Designer Developer Workflow Conference (D2WC)
This past weekend I volunteered at the D2WC in downtown Kansas City. It was put on by the local Adobe User Group KCWebCore and was packed with great information. The sessions fairly crackled with good ideas and a hearty camaraderie between professionals in the Web industry.
My favorite quote was from Chad Udell who said something along the lines of, “Stop using ‘Lorem Ipsum.’ It’s not doing anyone any good.” So true since clients always get hung up on it and designers/developers may rely too much on its look while not thinking about how the real data will appear in the page.
All in all, a great conference. Here’s hoping it continues to grow.
Thoughts on SXSWi 2010
Posted by admin in Media, Technology on April 12, 2010
OK, this was my first time going to SXSW. The last big conference I attended was Flash Forward 2000 in San Francisco, so my conference skillz were a little rusty. I was also a little nervous about how relevant and informative this would be, but I was excited by the focus on User Experience. I needn’t have worried. The speakers and presentations were thought provoking and downtown Austin was awesome. The city handled the conference with aplomb and even rolled out 3 days of beautiful weather, Tuesday notwithstanding. I wish there had been a few more in-depth, technical sessions, but I know that’s hard with such a large and diverse group of attendees. In the end I found the whole thing very inspirational.
Some things I took away as a whole:
- Social media is still in its infancy and although it’s the current “next big thing,” it’s here to stay. I agree with one presentation that the growth in this area is somewhat tied to human nature and how non-linearly our minds work. The total impacts to our privacy, psyche and legal system will not be known for years to come.
- Playfulness is a good thing. It may sound cliche, but playing games is in our nature just as much as the need for social interaction. By injecting playfulness and spontaneity into our design processes, we can reduce stress and improve brainstorming.
- Use paper up front in the design process. It really does reduce the investment in a particular idea. It allows you to scribble, jot, crumple and start over a lot faster than going directly to the computer.
- We are not order takers nor short-order cooks. Don’t be afraid to ask questions when a client or stakeholder comes to you with their proposed solution. Adding a green dropdown menu in the right column might be what one user wants. It’s our job to correctly identify the problem, provide the best solution that works for the majority of users, then track and verify the decision after implementation. This will provide real, measurable benefit over time with an eye on the site as a whole, not just what’s needed now. Now, this isn’t always easy, nor is it applicable to every project, but unless someone has an overarching plan or clear vision for the site, the result will inevitably be piecemeal and frustrating. That is what we as UX professionals are here to solve.
It was very refreshing to hear and discuss this exciting field with with so many like-minded people.
Google Tasks standalone Adobe AIR app in 30 minutes
Posted by hollowmyth in Design, Technology on April 7, 2010
OK, this is kind of amazing. I’ve been using the underrated Google Tasks to keep track of small things across work and home life. Over the past year or so, they’ve made some really nice improvements. One thing they haven’t created (or at least made public) is an API to allow the use of your task information in other websites/applications. There is a bug logged with this request, but still no word on if or when it may be implemented.
Needless to say, I was pretty bummed when I found this out. But, I also remembered that Adobe’s new Flash Builder was recently out of beta and I had been meaning to give it a look. So, after downloading and installing, I popped it open. It looked pretty similar, so I created a new project:
I chose to create an AIR project, told it where to save and chose the default packages to include.
After that, it was a simple matter to look through the documentation and find the mx:HTML object which will load a remote page for viewing. So, since Google has been kind enough to create a canvas view of Tasks already, this is literally all the code I had to write to have it show up in the debug AIR player:
That’s it. I packaged up the application with a self-signed certificate and away we go, Tasks on the Desktop:
Download and install TaskMaestro here, if you like.
All in all, not a bad way to spend a half hour.
Knowing someone online
You know, a lot of us have been kicking around these tubes for quite some time now. While I haven’t personally met everyone I talk to online, I feel like I’ve gotten to know many of them pretty well. Here’s a quick list of some of the people who have had an effect on me since I began this big electronic social experiment:
http://www.mg33.net/
Michael Gallagly was one of the people I go to know on the Flashkit boards from way back in the early days of Flash.
http://www.markfennell.com/
Speaking of Flashkit, it wouldn’t have existed without Mark Fennell.
http://raydoeksen.com/
I’ve known Ray Doeksen on several boards and I always consider his opinion to carry great weight. He’s one of the good guys.
http://kenvella.com/
Ken Vella did a lot of video work in the early days of Flash and although I haven’t really connected with him in a while, he is an inspiration.
Thanks for the interaction over the years!
Crowd sourcing, spec work and the budget-conscious client
Posted by hollowmyth in Personal on February 26, 2009
There’s a catch-22 involved in crowd-sourcing which I find frustrating. The buyer will not receive work that’s as high-quality as they could from working with a single designer (or firm) who really understands their business. And the designer spends time on semi-custom designs which may or may not be chosen, resulting in an overall loss of time and effort. The whole process seems designed to grind down both sides to middling results. Now I’m not saying that everyone needs to pay Chiat/Day prices for all their design work, but if you’re asking for custom spec work, you should pay the designer for their time. Otherwise, you’re just asking for lots of random submissions with cookie-cutter solutions to your unique problems.
