another line where I had to interact with a cashier. I want convenience and to be on my way to spend time with my family.

Another poor customer experience.

Where Shopping is a Pleasure

Contrast my Walmart experience with going to Publix later tonight. (I really like Publix but go to Walmart more often because it is closer to my house and the prices are lower.) Publix’s tag line is “where shopping is a pleasure.” I cannot think of an experience I have had at Publix where it was not a pleasure. I actually like interacting with Publix employees because they have a smile on their face and genuinely want to serve the customer. They value their customers. I don’t always feel that way at Walmart.  I usually leave Publix with a smile on my face, or at least in my heart because it has been a pleasurable experience.

Going Online

As a Web designer, I think a lot of customer or user experience. My passion for user experience comes from the fact that before I was a Web designer, I was a Web user and I still am. I learn so much by reflecting upon my own experiences online.

Tonight, I was online trying to register for State Farm’s Web site. My car insurance premium is due and wouldn’t you know it, I am out of checks. I hardly ever use checks except to pay a few bills and give to my local church. So I went online to pay my bill. It would have been nice if State Farm mentioned this online payment option on my bill. I found out about this option by calling my local agent. I can only describe my online experience as painful. I had log-in multiple times and encountered several application errors before completing my task. A poor experience.

Minutes later, I was paying my Discover bill online. Discover has a great Web site. They make it easy for you to get your task done and get on with your life. A lot of the success of their user experience is due to the visual design that make the interactions clear. Nice big buttons help me to navigate my way to my destination. Of course, most of the time, I don’t even think about the experience. It meets my expectations and I accomplish my task. Not memorable but definitely pleasurable in the sense that I accomplish my task and come move on to things like writing this blog post. Way to go Discover Card.

So what do I take away from my experiences tonight. I am challenged to consider how I help the people that use the sites I design.

• Are the call to actions clear?
• Can they easily find what they want?
• Are they able to accomplish their tasks quickly and move on to some other aspect of their life?
• Does the visual design I create provide an pleasurable environment that the user may not be consciously aware of?
• Do those who visit my sites have a good experience as they accomplish their task? In the end, that is what matters the most to me.

How do your good or bad experiences in the offline or online world affect your work as a designer or developer? Please share your thoughts.

First and foremost, a Web designer is a problem solver. A client comes with a message they want to communicate, information that they want to share, or a product or products that they want to sell. My job is to find an appropriate visual solution that will tell their story and connect people with the service they are offering or selling.

I craft a solution by visually organizing the text, images and video on the page to communicate my client’s message. I also craft a visual personality that helps supports the communication of that message.

A Hybrid ???

I have always assumed that a Web designer was one who not only came up with a visual design but also had the skills to build that design. My thinking is shaped by the fact that I first got into Web design by learning HTML so that I could create a Web page. This was back in the late 1990’s and visual design on the Web was in its infancy. Slow connections meant that you had to be creative to add graphics to a page and make it efficient to download. So I learned to code in HTML and later in CSS so that I could bring my creations to life.

Hence, I have always thought that it served a Web designer well to know how to build his or her creation (read a recent post on the subject.) There are many times when I will not even do a design comp but jump right into writing HTML and CSS and create as I build. I know what graphics I want to create and I prefer doing that in Fireworks. As I code, I begin to craft the design and start adding in details that make the design really come to life.

It is only recently that I have come to realize that many consider me unique. Hybrid is one of the words that someone used to describe my skills. I never thought of myself that way because most of the designers that I follow code their designs.

What are your thoughts? What word or words do you use to describe the work you do?

“Influence is immediate and free for the taking. Because of this, its utility is often short-lived. At times it may even serve as little more than a platform for duplication.

“Inspiration, on the other hand, is an on-going journey in which one continually seeks to heighten his or her awareness of design in its many shapes and forms. It is an understanding of the interplay between design and the cultural, social, and economic facets of society.

“Inspiration is not always immediate, and it has to be earned. Its utility is nurtured and harvested over time—months, even years—through personal experiences. Often it is the catalyst of true creativity.”

I think Cameron has nailed it. Much of what people call inspiration is really influence. I think there are different levels of influence and how we take that and use it to solve our design problems. Andy develops a similar idea in his article.

I think Andy is also on to something. I think he is trying to debunk some false ideas about what inspiration is. He wrote a similar article about creativity.

I agree with many of Andy’s assertions. I think that a lot of people throw around the term “inspiration” and it is creating a wrong idea of how a design professional works. It is almost the idea of having a “muse.” And what most people call inspiration is really influence–looking at design galleries. I never find “inspiration” or influence when I am looking for it.

