190. Become a branding Ninja

Posted in Classic shows on November 4, 2009 by Paul Boag

On this week’s show: Ryan and Stanton interview Alex Hunter about managing your brand. Meanwhile Paul and Marcus look at how to speed up your website.

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Offline inspiration

It has been a while since we have featured a Smashing Magazine post on the show so thought it was about time.

Shocking though this will be, it is not a top 10 list. Instead it is an excellent post on finding inspiration offline.

The post argues that using online sources such as CSS galleries for inspiration is not enough. As designers we need to be taking a walk, visiting a museum or spending time sketching. We need to consider these an essential part of our job description.

The post examines eight areas of inspiration:

Nature
Museums
Sketching
Hobbies
Music
Photography
Traditional art
Our own imaginations

It then discusses what can be found in these areas of inspiration. In particular the post looks at:

Texture
Color
Shapes
Changing our perspective
Discovering themes

The problem is that we don’t feel like visiting a museum is work and even if we do our bosses certainly do not! However, this is eloquently addressed to:

The trick is to consider alternative inspiration an an essential part of the job. While it feels more like play than work at first, finding true inspiration should mean more than browsing through the same material over and over. And we should know that in a creative industry, having fun is okay; it doesn’t mean we’re being unproductive.

Girl looking at Museum exhbit

Image source

Some of the best design work I ever did came from offline sources. I just wish I prioritised this kind of research more.

All you need to know about CSS3

Mr Stanton discovered a great new site this week – CSS3.info. With CSS 2.1. becoming increasingly supported and integrated into our work, it is time to look ahead at what CSS 3 has in store.

CSS3 has got some really interesting new features that are already supported in some browsers. From advanced selectors such as attribute selection through to multiple column layouts, there is a host of goodies we can start to play with.

What is more, by using graded browser support we don’t need to worry too much about IE’s lack of support.

CSS3.info is a great starting point if you want to begin using some of these advanced CSS features. It provides examples of each new feature and tells you what browsers support it. It also provides a selector check so you can see what advanced selectors work in different browsers. Finally, it also provides up-to-date information on how the new specification is progressing.

I really would encourage you to take a look at CSS3. Its got some really exciting features that you can start using now.

Preparing and planning for a redesign

Although I am generally against the principle of redesigning sites from the ground up, there is no doubt that every site needs a refresh once in a while.

Knowing when and how to go about redesigning your website can be a tricky process. Fortunately Web Designers Depot has a post that might help. Entitled “Preparing and planning for a redesign” it provides some valuable advice for any website owners thinking of redesigning.

The Firefox website before and after its redesign

The post starts by looking at how you know it is time to redesign. Contributing factors include:

Out of date technologies and techniques
The age of a design
The lack of a CMS
Search engine ranking problems
Under performance
Your competition

It then goes on to look at what needs to be done in preparation for a redesign. This includes:

Identifying what works
Being clear on what doesn’t
Looking at what can be removed, combined or added
Knowing what motivates your users
Whether a complete redesign is even necessary

Finally, the article concludes by looking at some potential dangers in redesigning. These include dealing with repeat users and avoiding broken links.

Although I don’t agree with everything in this post, it is a useful article if you are considering a redesign. Check it out.

Confusing menus and links: the web’s biggest challenge

I want to conclude with a post that might make you rethink your sites navigation. It is by Gerry McGovern and is entitled “Confusing menus and links: the web’s biggest challenge.”

Gerry applies his task focused approach to information architecture. He argues that too many organisations are more concerned with organising their content into an IA, than meeting the needs of users.

He suggests that to make a truly effective information architecture we need to start thinking like our users, who are focused on the task at hand.

To demonstrate his point he refers to the BBC sports site as a good example:

If you visit the BBC homepage and choose “Sport” you are brought to a page about sport. Just sport. The critical first screen is all about sport. No links to news or weather or business. Just sport. If you click on Football you arrive at a page that’s just about Football. Just Football. Not cricket. Not rugby. Not golf. Just football. If you click on “Premier League” you get to a page dedicated to the Premier League.

This is not web design. It’s web management. It’s about eliminating all choices that are not connected with the customer’s current task, which in the above example might be: Find out the latest news about the Premier League.

BBC Football website

Too often as website owners we clutter our navigation with other content that users “might want” or which we want them to look at. Although there are times when we want to cross link or promote other content, we need to be careful not to distract users from achieving their primary aim. If they become overwhelmed by links and fail to complete their task easily, they will leave.

He ends with a radical suggestion:

Menus and links need to be designed in the context of the task the customer is trying to complete. That means stripping away higher-level options and creating links that point forward based on the task at hand.

Stripping away top level navigation is not always a good idea, but this post should make us sit up and think.

Interview: Alex Hunter discusses developing an online brand

Ryan: OK, joining us today is Alex Hunter and we’ve just listened to you do a talk on… what was the talk title, I’ve forgotten?

Stanton: It was kind of “Managing Your Brand”.

Ryan: “Managing Your … Marketing Your Web App and Future Brands Online” – it was really good talk; really fascinating.

Alex: Thank you.

Ryan: So, would you like to tell us a little bit about yourself Alex?

Alex: Yeah. Sure. I’m an independent, kind of, brand ninja if you will. I’ve worked with some of the biggest brands in the world – on both sides of the pond. I live here in the UK but am originally from California.

Ryan: OK. And your talk was focused around making yourself your brand; putting your reputation on the line, in a way. It was really interesting – do you want to tell us a little bit about that?

Alex: Absolutely, yeah. Brand is one of those things that falls by the wayside, especially when it’s a developer-centred organisation. Developers are creating amazing technologies, incredible platforms but while they’ve been doing that they’ve actually been completely changing the game; they’ve been fundamentally changing the way marketing and branding works. It’s amazing, because they’ve create apps and platforms (i.e. social networking) that allow consumers to connect with brands for the very first time. Before, it was just send a letter out, watch a billboard, very mono-directional. But now we have these tools to connect with brands, and the irony is that the people that created that conversation aren’t responding to the fact that they need to have their brands intact.

Ryan: Right, OK.

Stanton: You gave a couple of examples of companies that you respect and that do this kind of thing really well. Can you give us a run through those?

Alex: Sure. I think Digg has put a lot of time and effort into their brand over their, what is, five-year or six-year existence. They’ve done a lot of little things really, really well and it was nice to hear Kevin Rose allude to them yesterday. Things like their blog – I think they’ve got the best corporate blog in the world because it’s not just the Vice-President of PR doing the blogging. It’s not even just Kevin or Jay (the founder and CEO respectively). It’s the developers, the designers, the DB admins, the receptionists, the community managers i.e. the faces and the names of the people that created and curate the community that we as the “Digg Community” have invested so much time and energy into. We can connect with those people now because it’s a name and a face of a real person. And so what they do whenever they roll out a new piece of technology or a new development, they say “Hey, I’m the guy that did this. Here’s why and here’s how (in excrutiating detail). What do you think?”. And that’s kind of revolutionary.

Stanton: So you would encourage people – especially working in small teams – not to be scared of just talking about what they’re doing and just waiting for “Let’s just wrap it up in a press release” or something and just talk about it naturally and be precious and passionate.

Alex: The being “precious” about it, I think, is a very, very big risk. That transparency is really beautiful because it brings people into the journey – especially when you’re creating something brand new – when it’s just an idea. You’re creating a new product and you’re updating people on it. It’s why reality TV is such a painful hit, I mean. It’s because people are looking into this thing and, Lord knows, the dev cycle is dramatic and painful and “4 o’clock in the morning” caffeine-induced frenzies. But also, it’s like when things go wrong, hold your hands up – be transparent, human. Don’t hide behind a brand name or a product name. And people will engage with that.

Ryan: So, how should people be doing this really? How should people be developing their brand and associating themselves towards the brand and then putting it out there. What techniques should they be using?

Alex: It’s a great question. I think that there’s – especially with Twitter, interestingly – there’s this real blurring of the line between personal brand and corporate brand. A lot of the big names that we know in technology embody their brand; Kevin Rose is Digg, Gary Veynerchuk is Wine Library TV, Tony Hsieh is Zappos – they’re all completely interconnected; there’s no separating them. They’ve invested themselves emotionally in what they do and that shows in the brand. And I think they’re defined by what they want to be. Gary has always been very clear about what his values are, Digg is very clear about what their values are. Apple are very clear about what their values are, and I think, trite as it may sound, going through and identifying your values – and it was really refreshing because as I came off the stage some dude came up to me and say “Hey, thank you. We’ve been labouring over this for years and we finally sat down – or I stopped sitting down with myself and brought the whole team in – and we defined our values” and it’s just gone up exponentially through that. And so I think it’s just define the values, creating an identity out of that and then saying “What are we now and what are we going to be, well, indefinitely really”.

Ryan: So do you think that’s got to be one of the first stages when you release it – you’ve got to be thinking about where you’re going to take it and how you’re going to present it to the world.

Alex: Absolutely

Ryan: That’s vitally important.

Stanton: So you talked about brand consistency and not to be scared of it or precious of it again. You should be willing to put it out there and how other people in your company – just use it and get it out there.

Alex: It’s… consistency is a funny one. People always say “The more people you give the message to the more watered down it becomes and the less consistent the message is”. Big brands are really scared of losing the refinement of their message. Realistically, they’ve been doing it for the last 30 years because the person who answers the phone in the call centre is the first point of contact that a user has with your brand. They are representing your brand. The receptionist is representing your brand. So giving someone an account on Twitter to do the same is no different, it’s just a little bit more of a public stage. But, on the flip side, that’s a good thing because people can see you responding to positive comments and negative comments and reacting and helping people in a very public forum. That’s why things like Get Satisfaction and applications like that – and actually in South Africa there’s a really popular one called Hello Peter which businesses are all into trying to respond and react to. So I think it’s a good thing and people shouldn’t be scared of consistency.

Ryan: Some brands, and we’re talking here quite a bit about people being associated to the brand and being kind of interchangeable. You say Steve Jobs, you say Apple, you always think of the two. For brands like, you mentioned, Diet Coke – being that you were invested into that brand – there’s no person that you can think of associated to that but you see that brand and you’re committed to it. McDonalds, things like that. What differences are there between the two? How do you promote? It’s kind of a logo you’re promoting in a way, isn’t it.

Alex: It’s a really good question. Diet Coke – the Coke/Pepsi thing is a fascinating brand battle and one of the few where it’s really only a two-horse race, especially in the consumer arena. I mean you’ve got Boeing and Airbus but they don’t really have to advertise because, well, I don’t have $100 billion lying around. Coke and Pepsi, I think, play off the fact that they are rivals and you are either one or the other. I think the more you consume of it the more passionate you become about it. So, if you are a regular Diet Coke drinker – like my wife won’t go to restaurants that serve Pepsi, she’ll leave because she can’t stand the taste of it. I’m sure it’s psychological because as Dave Chapelle said in that video, “It’s all the same”. It’s sugared water in a tin can! But they’ve managed to kind of feed off each other to an extent that has developed this rivalry and therefore developed this passion within its user base.

Ryan: I suppose then there’s so many different avenues that you can take to compete and get your brand out there. Is there any more that particularly stand out; having a direct competitor is one way of developing your brand or having a figurehead or any other ways you can go about it?

Alex: Absolutely, absolutely – especially for small – or reasonably small – brands. I think there’s a couple of things that are really important. In kind of extending the reach of the brand and the application with content like blogs – like the Digg example is a great one – but also engagement, both in the physical world and in the digital world. There are a lot of web companies that are getting really good at hosting real world events where users meet up and are rewarded both on a macro-like Digg or a Yelp on a micro level like some companies here in Europe like Qype that I mentioned during my talk that are introducing users to each other and to the people that either administrator or are the, kind of, power users within the community. Kevin Rose mentioned that again yesterday as a really good way; launch parties, regular user meetups, get people talking, get people connected. That really breeds loyalty. It’s astounding what that can do in terms of the competitive.

Ryan: I think Digg is an excellent example because they have so many methods of getting their message out there, don’t they. They’ve got the blog and the meetups and everything else.

Stanton: It’s like that with the bigger companies that come out. They can release different products that might not be wildly different but there’s the kind of umbrella brand that’s so strong that you can pick up that product and you know it’s new and you know the quality of it.

Alex: It’s really interesting. The web has actually fundamentally changed the way brand is perceived because we have these, like, loyalty mechanisms built in. Let’s look at, like, re-branding an acquisition. If my local supermarket gets bought by another supermarket, I don’t care. As long as it’s still there and has food in it – whatever! When Yahoo! bought Flickr they kind of didn’t know what to do with the brand. Do you keep it Flickr or do you make it Yahoo! Photos? And they’ve been kind of to-ing and fro-ing. But you can’t because that loyalty that’s in the Flickr community, that has built it up to where it is, would be PISSED OFF. So now, the compromise that just did recently was “Flickr by Yahoo!”.

Ryan: And people don’t seem to like it!

Alex: Exactly! Can you imagine what would happen if they rebranded it to just Yahoo! Photos? I mean, of course you’d get over it eventually but it’d take a lot longer and you’d lose a lot of customers.

Stanton: That kind of touches on one of the key things I took away from your talk. You said “Look after your users best interests, not yours”.

Alex: Absolutely. It’s hard because you gotta pay the bills. But that reputation will put you head and shoulders above anybody else. The Amazing Tunes example that I used. There are other unsigned artists sites out there, but not that give 70% of the profits back to the user and not that have a DAB radio station that you can get featured on. That’s looking after users. That’s the definition of an ethical web company.

Stanton: So for anyone starting out or building a company or a start-up or something, are there any common mistakes or pitfalls that you see all the time, or that you’d encourage people to watch out for or avoid.

Alex: Absolutely. There’s the ever-present “If you build it, they will come” mentality. If a build a solid app, no matter how ugly it is, people will come. They will not because they’ll never hear about it. And there are competitive apps to almost everything, and if there isn’t one today, there will be one tomorrow, and they will have looked at what you’ve done and they will have started an outreach, they will have started a Twitter account, they will have started a blog, they will have networked it physically and they will have networked it digitally, they will have thought about the presence, the UI. And I think that siloing and kind of compartmentalising and just saying “I’m going to iterate my app” is not going to work. There are exceptions to that rule. TweetDeck – he developed it to solve a personal problem, it just happened to be really well solved, and so it’s kind of growing on its own. But that is the exception to the rule. I think that hiding under a bushel, expecting it to develop on its own, it’s just not going to happen.

Ryan: With regards to cost of developing your brand, it can be the chicken and the egg sometimes. You need to develop an app and get it out there to make some return to put some investment into marketing it. What initial steps can be used to build yourself up before you can plough some money into it and doing it properly.

Alex: It’s kind of interesting. I think, yeah – you’ve got to have a concept obviously and some basic stuff done but I think one of the things that I’ve always found that worked, and it was really interesting to hear someone talk about it yesterday – I’m not sure who it was – but this kind of closed beta invite only concept seems to work really well at generating buzz. And if you just get one or two people saying “What the heck is this?”. You get these precious invites – which really aren’t that precious – Spotify’s a great example; actually Spotify’s a great example on two levels: 1) it was invite only for the longest time and 2) our pals in America couldn’t have it and they wanted it so badly that they were spoofing IP addresses and whatever they had to do to actually be able to use it. That kind of sense of exclusivity is a free way of generating that kind of buzz, if you can just get enough people to talk about it and it’s just an occasional whisper in the air, a Moo Card dropped somewhere with an invite code on it – that will just start to get people excited about it. But you have to make sure the product doesn’t suck on the back of it, because that will also spread pretty quickly as well.

Stanton: A lot of the talks I’ve sat in on today are starting to tie in. Yesterday it was “If you’re going to release something, release it early”. Do one or two things but do them really well, don’t try and do everything at once because you won’t be able to. And then see how things get – see how your users react to it and then build. I guess that’s reacting with the branding people that engage with the brand and then you’re building it and they feel invested.

Alex: That focus is really important as well, and I think that’s why APIs are so important in the early stage because you can get people developing iPhone apps and other integrations without taking your eye off the ball and doing those one or two things really well and going “Oh crap we’ve got to go home and develop the iPhone app”. It’s really interesting the way that it’s evolved – product development.

Ryan: Do you have any predictions of how things are going to change in the future. At the minute we’ve got these big companies that are doing it really well, everyone’s kind of imitating and doing similiar things to try and push their brands as well, and inevitably, things will change again. Any predictions about where things might be going?

Alex: I think it will become even more democratic. I think that the users will become even more powerful because the time to reaction is so fast.

Ryan: Yeah

Alex: But I also think loyalty will get even stronger and if you’re going to develop a competing app to an incumbant you’re going to have to work 10 times harder to get people off of what they’re using. As people start to use even more social currency, more points systems, giving more “value” to a user, it’ll be harder and harder to bring them over. I also think it’s going to be harder for people to acquire web brands, especially the big companies – the Yahoo!s the AOLs of the world to acquire small web brands without alienating those kind of fervently loyal people that are already their user base.

Ryan: You did mention people coming up with all this sort of cutesy names and stuff, mispellings and things like that. The market just seems to be saturated with it. How should people be thinking about deciding on a good brand and what fundamental things should they be thinking about when they’re making those decisions

Alex: I think that’s a great question. It’s less about the name – like you said it’s really easy just to misspell something or drop a consonant; that’s really lazy – you’ve got to look at it much more as a value-driven. What are our values? What is our product like? What is our team made of? Where are we in the world? And then use that to feed in the name to something obviously catchy, obviously when you can get the domain for a reasonable price – those are practical things that you need to take into consideration. But it’s got to be catchy; it’s got to be engaging, it’s got to mean something. And I think people have started to catch onto the whole “if you can make it a verb”. Digg and Google have become verbs (by the fact that they’re just ubiquitous), but I think people are now starting to say (at least, I’ve heard people around London say) “I’m going to Qype that” and it means “I’m going to check what this place is like” in terms of reviewing a restaurant before I go into it or whip out their Qype Radar iPhone app and check it out before they walk into it. So I think that that’s a really interesting revolution.

Stanton: You’ve got to work hard to get to that place, don’t you?

Alex: You really do.

Stanton: Then it appears in the dictionary!

Alex: That’s when you know it’s all over. You’ve won!

Ryan: OK, well, thank you very much for your time. I really enjoyed your talk and I think listeners will find that really useful. Thank you so much.

Thanks goes to Sam Kirkpatrick for transcribing this interview

Listeners feedback: Give yourself a speed boost!

Normally the listener section of the show focuses on me answering listener questions. However, this week on twitter and the forum it has been the other way around.

You may have noticed that boagworld has been running slow for sometime. Well, I finally decided it was time to fix the problem. However, my knowledge on the subject was fairly limited. That was why I turned to the Boagworld community and boy did they help!

I thought it was only fair that I share the top 5 things I learn from them.

Read 5 Ways To Give Your Site A Speed Boost In Less Than 30 Minutes.

159. Special Guest

Posted in Classic shows on April 1, 2009 by Paul Boag

On this week’s show: The northerners are back with special guest host Sarah Parmenter.

Podcast: Download (29.1MB)

On this week’s show: The north erners are back with special guest host Sarah Parmenter. We answer your questions on how to quote for projects and whether using off-the-shelf software is wrong and we have a chat with Sarah on her experiences in the industry and the difference between developing for clients and developing for yourself.

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Alkaline

Our first story for is a new product by the guys over at Litmus, you may have come across their Browser and Email testing apps before and they’ve just released a new Mac app called Alkaline, this is a Mac front-end to their online browser testing suite and lets you test your website designs across not only 17 different Windows browsers which they mention on the site, but also all of the Mac and Linux browsers that the online Litmus services test against.

Alkaline grabs screenshots of your site rendered in all major browsers, the number of which depends on your chosen pricing plan, It’s free to test against IE7 and FF2 and if you need to test across all browsers, it’s available under the standard Litmus pricing plan which offers both individual and team monthly subscriptions, and a handy day-pass if you only do this kind of testing every now & then. Litmus also stores a history of your screenshots so you can see the evolution of your design and also reports your HTML and CSS errors.

There’s plugins available for Textmate and Coda, and you can preview the sites right inside Coda 1.6’s preview window, however because Alkaline grabs screenshots of your pages it’s not possible to do any live updating of CSS and see the results in all browsers.

Paul at Litmus also informed me that throughout April, they’re offering full access to the Litmus service for free on Weekends, so on Saturday and Sunday you can test across all the browsers (using Alkaline or the Litmus site) and all the email clients, even if you only have a free account.

16 design tools for prototyping and wireframing

It’s no secret that prototyping or wireframing can really help in the overall design process, and there’s now a wide range of tools on the market that aim to help you in this process. A recent Sitepoint article lists 16 of these tools and rates their usefulness.

The list of tools is good, convering favourites such as Omnigraffle, Axure and Balsamiq to other applications which can be used to wireframe such as Powerpoint or Keynote. If you’ve not looked into these kind of apps before then do check it out, they also lists the price of the apps so you’re sure to find something within your budget.

10 Lessons every freelancer should learn

If I remember rightly, I came across this link from one of the people I follow on Twitter and it covers some killer tips on how to be a better freelancer, covering everything from self promotion, organising your workflow, finding time for your own projects, keeping motivated and how to charge appropriately, this is a must-read for anyone considering freelancing, or indeed those already in the freelance world.