Posting from the Adobe AIR Bee app
OK, so Adobe has just released the 3rd beta of its desktop/connected platform, AIR (stupid name, Apollo was much better.) One of the sample applications is Bee, a blog editor. On first load, it asks you if you have an existing blog, of if you want to create a free one on wordpress.com. I put in my user and pass and was greeted by the “quick start” menu. It’s a pretty nice way to jump into posting a blog entry. I don’t know if I’d use it all the time, though, since I just don’t blog that much.Â
 anyway, intereting turn of events how AIR is shaping up. This is going to be a wild year with Silverlight and AIR/Flex duking it out while Google, Yahoo and others hone their AJAX-fu. I wonder what Christmas will bring a year from now. Hopefully fatter paychecks for all of us in this crazy online world.Â
Flash, OOP and an AS2 Document Class
Posted by admin in Technology on January 2, 2007
Ok, so I came across this post by Keith Peters in which he explains a way to mimic a document class in AS2. Danny Patterson had the same idea and blogged about it around the same time.
So, I’m in the middle of trying to get my head around OOP and figured this would be a great way to rid myself of the timeline crutch once and for all. Well, not so fast. There were a few pitfalls which I’d like to document here for posterity. In the next few days, I’ll add to this post and show what had to be done to get it working and the leaps of knowledge I had to go through to get there.
Data visualization with Flash AS2
Posted by admin in Technology on October 12, 2006
Ok, so I’m trying to learn more about advanced data visualization with Flash and I’m trying to do it in the most object-oriented way possible. Flash seems eminently suited to this task and with the coming switch to Flash player 9 (once it hits above 80% version penetration) the power will be formidable.
So, I want to put together a bunch of links and experiences that will show how I did what I did and where I learned it.
Firstly, here are a few links that I’ve found:
www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/index.cfm
Samuel Wan’s treemap visualizer: www.samuelwan.com/information/archives/cat_source_code_downloads.html
I’ve seen neurofuzzy’s php junk: www.neurofuzzy.net/2006/04/28/treemap-php-source-code/
and I’ve looked at a few of the java projects on the big U of Maryland site: www.cs.umd.edu/projects/hcil/treemap/
Everyone who knows CSS take a step forward…
Not so fast, Rich Paul!
Ok, now that this whole Web 2.0 hogwash is starting to get venture capital funding, everyone is talking about semantics and css layout as the way forward for social networks and magical user-centric webservices. Well these things, like the technologies underlying the so-called web 2.0 movement, have been around for a long time. They have only just recently reached critical mass and the mainstream eye. Now I, however, was immune to the siren song since I had taken a different route and plunged into the heady world of Flash development.
So, here I am, having taken a different job, jumping head-first into the current state of standards-compliant web design. And I tell you, I believe in it. It makes sense to separate content from presentation. It makes sense to make sites easier to update and accessible to those with difficulties. But why does it have to be so damn buggy? I mean come on. It’s 2006! I would think that by now there are quite a few people in the online world that know what they would like to be able to use when putting together a site. Well, here’s my list:
- Rounded Corners. Why can’t we specify them in the code?
- Easy n-column layouts. Sure we can hack them together, but it shouldn’t be this hard to put together such fundamental site organizations.
- Alpha transparency.
- Downloadable fonts. Why can’t my text appear how I design it to look?
- Gradients. Why can’t I specify them with code?
- Rotation. Why can’t I rotate elements on a page?
- Vector graphics. Would help with the rounded corners and a whole lot more.
Now, I know the web is about content, but after all these years, why can’t we have the tools to make it easy to produce content the way we want?
P.S. This rant sprang up after the 12th time I had to edit my CSS because of another crippling IE bug which caused me to completely re-configure my somewhat complex 2 column layout so it would work again.
I’d like an a-la-carte channel selection, please.
Posted by admin in Technology on July 3, 2006
Only one time in my life, have I ever been given free cable. It wasn’t asked for. It wasn’t an underhanded deal. The installer just happened to not put any trap on the line and hey, free cable for a few months! It was pretty cool and I got to know a few channels very well. Well, after a few years, and jobs, life moved on and we never had money for cable…until recently. Since the gigantic phone and cable companies are starting to battle on the content field, prices are starting to come down. So, I stuck a toe in the water and perused the local bundles for all the many offerings and you know what they were all offering? If you act now! You’ll get not 100, but 200 channels you will never watch with programming you never really cared-for! And don’t forget the 40 premium movie channels that all play the same movies, just at different times of the day! Plus, we’ve got the most HD channels of anybody, but you don’t really care, because your tv is from the stone age, but you’ll upgrade for this! We mean it! Buy now!
And that’s ok. The packages they’re offering might be just what some people are looking for. But, I’d like to think there’s a better way. How about I sign up for your service, and I get to pick the channels I’d like to watch? At the high-end, I’d probably have 20 or so and maybe one premium movie channel. I will never watch 250 channels. That will never get me to sign up for cable or television as it’s being offered by the phone companies right now. I’d just like to watch what I want. And if they could throw in a little DVR action to sweeten the deal, I’d go for it.
In this day and age, I don’t think this is an unreasonable request.