I think what happens is that we regularly expose ourselves to different ideas and works and that becomes part of a reservoir that we can draw on.

Like other designers, I have an itch to jump right into Photoshop or Fireworks and start designing. But we really need to take the time to research so that we have solid foundation to come up with a design solution. As I think about the strategic planning process, one of the first steps is doing a situational analysis. That is really research or the result of research. You have to know the background and factors that shape the problem and also look at how others are solving similar problems. This leads to better defining the problem and the constraints for coming up with an appropriate solution. Then we can draw upon appropriate material from our design reservoir.

Now I can think of at least one time that I saw something in a design gallery that helped me right away. But I was already working on the problem and moving in a similar direction with my solution. Seeing the other solution gave me some more ideas that helped me shape my final solution.

Andy has an interesting take on what inspiration really is and I need to chew on that a bit more before I know where I agree and where I don’t.

So what is inspiration and where does it come from? Well, the antonym of inspiration is of course expiration. To expire is to end. It is the end of term or end of life. This alone makes it clear that to be inspired is to receive new life; life beyond what we already possess. This new life brings extraordinary ability, allowing us to do things we otherwise simply cannot do. So there is nothing mundane or worldly about inspiration. By definition, it is not something we already possess and might willfully tap into in our moment of need. It is something that comes most often unbidden and fills us with something beyond “us.” And what is beyond us?

It is not my main purpose here to challenge your philosophy, but there is an elephant in the middle of the room of this examination: divinity. If past response is any indication (and much to my great sadness), many of you will surely gnash your teeth and spit in derision of this fact, but the term “divine inspiration” is entirely redundant. There is no inspiration short of the divine. When you consider the fact that inspiration is something beyond ourselves breathed into us, or that we breathe in (inspire) or otherwise become filled with, and so find the ability to do what we otherwise cannot do, certain realities stare us full in the face. Unblinking. This would seem to make clear how shallow are our most common references to inspiration.

After reading this article, I am trying to decide if I feel comfortable using the word inspiration at all. Again, I want to chew on this some more. I think I like the words inform or influence better because I think they do a better job describing what is really happening in the design process. As I read in Beyond Trend, it is important as a design professional to be conscious of what sources are informing our design solutions.

Whether you call it inspiration or not, I like Cameron’s idea in that true inspiration is a collective knowledge that we accumulate over time and apply appropriately to solve our design problems. Then that collection informs or influences our design decisions.

“In the spring of 2008, Sons of Maxwell were traveling to Nebraska for a one-week tour and my Taylor guitar was witnessed being thrown by United Airlines baggage handlers in Chicago. I discovered later that the $3500 guitar was severely damaged. They didn’t deny the experience occurred but for nine months the various people I communicated with put the responsibility for dealing with the damage on everyone other than themselves and finally said they would do nothing to compensate me for my loss. So I promised the last person to finally say ‘no’ to compensation (Ms. Irlweg) that I would write and produce three songs about my experience with United Airlines and make videos for each to be viewed online by anyone in the world.” — Dave Caroll

This video show the importance of providing a good customer experience. United Airlines failed. And this guy has created expressed that.

What I like about this video is that it is not hateful and angry, but it is a really classy and truthful response to a frustrating  situation.

Thanks to Chris Coyier for sharing this on Twitter via The Huffington Post

Chris points out the problem with most CMSs is that they are really only useful to Web people, those who have experience with working with Web sites. WordPress is Chris’ favorite CMS and mine as well. But as I have done more development with WordPress, I see that is does fall short in really empowering content owners in the way that I would want.

A possible solution: “light” CMSs. There are a growing number of these solutions available on the market today. Several of them are free services and at least one of them costs money. One of the reasons that I like WordPress is that it is free, open source software that is continually developed. The price is right for the non-profit organization I work for.

These light CMS solutions contain less features which make them simpler, and I believe, a better user experience for the content owner.

Here are the light CMS solutions that Chris highlights in his article:

• Unify — Currently in private beta. It is a product of Unit Interactive which is headed up by Andy Rutledge, one of the designers I follow on Twitter and RSS. I was not able to take a close look at it.
• Cushy CMS — this seems to be the first player in the light CMS. It is a free service.
• Page Lime — in free public beta. It has a visual editor and reminded me of Contribute.
• Perch — I really like their Web site and they have great documentation. Perch costs about $57 per domain. You host it on your own server.