Some great tips come in the way of keeping customers happy and generating repeat business and I’d like to squeeze in a forth link here to another Sitepoint article (sorry) which covers how to upsell additional services to clients as a freelancer you should be looking at maximising the amount of money you can make from each project through added services, whether it’s packaged services such as hosting, logo design or business cards.

I don’t really freelance but I do manage a couple of small sites I built on a freelance basis, and I get recurring revenue by hosting them on a small reseller account. I’ve also been able to tempt the customers into paying for a years hosting rather than a monthly cost by rounding the amount down to an even figure, which while it’s only a couple of pounds cheaper, always got chosen.

Interview: Sarah Parmenter on the difference between developing for clients and developing for yourself

Ryan: OK, so onto our interview section and what we are going to do today is an off-the-cuff interview with you, Sarah, er, so for people who don’t know who you are, er, do you want to introduce yourself.

Sarah: Sure, my name’s Sarah, I’m based in Leigh On Sea in sunny old Essex and I own a company called ‘You Know Who Design‘ that’s been going for about nearly seven years now, um, and I just do web development and sometimes I dabble in a bit of graphic design. Um, when I started off when I was younger, it was more graphic design than web but now it’s purely web and, er, yeah, it’s what I love doing.

Ryan: Right, OK, and we think a good topic to have a chat with you about would be the difference between developing for clients and developing for yourself.

Sarah: Yup

Ryan: So, er, let’s start off. Do you give yourself time to work on personal projects?

Sarah: I do, but not as much as other people do; whenever I see on Twitter, there’s a lot of people who have a lot of personal projects on the go and it generally tens to be on a Friday as well (all laugh), you see Twitter on a Friday, generally full of people, um, doing their own stuff but I tend to, if I’m doing something I tend to, maybe, give myself a couple of hours if I’ve got a spare, if I’m waiting for a client to get back to me on something and I can’t proceed with anything. I put client work first, and I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but that’s the thing that pays the bills, so, um, they always come first and if I’ve got a bit of downtime, I’ve always got projects that I want to work on, but possibly haven’t got the amount of time to dedicate to them as I’d like. I think it’s probably the case with everyone.

Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. You get some time, don’t you, through work?

Paul: Er, well we did sweet talk our boss into giving us 5% time, which was supposed to be like Google’s 20% time, where they get a whole day to work on personal projects, if it benefits the company.

Sarah: Really?

Paul: Yeah, well we got, like an afternoon on a Friday, which is kind of sidelined at the moment.

Ryan: To spend in the pub (laughs)

Paul: That’s personal projects, I’m sure. No, it’s kind of sidelined at the moment, we’ve got some major projects on which are taking up all our time with some heavy deadlines, so we’ve had to shuffle that. Hopefully we’ll start to get that back over the summer and work on some cool stuff instead of the business stuff.

Sarah: I think it’s rea
lly difficult, because obviously your client stuff does have to come first, and even if you’ve dedicated an afternoon or a couple of hours, if something comes up that morning, or if you’ve got a problem that needs sorting, unfortunately, it’s just the way it is, your client work has got to come first.

Paul: Yeah, pays the bills.

Sarah: I mean, a lot of personal projects, a lot of people’s personal projects, do end up very lucrative for them, and you could argue that it’s just as lucrative to just go along with your own personal projects, but I think in general, most people would find that their client work would, er, would have to come first.

Paul: We’re trying to convince our boss to let us build, er, an iPhone app

Sarah: Really?

Paul: and sell it on the app store. He’s not having none of it, because we’ve told him we all need iPhones to test it on, he just won’t buy them for us.

Ryan: and a mac to develop on

Paul: a Mac to develop on, yeah. For some reason, he’s not warming to the idea.

Ryan: he can’t understand the thirty grand, you know, outlay to…

Paul: We’ll easily make that in a day on the app store (all laugh), I keep telling him this.

Sarah: the app store!

Paul: Yeah, the app’s 50p, you know…

Ryan: Er, completely sidetracked there, erm. What differences do you find, er, between developing for clients and developing for yourself? What major differences do you find?

Sarah: I find, when I’m doing stuff for myself, I’m actually a lot less decisive on stuff. I sort of, because I’m immersed in, maybe my own branding, or sometimes it’s really good to look at it from an outsider’s point of view. If you’re doing stuff for clients, I think sometimes it’s easier to look at stuff and go ‘well, that needs to go there and that needs to be there to catch someone’s attention’ or you need to move that or make that a different colour, and when it’s your own stuff I think you tend to be either really creative and you don’t really care if you get stuff wrong, or if, do you know what I mean? It’s more, sort of… the boundaries aren’t there, you’re not time-constrained, there’s no brief, you just go off on one, doing whatever you want, whereas with client stuff, there tends to be a bit more, erm, what’s the word, consistency across everything, and I find, personally, when I’m doing my personal stuff, I could sit in front of Photoshop pushing something from the left-hand side of the screen to the right-hand side of the screen for two hours, wondering whether it looks right or not, whereas if it’s a client site, I think ‘right, I have to make a decision on this – where would this go, or where would it be best placed, and you make a decision and you move on, because otherwise the more time you, you take going backwards and forwards is, er, less money that you’re earning, so I think I tend to be more decisive with client work and with my own I tend to be a bit more, erm, easy-going and, er, possibly a bit more creative, in the sense of trying things that I haven’t tried before. Erm, yeah, I think it’s just good to be (pause – all laugh).

Paul: I think personal projects give you time to play with the stuff that you wouldn’t normally risk putting into a client’s site, things that might take you a week to figure out.

Sarah: That’s what I, sorry a man just walked past my window in a pair of shorts, as I was answering that question, which completely put me off,

Ryan: Was it an ugly man, or a good-looking man?

Sarah: No, he was an old man.

Ryan: Oh, right. OK

Sarah: I wondered if he had dementia or something, and he thought it was summer.

Paul: Was he in just a pair of shorts?

Sarah: Yeah

Ryan: A pair of shorts and a smile?

Sarah: No, and a newspaper.

Paul: Strategically placed.

Sarah: It just completely sidetracked my thinking pattern, then.

Paul: That’s OK.

Sarah: Oh, sorry.

Ryan: Where were we? So, which do you prefer, developing for clients, because obviously you’re doing that every day, or do you prefer developing for yourself?

Sarah: I actually prefer developing for clients, erm. I prefer getting a brief and thinking ‘right, how can I best interpret this brief, and get the objectives that they want, er, they want to get out of this website, how can I do that in the best possible way?’ Whereas, I think that when you do stuff for yourself, you don’t necessarily write down a brief as strict as you’d get when a client is sending through something. So, I, I actually prefer developing for clients, I really like, I don’t, I really like doing all the end, getting to the end product with a client. I think I get more satisfaction out of that than I do when I’ve done it for myself, because I still look at it in a very critical point of view, I still think, ‘oh well, maybe I could make those buttons a slightly different hint of green and it will look better’; whereas, with client stuff I think it’s just all about decision making, I think you tend to make more decisive decisions with client work than you do with your own. You think of your own as an ever-ongoing project that you can forever tweak and make changes to, whereas with client stuff you, once it’s live, it’s pretty much. You might get to update…

Ryan: Yeah, it’s difficult to come back, isn’t it?

Sarah: Yeah. Exactly. So I much prefer developing for clients, when they’re nice clients!

Ryan: Yes, we only like the nice clients.

Sarah: Yes, we all like nice clients.

Ryan: But do you think personal development time is important, do you think it’s important to develop your own projects?

Sarah: Yeah, I do I think it’s important from the sense of being, when I personally do lots of my own stuff, I find that I tend to be a bit more, erm, creative, in the sense of I’ll try stuff that I might think ‘oh, that’ll look awful, I won’t bother doing that for a client site’, but I might try it and actually surprise myself and think ‘oh no, actually, that’s a really good technique to use’ or do something a bit different because you’re not constrained by time when you’re doing stuff for yourself, necessarily. But I think, I do think it’s really important to do your own, your own thing, because I think it’s also a learning curve, you might try out different systems to use, you might decide to learn something, you might decide to use something like, if you’ve never used WordPress, you might decide to go and bolt WordPress onto your site just to see how you get on with it, you might try different apps. I think it’s important, because it frees the mind to use other things that you might not necessarily get to use when you’re in an office environment or, or perhaps even day to day because you don’t have the time to learn it, so I do think it’s important, but I don’t think it’s the, er, the be all and end all of everything.

Ryan: I think, er, a good tie-in question, not specifically about developing for clients and, er, yourself. Erm, keeping it with blogs and stuff, do you allot yourself a, like, time to read your feeds and, er, things like that, and to keep up with them, because I’ve been so busy in the last two weeks, my feeds have just gone like – you know when Google Reader says ’1000+’ and that’s it, it’s just stopped counting, it’s gone ‘look man, give up on these feeds, you’ve passed a thousand.’

Paul: You need to declare feed bankruptcy, I think.

Sarah: I tend to do this really annoying thing, where if someone posts a good link on Twitter, I’ll open it up in a browser window in a tab, and then if someone else posts, I’ll open that in another browser tab, so I’ve got about 100 tabs open in Firefox that I never get round to, to looking at, which slows the whole thing down and end up having to then bookmark them in a little folder called ‘Interesting Links’, that I never get around to reading.

Ryan: When you look back, they’re four years old and completely out of date.

Sarah: Yeah.

Paul: The shocking thing, because I do the research for the, the Boagworld news and push it all through the links, I probably churn through 150-200 feeds a day (Sarah: gasp), which is so many feeds that I haven’t got time to read them, which is shocking; I get so much information, so many good things that I’m pushing out to other people, that I just don’t have time to read them, there’s too much information.

Sarah: Do you skim-read them?

Paul: I do, I skim-read, I usually read the first few paragraphs, just to see what the article was about, clip out the interesting bits of text for the previews and then send it on it’s merry way out of Twitter and then I’ve written a function that, every time someone clicks a link on Twitter, it kind of lets me know, tracks back and so I can see, right, which… and I watch it, I’ve got live stats and streaming on one of the spare monitors, so as this link goes out onto Twitter, I can see it being read, so I can actually what’s actually what the people are reading, what’s been interesting that way, instead of me thinking ‘that’s genius, we’ll use that on the show’. It’s actually kind of crowd-sourcing information like this.

Sarah: Yeah, that’s a better way of doing it, isn’t it? It’s more productive.

Paul: Yeah, but I do the same, it’s like something I really want to read, I’ll open it in a tab and I’ve got the permatabs thing on Firefox, so I’ll set it so that I can’t delete it until I’ve read through it, but usually it just ends up there for weeks.

Ryan: I tag them in Delicious, so I’ve got like tutorials and stuff that I think ‘oh, that looks fantastic’ and I’ve got a ‘to try’ thing, which is slowly increasing in number and I never sit down and have a go through the tutorials or anything like that.

Paul: Yeah, I think the key is to follow a few key, key things and not try and follow too much information, and then just look at what everyone else around you, the people that you respect, in what they’re sending out and try not to get overwhelmed because there’s a lot of information out there.

Sarah: Dead right, there’s so many, it seems to be a new thing on Twitter to actually post those sort of links, day in, day out, which is really handy because there’s a lot of people who have a lot of good stuff on Twitter.

Paul: Oh twitter.com/boaglinks is the premier source of all this information, of course.

Sarah: Of course! (all laugh)

Ryan: Er, OK, so I think the final question to you, then Sarah, is, erm, what inspires you to pursue your personal projects?

Sarah: Erm, oh, that’s a difficult one. I kind of get inspired in strange places, when I came back from the Future of Web Design and Future of Web Apps, I kind of get inspired by other people, not necessarily the apps that they’re producing, or work that other people are producing, but I sort of feed off other people’s energy, strangely. If other people come away from something really, erm, excited about something, I tend to think ‘oh, yeah, that sounds like a good, like when Adobe Air came out, that was a kind of a buzz around that for a while and it got me thinking ‘um, what can you develop with that that would, you know, might be interesting to other people or that other, that other web designers might want to use?’ but that’s kind of what happened with my own app, Olive, it’s kind of on the backburner at the moment, but there was a problem that came up at work and it was coming up time and time again and I thought ‘there must be something out there that actually addresses this issue of, of erm, client management, so went around, couldn’t find anything and then ended up building it, and it was actually built more for me, rather than other people and when I sent it out to a few people, they really liked, and got into using it and, erm, it’s just kind of handy if you build something that’s, that’s great for you, but equally other people find interesting as well. It’s, erm, it’s a win-win, really. I mean, I use it all the time, and there’s other people who do as well, bu
t at the moment it’s, er, needs a lot of updating, because I’ve been so busy with client stuff, but maybe I should have put that first, but clients pay the bills unfortunately.

Ryan: Absolutely, absolutely. I think I, erm, I think I overthink things, so I think to myself ‘oh, I’d love, love for this to exist’ and then I think to myself ‘I could spend the next three years developing that’ and, and someone would do it better than me, you know and just finding time as well.

Paul: Yeah, I think it’s right what Sarah says, you’ve got to scratch your own itch, you’ve got to find something that you would want to use so much that you would spend that amount of time to build it, and then if it’s for you, it doesn’t really matter that much if no one else wants to use it because it does something that you want it to do.

Sarah: Exactly.

Paul: And it’s a learning process, you can choose any language. If you want to learn a new language, if you want to learn Django or Python or something, you could build it in that, just to learn that language, erm, and then send it out in the world, see if people use it.

Sarah: Exactly, that’s kind of what happened. I was learning quite a bit about Ruby at the time, because Olive, Olive’s built on the Ruby on Rails platform and it was so interesting just to get an insight into how different developing with Ruby is compared to PHP. That was just worth it in it’s own right, really because I find that I learn much better with real world examples rather than looking at a load of code. I find that if, if I ever get something like that, I have to take it apart, almost, and then try and work out how to put it all back together so that it works. I think I learn better by doing that and a lot of people do. If you going on to any of the tutorial sites now, there tends to be a lean towards developing an app or something small; I think on the Nettuts at the moment, website – do you guys know that one?

Ryan: Er, yes.

Paul: Yes, ah the Nettuts, oh yeah.

Sarah: Yeah, there’s a, there’s a sway towards actually building like login systems from scratch and things like that on there, where it’s actually showing you the code and then showing you how it works in real world situations which I think is really good, for me, I don’t know about you two, but I personally prefer picking stuff apart (laughs).

Paul: Yeah, absolutely. I usually start at the very lowest common denominator, like a user access system, and I’m learning CakePHP now which is, kind of a Ruby clone for PHP and instead of using their in-build methods which will do it all for you with build this, just write these classes and it’s like ‘No, it’s like the most basic thing I can do in this language, let me learn how to do it’, and I’ll learn that way.

Sarah: Yeah, yeah, that’s, I think when, erm, when I looked at using Ruby for, er, for Olive, I didn’t build it, it was built by a guy, a brilliant guy, Adam Cooke, but I was still really interested to know how it would work and how Ruby is different and the first thing I did was built a, erm, a basic recipe, sort of database thing with, it was off of a tutorial site and I think it’s great if it gives you just a little bit of insight into something that you might not have already realised or known about building your own stuff, then I think you have that sort of passion to go forward with it, you have that confidence to then think ‘oh, well I’ve done that tiny thing, maybe I can do something else with it. Whereas, if you’re doing it for clients, you don’t, you wouldn’t really venture into using another programming language that you weren’t comfortable with on a client site, unless you were a bit silly.

Ryan: Absolutely, absolutely. Paul told me a really funny thing, in between, er, when he told me he was learning CakePHP. He said, I’m trying to remember what it was that you told me, it was ‘if Ruby’s French, CakePHP is French with an English accent’

Paul: Yeah, its kind of the same, just not quite as elegant.

Ryan: Yeah, I thought that was fantastic, that was so fantastic, I made it into, I have some rotating quotes on my web-site, and that made it into my quotes, that was fantastic.

Much thanks goes to Simon Douglas for transcribing this interview so quickly!

Listeners Questions:

Is Using Off-The-Shelf Software Wrong?

Jon Writes:

I guess my question is about the use of off-the-shelf software. I must admit I feel slightly uncomfortable using it at all. As a decent sized agency of 9 people, with our own very capable developers, I can’t escape the nagging feeling that we are “cheating” slightly by using an off-the-shelf platform at all. Although we adhere strictly to licensing requirements, most of our customers do not know that their stores are powered by what is essentially a ready made system, which we then skin, configure and populate.

What are your views about off-the-shelf stuff and the pros and cons of using it on client work?

Thanks and keep up the good work!

I think the main source of your discomfort is the fact that your clients don’t know you are using off-the-shelf software for their projects, which raises the question why not?

Your clients have approached you to provide them with a service they cannot perform themselves. Whether that is building a system from scratch or integrating and customizing an third-party system to meet their needs, you are still the expert.

There are very powerful off-the-shelf e-commerce systems, blog engines and CMS’s that should be thought of as weapons in your arsenal rather than “cheating”. Explaining to your clients why you are going to use a particular system for their project can be hugely beneficial. It shows that you don’t want to waist their time and money re-inventing the wheel.

Therefore, the pro’s are:

It meets there project aims
You are experienced with the system
It’s supported by a third-party team of developers who are dedicated to that one product and includes a vast community of other users who support each other
It can be implemented in a shorter period of time than building from scratch (i.e. cheaper for the client all round)
It’s a tried and tested system (You could even give your client a list of other successful companies that are using it)
It is also more than likely that a third-party product that has been around for several years is a more reliable and robust system than the one you develop in a couple of months.

That said there are always inherent risks in using anything third-party, whether it be API’s, frameworks, libraries or software and I have a general rule of thumb that I try to always adhere
to:

Don’t implement something you don’t understand!

If it breaks, it costs you time and money to fix the problem, and that’s once you’ve diagnosed what that problem is. The longer it takes you to fix the higher the risk that your client is going to lose confidence in your ability to deliver.

So take the time to do some dissecting and learn how to use your tools as fully as you can prior to implementation.

How do you price and quote different projects?

Jamie who’s just started up his own web development company is having trouble working out how to price and quote different projects and wonders if we have any tips that we’ve found helpful when quoting for clients?

One of the hardest things when starting out, and even for established businesses is finding your feet with pricing. I think the biggest lesson I learnt is not to under-quote just to gain the business, even though you are in need of clients. It makes no business sense to work for peanuts, you’re better holding off for a client who respects the work you do and pays honestly for that work rather than being a design machine churning out work just to make ends meet.

The other important thing I learnt in my first year of business is, clients who barter with your prices are generally bad news. We’ve all heard it, “if you can do this one at x-amount we have plenty of other work in the pipeline we want to use you for” – while this sounds tempting, 9 times out of 10 the promise of the further work never comes off, even if it does they would normally expect further work at the “cheap” price they paid you before, as you accepted it so you must be happy to work for that right? Wrong.

I always find it helpful to ask the client for a ballpark figure prior to laying out the full proposal, this negates you wasting time putting together the proposal of cost plus terms and conditions only to find the client wants to build ebay on a budget of £300.

I also find ballpark figures helpful because I find it easier to provide the client with options, even if they have a relatively small budget there is normally still something you can do, even if it is very basic – but it gives you a starting block to explain if their budget was a bigger they could bolt on a CMS system or have a better shopping cart, then explain the benefits of those. You’d be suprised how much the budgets are then increased by.

It’s all about providing the client with the best solution for their project at the end of the day, and if you think the best solution would be bolting on Expression Engine or the like, you need to give the client the choice to do this and expand their budget if necessary rather than cut them out of the equation because of it, it’s all about educating the client.

10 criteria for selecting a CMS

Posted in Development on March 5, 2009 by Paul Boag

Choosing a content management system can be tricky. Without a clearly deﬁned set of requirements you will be seduced by fancy functionality that you will never use. What then should you look for in a CMS?

I have written about content management systems before. I have highlighted the hidden costs of a CMS, explained the differentiators behind the feature list and even provided advice for CMS users. However, I have never asked what features you should be looking for in a content management systems. That is what I want to address here.

When I left home for University my mother taught me a valuable lesson. If you want to save money, never go grocery shopping when you are hungry and always write a list. If you don’t you will be tempted to buy things you do not need.

The same principle is true when it comes to selecting a content management system. Without a clearly defined set of requirements you will be seduced by fancy functionality that you will never use. Before you know it you will be buying an enterprise level system for tens of thousands of dollars when a free blogging tool would have done.

How then do you establish your list of requirements? Although your circumstances will vary there are ten areas that are particularly important.

1. Core functionality

When most people think of content management, they are thinking of the creation, deletion, editing and organizing of pages. They assume all content management systems do this and so take the functionality for granted. However that is not necessarily the case. There is also no guarantee that it is done in an intuitive fashion.

Not all blogging platforms for example allow the owner to manage and organize pages into a tree hierarchy. Instead the individual ‘posts’ are automatically organized by criteria such as date or category. In some situations this is perfectly adequate. In fact this limitation in functionality keeps the interface simple and easy to understand. However, in other circumstances the absence of this functionality can be frustrating.

Consider carefully the basic functionality you need. Even if you do not require the ability to structure and organize pages now, you may in the future. Be wary of any system that does not allow you to complete these core activities.

Also ask yourself how easy it is to complete these tasks. There are literally thousands of content management systems on the market, the majority of which offer the core functionality. However they vary hugely in usability. Alway look to test a system for usability before making a purchase.