Anna Debenham reviewed Perch on this week’s Boagworld Podcast. She has also used Cushy CMS. She pointed out that the major advantage of using Perch over Cushy CMS is that the files are all hosted on your own server with Perch. She had problems with the Cushy CMS server going down which meant the service was unavailable. PageLime is also hosted on their servers.

Cushy CMS, PageLime, and Perch have videos introductions about their service and good documentation to get started. It seems pretty easy to implement any of these three solutions. Cushy CMS and PageLime involve adding classes to your HTML code. Perch involved using specific PHP tags and reminded me a lot of WordPress.

From the little research I did this afternoon, I believe that Perch would be the product that I would choose. Yes, it costs money, but the big advantage is that you don’t have to worry about another server going down that you have no control over. As I mentioned, some of it’s features remind me of WordPress. It would take more technical knowledge to setup Perch. It looks like their templating system is quite powerful and gives more control to the Web designer or developer. But the advantage it has over WordPress is it’s simpler interface for the content owner.

One final note: I really liked Perch’s site. It has nice texture and illustration. It uses JQuery for some fun animated effects. The birds in the tree at the bottom animate and move into the screen on pages where you can see the footer right away.

I saw this on DW Journal report last night. It is a very interesting look at how East Germany kept in it’s people during the Communist era.

I have a great interest in the history of communism because of my travels to Hungary. My first trip was the summer after the Wall came down. I remember very clearly watching Nightline and seeing the jubilation in Berlin when the Wall came down. It was exciting to know that I was going to be part of history as I traveled to Hungary in 1990.

When I was younger, I remember seeing a movie about a family that escaped from East Germany in a hot air balloon. If anyone knows what the title of the movie is, I would appreciate your comment.

UPDATE: I just Googled it and found out that the name of the movie is Night Crossings. I thought it was a Disney movie and I was correct.

A very telling video about what the average person is thinking when they use the Web. I listened to an interesting discussion about this subject on Sitepoint’s podcast.

I think the reason there is confusion about the difference between a browser and a search engine is the integration of search into the Web browser. Search is the function that users do the most of. I could see why they don’t understand the difference.

I believe this video is evidence that a lot of people are not so concerned about which browser they use and will probably stick with their default. Web designers are going to still have to consider IE6 for a long time and then determine what strategy to employ with IE6.

One strategy that I am investigating is Andy Clarke’s Universal IE6 CSS. I have implemented it on this site. I like the idea of serving up the user the basic content without styling.

BTW, a browser is software that you use to view Web pages. The more popular browsers include Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera, and Chrome.

A search engine is a Web site that you use to search for things on the Internet. Two of the most popular are Google and Yahoo. Many modern Web browsers use Google when you use the Search box in the right hand corner of the browser.

Thanks for the honor, Inspiredology.

Yesterday afternoon, I received this email from raysbaseball.com. I had bought tickets over the weekend to see today’s game.

I was really impressed with the information in this email. It told me about the starting pitchers for both teams and had links to relevant statistics. There were also links to information about visiting Tropicana Field. And it was information relevant to have a better experience at the baseball game.

This is a great example of thinking beyond your Web site and having a Web strategy. It utilizes other technology means to enhance the experience of the product, a Major League baseball game.

Paul Boag recently posted 10 ways to put your content in front of more people. This email is a fine example of what Paul was mentioning.

“…attempting to describe the idea of becoming a better designer by dissecting, analyzing, and ‘copying’ the works of other designers.”

In his follow-up article, he talks about how Tony Williams, a drummer, would practice playing in the style of other drummers in order to become a better drummer himself. Cameron’s point was:

“…you become a good designer by familiarizing yourself with the methods and techniques used by those who are already good designers.”

As I read that, I thought about 2 ideas that I came across from other designers that were similar to what Tony Williams did.

1. In his book, Sexy Web Design, Elliot Jay Stocks recommended looking at the work of other Web designers and then doing a wireframe of their design in order to study layout. I had a similar idea back in December when I bought the book, The Web Designer’s Idea Book.
2. On the same day I read Cameron’s post, Chris Coyier wrote a post, Exercise to Get Better at Web Design. This article is even more in line with Tony William’s idea. Chris suggests finding a Web design you really like and then try to copy it identically. He even suggests looking for ways to put your own spin on it while you are recreating the design. Chris is not advocating design theft here but it is a similar idea to how Tony Williams would practice in the style of other drummers. Check out Chris’ article for all the steps of his suggested exercise.

A talk from SXSW on the clever things designers put in their design to add pleasure to the experience. I listened to the audio but look forward to viewing the slides since this was a very visual presentation. I would like to think more about the ideas presented here. It goes on usability to adding value to people’s experience and I am really motivated by that in design.