The editor is one core feature worth particular attention.

2. The editor

The majority of content management systems have a WYSIWYG editor. Strangely this editor is often ill considered, despite the fact that it is the most used feature within the system.

The editor is the interface through which content is added and amended. Traditionally, it has also allowed the content provider to apply basic formatting such as the selection of fonts and colour. However more recently there has been a move away from this type of editor to something that reflects the principles of best practice.

The danger of traditional WYSIWYG editors is two fold. First, they give the content provider too much design control. They are able to customize the appearance of a page to such an extent that it could undermine the consistence of design and branding. Second, in order to achieve this level of design control the cms mixes design and content.

The new generation of editors take a different approach. The content provider uses the editor to markup headings, lists, links and other elements without dictating how they should appear.

Ensure your list of requirements include an editor that uses this approach and does not give content providers control over appearance. At the very least look for content management systems that allow the editor to be replaced with a more appropriate solution.

The editor should also be able to handle external assets including images and downloads. That brings us on to the management of these assets.

3. Managing assets

Managing images and files are badly handled by some cms packages. Issues of accessibility and ease of use can cause frustration with badly designed systems. Images in particular can cause problems. Ensure that the content management system you select forces content provider to add alt attributes to imagery. You may also want a cms that provides basic image editing tools such as crop, resize and rotate. However, finding such a cms can be a challenge.

Also consider how the content management system deals with uploading and attaching PDFs, Word documents and other similar files. How are they then displayed to users? What descriptions can be attached to the files and is the search capable of indexing them.

4. Search

Search is an important aspect of any site. Approximately half of users will start with search when looking for content. However, often the search functionality available in content management systems is inadequate.

Here are a few things to look for when assessing search functionality:

Freshness – How often does the search engine index your site? This is especially important if your site changes regularly.
Completeness – Does it index the entire content of each page? What about attached files such as PDFs, Word documents, Excel and Powerpoint?
Speed – Some search engines can take an age to return results. This is especially common on large sites.
Scope – Can you limit the scope of search to a particular section of the site or refine search results once returned?
Ranking – How does the search engine determine the ranking of results? Can this be customized either by the website owner or by the user?
Customization – Can you control how results are returned and customize the design?

The issue of customization is one that goes far beyond search.

5. Customization

I have been unfortunate enough to work with content management systems that are completely inflexible in their presentation.

The presentation of your content should not be dictated by technology. It is simply not necessary now that we have techniques for separating design and content. Unfortunately like web designers, many content management providers have failed to adopt best practice and their systems produce horrendous code. This places unreasonable constraints on design and seriously impacts accessibility.

You need a content management system that allows flexibility in the way content is returned and presented. For example can you return news stories in reverse chronological order? Can you display events on a calendar? Is it possible to extract the latest user comments and display them on the homepage? It is flexibility that makes a cms stand out.

Talking of user comments, it is worth mentioning all forms of user interactions.

6. User interaction

If you intend to gather user feedback, your cms must provide that functionality or allow third party plugins to do so. Equally, if you want a community on your site then you will require functionality such as chat, forums, comments and ratings.

As a minimum you will require the ability to post forms and collect the responses. How easy does the cms make this process? Can you customize the fields or does that require technical expertise? What about the results? Can you specify who they are emailed to? Can they be written to a database or outputted as an excel document? Consider the type of functionality that you will require and look for a cms that supports that.

Also ask what tools exist for communicating with your customers. Can you send email newsletters? Can recipients be organized into groups who are mailed individually? What about news feeds and RSS?

Finally consider how you want users to be managed. Do you need to reset passwords or set permissions? Do you need to be able to export user information into other systems?

But it is not just user permissions that may need managing. You also have to consider permissions for those editing the site.

7. Roles and permissions

As the number of content providers increase, you will want more control over who can edit what. For example, personnel should be able to post job advertisements but not add content to the homepage. This requires a content management system that supports permissions. Although implementation can vary, permissions normally allow you to specify whether users to edit specific pages or even entire sections of the site.

As the number of contributors grows still further you may require one individual to review the content being posted to ensure accuracy and consistent tone. Alternatively content might be inputed by a junior member of staff who requires the approval of somebody more senior before making that content live.

In both cases this requires a cms that supports multiple roles. This can be as simple as editors and approver, or complex allowing customized roles with different permissions.

Finally, enterprise level content management systems support entire workflows where a page update has to go through a series of checkpoints before being allowed to go live. These complex scenarios require the ability to roll back pages to a pervious version.

8. Versioning

Being able to revert to a previous version of a page allows you to quickly recover if something is posted by accident.

Some content management systems have complex versioning that allow you to rollback to a specific date. However, in most cases this is overkill. The most common use of versioning is simply to return to the last saved state.

Although this sounds like an indispensable feature, in my experience it is rarely used expect in complex workflow situations. That said, although versioning was once a enterprise level tool it is increasingly becoming available in most content management systems. This is also true of multi-site support.

9. Multiple site support

With more content management systems allowing you to run multiple websites from the same installation, I would recommend that this is a must-have feature.

Although you may not currently need to manage more than a single site, that could change. You may decide to launch a new site targeting a different audience.

Alternatively with the growth of the mobile web, you may create a separate site designed for mobile devices. Whatever the reason, having the flexibility to run multiple websites is important.

Another feature that you may not require immediately but could need in the future, is multilingual support.

10. Multilingual support

It is easy to dismiss the need to support multiple languages. Your site may be targeted specifically at the domestic market or you may sell a language specific product. However think twice before dismissing this requirement.

Even if your product is language specific, that could change. It is important that your cms can grow with your business and changing requirements.

Also just because you are targeting the domestic market does not mean you can ignore language. We live in a multicultural society where numerous languages are spoken. Being able to accommodate these differences provides a significant edge on your competition.

That said, do think through the ramifications of this requirement. Just because you have the ability to add multiple languages doesn’t mean you have the content. Too many of my clients have insisted on multilingual support and yet have never used it. They have failed to consider where they are going to get the content translated and how they intend to pay for it.

Conclusions

Features are an important part of the CMS selection process, but they are not everything. It is also important to consider issues like licensing, support, accessibility, security, training and much more.

I leave you with a word of warning – Don’t let your list of requirements become a wish list. Keep your requirements to a minimum, but at the same time keep an eye on the future. Its a fine line to walk. On one hand you don’t want to pay for functionality you never use. On the other, you do not want to be stuck with a content management system that no longer meets your needs.

This has been an extract from the Website Owners Manual - now available as an ebook and for preorder in print.

10 things a web designer would never tell you

Posted in Design on February 5, 2009 by Paul Boag

These arty-farty web designers are always telling you how your site should look. Don’t listen to them! Don’t they know the customer is always right? Here are 10 things a ‘good web designer’ would never tell you about choosing the perfect design.

Working with web designers is a nightmare. You will never meet a more opinionated bunch of snobs. They are always going on about ‘white space’, ‘composition’ and how they went to art college (like that counts as a proper education!). When it comes to choosing the design of your site, they are the last people you should listen to.

What follows are 10 things you need to know about managing a web design project, that no web designer will ever tell you!

1. Always request speculative design up front

Before you pick which web designer to work with make sure they submit some designs for your site upfront. Whatever you do, don’t pay for this work. If they really want to work with you they will swallow the cost.

Some of them might start bleating about not doing ‘speculative design’ and that only designers desperate for work would do design for free. Personally I ignore this BS. If they are ‘so successful’ that they can’t spare the time to do unpaid work for me, then I don’t want to work with them.

What is great about speculative work is it is not constrained by ‘understanding the business’ or ‘user feedback’. Its all about creativity. Surely a good web designer can come up with great work out of thin air, even if they don’t know who the target audience is and have never spoken to the client. I want something that makes me go wow. Who cares if it ‘fulfils my business objectives.’ The more bells and whistles the better!

2. Don’t get hung up on end users

Web designers are always obsessing about the end users. They worry that users won’t like this or that they won’t understand that. Its pathetic.

People like to be told what to do and they will ultimately follow your lead. I once had a web designer complain because I wanted to collect users phone numbers on a sign up form for our newsletter. Apparently ‘users’ don’t like being asked for unnecessary personal information. Can you believe it! How the hell am I going to cold call these people if I don’t have their phone numbers. Sometimes you wonder how these idiots survive in business.

Instead of focus on user needs, focus on what you can squeeze out them. Times are tough these days and so you need to maximise your returns on every one of these sheep. You have to be tough in business.

3. Rely on your gut instinct, not testing

Talking of users – what is this obsession with user testing? Just sounds like a way for web designers to charge more money if you ask me.

After all you have probably been working in your job for years. You know all there is to know about your audience, right? Even if you did run user test sessions, stakeholder interviews or whatever other made up technique is the latest fashion, its not going to tell you stuff you do not already know.

Admittedly, these sessions occasionally turn up stuff you might not expect, but can you really trust the results? Surely your years of experience count for more than a few hours of testing.

Of course, the other problem is that user testing is massively expensive. I heard from a friend that it involves usability labs, videos, two way mirrors and ‘facilitators’ (whatever those are). That all sounds pricey to me!

Some web designers will tell you that they do it by going into user’s homes and talking with them in their own environment. They justify this by saying you learn more because the user is relaxed and you can see where they live. Personally, it doesn’t sound very professional and if it isn’t expensive, how could it possibly give good results?

4. Form a committee to provide feedback

Admittedly I maybe sounding a little arrogant, but I really am not. I think it is important to get the opinions of other people. I just think web designers are not the people you should be asking. They live in a techy bubble and do not understand what it is like to be an ordinary user like us.

I suggest forming a committee to approve any designs produced. After all web designers keep telling us that design is subjective. That means you shouldn’t rely on the opinion of just one person (especially if that person is a designer). What you need is a committee to thrash out what the site should look like.

Ideally you would call a meeting with the designer in the room and get them to produce something there and then under the direction of the committee. However, most designers tend to get ‘emotional’ when you suggest that. So instead I recommend giving them the freedom to produce something themselves and then discuss it as a group.

Now inevitably this will lead to disagreement. Some people will like the colour, others will hate it. This is natural. What you need to do is seek a compromise that will please everybody. If you can have the designer on hand to try out new ideas in the meeting this will really help. Before you know it you will have a design everybody can tolerate (although admittedly not everybody will like it).

5. Become obsessed with detail

“The devil is the detail they say. Nowhere is that more true than on a website. Unfortunately you cannot rely on a web designer to have that attention to detail. Its hardly their fault. They are ‘arty’ people after all and their brains just don’t work that way.

If you want your design to be ‘just so’ you will need to micro manage every aspect of the design process. Don’t be afraid to tell your designer exactly what you need them to do. Be as specific as possible. After all, they call themselves pixel pushers.

Also insist on consistency across all browsers. Web designers tend to be sloppy in this area. It might look great in Safari (apparently this is a browser – who knew!) but in Netscape 4 it looks awful. They will give you some rubbish about not all browsers being capable of rendering modern design. They will say that as long as it is usable on all browsers, that is what matters. The hell it is! You don’t put up with that kind of rubbish in print design, so why should you on the web?

6. Enforce corporate style guides to the letter

Your organisation has a corporate design guide for a reason and yet web designers think they can flaunt the rules. They will talk about the differences between print and the web. They will go on about colour on screen, web typography and dots per inch. However, the real reason they want to ignore your guidelines is because their egos will not allow them to work within limitations.

You must take a firm hand over this issue and stick to the letter of the law. Enforce pantone numbers and ensure they use corporate typefaces. They might mutter something about limited fonts on the web but this is just not true. I know for a fact that sites built in flash can use any font you want. With that in mind I always recommend that sites are built entirely with Adobe Flash.

Oh yes, and watch out for abuse of the logo. Most style guides say that the logo must have a certain number of millimetres around it to allow ample white space. I recommend taking a ruler and measuring the space around your monitor on screen. Better still, print out the design so you can be even more accurate.

7. Fit as much on the homepage as possible

Let’s take a moment to discuss the design of your homepage in particular.

Without a doubt the homepage is by far the most important page on your site. If I look at my own website statistics the majority of people who come to my site never get further than the homepage (I have no idea why this is the case!) This is a problem.

The solution is obvious when you also consider the importance of minimising the number of clicks a user has to make to reach content – Put as much content as possible on the homepage.

This also solves the problem of everybody within your organisation wanting homepage real estate. Instead of endlessly discussing whose content is most important, simply put it all on there.

Of course with so much content on the homepage people might complain their content is lost in the crowd. The best solution in such situations is to either make it bigger or animate it. I find flashing text particularly effective.

8. Ensure all content appears above the fold

Unfortunately you are limited in the amount of space available on the homepage. This is because all content has to sit above the fold.

The fold refers to the point where users have to start scrolling. As we know users do not scroll. In 1994 Jakob Nielsen found that only 10% of users would scroll when presented with a web page. 15 years on I see no reason why this would have changed.

Some designers will tell you that the fold is a myth. They will argue that it does not exist because different browsers, resolutions and toolbars all effect the vertical available space. All I know is that on my computer I have 470px of vertical space before I have to start scrolling. I am a fairly typical user and so you should ensure all content is within this area.

The only exception to this rule is if your boss has a different amount of vertical space. If he is going to be looking at the website I suggest designing for his browser. Alternatively simply print out the site for his approval.

9. You only need to test in Internet Explorer 6

Web designers like to claim they need to spend hours testing on every browser combination. However, in reality this is just another way to extract more money from you.

All you really need to do is build the site so it works on Internet Explorer 6.

Internet Explorer is the most dominant browser having by far the largest market share. Although there are different versions of IE most companies run IE6. As corporate customers are the people with the real money you should concentrate your testing on their browser. Also surely if it works in IE6 it will work in IE7! You can trust Microsoft not to break the web.

If you want to be super cautious, add a message to your site telling users it is optimised for internet explorer. Users can then download that browser if they want to see your site.

10. SEO is more important than design

Getting the design of your website right is important. However it is no use if nobody sees it. Your number one priority has to be driving traffic to your site.

The best way to do this is through search engines. Fortunately there are a plethora of tricks and techniques to fool Google into ranking you highly. You can use hidden text, cloaking pages, redirects, doorway pages and keyword stuffing to force you up the ranking. Google kindly list these techniques in their Web Master Guidelines.

The problem with some of these techniques is that they undermine the design and content of your site. They can also affect the usability and accessibility. However, this is a sacrifice worth making in order to keep those new users rolling in.

Some web designers place a higher emphasis on repeat traffic. However, in my experience it is hard to get a user to return a second time. This is almost certainly because they have seen everything already. Why would they come back? Concentrate your efforts on creating a steady stream of new users.

Conclusions

If I could leave you with a single thought from this post it would be this – your web designer does not work with you, he works for you.

You need to take control of the design process. Its your site and you should get the design you want. The role of the designer is to implement your idea. Do not allow him to drag you down into endless discussions about ‘users needs’, ‘accessibility’ and ‘usability’. These are all distractions from the primary aim – to impress your boss and earn that next promotion.

This article was based on a presentation I gave at Bathcamp and is a sick twist version of content taken from my book ‘The Website Owners Manual‘

What's in a name?

Posted in News on December 5, 2008 by Paul Boag

I am proud to announce that the Boagworld podcast has won this years .net magazine award for best podcast. However, I do also have some regrets.

It is getting embarrassing now. When I setup the Boagworld website and subsequent podcast it was just a personal side project. The name was a silly in joke. I put no consideration into it.

In the dot com boom I worked for a startup called TownPages. I headed up a team of designers who unsurprisingly enjoyed taking the piss out of me. One of those designers (a guy called Rob Crook) took offence at me having two monitors, while the rest of the team had to make do with one and so coined the term boagworld. He painted me as an empire builder, drunk with power :) The name stuck and eventually I bought the domain. It became a form of self deprecation that referred to my over inflated ego.

When I finally decided to create my own site Boagworld seemed the obvious choice. The site and podcast was me sharing about myself, why wouldn’t I choose Boagworld?

Four years on and it has become an embarrassment. Winning the .net award has particularly driven home how bad a choice it was.

Boagworld has long since stopped being about me. It is about the community and those who contribute to it. The success of the show is down to a whole bunch of people:

Marcus Lillington – He didn’t even get a mention in the .net magazine!
Ryan Taylor – Who produces the show every week
Paul Stanton – Who finds all of our news stories
Anna Debenham – Who publishes the show and edits the interviews
The interviewees – Who come on the show every other week and share their knowledge and experience
The forum leaders - Who make the community such a vibrant and friendly place.
Those who leave posts in the comments – Many say blog comments are negative and aggressive. That has never been my experience on boagworld. You guys add genuine value in what you post.
Those who contribute to the show – Your questions, jokes, and reviews have added an extra dimension that was lacking for a long time.
Our transcribers – Who painstakingly write out a transcript of every interview we broadcast. It blows my mind that people do this for free!

Trust me, this is not false humility on my part. I am more than happy to shout about my personal achievements. However, I have noticed the more I hand control to the community, the more successful the show has become. Perhaps there is a lesson there for other website owners.

So am I going to change the name? Of course not. I think it is too late for that. Anyway I suspect many of you would object. However, it does make you realise just how important it is to get your branding right from the beginning.

142. Community

Posted in Classic shows on November 5, 2008 by Paul Boag

In this week’s show Ryan and Stanton cover the news in Paul’s absence, we’re joined by Mark Boulton to discuss design by community and Marcus reminds us to keep positive.

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News and events

Typeface.js

There are many solutions to insert custom fonts into your designs, whether it’s the good old CSS image replacement techniques, SiFR or FLiR, we’re really just biding our time until font-embedding through the @font-face rule becomes widely supported in the browsers (we’ve covered font-embedding before in show 129) But for now, there’s another technique on the block called typeface.js which uses browsers’ vector drawing capabilities to draw text in HTML documents.

Browsers have, for a while, supported vector drawing – Firefox, Safari and Opera support the canvas element was well as SVG, and IE supports VML. The Typeface.js project uses this vector capability to ‘draw’ the fonts within your webpage.

There are a couple of caveats, while the ‘drawn’ text is selectable, it’s not highlighted (though this should be remedied in future versions) and the fonts have to be converted first through a tool available on their website. But this might be a nice little fallback if the users browser doesn’t support @font-face.

Sell Your Web App

In our next news item Ryan Carson, owner of Carsonified, has this week published a blog entitled “Sell Your Web App: Lessons I Learned From Selling Dropsend” and as you would expect from that title he shares his tips and mistakes when selling his app and it’s a very interesting read.

He talks about considerations like choosing the right merchant account, anticipating high lawyer and accountancy fees and off course being discreet, don’t blog about your sale!

He’s also prompted for people to leave their own tips in the comments so if you’ve sold a web app yourself head over to thinkvitamin.com and share your experiences as well.

Lessons learned while building an iPhone site.

Theres a nice article on the Flickr Blog which details some of the lessons they learned while building the popular iPhone version of the Flickr site. They go into detail of subjects such as “don’t use a javaScript library or CSS framework”, “Load page fragments instead of full pages”, “optimize everything” and making sure to tell the user what’s happening through visual indicators.

If you’re developing iPhone apps, or are even just thinking about it I’d recommend giving this article a read before you start work, it may save you a lot of time down the line.

Free Site Validator

Our final news item brings our attention to a service blogged about by Roger Johansson at 456bereastreet.com. Roger was looking for a way to validate his site without having to do every page individually and what he found was freesitevalidator.com.

The service automatically craws each page of your site and checks it for validation, as well as giving you a report of any broken/dead links. Also known as Link Rot!

The service looks really useful so be sure to check it out.

Interview: Mark Boulton on Design by Community

Paul: So as I said at the start of the show, joining me today is Mark Boulton. Good to have you on the show Mark.

Mark: Good to be here.

Paul: It’s nice to finally talk to you, we met up for the first time just a few days ago now.

Mark: Yeah, it was it was about a week ago.

Paul: It was great to do so. I talked about you a few weeks ago on the show as well when we were talking about a recent blog post that you wrote. But we will come on to that in just a minute. What we are going to talk about today with Mark is that he has done the unthinkable from a design point of view. Haven’t you really?

Mark: I have really yes.

Paul: You’re totally insane and so I wanted to pick you brain about why you have chosen to do the unthinkable. Before we get onto that, all of this resolves around some work your doing for Drupal. Tell us a little bit A) about what Drupal is and B) what you are doing.

Mark: Drupal is a Content Management Framework I guess, that allows people to build websites and its an open source project, it’s been going for quite a while now. I think seven years or so. The software is on version six now and it has a very large user base. Probably three hundred or so registered users.

Paul: Three hundred users?

Mark: Three hundred thousand!

Paul: Ah ok.

Mark: So it’s a pretty enormous project really, and with it being Open Source these are all very passionate developers. It’s quite a developer centric platform.

Paul: Ok.

Mark: The community, with it being open source the community contribute quite a lot to it, with modules and themes and that kind of thing, plugins. Our involvement in the project is redesigning drupal.org, which is kind of the home on the web of the framework, so you can go there and download and read documentation. But it’s also the home of the community, which is a pretty huge one. So it’s very exciting.

Paul: So tell us a little bit about the design process that you’re using, and this is what you blogged on and what kind of caught my attention and struck me as a ridiculous idea and what on earth were you thinking about?

Mark: Yeah, well I’ve been working with Lisa Raquelt who is a user experience researcher and kind of strategist. She started very early on in the process. She started blogging about it with the Drupal Association, who represent the Drupal community, who engaged us on the project. They are very happy with this being an open source project. They’re very happy with us to talk about it. Which is completely opposite to the way you normally work with a client.

Paul: Yeah, totally.

Mark: Normally you sign NDAs and it’s very closed doors. You don’t want to tell the competition, its the complete opposite, which is terrifying. Lisa started blogging about it and got really really great feedback from the community, really valuable feedback. Then I then started blogging about some of the design work we were doing. We are redesigning the wordmark and the branding currently. And I thought I may as well just jump in feet first here and see how this goes, which is totally contrary to the way I’ve been working in the past and the way your mind tells you you should work. You just shouldn’t openly talk about design because you’d think that it’s very subjective and everyone is going to have their own opinions, which is true. But we blogged about it a couple of weeks ago and it’s where my blog post on my own site, markboulton.co.uk, came about was I had a lot of people including yourself Paul. Who were saying I was insane, why are you doing this? And it’s this notion of design by community that’s very different to design by committee. Which is what a lot of people was telling me, "You can’t design by committee, it never works." Which is true, it never does.

Paul: So why do you think we are so hesitant as designers to talk openly? Is it fear of the subjective, is it that we don’t like people looking at our designs before they are finished? Why are we so hesitant do you think?

Mark: It’s a really interesting question that. I had an interesting conversation with an architect a couple of weeks ago about the exact same thing. A lot of architects don’t open up. A lot of designers, maybe product designers. An insight into the way somebody works and as designers we all work very differently and sometimes it’s a very private process. To expose that it’s almost like going out shopping with no clothes on. Suddenly you’re exposing the way that you work to everybody, to judge you, and people will judge you. It is a terrifying thought. I think part of it is also schooling. If you’ve done art at school, which most designers have done, most visual designers. You slave away on a piece of art and it’s not finished yet and it’s not finished and you don’t want anyone to look at it until it is finished, so I think there is an element of that as well. When I released two versions of the Drupal wordmark, for feedback they were very much just sketches. They were right in their first iteration. I would normally never do that but I thought let’s see what the community thinks.

Paul: So what happened when you released those two sketches?

Mark: It was carnage. Initially it was quite painful sometimes to listen to some of the comments to be honest. I think anybody takes their own work personally. If someone then attacks some of your own work with necessarily seeing any of the context and that kind of thing, then it can smart a little bit. But I’ve written my own blog for a while now and I’ve got reasonably thick skin, so it wasn’t that bad. What did come out through all of the comments were trends. Trends started to emerge. So from people’s subjective opinion, if enough people were having the same kind of subjective opinion, then that becomes less of an opinion and more of trend. And it was really those trends were looking to identify, that we could feed back into the development of the design.

Paul: It’s interesting there you talked about the fact the people who were seeing this stuff didn’t have the context. Did you not prepare the ground in any way? Did you not tell them why you took the approach you did? Or did you literally just put out the branding there and go, "What do you think?"

Mark: Yeah, there is a reasonably sticky situation with Drupal, particularly with the wordmark. They have a kind of logo at the moment, which is a kind of drop with a face on it. And that logo at the moment is under GPL so it can’t be trademarked which means the Drupal Association can not protect their own property, as it were, because this logo is under GPL. Which means that anybody can take it, change it, completely mess around with it. Which is fine, the community have been doing that for a long time now. So when I took on and blogged about this redesign of the wordmark, there was not the context, the business context, was perhaps lacking because I felt that I could not provide that business context. Because I was the designer and that should really come from someone else, and that was a little late in coming. Which is why the first blog post really didn’t go down too well, because I assumed the audience knew that this project was happening. As it turned out, it actually wasn’t. They didn’t know and it was all a bit of a mess, but it’s kind of smoothed over now, with later iterations and there’s been more blogging done by the Drupal Association. Which has provided the rationale for redesigning the branding.

Paul: Right, so there is a lesson to be learned there I guess of the importance of providing context and why stuff is happening and why you are taking the approach you are I guess.

Mark: Absolutely yeah, I think context is really important, especially for branding and logo design and that kind of thing. Just providing, and I was very aware of this when I blogged it. We all saw what happened with the London 2012 logo, when that is released very early without any context, it’s either misunderstood, or just hated or really liked. I’d rather have that kind of opinion anyway, than somebody kind of going, "Yeah, its alright."

Paul: You prefer to create a strong reaction.

Mark: Yeah, either positive or negative, because those are the reactions you can act upon. Anything in the middle is kind of gray, middle ground. That’s actually very very difficult to take on board and move forward with. So any kind of negative or positive reaction, you can take that on board, which we did. But the context for the Drupal logo is going to be the other stuff around it, which is the branding, the tone of voice, what is said on the page, the design, the other design elements around it, how it interacts with the existing kind of drop because they are still keeping that as a mascot. So it’s how all of that works together was perhaps lacking at this early stage. Which is why perhaps, going back to your initial question, designers don’t actually release very early on because the context isn’t there yet.

Paul: Yeah, which makes a lot of sense. When it came to the feedback, so you were obviously asking for feedback here, were you setting any kind of constraints on that feedback? From time to time I’ve talked on the subject about how to get design signoff and that kind of thing and one of the things that I always say is, "Don’t just say, ‘What do you think?’" but actually kind of try and guide the type of feedback you want and give a context to it, is that something you did?

Mark: Yeah. Not initially, which was why we had to.. The initial blog post didn’t really go down so well from an actionable sort of feedback point of view. Because I felt that a lot of the design questions I wanted answered. I think it was too early and I hold my hands up for that. I think it was too early in the process for me to blog about that. The second post that I put up I asked for specifics on whether or not the word mark needed a capital D or a lower case d and whether or not it needed, we were developing the idea of a secondary icon with it which is a splash and whether or not it needed the splash or not. We got some really great feedback because that focused people’s attention. That provided a really great selection of trends which have fed back into the next iteration. The first post was a bit of a free for all to be honest. Nothing really useful came out of it, which was a shame.

Paul: I mean you kind of, you talked about trends. Do you think that that is kind of, those trends that you see emerging, have the way that you have taken those on board has it been a kind of anecdotal trends or are you talking statistics here? Were you kind of marking down how many people you know said, "Yes, there should be an uppercase D." or whatever or are you just kind of taking on a feeling? Does that make sense?

Mark: Yeah. It was kind of taking on the feeling. More qualitative than quantitative at this point. However, for the cap D or lowercase d we could have just run a poll which in hindsight we should have done, is just had a tick box for each question as it were. However I’m always a little, I actually quite like a lot of the qualitative feedback because people were saying, "Yes cap D and splash," but then they go on to say something else. If we just reigned it into a simple poll then we would have lost all that really great, valuable feedback, because it’s that that provides context for their answer.

Paul: Yeah, I mean you won’t necessarily know why they’re saying a capital D.

Mark: Exactly, and there was enough of people saying the same kind of thing in those comments for it to be a pretty good trend for us to act upon. And it also throws out more heads about them on as it were. There was a lot of valuable comment from the Drupal community especially. And that we would have spent six months trying to research the ins and outs of that community, the history and the culture because there is an awful lot, you know. It’s been going seven years and there’s a lot of people in there. I would have been around â€˜til next year trying to fully understand that community if I hadn’t adopted this open way of working.

Paul: It’s quite interesting, isn’t it? I mean when they were coming back and you were seeing a trend emerging very definitely one way or the other over something, were you always going with that decision or were sometimes you saying "Well actually, although everybody’s saying we should go with a capital D or whatever, I’m not going to because of X, Y and Z."

Mark: Yes. I think there does have to be somebody who is willing to make a decision on something that needs to be decided upon. If fifty percent of people said, "I like a black website," and fifty percent of people say, "I like a white website," the compromise is that you end up with a gray website and nobody wants gray. So, what we’ve done especially with the cap D and lowercase d for example there was pretty much an overwhelming response to, "Yes it should be lowercase d," because it’s kind of more attractive aesthetically and all the rest of it. However we’ve chosen to go with uppercase D and that is because of business requirements and also because of the ties in with the documentation. We’ve revised the word mark now where the uppercase D is actually a lot better than the previous version. Perhaps when I posted initially the lowercase d and the uppercase D were not really on an equal footing design-wise. The uppercase D needed a lot of refinement and again perhaps that skewed the results, skewed the comments and so we’ve actually reversed the general trend there and said, "Actually no. We think we should go with the uppercase D for this reason and this reason," and that will continue throughout the whole process. We’ve got to remember, and it’s very important, that the Drupal Association hired us for our expertise and if we feel strongly about something then hopefully we’ll go ahead with that and we’ll push back on any feedback.

Paul: I mean it’s quite interesting. You talk about, "as we go through this process." So it sounds like you’re gonna keep going down this line, that you’re gonna, you know, as you create say, the website interface that you’ll expose that.

Mark: Yeah we are. If you have a look on groups.google.org and do a search for the redesign group in there we have set in a bunch of dates in the calendar for gathering community feedback. So we will be posting up a link on Thursday to the prototype we’re developing and we’ll be doing that for the next six to eight weeks. Every other week we’ll be posting a link up there to gather feedback throughout the weekend. So we’ll be posting it up on Thursday/Friday morning and then we’ll be kind of locking off comments on Monday and then all of those comments will hopefully try and establish some trends and feedback. That’ll then feed back into the next iteration. So we’ve pretty much set a precedent here and we’re gonna be designing in the open â€˜til the final curtain call, as it were.

Paul: Excellent! So how do you feel this differs from design by committee? Because from chatting to you when we met up whenever it was I got the distinct impression from you, you saw this as a very different kind of experience, but why, what makes it different?

Mark: Yeah, well I’ve been involved in design by committee quite a few times. I’m sure a lot of designers have and generally in those instances you’re in a boardroom or a meeting and there are several people, maybe twelve tops, and they all have very strong opinions. Generally, as I said in my blog post, there might be an alpha male in there or two sometimes. People can rally around the loudest voice, so all of a sudden that becomes the opinion. It can be a very, very difficult environment to work in because there are so few people, all with a very loud voice. Design by community is a different kettle of fish really because we’re designing for essentially 300,000 clients and the wider web community as well, we’re not just asking the Drupal community for feedback here, we’re also asking the wider web community for feedback. Anybody can get involved in this, it’s not just for the Drupal community. So anybody can. So if you feel like, talking to the listeners here, if anyone feels like weighting in with their comments, please do. Because it’s very important to us that the wider audience is reflected in this redesign and not just designing for the Drupal community. So it’s a very different process I think, because we’re kind of staffing back a little bit. We’re not in a meeting room with twelve people trying to come up with a solution. We’re putting stuff out there. We’re asking for comments from a lot of people who are thankfully providing comments, which is great. Really thoughtful feedback, then we can try and establish trends and then it’s those trends that we act upon. It becomes a little less subjective. That’s the idea anyway.

Paul: It’s the scale that turns it into trends rather than just an opinionated person I guess.

Mark: Yeah, that’s right. And you do have to, like I said initially, sometimes it’s difficult to read a bit of a flaming going on on your blog posts, you know, because there are quite a few people out there who will be very passionate about this project. They’re very passionate about Drupal because they’ve got a lot of time and money, a lot of people their livelihood is dependent upon this platform. So we have to really take that into account that this is serious for a lot of people. We’re not just redesigning a website here, we’re actually providing a platform for a community to do their work. So it’s pretty important stuff.

Paul: So, I mean do you think that this is a kind of a peculiar situation? You know, is the Drupal project unusual or would this be a kind of approach you would encourage for other designers working on other types of projects?

Mark: It’s a really interesting question. I mean I’ve worked waterfall methodologies in the past so you get your, you do your research, you do your initial designs, they get signed off and then you build your website, it’s very linear. And after working at the BBC for so long I realized that, because we worked very iteratively at the BBC that actually a more iterative approach was actually more valuable so to take that client-side approach, and the agile software development approach, to take that commercially with design is actually very difficult. But with the clients we are currently working with, that’s the way that we work. So we don’t work in a waterfall methodology, we work very iteratively upon fixed time scales. So we have a week per iteration for example. Now the feedback thing, the only difference really between Drupal and any other big project is the fact it’s open source and has a very, very big active community who are used to working in this way. I think that’s the critical thing is that they’re used to people putting software updates out early, feedback and they get changed and honed down until the final version is released but it’s just the way that they’re working so we have to kind of slot into that culture and it’s not a culture that design thrives in actually.

Paul: No, I can imagine.

Mark: No it’s a very difficult environment for design because, and it goes back again to one of your initial questions about wanting to sit there and craft a solution until it’s finished. Well that goes counter to the way that this open source culture works. They want to see stuff early. They want to feed back. They want their say. So as long as you kind of understand that and they’re not being grouchy or attacking you in any way they just want the very best for the project. So yeah, it’s worthwhile considering it as a working approach. Certainly the iterative approach is worthwhile considering for any project but the getting feedback early, if your audience is big enough then give it a go and see how it works. You know if you speak to me in six weeks time I may have a completely different conversation. This is really very much a work in progress and we’re just seeing how it’s going. It’s not been done as openly in the public before. I can’t really remember any projects from a design perspective that have been like this. It’s fairly unique. Which is really great, it’s exciting. So we’ll just see. We’ll see what happens.

Paul: Yeah, very interesting stuff Mark. Thank you very much for coming on the show.

Mark: Thank you for having me. It’s been a pleasure.

Paul: And we will wait with baited breath to see future blog posts as to how the experience goes to the bitter end.

Mark: Please do because I’ll be blogging about it pretty much constantly throughout the life of the project.

Paul: We’ll keep an eye on that. Thank you very much for your time and we’ll get you back on soon enough.

Mark: Great! Thanks Paul!

Paul: Bye bye.

Mark: Cheers. Bye.

Thanks goes to Todd Dietrich and Andy Kinsey for transcribing this interview.

Listeners feedback:

Keeping Positive

Got this question from Bill (remember him?!)….

I have just found out that the potential new project I have put loads of work in to winning is not coming my way. I wrote an extensive proposal, did some unpaid mock-up work, attended a presentation and jumped through every hoop thrown my way.

I was told by the client that it was ‘very close’ but on this occasion I had not been successful. Gutted.

How do you guys at Headscape cope with these types of rejections?

To be honest, and this is from a lot of bitter experience, it’s hard and some are harder to take than others.

I do, however, have a few thoughts and pointers that may help. Firstly, you can help yourself by weeding out the enquiries that you will never win.

Are these people worth your time?

Check out the email address of the enquirer. If it’s gmail, hotmail, yahoo or similar then chances are your potential client is just looking for free consultancy from you. I.e. they have an idea and have no idea what’s entailed in making that idea happen. And they certainly will not pay you to research it.

Secondly, and I am only aware of this possibility in the UK, but you can check up on a company through the Companies House website. This tells you all sorts of useful information about how long they’ve been around, their liquidity etc. You may change your mind about responding to a tender sent from a dissolved company.

Talk money

There is nothing more frustrating than being told that you are ‘way out of the ballpark’ after putting hours, even days, of effort into a proposal.

Ask people, up front, what their budget is. Explain that you need to know it to respond with the most appropriate solution for them. An example I often use is usability testing. Everyone knows that testing, preferably many times throughout a project can only be a good thing. But that said, not doing any testing doesn’t automatically mean that your client will get an unusable turkey for a site.

If you don’t get anywhere by asking then create a 2 or 3 paragraph solution with associated tasks (a mini proposal I guess) and email that to the potential client with an associated ballpark price. If they still want you to deliver a ‘full’ proposal then, chances are, your ballpark is within their range.

Ask/listen

Ok, so assuming you think that responding to the proposal is a good use of your time, you now need to read their brief in detail noting questions you have along the way. You will make a number of assumptions about what is the correct solution for this client while you are reading.

You need to talk to the client to confirm their answers to your questions but you also need to listen to their responses to ensure that your assumptions are correct. It’s very easy to arrogantly assume that ‘you know best’ because you’ve been doing it for years.

This also applies to your written proposal. Don’t describe and price up what you think the client needs – go through every point in their brief and respond to it accordingly. If it is plain obvious that something they’re asking for makes no sense at all, then tackle it head on and explain why they shouldn’t be doing it.

Stick to your guns

We decided, quite a while back, and for very good reason, that we would not do any unpaid mock-up design work. In some cases this has been seen as a positive thing (once it has been explained) but with other potential projects I’m sure it has adversely affected our chances of winning the work. However, we should stick to what we believe is right. Chopping and changing presents a negative image to both potential clients and our staff.

If you do decide to present initial mock-up ideas don’t be tempted into iterating them further. Any client who asks for is again asking for free work and is most definitely to be avoided.

Be gracious

Sometimes you just have to accept that you’re not the right fit with certain companies – even if the initial phone call or meeting went really well. It may well be that someone else delivers just the thing that really swings it for the client – sometime you just don’t know what that is.

If you do lose then you need to accept that you win some, you lose some. It often happens that these things happen in streaks which can be very frustrating. We found ourselves turning away superb opportunities earlier this year simply because we were too busy.

But always try to bring a positive attitude to any rejection because it is possible that these people will contact you again for further work (though beware that you are simply making up numbers!) or they may recommend you to others. They won’t do either if you react badly to the rejection!

128. Details

Posted in Classic shows on July 30, 2008 by Paul Boag

On this weeks show I’m accompanied by our Producer Ryan and Researcher Stanton. We Interview Dan Rubin on the Details of Design, and answer your questions on managing a bigger team and terms and conditions.

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News and events

Silverback Launches

This week has seen the release of Silverback, the highly anticipated app from the guys at Clear:Left. After months of speculations about what Silverback actually was, the “spontaneous, unobtrusive, usability testing software for web designers” is finally available for download.

We’re sure a majority of you know all about Silverback, but for those of you who don’t, Silverback, which is available exclusively for the Mac, is Clear:Left’s answer to convenient usability testing on the go. Utilising the iSight and screen capture facilities of the Mac, user’s experiences can be recorded and reviewed at a later date, taking away the costly and often difficult to setup up approach of using specialist equipment like multiple camcorders which can lead to hours of time spent trawling through video footage.

PatternTap

Whether you’re a designer or developer, there are many occasions where you go on the hunt for inspiration in interface design. Normal CSS Gallery sites give you great examples of full site design, but usually don’t focus on the small details of interface design. The only site i’ve ever been aware of is Christian Watsons “Elements of Design“, which is a great resource showing examples of elements like comment forms, calendars & date pickers, footers, image captions and so on.

There’s a new site I’ve come across this week called PatternTap.com which also wants to collect these design patterns and focus on specific elements of design and to help you to reference, collect and organise them for your own needs.

PatternTap is shaping up to be an absolute goldmine of inspiration, and looks like it will build into a large resource of design element exmples. There’s currently 46 collections, everything from 404 pages, audio players, pagination and search boxes. It let’s you create your own “lightbox” style user sets, so you can keep your favourite examples organised for future reference.

I’ll definitely be adding this to my toolbox of design inspiration links, and recommend you give it a look too.

Google App Engine Update

This week also sees the release of a small update to the Google Apps Engine. The Google Apps Engine allows developers to build applications on Googles own infrastructure. I have to admit that the Google Apps Engine is not something I’ve developed with personally however that doesn’t stop us talking about it so let’s run through the list:

Firstly you can now have up to 10 apps on your account as opposed to the previous limit of three 3, the Engine also limits developers to 1000 files per application, so the increase in the number of apps you can now have is a welcome addition.
Time windows for Dashboard graphs: Zoom in on the data in your dashboard to get a more accurate picture of whats going on. You can zoom in to see graphs for the last 24, 12, and 6 hour periods.
Log files can now be downloaded in plain text.
And finally you can send email as the logged in user: If you’re using the users API, you can now send email from the email address of the currently-logged-in user were as before it was only possible from the administrators account.

S3

So some of you may be aware that Amazon’s S3 service suffered from some 6 hours of downtime recently, this echoes the issues of service availability that happened back in February.

For those of you who don’t know, the S3, or “Simple Storage Service” is a scalable and inexpensive data storage infrastructure, which allows you to store and retrieve any amount of data.

So this is a fantastic idea – in theory, it means that if you’re developing a large website or web app and need lots of storage, you don’t have to pay for huge webhosting plans with lots of physical diskspace, you store your assets “in the cloud” as it were, and you’re charged based on how much storage space you, and how much bandwidth you consume.

Lots of large sites rely on the S3 service for their storage needs, Twitter, BaseCamp and SlideShare to name but 3 and the recent downtime has raised the age old issue, “are we putting all our eggs in one basket?” Jonathan Boutelle put it best in a recent blog post, stating “When S3 goes down, the internet goes down”. Aral Balkan also wrote recently urging people to have contingency plans in case events like this happen again, stating that the Open Source Google App Engine SDK could be the answer.

Interview: Dan Rubin The Details Of Design

Paul:Joining me today is Dan Rubin who I recently saw at the @media conference. Good to see you or speak to you again Dan should I say?

Dan Rubin:Good to speak to you Paul.

Paul:It was good to meet up with you at @media. It feels like a long time since we met up and it was great to hear you speaking there. That was a first for me.

Dan Rubin:Thanks. It was a privilege to be able to help out Patrick it being very last-minute.

Paul:Oh was it?

Dan Rubin:He sent me an email about two weeks prior saying someone had dropped out and of course I wasn’t going to say no.

Paul: laughs

Dan Rubin:It’s been over 10 years since my last trip to the UK, so it was a great opportunity.

Paul:Cool. Well I have to say considering you only had two weeks to put together the presentation, it was truly phenomenal. It was an excellent presentation and I really enjoyed it. You were talking about ‘design is in the detail’ I guess was the kind of subject you were tackling?

Dan Rubin: I’ve been talking a lot lately about the level of detail, the attention to detail and the design and I’ve done a couple of presentations with Brian Veloso over the last year on that same kind of topic. This was an extension of that injecting some of my own little personal preferences into the talk and got to cover things like typography and some of the simple practical things that you can improve very easily that result in a big improvement and typography, and little tricks in using grids, not on how to make them but how to actually implement them and how they can help workflow and bring things together and make layouts tighter and better without
that much effort and the same thing with digital transformations in photography and a lot of pixel detail that a lot of people don’t notice and its all about the subtle level of design.

Paul:I got this vague feeling that as you were talking you were a little bit appologetic for some of these manushi that kind of individually you sit there and go ‘how is anyone going to notice that?’, but accumulatively they have this effect on the design don’t they?

Dan Rubin:Well that’s the thing. It comes down more to feeling than seeing but its about as a designer what you feel with your eyes more than anything else and how that translates to what users or viewers or readers also feel but since they don’t know it is there, they are likely to never actually see it, but as a designer you’ll know it is there, you can see it, and the trick is to get it to the point of you can still see it but it is not really visible it is just felt.

Paul:A subconscious expression?

Dan Rubin:Yes.

Paul:You covered loads of tips in your presentation and there was some excellent stuff in there but if you had to pick out one that has the biggest impact on a design, which of the many things you talked about would that be?

Dan Rubin:I think what it would be is to really underscore trusting your eyes and it seems a really simple concept and whenever I put that up on the screen you get giggles from the audience. The truth is many of us don’t actually take the time as designers to just step away and look at what we’re working on. It doesn’t matter whether it is for screen or print. The medium is a material at this point and it is just having faith in what you see and what you feel. That’s what being a visual creative is all about. It is trusting what you see. It is the same as being a good musician comes down to trusting what you hear and sometimes we forget that, and we start getting into designing based on the rules or how we think we are supposed to do things or designing on technical limitations alone. When we do that we stop using our eyes.

Paul:It’s interesting in the presentation you talk quite a lot about some of the details and the mechanics of design. You were talking about font sizes going incrementally up, your heading and your sub headings and there being a mathematical relationship in their sizes. You talked about being consistent in your margins and padding and how all those things inter-relate. Are we saying that design is something that can be learnt and it is a mathematical thing and it’s a set of rules that you just adhere to? Or is there some sort of underlying artistic thing, some people just know how to do it and it’s not something that can be learnt. What’s your opinion on it because I get mixed feelings from you? On one hand you talk about these rules and on the other hand you talk about stepping back and looking at your design and it feels more kind of arty-farty if that makes sense!

Dan Rubin:What a load of questions and rightfully so! It’s something I’ve written about before years ago and had a bit of back and forth on the topic with Paul Scrivvens of 9 Rules, with him arguing that you don’t need any natural artistic ability because he didn’t think he had any, yet he was clearly doing things that looked good. I was arguing the opposite but when it comes down to it it’s really not something that you can say definitively either way. Just as there are people who naturally seem to be good musicians or good athletes or good at math and programming, there are people who seem to naturally be good at design and any kind of creative endeavours. It is really difficult to tell whether that seeming innate ability has come from something that happened in very early childhood development or if they were born with it. I do think that however difficult it is to put a finger on it, once you get old enough, especially to the point w here probably most of your listeners are doing what your doing for a living already or you are thinking of changing from one thing to another, you’re past that point of subconscious development where you need to put conscious effort into something and you can. I think you can be trained to do most of the things designers do. You can even train yourself to see the way that creatives see. The older you get the harder it becomes to incorporate into the way you view the world. That is a big part of it. That comes down to sometimes the different personalities. How hard is it to put a finger on what makes you ‘you’. I would say as a teacher, and I spend a lot of time teaching high school students over here about music as well, since that’s my other passion, and it’s specifically not just playing music but it’s specifically singing which is one of those things that you can either carry a tune or you can’t. I’ve also seen kids who can’t carry a tune when they start singing learn how they train themselves. They learn the proper muscle memory, and it’s amazing to see what people can actually accomplish when they put their mind to it. If you are listening out there and you want to become a better designer or maybe you’re not a designer and you’re a programmer or a web standards junkie, and I can say that because I am one too, and there isn’t any reason that you can’t become a better designer, or become a designer from scratch if you realy really want to.

Paul:I think that’s really important to say because I think so many people are intimidated from getting involved in design because there’s almost a bit of snobbery. If you’re not artistic, you’re not artistic there’s nothing you can do about that. I personnaly don’t believe that that’s true. Like you say I think there are some people that are naturally inclined that way but I think a lot of the principles that you were talking about in your presentation pretty much anybody can pick up on and do, which is what encouraged me so much hearing you talk.

Dan Rubin:That is one of the reasons why one of the reasons I say one of the most important thing is to trust your eyes and that’s instinctual. These rules, as a good teacher you have to teach these rules. When you start learning any discipline the first things that you are taught are the basics.The basics are things that many people, once they learn enough, don’t conciously think about, but what you find if you deconstruct their work is that they are doing them, they have incorporated into their flow into their process so it’s second nature to them. What we think of as instinct is really just experience.

Paul:Yeah. One of the things you did mention in the presentation that grabbed my attention is you talked a lot about texture and adding more texture to your design and about how that creates a real feel. There seems to be a slight skism, I don’t know if that is the right word, but like 2 different camps in design at the moment. People like yourself, Elliot Jay Stock is another example that does very rich, very textured design. It’s absolutely gorgeous. At the other end of the extreme you’ve got people like 37signals doing this minimalistic functional design. How do you feel those two sides fit togeth
er? Is there a role for one or the other or have they both got their place

Dan Rubin:I really think that both have their place and more than that it’s popular to create divisions. Not just these days, if you look at any industry that spends a lot of its time looking at itself, like we do, you start to find reasons to create little clicks within it or factions or what have you. If you just ignore those splits that happen because we spend way too much time looking at what we do and try to deconstruct it and answer that question of ‘why’. What you find is that it’s all the same thing. When I talk about texture it is important to understand that it doesn’t just mean rough or ??bulap or brick. Texture can also mean smooth and polished and speaking directly about 37signals for instance. I’ve used their apps and I’ve loved them since the first time they came out. If you look at the first versions of Base Camp and Backpack, before their incremental re-design they’ve actually added the little drop shadow over time. If y ou look at it as a designer you see the flaws in the way they’ve done it because it doesn’t look real and it just ends at some edges, it has hard edges, but that’s not the point. The point is they added it because it created a separation, they added it because they felt it needed it. The rest of the interface doesn’t need any other texture because it isn’t supposed to have a feel to it. It’s actually supposed to totally get out of the way and there are different approaches to minimalism. You can use minimalism in subtle detail where you add in things like I was showing in my presentation, or you can use minimalism where you keep taking away and 37signals apps feel right, they always have felt right to me so as far as I’m concerned that means they’ve hit the nail on the head. It shows when you see people trying to recreate the application interface and theat style that 37signals uses and they get stuck in this pattern of adding things, like they feel ‘well, that’s 37siganls l ook so I think we have to add things to make it better, to make it better, and they never work as well because it’s not just about that. So the answer is, and I try to underscore this when I talk to people about this or present about it or even write about it, as much as these things can be presented as rules and definitive this is the way to do something. the fact is you have to do what works best for you and your particular project or circumstance or situation, and you also have to be open to the fact that what works for you right now might change. It might be different next year, next month or next week, and being able to adapt to your situation as a designer specially is really important, because you have to adapt if you’re doing client work, you have to adapt from project to project, because your style might work for one client but you might need to tweek your style to do what’s best for another client. If your working on your own applications, what works for your users now might not work for your users once they become users that have used your app for a year and they’re experts now.

Paul:You talk about tweaking your style. How easy is that, do you think, to do in reality? I mean I’ve got a very strong style in my design, and I really struggle and I look at someone like Cameron Moll’s style and I just love it. I love the light-handed feel, he’s very delicate, beautiful design, and I wish I was more like that, but there is no way I can make myself become like that, or can I? Is there a way of changing your style?

Dan Rubin:I think we’re all naturally mimics. I’m not going to dig into my opinions on human adapability too much. I spend a lot of time thinking about that as far as evaluating how people use things, whether it’s interfaces or products and it’s interesting to start to see those patterns but you can see it on a global scale too. Historically human beings are species very, very adaptable and that happens on macro and micro levels. If you want to adapt your style you can. You look for the inflences you want to model yourself after. This is just how people learn to be designers when they’re starting out, or learn to be artists. When I took my first watercolour and oil painting classes when I was 11 or 12, the way we learnt was to recreate examples that were painted by masters. So learn how to use the brush strokes they use, to learn how to mix colours the way that they use them, to learn how to use the tools the way that they use them becau se you only discover your preferences and your style by mimicing, copying others. You find out what works and you decide what works for you and what doesn’t. So changing how you design and how you see is not necessarily easy, because at a certain point you’re reprogramming muscle memory and from my experience with singing I know how difficult that is to do. Once muscle memory has been built up to the point where you don’t think about it and you just react, it’s very difficult to break that down and re-build it. Difficult does not mean impossible.

Paul:That’s really interesting that you say that because I’ve always very much struggled to design in any other way than I already do, but I obviously need to push myself in this area. Talking of 37signals, I’m sure you have been following their recent post and various reactions to it about skipping Photoshop, and how they move straight into building with HTML and CSS and I just wondered what your opinion was on that.

Dan Rubin:I know I’d get roped into this discussion somehow. There has already been some great responses from people like Jeff Croft and Mark Boulten to the 37signals post on that, and even interestingly enough a follow-up post sourced by 37signals announcing that they were looking for an additional designer for their team that can push them into different directions that they havent been going naturally. That comes back to the whole adaptability and willing us to change and being open to it. In the argument itself I can’t say I always start in Photoshop or Fireworks or some sort of visual tool. I think Jeff said 37signals starts with a visual tool, it’s pencil and paper. I think even if your tool is a marker on a whiteboard to a certain extent everybody tends to start there, even if you don’t start there you start with a picture in your mind. So there’s some level in the process where a visualisation is occuring, if that’s fair to say. When it comes down to it why does the tool that you’re using to visualise really matter? It starts in your head if you’re a primarily visual person you can either realise that vision by programming it and seeing it in the browser or using Photoshop as a tool. All of these are just tools when it comes down to it, they’re not the end result. They’re just part of the process. I’ve done both. I’ve built straight from XHTML and CSS many times and I do tend to find that most visual designers that have weighed in on this conversation also find that in my opinion the result ends up being more simplistic. that’s not necessarily to say bad. It’s just different and you’ll find that the tools that you use as a visual creative influsence the end result because that comes down to constraints. 37signals of course is huge on constraints and you do save time when you’re doing straight HTML and CSS, you skip a lot of the temptation to play around like I know I do with layers and layer setting s and percentages of opacity. I spend a lot of time playing when I’m in Photoshop, I don’t think that’s bad. That’s part of the creative process when using that tool. When I used to paint which I havent done in way too long. I would play with my
palatte, when I was doing oils my palatte and my palatte knife was tool before I got to the canvas, and I would play with mixing my colours ‘and that’s not quite right’ and ‘wait and go over here’ and sometimes you get it onto the canvas and it doesn’t look the way you want it to and have to wait for it to dry and then you paint over it because that’s what you do with that tool. When you’re doing watercolours you don’t have that forgiveness of the tool, you have extra constraints, so you don’t experiment as much putting it on the paper, putting the paint to paper because you know once it’s dried and there you can’t go back. you can’t paint over it. So you adjust your style depending on the tools and the workflow and it’s all good, it ‘s just all different and you have to I think do yourself a favour and experiment to find which works best for you and don’t be afraid if you’re working on a project and you think ‘this doesn’t feel like it needs a lot of subtle gradients and lines and shadows and Photoshop work. I might just be able to build this without using Photoshop at all’. So do it if it feels like that will work best go that route. If you feel the opposite go the other route. If you feel like it should involve a lot more natural media pull out your watercolour pad and paint something and scan it in and incorporate that

Paul:It really down to the right tool for the job thought process.

Dan Rubin:Exactly. The thing that 37signals does really well is stick to their guns. They state their opinion so firmly that people can easily interpret it as law and I think that’s very important. In any industry it’s very important to have people who do that, who can stick to what they believe so strongly and apply it so universally that it creates this set of rules, but it doesn’t mean that they have to be followed or cant be partially followed or bent or broken and you find just as much as 37signals is enfatic about skipping Photoshop. There are other people who would never in a million years go straight to HTML and CSS, doesn’t mean that either camp is right.

Paul:OK. One last question just to wrap this up. We’re running out of time but there’s something I wanted to ask you which is: We’ve been already talking about that there are people that may be want to learn to be better designers, to find their style and to move into this area, perhaps they’ve been a developer background and they’ve been previously put off exploring design because they have been made to feel inadequate. What kind of resources would you encourage people to look for or look at in order to get going I guess?

Dan Rubin:Whether you’re starting from scratch or just trying to improve what you already have it’s important to touch on a couple of specific areas, and those are typography, layout and working with colour. This applies just to design because it’s worked whether you’re designing on the web or designing in print or branding or whatever you’re doing. Typography is kind of my first love with design and if you want to learn about typography you have to go out and buy ‘The Elements of Typographic Style’ by Robert Bringhurst. It’s the bible for typographers. It’s really easy to read too because he’s a well respected Canadian poet as well. He just happens to be an excellent typographer and book designer, so if you are in a rush, you cant get to the book store or Amazon right away Mark Boulton’s series ‘Five Simple Steps To Better Typography’ is a great place to start as well and he references a ton of other good resources. Start there if you a re going to start online but no matter what buy ‘The Elements of Typographic Style’. When it comes to layout there are a lot of things that you can learn about layout but you’ve got to learn about grids, even if you never use them. Do yourself a favour of learning and I’ll reference Mark again, actually I’ll reference Mark in all three of these. He’s got great starter tutorials about this stuff so ‘Five Simple Steps To Designing Grid Systems’ is really a great place to start. Cameron Moll has written about Griding The 960 and read up over on Khoi Vinh’s site about grids. ‘Grids Are Good’ is a great demonstration as well, and if you want to get a physical book to hold ‘Grid Systems In Graphic Design’ is a great, great phyisical book and I think it’s important to as web designers to also reference ‘Print’, because Print is where all these design rules come from and typography rules and colour rules, so learn from these different implem entations and you’ll figure out things that you can do that you didn’t think about, because you haven’t seen them on the web. So ‘Grid Systems In Graphic Design’ is by Josef Müller Brockmann I believe would be the pronounciation, look that up. Colour, and this is something that’s very preferential maybe but read up again Mark Boulton’s ‘Five Simple Steps To Designing With Colour’. He’s great at teaching, he’s great at communicating all these things. Also play around with some of the online tools like Adobe Kuler, is fun. Look at what other people are putting together, look at combinations, again feel is important. Whatever feels right for what you’re trying to do. Another cool tool is Colorjack. You got a couple of ways of mixing colours and it’s really, really cool to look at. Finally on the topic of colour whenever using colours in an interface please be aware of the different types of colourbl indness that exist, and there are lots of tools online. Photoshop CS4 will have some tools built in as well but there are plug-ins that you can get right now for all sorts of tools and online tools as well that allow you to see what you’re designing, or even just a colour palatte. See them through the eyes of someone that has these various colourblindness afflictions and make sure that whatever you do doesn’t render something unuseable to what ends up being a large percentage of the viewing public when it comes down to it.

Paul:WOW !! That’s a good set of resources !! My word.

Dan Rubin:You didn’t think I’d be that prepared did you?

Paul:That’s a superb list. I certainly didn’t know about all those posts from Mark Boulton. there was some great stuff in there – Thank you very much Dan. Just to say that Dan’s talk at @media will be no doubt going live at some point and you’ll be able to download it and listen to it. Definitely do that, it was superb. So check that out. You will be able to go the shownotes for this episode for all those links that will be useful as well. No doubt you won’t be able to remember them all. Dan thanks for coming on the show, it’s very much appreciated and we will get you back on in the future.

Dan Rubin:Thanks very much for having me Paul. It was a pleasure.

Thanks to Sarah Galley for transcribing this interview.

Linkage

You can find Dan Rubins site, Superfluous Banter here.

Typography

Layout

Colour

Listeners feedback:

Managing a Bigger Team

Jon asks: We are a company of 4 people – myself (owner, design lead and general business development/project management person), one designer, and 2 developers.

We are hopefully about to merge with a slightly larger company in a neighbouring town who have slightly more staff than we do (7 in all), and who have more of a project management structure – 2 project managers, using the services of 1 designer, 3 developers, and 1 designer/developer. I would end up as owner/MD of the enlarged company.

My question is really about project management? What do you think is the best organizational structure for a company of 11 people? I was feeling pushed on the project management side before this merger came along, and the merger will bring 2 project managers with it. How does Headscape do it for example – I think you have project managers there – do the designers and developers report to project managers, or do the project managers pick from a pool of design and development resource as required? What are your thoughts generally on the whole project management side of things.

A-ha… this is part two to a question I answered a few weeks back relating to pricing work after two companies merge. I wanted more detail at the time and now I have it!

Comparing to Headscape, we have 4 designers, 4 developers, 3 project managers, 2 business development/analysts and 1 lazy good-for-nothing called Paul … seriously though, Paul effectively markets Headscape and I have to say he’s rather good at it (ungrits teeth…)

Following the merger Jon will have a team of 11. As he is new MD, I think it is imperative that he much reduces the design and PM aspects of his role and concentrates on bringing in business as there are quite a few more mouths to feed.

That leaves roughly 3 designers, 5 developers and 2 PMs. Depending on the work you’re doing I think that is ok especially considering Jon can bolster both the design and PM groups if needed.

Regarding the allocation of work, project managers should rule the roost. Full stop.

It is their job to manage resources. Delivering projects effectively and on time means that they must know that they are in charge regarding who does what and when they need to do it by. A certain amount of fitting the right person to the job should be done but generally, the rule should be that the next piece of work goes to the next available person. This would be particularly useful advice in a merged company where it would much easier to keep going back to ‘your’ guys because you trust them.

One thing that has worked really well for us is to set invoicing targets for the project managers. We don’t operate performance related targets but it still really helps to focus minds on hitting milestones at the end of months.

Terms and Conditions

Adam writes: I am developing my own web application. In summary, it’s a site with user submission of content in a social networking format with video uploads. Anyone can register an account.

I of course have to try and write Terms of Service for this and I am getting stuck. I am wondering what Headscape uses, especially for Getsignoff, and whether you found a pre-written terms of service, or had a specialist write one.

What’s your solution to the problem, and what should / should not be included.

I have to confess to conferring with Headscape’s fount of all legalese knowledge on this – our MD Chris Scott. I tried to get him on the show but he’s still a little jittery after the last time all those years ago… anyway, Chris put together the TOS for Getsignoff and these are his thoughts on it:

For Getsignoff I looked at the TOS of other online services like Harvest, Basecamp, Youtube and Flickr. I’m not a legal person, but this gave me enough material to be able to identify the key issues that I thought we needed to cover in our TOS.

I assembled this into a brief for our legal adviser that was part overview of what we wanted to achieve and part draft TOS using adapted clauses from other TOSs.

Our legal adviser pretty much re-wrote what I had given him but this was from a position where he had a good understanding of how we wanted Getsignoff to work.

The bottom line with this sort of thing is that you really need to get a professional legal person to assist.

126. Scaling

Posted in Classic shows on July 14, 2008 by Paul Boag

In this weeks show we learn lessons from the botched iPhone launch here in the UK. We chat to Jeff Veen about the designer / developer relationship and Marcus talks about adding jingles to your website.

Download this show.

Launch our podcast player

Watch the behind the scenes video (Part 1)

Watch the behind the scenes video (Part 2)

News and Events

The Mobile Internet has reached critical mass

This week saw the release of a new report by Nielsen Mobile entitled “The Worldwide State of the Mobile Web“.

The gist of the report suggests that the mobile web is considerably more popular than many of us would believe. 15.6 percent of mobile subscribers in the US and 12.9 percent in the UK, use the mobile web regularly. In the US this equates to 40 million users. A substantial number.

Interestingly the most common device used for accessing the mobile web is not a smartphone but rather the Motorola RAZR. This reenforces the answer I gave Wayne in last weeks show. I said we cannot design exclusively for devices such as the iPhone.

With people like the VP of Google stating that the future of the internet lies with mobile users, there can now be little doubt as to the direction things are moving. This is especially true now that we are seeing unlimited data plans.

Web Standards Curriculum

A regular complaint I hear from students is that they are concerned about the out of date techniques they are taught at school or college. With many institutions still teaching table based design it is a legitimate concern.

Fortunately they are not alone in this concern. Opera and Yahoo! have teamed up to produce a web standards curriculum. This curriculum teaches best practice in web design and is broken down into modules that can be taught either by themselves or part of existing lesson plans.

If you are a student or educator definitely check this out. Hopefully you can get it adopted at your institution. Even if you cannot, there is nothing to stop you working through the course yourself.

Working with designers

Although our next post reads slightly like a rant (I should know what a rant sounds like!) it nevertheless communicates some excellent advice.

It is a post aimed at clients and provides 12 tips for working with designers. Advice includes leaving preconceived notions at the door, be specific in your requirements and design for your customers and not yourself.

There is no doubt that many clients serious misunderstand the role of the designer. However if I was a client reading this, I might find the tone hard to swallow. Despite that I would encourage those of you who work with designers to read this article. My favourite quote is…

Just as writers are not just people who can type, designers are not just people who can use graphics programs.

Web form design patterns

Our final post this week is a survey Smashing Magazine have done on 100 popular sign up form. The idea of the survey is to give you a better understanding of what makes an effective sign up form.

Of course, just because other sites do things in a certain way, does not make that the best approach. You should never blindly follow the crowd. Nevertheless this is a fascinating read.

The post is split into two parts and contains information such as…

How the link to the sign-up form is titled
The placement of sign-up links
Whether the sign-up form is a single or multiple pages
How labels are aligned
How many fields are mandatory
What help and tooltips are provided
How validation is managed
How error messages are designed
Is it necessary to confirm the email address
Is it necessary to confirm the password

The list goes on.

If you are looking to justify design decisions you have made or need some help designing the perfect signup form, this is a great place to start.

Just a quick reminder that the news we feature on the show is only a fraction of what myself and Paul Stanton post on the website. To get a more comprehensive view on what is happening in the world of web design, make sure you subscribe to our news RSS feed.

Feature: Lessons to be learnt from O2

I am not sure whether you noticed but this last week saw the launch of the iPhone 3G. It would certainly have been hard to miss it.

I don’t want to add anymore to the endless discussion surrounding this launch. However, I would like to focus on a side issue. I want to look at how O2s website handled this momentous event and what we can learn from their mistakes.

Interview: Jeff Veen on working with developers

Paul: So I’m very excited to have Jeff Veen joining me today on the show. Good to talk to you Jeff!

Jeff: Oh, it’s absolutely my pleasure. Thanks for having me!

Paul: Well it’s really good to get you on the show. I’ve wanted you on for ages, but I haven’t had the guts to kind of approach you so I sent Ryan to talk to you instead. I feel vaguely like, you know, you get at school discos where you fancy a girl and you send your best friend over ’cause you don’t have the guts to do it yourself. Or is that just me?

Jeff: Well I’ll tell you, I’m happy to have this dance Paul. It’s great.

Paul: Right, well for those that don’t know you Jeff and don’t know your background can you just tell us a little bit about yourself and how you ended up in a situation where you ended up working for Google. You know, how did that come about happening? ‘Cause that’s what we’re going to talk about a little bit today is your experiences of being at Google.

Jeff: Well, I tell you I’d been working with developers, as kind of more on the design side for quite a long time. Do you remember hotwired.com from Wired Magazine?

Paul: Oh yes, definitely.

Jeff: Way back when, right? Like we launched that back in 1994 and that’s really when I got started on the web, was coming over to Wired, working on their online properties like Hotwired, Webmonkey, and HotBot search engine, you know stuff like that. So I was with them for quite a while, they went through an acquisition and brought us over to Lycos, that big search engine. And then from there I started a company called Adaptive Path. Adaptive Path is a user experience consulting group in San Francisco. It was seven of us, we were all friends from the industry. We really focused on research, design, information architecture, usability, stuff like that. And I did that for a number of years with them and then finally convinced my partners that doing a product would be something interesting for us to try. We had done consulting. We had done some events. So we were kind of looking for the next thing to try. So I put together a small team of developers and some other designers and we made a product called Measure Map. That was a web analytics tool aimed specifically at bloggers. And just as we were about to launch it, we had done a bunch of work on it, Google gave us a call and said, “We love what you’re doing. We want you to come over and bring that to Google.” So we went through an acquisition there and that’s really how I got to Google.

Paul: Ahh, I see. ‘Cause I remember very vividly Measure Map coming along and getting very excited about it and then it kind of disappeared.

Jeff: A little bit, yeah.

Paul: Yeah, ’cause you got swallowed into Google.

Jeff: Well Google was very clear that they had a lot of respect for the work that we had done around designing Measure Map and wanted us to apply that expertise to their big Google Analytics product which had recently, sort of. They had acquired a company called Urchin, which had kind of an enterprise analytics package and they had made it free, and that had brought it to a whole new audience that really, sort of, didn’t quite understand how analytics worked. So we brought some of the best practices of design into Google and redesigned Google Analytics to make it sort of, kind of maintain all the power that it had, but make it much more accessible to a broader audience. So that’s really what we spent our time doing at Google.

Paul: OK, so we saw Google Analytics and those changes that you made to Google Analytics appear a few months back, and you know, were very impressive. But I’m quite interested in what happened. How did that come about, and how did that process work? So you arrive at Google, you walk through the door of Google. Now, one presumes that there was an existing Analytics team already working. Is that right?

Jeff: Yeah, that’s right. There was probably about twenty developers or so that were working on the Analytics application. Almost entirely all, sort of back-end engineers. As you can imagine, something of that size and scope, it’s a pretty impressive technical feat. The amount of data that they’re tracking every day, really just continues to blow my mind how much scale they have over there. So there was really, really talented engineers that had been working with the product for quite some time. That product had been around for a number of years. I think they were in version six of the product. But, to their credit, the Director of Engineering, a guy named Paul Moret, really knew that he had to change that application for this new audience that he had, sort of had started to grow by being at Google. So he was really behind the idea of completely rethinking. “Like lets,” he said, “Let’s start from scratch. Right, we have a lot of users. We have a really powerful product that I want to completely rethink how this happens.” And so, yeah, we really just rolled up our sleeves and sat down with him and his team and really sort of became one team. Got in there and made a lot of change. One of the things I think that really helped us be successful there was that we had a pretty robust methodology for user research that really resonated with a lot of the engineers that we were working with. It was really sort of. It was like I said, pretty mature, had a lot of data behind it so we could really show a lot of the work and helped us really get over a lot of the perceived subjectivity of design. So, you know, you can imagine this team comes in. We are a bunch of relatively technical designers, but still designers. And we sit down with these very, very technical engineers and we kind of showed them a process of how we were going to talk to a lot of the existing audience, a lot of the new segments of the audience, take everything that they told us and kind of boil it down into a lot of actionable next steps. And a way of prioritizing what features and changes we wanted to make. And so rather than us kind of going off, doing a bunch of design work and presenting it to them, we really involved everybody, or as many people as we could, in the process of how to change that application at its very basic level. So I think the results of doing all of that with the technical team was that we built a lot of trust between us. So that we could take some of their fundamental assumptions and really question those, but include them in that process so that there was a lot of give and take.

Paul: I mean yeah, because your initial reaction when you look at a company like Google, that it is a very developer-centric company. So I was kind of half-expecting you to say that you encountered quite a lot of resistance to the kind of design changes that you were introducing, but from the sounds of it, because your methodology is quite scientific, for want of a better word, you know it’s very logical, etcetera that it sounds like it went down quite well.

Jeff: Yeah, it did. It feels like we’re using the scientific method: doing testing and research and analysis and things like that. Ultimately though, so much of design is really, really hard to measure. Especially when it comes to matters of taste and perception and things like that. I mean, we can measure click-throughs and we can measure conversion rates and things like that, but ultimately the changes had to come from just being good designers. So having this relatively, kind of quantitative analysis that we did just allowed us to sort of speak on the same terms with the engineers. Have them trust us, and then let us make the changes we felt in our gut we should be making. So a lot of times I’ll be working with somebody who is very technical and they want to say, “Well if you make that change, can you show us some data that’ll prove that that’s the right change to make?” And almost never can I do that. Right, like we can do little tests and we can do some A/B testing and multivariate testing and stuff like that. And that’s good for little incremental changes but when you’re fundamentally changing an application it’s almost impossible to measure the accuracy of the decisions that you’re making. And that can be hard for somebody who really is a very analytical thinker, very quantitative in the decisions that they make, to sometimes kind of let go and say “No. You’ve go
t to trust us. It’s just going to be better.”

Paul: So were there other techniques that you used beyond providing data to kind of bridge that gap between the way that maybe designers see the world and that of developers?

Jeff: Well I’ll tell you another thing that I really believe in, is prototyping rather than just drawing mockups. One of the benefits I had going into Google is that I had a remarkable team at Measure Map that were quite technical. A very good front-end developer who could do lots of JavaScript, AJAX, CSS markup kind of work. A talented Ruby developer, and then a guy who was great with Flash and ActionScript. So bringing this team together, all of them good designers, but all of them with very technical backgrounds, we could come in and very quickly start to realize what a redesign might look like. Also the thing that really helped us was that Analytics internally had a very well-developed API. So we could say “All right, show us how this API works, then we’re going to immediately start experimenting on top of it using real data. We can bring users in for usability tests and they can see their data in our prototype in a matter of weeks, rather than months and months of development.” So having that separation between design, front-end and back-end, through a robust API allowed us to prototype so quickly that they could immediately say, “Wow! Look at all the work this team is doing!” Rather than us standing in front of the projector pointing at Photoshop comps or something and saying “Imagine what it would be like to click here.” We just had a thing working that people could log into anytime.

Paul: Yeah, I can really understand how that would make an enormous difference. So I’m presuming that you talk about your little team of people that went in there and started doing prototyping and stuff like that, but obviously you’re going to want to engage more with the developers that are there. I mean, the traditional danger has always been that as a developer and a designer you work independently. The designer does his thing. He hands it over the partition to the developer. The developer goes away and does his thing. Now I presume you wanted to avoid that. So how did you establish that working relationship? How did you end up working closely together?

Jeff: I have almost no interest in that sort of “waterfall method” where somebody goes off and does research, hands it off to designers, designers then do some of their magic, hand it off to developers. I’ve never been successful at doing that, primarily I think because I learn so much from the process of building things. So again, it was just, really one of the first things we did was invest a lot in getting the teams to trust one another. And that meant really just spending time with each other. So that meant almost every day just scheduling some time in the conference room for us all to kick around ideas, to look at some of the existing work that they were doing, some of their future plans and just spending a tremendous amount of time with them. We also just had our desks right next to the development team. We were embedded, we were just right there. So we felt like part of the team. We’d all go eat lunch together. I mean simple things like that just make the development process so much more, so much easier because there’s real people working with each other rather than faceless “other people” handing specs over. So putting a lot of time in: absolutely crucial to success in a process like that.

Paul: So obviously you got to work with a great group of people over at Google. Some of the most talented developers in the world I guess. So I’m really interested to know, what was it you learned from them? You spent all this time with them, what was the kind of thing that you took away as a front-end interface designer what did you learn from this amazing group of developers?

Jeff: Well, a couple of things really. I think the thing that struck us the most when we first got there was just the enormous scale of everything. Like Google, as you can imagine, Google has lots and lots of users, but they have a tremendous diversity of users too, literally from around the world. A statistic that we throw out all the time is that seventy percent of Google’s traffic comes from outside the United States. So the audience that we were used to designing for is really the small minority of people, and in fact the rest of the world is where all of the products are being used. So we had to think about that diversity of audience even in the design decisions that we were making every day in that everything that we were designing was going to be translated in up to forty different languages. So that was probably the first thing that really brought our attention. The second thing was the unbelievably high standards that Google had for their products. Like you said, I totally agree, they’re some of the best engineers in the world. They have coding standards. They have testing standards, QA standards that were absolutely remarkable. I just learned so much about how every little detail fits into place to make a product that’s as robust and as really scalable and useable by a global audience that Google has. It was really like I got a crash course in some of the best computer science education I could possibly ever ask for.

Paul: Very cool indeed. So for the designers that are listening to this now, the front-end people that maybe are working with developers day in and day out and secretly behind their backs are having a bit of moan about those developers, they’re finding them quite tricky to work with, what advice would you give them about interacting and working with developers?

Jeff: Well, like I said, you’ve got to spend time in the trenches with them. That I think is just the most obvious thing that I can recommend doing. For both sides. It was hard for me to trust a lot of developers, like “Oh, you’re only concerned about your servers, you don’t care about users at all.” Which of course is completely false, but that’s an inherent bias that I would have. So again, spending that time: incredibly important. I think one of the things that I try to educate the most while I was there was that the level of detail, the care, everything that goes into the coding standards that engineers have, we have that same standard for the interfaces that we build. So I think sometimes, and I hate to generalize across developers, because I’ve worked just the entire spectrum of developers. One of the themes that I hear from time to time is that design is something that kind of happens at the end. Like “We do all the hard engineering. We get all of these systems in place and write all of this code and then we need some designers to come on and put the interface on so that we can actually launch this thing.” That I think cheapens a lot of the work that we do, and it’s a little bit demeaning for the discipline of design, of user experience. So I think we have biases on both sides and that frankly understanding more about what goes into the process both from a front-end and a back-
end point of view is kind of what brings us all together.

Paul: So if you could communicate one thing to the developers, one lesson, the question the other way around I guess. I guess in some ways it’s the same answer, isn’t it? It’s kind of stick with one another.

Jeff: Yeah, a little bit. Also there’s some really simple techniques that I’ve used, for example: even before we started we’d schedule a usability test with the existing product and get the engineers into the room behind that one way mirror and we would just watch. And we would watch people flail around with the interface and struggle and get frustrated and push the keyboard away. I mean that’s just golden. People see that and they’re just like, “Oh man, we’ve got some work to do.” So making it as clear as possible, what our users are trying to do, how we can all collaborate together to help them: incredibly, incredibly important. That said, it wasn’t, you know when I did consulting at Adaptive Path I was inside lots of companies. I worked with some of the biggest companies in America and saw inside of them and, to be honest, Google is truly a user-centered company. I was just so impressed with that. Broadening that idea of user-centered technology development is something that we worked on. Making it more of a balance between front-end and back-end is more some of the things we worked on. But ultimately I think Google really understands that putting users first is the way to be successful. Just look at the search results page with it’s very simple but incredibly effective advertising techniques, and you know, Google never had a front page that was full of the sort of portal design stuff that Yahoo! and other companies have done. So really, it was very fertile ground for the kind of work we wanted to do when we got there.

Paul: Very interesting. I’ve just thought of one other question that I get asked a lot from people looking to get into web design: they say, “So what am I better off doing, you know, where’s the best place to work? Is it in the large company? Or is it doing something in a small company by yourself?” Now you’ve obviously done both of those and there is no definitive answer, but what would you see as the pros and cons of a large company in comparison to working somewhere smaller like Adaptive Path?

Jeff: You’re right, in my career I’ve got swung back and forth between big and small. There are definitely benefits and drawbacks to both of them. In the bigger companies I think just inherently things move slower. Now, I mean Google is renowned for it’s “bottom-up culture” and good ideas are always emerging from people taking their twenty percent time. None of that is a myth. That all really happens. But at the same time, like I said, when millions of users, or hundreds of millions for some of the products. You just have to take a lot more steps, and what that does is it increases the distance between the idea that a designer or developer has, and a user actually seeing that idea. And one of the things that I love about this sort of entrepreneurial startup environment is that you can think of something, you can try it out, you can get it in front of your users. You can do that in an afternoon. And you can’t do that with a product like Gmail or Adwords or something like that because there’s so much inherent infrastructure and risk, things like that. I think it’s incredibly worthwhile for people to have both experiences, and frankly see what they like best. One of the things I really have learned in my career is that there are people that like to start things, and that there are people that like to run things. And there is no inherent judgment between the two, but once you understand “Ooh, I love having a big system and having that system run perfectly, and putting all the things in place to keep that, you know.” And that’s fantastic. I’ve learned, in my career, that I’m kind of on the other side. I love starting with nothing and building up something, and at some point I need to hand it off to somebody who is much better at running and maintaining, right. So those are the kind of things you learn by doing a lot of very different projects and product development and stuff like that as your career kind of goes on, I think.

Paul: So you’ve left Google now? So what’s the next step? What are you up to at the moment? Let’s finish on a looking forward note. Where are you going? What are you doing?

Jeff: I was at Google for just over two years and left about six weeks ago, and to be honest I’m spending a lot of time right now cycling and trying to sleep late, and things like that. I tell you it’s a tremendous luxury and I’m not taking it for granted at all. The immediate next thing is that I’m organizing a little conference with my colleague Bryan Mason, who I have worked with at Adaptive Path. He and I are doing a conference in San Francisco in August about starting companies. Yeah, as I was leaving Google I was thinking, “Well, what should I do next? What would be interesting?” So I talked to a bunch of my friends who have been entrepreneurs, or who are now investors and I just asked them, “Tell me your story. How did you get to where you are?” And I found those stories so interesting that I thought, “Man, we’ve got to share this. This is great.” And I thought, “Well, I could do a podcast or something like that.” But then I thought, “I love getting people together and having sort of a community feel.” So we thought: we’ll get one day, San Francisco in August. We’ll get everybody together and we’ll just have these conversations. So I’m really looking forward to it. It’s called “The Start Conference” and you can find it at thestartconference.com. That’s what we’re doing now.

Paul: Excellent stuff. Thank you so much Jeffrey for coming onto the show and talking about that. The issue of designers and developers working together is something that’s really important and I think there’s a lot of work still to be done, and it’s good to see that there are people out there that have got it right and are going in the right direction.

Jeff: I appreciate that Paul.

Paul: Thanks for your time.

Jeff: Thank you.

Thanks to Todd Dietrich for transcribing this interview.

Listeners feedback:

Adding a jingle to your site

Chris writes: A client of mine wants to incorporate 4 second jingles at various points on their website, triggered on page load, to reinforce their servicing brand. My first reaction is that this could get annoying but was curious as to your thoughts on the use of audio on the web.

I don’t think that there is any set ‘rule’ here but basically I would agree 100% that you shouldn’t do it because it will annoy the hell out of the site’s users.

There is an argument that audio branding can be included if th
e user only has to hear it once. However, I would dispute this as well for the following reasons:

It may well still annoy (and therefore have a negative effect upon) the site’s users
Users aren’t expecting it and it could embarrass them in an office environment
Quite a lot of users will have the sound off. Therefore, if you decide that the audio is only an ‘add on’ for the brand then you may as well conclude that it’s not necessary at all.

I have talked about audio on website before and reached the conclusion that, even though technology and bandwidth makes it more doable, it’s the wrong medium for audio. I think I likened it to having a soundtrack while you’re reading a book – it’s just wrong!

Of course, there are no doubt exceptions to this rule – really well thought out and produced audio indicators on a web app for example – but, generally speaking, audio branding on a website will have a negative effect. If your client is insistent, try and persuade him to include a video download on the site where audio will certainly work.

Fixed or bespoke pricing

Jon writes: We are a small web design and development company (4 people) and have tended to concentrate on higher value bespoke work. We are probably about to merge with another slightly larger company in a neighbouring town. This other company have traditionally aimed at a somewhat lower value market.

My question is about pricing. The other company operate to a very structured price list (£x for a 5 page brochure site, £Y for a basic ecommerce site, £Z for an ecommerce site with knobs on etc). We have always priced each project individually using a mixture of time costing, guesswork, and a “how much can we get away with” approach.

Do you think that a merged company approaching a wider market and value range would be better to adopt one approach or the other, or continue to do both? Would the existence of one approach damage the ability to operate effectively at the other end of the scale?

I guess the big question here is – are you going to remain as two different entities with some shared resources, or are you going to merge more fully and share work between the team no matter where it is sourced from (i.e. will one of their designers work on a future project from one of your existing clients)? If it is the former (which I suspect it isn’t) then I would keep the two pricing models the same as they are. I wouldn’t try and hide the fact that the two companies have ‘merged’ though, just explain that there are two teams delivering different services.

However, if the two companies are merging more fully, then I think this is actually fairly fundamental stuff. It’s almost like you’re all starting again and need to write a business plan. I think you would be opening yourself up for much criticism if you tried to operate both pricing plans.

I suppose other questions to you would be:

Which pricing plan is most effective (who is making the most profit)?
What does each company’s order book look like? I.e. have you just signed a massive contract at your higher rates?

This is interesting stuff and I’d like to know how it works out. I suppose the biggest unknown for me (that may well answer all of my other questions) is that I don’t know the reason for the merger in the first place.

Website Owner's Manual

Posted in News on June 5, 2008 by Paul Boag

I have been working on my book (The Website Owner’s Manual) for a while, but finally I have something to show you.

Update: You can now order the website owners manual and get access to chapters as they are written.

No, I haven’t finished it and to be honest my progress continues to be slow. In fact it is so slow my publisher is currently looking for a release date of December! Oh the shame :(

A recap: What the book’s about

First of all a quick recap on what the book is about. This is what my publisher has written…

Just because you’re responsible for your organization’s web presence doesn’t mean you know how to build a website. The job of planning, launching, and managing a site often falls to people who have little or no experience in web design or development. Website Owner’s Manual is a book for the thousands of marketers, IT managers, project leaders, and business owners who need to put a website in place and keep it running with a minimum of trouble.

Website Owner’s Manual helps you form a vision for your site, guides you through the process of selecting a web design agency, and gives you enough background information to make intelligent decisions throughout the development process. This book provides a jargon-free overview of web design, including accessibility, usability, online marketing, and web development techniques. You’ll gain a practical understanding of the technologies, processes, and ideas that drive a successful website.

So, basically it is a book aimed at website owners rather than web designers. That said, I think there is a lot of useful content in for web designers as well.

Content includes…

Secrets to a successful website
Defining roles and evaluating objectives
Planning and measuring your success
Page design and branding
Layout challenges
Creating killer content
User testing
Content management systems
Web design best practices
Domains and hosting
Website promotion explained
Techniques for engaging visitors

All useful stuff, whatever your job title. What is more it shows web designers how to better communicate with clients. In particular it helps define the role of the client. I can imagine this is a book many web designers will end up buying for their more ‘challenging’ clients.

The news: Get early access to chapters

Of course most of this you already knew. The interesting part is that you can now read and contribute to the first 5 chapters of the book.

The thing I love about Manning (my publisher) is that they run something called MEAP (Manning Early Access Program). The aim of this program is to engage the reader in the process of writing the book. Think of it as user generated writing.

For between $23 – $40 you can join the program and gain access to all of the chapters as they are written. You will also get the final book when it is released.

Each chapter is released in a very rough and ready form including all my horrible, badly drawn, sketches. You can read each chapter and make suggestions, corrections and comments via the books own private forum. I will be checking it regularly and working with you to improve the book.

What a bloody brilliant idea!

So if you fancy getting involved go to the Manning website (yes it is horribly designed!).

There is even chapter one waiting for you free of charge.

Random News

Posted in News on February 29, 2008 by Paul Boag

Boagworld has moved, the forum is back, Headscape has rebranded, our product is shaping up, the book is progressing and I seem to be speaking loads.

Wow! Life feels like it is moving at 100 miles an hour at the moment. I am busier than I have ever been, but it is all incredibly exciting.

Here is a random collection of the cool stuff that is happening.

The Boagworld website has moved

For a while now we have had problems with the hosting of boagworld. You may or may not have noticed it depending on how you use the site. However, the forum was particularly bad.

Well, we have now moved over to Media Temple and the site is flying. Check out the new enhanced forum and add yourself to the boagworld listeners map.

Headscape is rebranding

Setting up Headscape was an unusual process. We took a number of clients from our previous company and so was busy from day one. However, like any company, we needed things like letterheads, business cards and branding. The result was that I threw together our logo in under an hour and moved on with the next thing.

Well it is 6 years on and we are still insanely busy. However, it is time to finally get a professional to produce our brand identity. The obvious choice was Mr Hicks and what a stunning job he has done!

Unfortunately, because we are still run off our feet we haven’t managed a proper launch. Although Jon has provided most of the marketing material we need, the website is still down to us (we thought it wouldn’t look good if he designed that!)

However, rest assured we are working on it and it should appear before too long! What is more, this has spurred me on to look at redesigning boagworld. We will see!

Our product is coming

Part of the reason things are so busy is because we are developing a web based application. It is looking pretty good and it won’t be long before we start a closed beta. However, if you are coming to SXSW then grab me and I’ll show you a sneak peek to whet your appetite.

For now all I will say is that it will “make getting design sign off a breeze“.

The book is progressing

A number of you have been asking how the book is coming along. Well, after stalling for a while it is moving forward again. Best of all we are reaching the point where I am able to release some of what I have done for you to check out!

Also my publisher run a special scheme which some of you maybe interested in. Although we intend to give the first chapter away for free, you can also sign up to receive draft chapters as they are written. You do have to pay for the privilege but will receive the final book at the end. Think of it as being a beta tester for the book.

I’ll let you know more as things progress.

Speaking

Not that I have a lot of time for writing at the moment as I seem to spend half my days preparing presentations. Here are just a few of my upcoming speaking engagements. If you happen to be attending any of these let me know (especially if you are coming to the Great British Booze-up). I would love to hook up!

SXSW – Social networking and your brand
Highland Fling – Conference host and interviewer
@Media 08 – A panel on business and management
FOWD – Promoting and selling web design services
Singularity – No idea what I am speaking on yet!

So in short… I am busy! Despite that, its loads of fun.

109. Rissington?

Posted in Classic shows on January 28, 2008 by Paul Boag

On Show 109. IE8 divides the web design community, Anton Peck talks about imagery, and the Rissington Podcast crew stand in for Marcus.

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News and events | Anton Peck on imagery | Listener emails

Unfortunately Marcus is not yet back on active duty but does thank you all for your kind support. However, do not fret. You do not have to endure another show of me waffling on by myself. Stepping into Marcus’ still warm shoes are two giants in the world of web design and podcasting. From the infamous Rissington Podcast we have Jon Hicks and John Oxton.

News and events

Microsoft to automatically roll out IE7

First up I was sent an article by several listeners which seems to indicate Microsoft is intending to do an auto-update of Internet explorer on the 12th February.

When IE7 was initially released Microsoft made the decision to make the upgrade to their latest browser optional. So even though a user had requested automatic updates they would not receive IE7 unless they specifically approved it. This decision not to force users to update frustrated those in the web design community who wanted to wave goodbye to the evils of IE6.

However, it would now appear Microsoft has decided to take the plunge and will be rolling out IE7 as part of the automatic update. Not all users are signed up to receive these updates but those who are will be using IE7 from February 12th (if they are not already).

Expect to see a significant decline in IE6 users to your site very soon. Perhaps it will not be long before IE6 follows IE5.

IE8 divides the standards community

Talking of Microsoft and Internet Explorer, probably the biggest story of the week is Microsoft’s plans for IE8.

IE8 promises to be a huge step forward in standards support and has been significantly rebuilt in order to enable this. However, such dramatic changes in their rendering engine comes at a cost. They fear that by becoming more standards compliant they will break many websites which are not built with standards in mind.

The way they have dealt with this problem is to introduce a small piece of code that you drop into your pages which can be used to specify what version of IE your site is designed to work with. The browser then renders the webpage as if it was that version of the browser. So for example you could specify that a page was designed for IE7 and a person viewing the page in IE8 would see the page as if it was rendered in IE7.

If no browser is specified then it defaults to rendering the page in IE7 that way no matter what changes Microsoft make in future browsers legacy sites are still rendered correctly.

What on the face of it seems like a very sensible plan has caused uproar in the web design community. A List Apart and Eric Meyer seem to be generally supporting the principle while many others including the likes of Jeremy Keith strongly object.

One of the main sticking point seems to be that this approach breaks progressive enhancement. In other words I may choose to implement a piece of functionality on my site knowing that it wont currently work in IE7 but does work in other more compliant browsers such as Firefox. If i don’t add this special code when IE8 comes along it will look at my page see the code is absent and so render it as IE7. That means even if IE8 supports the functionality now it wont use it because it is rendering my site as IE7.

Its a complex issue with good arguments on both sides. In next week’s show Eric Meyer and myself will discuss it in more depth.

HTML 5 is coming

Still on the subject of the future of web design we now turn to HTML 5 which has just been released in draft format. Sitepoint provides a nice little summary of what is in and what’s out. There is also a summary of the differences between HTML 4 and 5 which is very useful as well.

I cannot claim to have read the entire specification yet but I have to say what I have seen contains some exciting stuff. Having HTML tags to define common areas like headers, footers and navigation offers some interesting possibilities and its good to see built in support for video and audio.

The big shame is that practical application of this is still a long way off but its nice to know that there is potential there.

Career advice for web designers

Of course all these upcoming technologies wont matter to you if my predications of a couple of weeks ago come true and we all find ourselves without a job! This week I was pleased to discover I was not the only one with a pessimistic attitude towards the coming year. Robert Scoble has posted a entry entitled “what to do if you are laid off in 2008 recession“, which I thought was a particularly cheery title.

Actually it is a really good post with some excellent advice. What I like most about it is that the advice applies as much to a student trying to break into web design for the first time as it does to a out of work professional.

In fact if you are considering a career change of any kind (or have had one forced upon you) then this is a good read.

Advice includes…

Spend at least 30% of your day job hunting
Start a blog
Share your knowledge with the world
Demonstrate your skills on youtube
Networking
Contact web start ups because they are hiring.
Volunteer
Prioritise friends and family

The list goes on and is definitely worth reading.

Expert interview: Anton Peck on imagery

Paul: So joining me today, as I said at the start of the show, is Anton Peck. How are you Anton?

Anton Peck: I’m doing great Paul. Thank you.

Paul: It’s good to have you on the show.

Anton Peck: I know. It’s about time isn’t it? *laughs*

Paul: It seems like it’s been a while. We haven’t actually had you on BoagWorld before have we?

Anton Peck: No, no. This is the first time.

Paul: But I’ve known you from… Where did we first meet? Was it South By Southwest?

Anton Peck: Yeah. I think we had sorta done virtual communication before then through email, IM or whatever. But we actually first met at South By Southwest last time.

Paul: Cool. So Anton, tell me and the listeners a little bit about yourself. How do you describe yourself? Do you primarily describe yourself as a web designer or an illustrator?

Anton Peck: That’s a tough call. The illustration is more my fancy, my hobby. It’s where my passion lies but the design is what I’ve been doing for a long time. So it’s sort of my trade of skill.

Paul: I see. So you’re kind of torn between two worlds.

Anton Peck: A little bit.

Paul: But fortunately those two worlds do overlap quite a lot which is why we have you on the show today. We thought it would be good to get Anton in really not to just talk about illustration but to talk about imagery on the web generally as that’s kind of his thing really, amongst many others, because you have a growing reputation. You do art-casts don’t you which are like illustration tutorials? Is that a good way to describe them?

Anton Peck: Yeah, that’s probably a good way to describe them. That is the rumor that I do those isn’t it. I don’t do them as often as I should but I do manage to get them out every once in a while.

Paul: And they are excellent. I have to say, I really do enjoy watching them. So let’s talk a little about imagery on websites and the use of imagery on websites. Let’s start off with a really nebulous and broad question that I guess is pretty impossible to answer but I’m going to ask anyway, which is what makes good imagery for a website? How do you go about picking imagery for a website?

Anton Peck: Well there’s a few things and some of them might seem obvious. First of all the images should complement the content of the website so that the substance isn’t too diluted from its original intent. I know that might seem kinda out there and obvious but it’s probably disappointing and surprising that there’s a lot of website owners that would want to put an image on a website because it’s really pretty or cool.

Paul: I guess it’s important to have imagery that relates to the branding or message you are trying to communicate.

Anton Peck: Right because imagery is meant to support the content rather than take away from it. You don’t want to pull everybody’s focus right away to the images but at the same time you want to support what’s already there. The images should have some interesting quality about them which could mean how well they have been cropped or resized. They should be saved at a pretty decent quality if they are JPEG’s or GIF’s. Not over compressed as they can sometimes diminish the personality of the website. When you go to a website and you see that it’s over compressed it really doesn’t look very good.

Paul: So for a relative newbie, an amateur that’s getting into web design, there’s always this question of GIF vs. JPEG. What do you use and when?

Anton Peck: Well for photographic style images that have a lot of… I would say colours but that’s not quite accurate but more photographic style images I would use JPEG’s. Then for images like logos, things that seem very flat and have a limited palette, maybe go with the GIF’s. Although I tend to do that a little bit less now that PNG’s are finding a little bit more broad support among browsers.

Paul: So do you use PNG’s very much?

Anton Peck: Every so often. They compress nicely especially when you use the adaptive palette which is similar to a GIF format but they can actually get a little bit smaller.

Paul: Cool, yeah. That’s been my experience as well.

Anton Peck: It just gets a little tricky when you are trying to do transparency.

Paul: Yes, exactly.

Anton Peck: That’s a whole other discussion.

Paul: Yeah, I don’t think I’m going to open that can of worms today. So any other tips for selecting good imagery?

Anton Peck: Well I would say it’s got to be appropriate and tasteful of course. So that way you can minimise the risk of offending someone or losing possible business. If you might have a certain sense of humour and want to put something on your website, you might have to watch out for how that might appear to someone else.

Paul: And I guess cultural considerations come in there as well. It’s easy to forget that the worldwide web is worldwide.

Anton Peck: Definitely.

Paul: The next big issue that a lot of people face is this whole kind of stock imagery kind of question. You reach a point where your website’s becoming relatively important to your business or you’re a web designer that’s working for certain clients. At what stage do you say that actually stock imagery isn’t the way to go, perhaps I should be getting something specifically commissioned whether that be commissioned illustrations, commission photography or whatever. It’s a difficult line. What’s your opinion on stock imagery? Is it the devil’s spawn or does it have a place? What do you think?

Anton Peck: No, I think it definitely has a place. It offers a great solution for those trying to find a good quality image when they can’t afford a commissioned photograph.

Paul: So what kinds of site do you use for stock imagery?

Anton Peck: I’ve been a fan of Crestock.com lately.

Paul: Ooo! I haven’t heard of that one.

Anton Peck: Yes and actually they have this huge contest going on where you can win a Mac Pro and all kinds of equipment. It’s a Photoshop contest and I happen to be one of the few judges on that particular site.

Paul: Ahh. So what’s this website again?

Anton Peck: It’s Crestock.com.

Paul: OK. I’ll check that out. Sounds good. So does that do both illustration and photography or…

Anton Peck: Yeah. They have a wide range of different material. They have background textures and you can search for pretty much anything there. A lot of it is user supported so if you even feel that you are a good photographer you can submit your work and see if you can even sell it and make a little bit of money off of it.

Paul: Oh cool. So when selecting stock photography, what should you look for? What should you avoid? The trouble with stock photography is a lot of it can look really similar to one another. What advice would you give about selecting stock imagery?

Anton Peck: Well there’s no real secret to it. There’s not a lot of advice either other than just go through a lot of it. Don’t try to find the very first searches you come across as that would be a higher chance it would be used somewhere else. You want to get a unique image, something that’s probably not as commonly found. It’s always a little disconcerting when you come across a new image that you see on 13 different sites like, “Oh that’s the same image used there”.

Paul: Yeah. It becomes obvious that it’s stock imagery.

Anton Peck: Right. So you want to find that unique image.

Paul: Yeah, couldn’t agree more.

Anton Peck: And the only way to find the perfect, unique image is to just go through a lot of it.

Paul: Yes! Which does take time doesn’t it.

Anton Peck: Certainly.

Paul: When it comes to commissioning stuff is there any particular advice you would give there in regards to briefing the photographer or the illustrator? I mean when somebody commissions you to do a piece of work, what kind of information are you after from them?

Anton Peck: Since they would commission me as an illustrator rather than an actual photographer, I’d mainly look at what they are trying to achieve for their website and how they expect it to support what they’ve done. One of the things that I was gong to talk about for commission photography, even though I’m not one, was the benefits for the websites because you can have a one of a kind image that fits exactly what is needed for the page. A photographer can come out to the business and take photos of the staff and location which is obviously something you can’t do with stock photos.

Paul: Yeah, which obviously makes a huge difference. I think often at times people actually want to see that kind of stuff because on the web you’ve got no way of judging what the company behind the website is really like. So to be able to see real imagery of real people and real locations does add some credibility and trustworthiness to a company. It’s not just somebody working out their back bedroom or whatever.

Anton Peck: Exactly what I was thinking, yes.

Paul: OK so you have a budget. How much difference does it make actually commissioning imagery rather than getting stock imagery. Is there really a difference? Is it really worth going out and getting stuff specifically commissioned?

Anton Peck: I would say if you are looking to get high exposure and if you were a big enough business I would definitely say do it.

Paul: So why is that? What difference does it make?

Anton Peck: Well that’s exactly what I mentioned earlier. It’s the one image that you are going to own or the website is going to own and it’s not going to be found anywhere else. Completely unique.

Paul: You do feel that when you go through these thousands and thousands of stock images that “Well, it’s pretty much unique. Who else is going to use it?” but it’s amazing how often images turn up. I’ve got a little program that changes my desktop image on a regular basis and I’ve had this really nice one that I loved and kept for a while which was a cityscape of London that had been made all futuristic and I thought “Wow! What a great image”. And then I’m going on the tube and there’s the same image plastered across the wall. It’s amazing how often they do turn up again.

Anton Peck: Yeah it’s takes away a little bit doesn’t it?

Paul: Yeah definitely. Definitely. You’re an illustrator, let’s get onto the role of illustration. What advances or disadvantages do you think that illustration has over photography. When should you be using photography, when should you be using illustration?

Anton Peck: Illustration’s gonna provide a whole different type of personality to a website that you can never find in a photo. You can create situations, objects, environments that would either be too expensive to reproduce or they just don’t exist in the real world. Things that you just can’t do with a photograph. Again, that’s going to have to be through the interview of the illustrator trying to describe whether the job is appropriate or not. Actually that would be up to the art director trying to commission to decide whether they need an illustrator or a photographer. But custom website illustrations are so unique right now. When you do have a custom illustration it stands out a great deal more than a photograph. I think one of the greatest examples that stands out on the top of my mind would be Andy Clark’s website with Kevin Cornell’s image that he did of that scooterboy, the guy on the scooter.

Paul: Yeah, it looks superb. That’s stuffandnonense.com, if I remember.

Anton Peck: .co.uk

Paul: Oh .co.uk. Well check that out.

Anton Peck: Just try to imagine if Andy would have reproduced that with a photograph. It wouldn’t have the same personality I don’t think. He wouldn’t have been able to pull it off.

Paul: So do you think that photography has less personality generally or is it just the stock photography that has less personality?

Anton Peck: I wouldn’t call it a more or less personality thing as much it would be a different type of personality. It depends on what you’ve going for.

Paul: Do you think there’s some situations where illustration just isn’t appropriate because it would create the wrong kind of personality or is illustration flexible enough to be able to work in most situations?

Anton Peck: No I think illustration is not appropriate for everything. I think there’s probably a time and a place where an illustration is not going to do the job of a photograph. The photograph tends to look a little bit more… I was going to say professional but I don’t think that’s the word for it. There’s a sort of business approach… I don’t know. Illustration is very personal. It’s one of a kind. It seems that if you have a corporation maybe an illustration isn’t going to work unless it’s a certain kind of illustration.

Paul: Yeah I kind of know what you mean. There’s something… A photograph has a kind of… trustworthiness isn’t the right word but a realism to it perhaps that lends itself to certain circumstances.

Anton Peck: Definitely. It’s really hard to distinguish between the two. It would really boil down to the specific case that it was going to be used.

Paul: Tell us a little bit about some of the different types of illustration and why you would pick when. Obviously every kind of illustrator has very different styles but are they any kinds of broad categories you would recommend in certain circumstances?

Anton Peck: Well, let me think off the top of my head. It seems like you have a real nice vector, flowery styles with flat colours like Veerle. Her work is fabulous and it’s all Illustrator. Her style is just so unique. Then I think of Kevin Cornell. His style is so organic and painted. Then there’s styles like my own. I tend to learn for more photorealism in some cases. My own personal gallery doesn’t lean that way too much. There’s a few different styles out there and it’s hard to say when it’s going to be used properly.

Paul: Do you think that some styles date more quickly than others? You talked about that flowery style where you see a lot of art deco type shapes being used on the web at the moment. Do you think that illustration goes through more fashion trends than photograph does?

Anton Peck: I would venture to say yes and in a way. However like all fashion trends, it always comes back. Right now the big popular thing is artwork that looks like it’s straight from the 70′s. The muted brown colours and the nice organic curves, swirls and circles, things like that. Those are going over quite well I think.

Paul: It’s interesting isn’t it. I think there some sites that need to be fashion conscious and on the cutting edge of what’s going on and there are others that need to be generic and long lasting. It very depends on what kind of industry you are in as whether you should follow these trends or not I guess.

Anton Peck: Right. Or then if it seems to expire then you can just change it out and get a new one.

Paul: The glory of CSS, the separation of content from design.

Anton Peck: Absolutely.

Paul: OK Anton. Thank you very much for coming on the show. It’s really interesting that we haven’t tackled the discussion of imagery before.

Anton Peck: I did have one real quick public service announce if you’ll let me have another minute.

Paul: Yeah, go for it.

Anton Peck: For your listeners I’m wanted to just bring up that they shouldn’t take images, and I know it’s kind of obvious, take images from fountain sites or Flickr or Google Image search. That’s just bad practice and they are normally just going to get found out and it’s not a very nice thing to do. If they find images on sites that they like, they can contact the owner to obtain permission.

Paul: And it’s surprising. Often the owners are very happy and flexible to accommodate that. If you take the time to contact them they are often very flattered that you asked. Good piece of advice. OK thank you very much Anton and we’ll get you back on the show again in the future. Good to talk to you.

Listeners email:

Textmate reviewed

Teifion shares his thoughts on Textmate for the mac, an incredibly powerful text editor with a sophisticated plug-in architecture.

I have to confess that I have only opened Textmate once and found myself unsure where to begin. I do know however that Teifion and many other web developers rate it extremely highly and use it as their primary development tool. In the show I pick Mr Hicks and Oxton’s collective brains about its benefits and whether I should make the effort to learn it properly.

Javascript or JQuery

The second listener contribution comes from Will who writes…

I was listening to your last one and you said it would be important to learn javascript for 2008. I know bits of javascript but don’t particularly like it and don’t know ajax yet, however, I have been playing with jQuery and find it much simpler. Do you think it’s a good alternative to learning all of javascript and have you used it at all?

Personally I think it is important to learn a language from scratch and that relying too heavily on libraries can cause problems in the long run. Although there is nothing wrong with you learning jQuery I would suggest it should be an addition to learning Javascript rather than a replacement.

If you want to know if Mr Oxton and Hicks disagree with me you will have to listen to the show :)

To leave an audio comment for the show skype “boagworldshow” or call +44 20 8133 5122.

Who do you ask to tender for your web project?

Posted in Web strategy on September 26, 2007 by Paul Boag

With literally millions of web design companies worldwide where do you begin when trying to draw up a list of potential agencies? Who do you invite to tender?

One option is to search on google filtering by geography. There are valid reasons for selecting a web design agency within the same country. Issues such as currency exchange, time zones and differences in company law can make working with international agencies challenging. However, beyond that, geography doesn’t play a large part. A web design agency is just as capable of designing a website whether they are next door or a few hundred miles away.

The best approach is to rely on word of mouth recommendation. Nothing beats a recommendation by somebody who has already worked with a particular agency. The best recommendations come from people you know and respect. Start by talking to your suppliers or other business partners. Who did they use to build their websites? What was their experience like? Next, if you are apart of a trade association see if they have any recommendations. They often have lists of preferred suppliers and even if they don’t you can always ask who produced their website. After that, try looking further a field. Search online for any forums or mailing lists related to your sector and ask for recommendations there.

A final option is to look at websites that you like or consider successful. Most websites will have a link somewhere to the agency that developed them. If they don’t, then a quick search on Google can often reveal the agencies name. However, it is important to be careful if adopting this approach. Just looking at a website does not tell you the whole story. The underlying technology could be a shambles, the management may have been appalling and the project might have exceeded its budget and missed specified deadlines. If you do select an agency on the basis of a website then you may be wise to call the website owner first and get their opinion on the agency.

By combining the various approaches above you should have built up a considerable list of agencies. How many agencies you choose to send the brief to is subjective. It depends on the size of the project and the time available. Invite too many and you have a lot of proposals to read and presentations to sit through. Invite too few and you may not receive enough responses to carry out a fair comparison. For an “average” website redesign (if there is such a thing) anywhere between five and ten would be a good number. However, the chances are that your current list is larger than that. How then do you refine it down to a reasonable number?

Assessing an agencies website

The most effective way of finalizing the list of agencies you wish to tender is by looking at their websites. An agencies website can tell you a lot about whether they are right for your project. The problem is that web design agencies are very aware that they are judged by their websites and so put a lot of effort into projecting the right image. Your challenge is to look beyond the superficial gloss and focus on what can be learnt about the reality of their offering.

It is easy to get seduced by alluring graphics and exciting animation. However, I suggest there are four essential pieces of information that you need to focus on.

Do they have the capacity to deliver? You need to be confident that their team is big enough and has the right skill to deliver your project. A good agency will ensure that information on the size and makeup of their company is available, in order to help you make that judgment.
Do they have the right experience? Agencies who have experience of working on similar projects or in the same sector, can prove invaluable. Their experience will dramatically reduce the learning curve and this will impact costs and timescales.
Can they produce the right design style? When we discuss design in the next chapter I will argue that brand identity and target audience, rather than the preferences of either the client or agency should dictate design. It is therefore important that the chosen agency is capable of designing a user interface suited to these requirements. Most agencies show examples of their work on their websites. Look for examples that are aimed at a similar target audience or mirror the style to your existing branding. Failing that make sure the examples on their sites demonstrate a broad range of styles. If all the sites they produce have a definite “house” style and that is not inline with your requirements, then look elsewhere.
Can they deliver your technical requirements? Good web design is about more than the user interface. Increasingly, web projects involve complex development work. An agencies website should demonstrate a capability to deliver these kinds of projects. There should be examples that are comparable to your requirements and using similar technologies.

If a website does not provide you with the information you require, then take the time to pick up the phone and speak to the agency directly. A five-minute phone call can be more enlightening than pouring over a site for hours.

Hopefully this process will allow you to create a definitive list of agencies you wish to invite to tender. Once the brief has been sent, expect the agencies to call with various questions. Be sure to note down the calls you receive. Who took the time to call you and who did not? Of those who did call, which asked intelligent questions and which had not read the brief thoroughly? These are all clues that help you build up a picture of the agency and informs your decision making process.

Show 95: In honour of the the RAF

Posted in Classic shows on September 25, 2007 by Paul Boag

On this week’s show: Paul shares some techniques for selling your services through your online profile. Marcus discusses project time scales and Ben Hunt talks about marketing your web business.

Podcast: Download (24.9MB)

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News and events | Project time scales | Social networking for sales | Ben Hunt on marketing a web business

News and events

The Rissington Podcast

For over 2 years now we have been doing this podcast and in that entire time we have reigned supreme. There have been other web design podcasts but lets be frank they have been shit ;) Obviously out of politeness I have pretended they had their place but I think it was obvious to all that only boagworld was really worth listening to.

However, like all great empires sooner or later they crumble and fall to a new rising star and I fear that maybe true with Boagworld. There is a new kid on the block called the Rissington Podcast. Not only is it hosted by two web design guru’s in the form of John Oxton and Jon Hicks but it is also professionally put together and at times really funny.

This rambling, question based show shares some great advice on web design in an entertaining and friendly manner. Definitely check it out, we promise not to cry. After all, it is even more British than us!

Net Promoter Score

On last weeks .net magazine podcast we got talking about how to measure the improvements we make to the user experience in order to prove their value to a client. Peter Merholz from Adaptive Path mentioned something called the Net Promoter Score which I have confess I had never heard of.

Fortunately I wasn’t alone in my ignorance because Andy Budd had not come across the term either. However, unlike me he took the time do some research into the Net Promoter Score and post his findings online…

To calculate your Net Promoters Score, you ask your customers “how likely they would be to recommend you to a friend”, and get them to grade their answers on a scale of zero to ten. Zero would be extremely unlikely while ten would be highly likely. Those who answer nine or ten are considered promoters, and are the most likely people to evangelise your services. Those who answer between zero and six are considered detractors and are the type of people who will spread negative views about your services.

To work out your Net Promoters Score, you simply subtract the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters. A good score would be in the range of 50-80%, while an average score would be 5-10%. A poor score would be in the negatives…

Andy then goes on to explain how this basic question can be used to assess the value of your service. I can see why Peter brought this up on the show as it would seem an excellent way of assessing improvements made to the user experience. By testing before and after a site redesign it would be easy to measure improvements in the experience.

Try it on your next project.

15 Excellent Examples of Web Typography

This is a bit of a random news story but I really wanted to mention it. I am excited to see that the movement towards better typography on the web continues to build momentum and I am constantly amazed at just what is possible with a bit of determination.

Typography can me an incredibly powerful tool in our design arsenal, as I have no doubt said many times before. However, if you still need convincing then check out these 15 superb examples of web typography which I came across this week. There really is some inspiring stuff in here and it should be enough to get even the most jaded web designer playing with type again.

Social net offers new perspective

Talking of being inspired, my last news story of today is a post by Bill Thompson on the BBC technology site. I am not sure it is directly to do with web design but it certainly went a long way to re-energising me about the work I do on the web.

The article focuses on how the social side of the web is transforming not just the way we interact online but also our world as a whole. While other journalists seem to be hammering the social net as a haven for child predators and terrorist trainers, Bill talks about how it is uniting cultures and making the news we see on TV real again.

Bill writes:

What will happen when these people (referring to online friends we have made) start dying in famines or wars, or when the climate changes caused by global warming lead to floods and droughts and natural disasters?

What happens when the photos on Facebook and Flickr show devastated crops and starving families – and these people are not just faces on the television but old friends, people whose likes and dislikes and reading habits and favourite films we know and share?

The world is different when it’s the people you know, and I do not think we will be able to resist the forces of change when our friends are dying on screen, in front of us, and we know that we could do something but have decided not to.

The article really grasps the power of the social web, a power I personally am all too well aware of. Running and developing an online community is a strange thing. Many perceive social networks as a numbers game (a way of attracting traffic). However at its heart are real people and real relationships. I will never forget a woman called Crystal whom I became friends with back in 1997 when I ran a virtual community. Crystal was dying of cancer and was housebound. For such a long time she was the heart of our community until one day she died. The grief that we felt was just as real even though none of us had ever met her face to face. She was a real friend to me, a real person.

I think that is why many online communities fail. They fail because they don’t grasp that communities are about people and relationship rather than features and technology.

Marcus’ bit: Project timescales

I have often rambled on about the importance of contracts on this podcast and, within those the contracts, the need for a detailed spec, a detailed task list and associated timescales and milestones.

I still think all of those things are important but I do think that often (me included) people go into a land of fantasy when it comes a) when they can start a project and b) how long each one of those tasks will take.

Clients are guilty of this too.

This is what usually happens:

The client, not knowing how long the project will take, picks a date for project completion because they don’t want it left open. Let’s call it ‘date x’.
Unless it’s patently impossible to achieve, agencies will agree to this deadline because they don’t want to adversely affect their bid.
A certain amount of back and forth over the delivery date happens because, for example, it takes longer than expected to agree on a contract, or maybe the scope has extended a little, etc. But the agency can’t really move the date to somewhere comfortable because they have already agreed to ‘date x’. So, all parties then agree to ‘date x plus 1 month’ or similar.
The project then slips and both parties start blaming each other for it – the agency feels that the client is overly pushy and, worse, the client thinks that the agency is unprofessional, inattentive etc.

Be honest from the start

Seriously, do it. I was just having a conversation this morning with a potential client (hi Graham) who is looking for a new site. He has an unrealistic delivery deadline of the end of October. With Headscape’s current workload, I felt that we could deliver the project, at best, by the end of January. This blew our chances completely but -

a) Graham appreciated the honesty and, who knows, may want to work with us again or recommend us to others;

b) If I had underestimated – a favourite at this time of year is to say ‘we can do it by Christmas’ – then I would have become very unpopular internally and also with the client when we failed to deliver.

Don’t forget you have other clients

It is so easy to think ‘standard CMS site redesign equals 10 weeks’ and then go and quote a date for completion 10 weeks from now! Don’t forget the following:

It usually takes at least 2 weeks to sign a contract
Do you have the resources to start straight away?
What other projects are imminent?
Staff holidays

Educate

I think the problems I am referring to relate to the fact that, even now, we are working in a relatively ‘young’ industry. This means that many clients simply don’t have an understanding of how long projects, and the tasks within those projects, can take.

This used to be a problem with pricing and still is in some cases. However, client expectations of cost seem to be a lot more in line with each other than they were, say 3 years ago.

If we can explain what we do and how long it takes right from the start with a potential client, then hopefully client expectations of project length will also balance out.

Paul’s corner: Social networking for sales

From time to time I get questions about how to build your reputation in the field of web design. How do you become well known so that you can attract more work in? Its a fair question and one that inspired an article I wrote recently called The Geeks Alternative To Golf.

Ask the expert: Ben Hunt on marketing a web business

Ben:

Ill be talking about marketing a web business. And the things that I cover will apply particularly to small web businesses, little shops, web designers. But, the principles that we will be going over will apply to the whole of web design and in fact the design of any site at all.

What I am going to be talking about I guess comes under headology, psychology. It will be stuff like: self perception, posture, attitude, and brand – which are really central things.

So, starting with brand… what is brand? Well, brand is how people perceive you. What do you offer, what can you do for them. And what differentiates you from alternatives. Differentiation is absolutely vital and you must not ever underestimate it. There is a couple of books that have been really influential in hammering this point home to me.

The first one I would like to mention is called Purple Cow. It is written by Seth Godin, the kind of godfather of marketing. And the core premise of Purple Cow is… whatever you do, you have got to stand out 241 you’ve got to be memorable. In the 22st century just fitting in with people’s general expectations, fitting in with the crowd simply doesn’t cut it anymore.

The second book that I really loved is called Zag and it is written by a guy called Martin Neumeier. And it comes at the same kind of thing, but from a different angle. It says, “When everybody zigs, zag.” You go in the other direction. What ever is going on around you, do whatever it takes to stand out, to be noticeable and to go against the flow. Zag is also full of brilliant examples that explain why and also how you can go about it.

So what I am going to be covering is broadly three steps that will help you to get into a really winning mindset. Okay, so let’s dive in.

These days so much to choose from that we are surrounded by so many brands and so many messages all of the time. What drives our decisions and our choices as clients and what drives our client’s choices. And I find that it really really helps me if I try and get into the head of my potential customers. So the first thing to note, which is really often overlooked, I cannot stress this enough is people who land on your website (generally speaking) want you to be the one.

No one really enjoys trolling search engine results. People say to you, “Oh you know, you competitors are only a click away.” And I would like to say to these doom-and-gloom merchants, “So what!”. You know, when somebody is on my website, we are half-way there. We are over the first hurdle.

And these people are going to fall into two categories. They are either going to be someone who is looking for what we do and if they are fantastic! All we need to do then is to communicate that, quickly and cleanly to them, without giving them any reason to click back to the Google search results. And if this people is in the other category of people who aren’t looking for what we offer, no problem! We have got nothing to lose. We’re unlikely to be able to turn them around at this point and they are probably looking for something else.

But what we might hope to do, is leave a positive impression so that one day when they are sitting there at there desk going, “Do you know what we really need is someone who does expert site reviews, or somebody who specializes in Web 2.0 design.” You might hope that hey remember you.

It is really important to get your head around this reality that people who are visiting your sites are your friends and they want you to be right, so all you have to do is not bugger-it all up.

Okay, so let’s take it for granted that your honored site visitor is in the first camp. They are here because they are looking for what you offer; they want you to be the agency for them. Moving on to step two… How to let them make a positive decision.

Now here my advice is, work out who they really are. Who are your real customers? I see a lot of small agencies and free lancers, who on their websites they try and betray themselves as something they’re not – either bigger or broader or more capable. We don’t need to do that. The absolute core of this whole blurb I am spatting at is don’t pretend to be a big corp megabucks agency, if you’re not. Yeah…

The whole trick is to be who you are, and portray that in a strong way that people love; that people connect with. I mean, you’ve seen all this stuff where people say, “We this and we that.”. You know, all over their website. When it is clearly one guy sitting in his bedroom. And there is nothing wrong with being one guy sitting in your bedroom doing work; there is a market for that kind of thing. And the other kind of stuff you find is people say is that, “Oh, we do work for clients ranging from 50-quid jobs (for small local businesses) up to mega-gazillion jobs for international blah-blah-blah…”. And you sit there going, you don’t do those kinds of jobs.

So who are you trying to win? Are you trying to win BMW and SONY and Disney? Do you think they… those guys are going to come along to your website and fall for this stuff? Let’s say they did.

Let’s go on a flight of fancy and say that the VP of Marketing for Disney lands on your website cause they just happens to find himself between web agencies, looking for a new one, and he goes, “Oh wow! These people seem to have a team although I can’t see them because there are no names and there is not much of a portfolio. And they say that they work with companies just like mine, a massive global conglomerate.” Let’s say you caught him on a bad day and he accidentally picks up the phone and calls you. How long is he going to be on the phone for, one minute 241 two minutes, before he realizes that you can’t possibly give him the security that he as a big-massive client needs. So we just need to accept that these aren’t the guys who will be paying your wage.

So think, “Who are the real people who want what you offer?” And then, we brand ourselves, we pitch ourselves for those people uniquely. There is no point in pretending to be what you are not. What you need to do is present what you are, in the best light possible, which brings us onto step three… How to show who you are in a way that wins customers.

So the trick is to examine all the aspects of what you are, what you do, and how you work whether you perceive it as positive or negative. And build those things into a brand, into a whole impression, that really delivers for you. So let’s get back into our customers head.

Who are they, first of all? So they are not BMW and Disney and all of these guys. They aren’t going to be paying your bills. Who is going to be paying your bills? Who needs what you have? This is a two-way match between supply and demand. You can’t just be what you are not. You can only offer what you can offer. You can’t sell to people who need something else.

Let’s start with the givens. Let’s start with what you are and what your capabilities are, what you can do. And then, picture a market for that. But the trick here is to select what to show that might make you memorable and create a connection.

Often the things that you might perceive as weakness… for example if you are stuck in that mindset of thinking, “You need to pretend to be a massive full service agency.”… the things that you think are weaknesses may in fact be real strengths if you can spin them right, if you can present them in a right way. But, fundamentally this is all about getting your head around it.

Branding isn’t about pretending to be something that you are not. Branding is about working out who you are and what you really do and then standing there and saying it with confidence in a way that really impacts people.

Okay, so let’s look at a few things. Ah, you might be thinking, “We are not based in central London.” Great! You’re nearer to your local customers. You’re nearer your local small businesses who want somebody around the corner. They don’t want a big kind of so-ho agency.

So you are thinking, “We are just one person.” Fantastic! You have no huge wage bills and that keeps the cost down. And very often, your clients can know that they can pickup the phone, and might even have your mobile number, and they can pickup the phone and speak to you. And that is worth an awful lot to a lot of clients, knowing who is going to be on the other end of the phone.

“What about if you haven’t got an office?” Who cares if you haven’t got an office? You go to your clients and meet at their premises. It also keeps the fees down. Your local clients will respect that.

“You don’t know everything about web technology.” Who does? You might be a specialist in PHP or CSS. Or you might have a particular passion for religious organizations or green issues or whatever it is, whatever really floats your boat is whatever you want to do. Let’s do that.

Nobody knows everything. So if you are a small scale agency, we talk about this a lot, everyone has a network of other professionals and amateurs in your area, or around the world, who can help. And even the big agencies do that – everybody does that.

So what we are talking about is, say what you are really about. Lots of people make a positive decision to work with my agency, after reading our ethical policy that we publish on our website. And that works great for us because the kind of clients that we love to work for are actually attracted by reading that stuff and the other clients who are in industries that we don’t do, they don’t bother to get in touch. Which saves everybody time and effort. So now you are getting your brand together. We need to build in, what your audience wants.

So if you are really suited to dealing with other local small businesses, say. Think about what signs, what signals they are looking for to be able to make a positive decision to take the next step.

There are two important things to remember here. Remember the customer in on your side. They want you to be the one. And also, here’s a new one, you don’t have to close a sale on your website.

They job of the website is to get a qualified visitor from the point of first initial contact, knowing nothing about you, to the point of taking the next step. That’s it. So focus your efforts on giving the right kind of visitor, the right kind of signals, that you probably right for them. That is all that you need to do.

Now generally, you’ll be looking to reinforce just a few points and I always think of these as like check boxes in somebody’s mind. I like to picture somebody; think of what they look like, where they’re working, sitting at their computer typing something into a search engine and clicking on some results. And thinking, “What are the check boxes, what are the three or four check boxes (there are not usually more that that), in this person’s mind that I need to tick-off?”

And if you can tick-off those check boxes without upsetting the person, or giving them any reason to go away, and not believe in you then you’ve probably done your job. Then what you do is, you say (here is a call to action)… “If you want to talk about this more, that is fantastic, pickup the phone and call me and I would love to speak with you!”

Let’s imagine, depending on the market you are talking to, what kind of check boxes might be in somebody’s head. I think very often that they are things like, “I can trust these guys.” or “They are not going to be too expensive and will fit my budget.” or “They like working with companies like mine.”

So they are looking for evidence of all of those things. And it might be like what we said before; “I can get somebody on the phone if I need help.” And clients aren’t necessarily super confident in their requirements. You know, if it is an engineering company, and they don’t really know anything about media or marketing in particular, then there is no reason to think that they are sitting there being really really cynical. What they looking for is a friend, they are looking for someone to be on their side and to help them through this process.

All we need to do is get them effectively to feel good about you 241 is really what we are saying. We have to get them from first finding you, to coming to a point where they have no reason to think you are not the right agency for them, then you give them a call to action and you say, “Let’s get together and let’s talk about we can do for you.”

The thing I would add here is to do with focus. You need to plan the steps from the home page through to that call to action. Now you know your website might only be one page. You might only need one page to do that. You don’t have to have a news section. You might not have news to give. Don’t put a news section on because it will be a dead pit.

You should put on your website only the things that you need to get that person from A through to B. And you need to be very very focused about it. So don’t put in more pages than you need. Don’t put in more images than you need. Don’t put in more blurb-bump-from-rhubarb, the more blurb-bump-from-rhubarb you put on your website the more you’re going to be watering down your message.

Get all of these steps right, you have done your job and you should see the difference in your bottom line.

Show 92: Royal Air Force

Posted in Classic shows on September 4, 2007 by Paul Boag

On this week’s show: Paul asks how much you should blog, Marcus takes a look at the state of music online and John Oxton joins Jon Hicks in discussing the benefits and drawbacks of home working.

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News and events | Music on the web | How much to blog? | Hicks and Oxton on home working | Housekeeping

One quick thing before we dive into the news. I am lazy. Yes, I know it is a shock. I am always looking for the easiest way to do things. But as well as being lazy I like pretty shiny things. One thing I particularly like is pretty desktop pictures. However, looking for cool ones takes too long. You can therefore imagine my delight to discover a mac app called Desktoptopia that basically pumps gorgeous background to my desktop on a continual basis. What is more you can even add your own RSS feeds if you don’t like their images.

So I wrote to them saying I liked their software and they offered me a $5 discount for all you boagworld listeners until the 18th September. That means you can buy the software for only $15! All you have to do is go to desktoptopia.com/store and enter the code “boagworld”. I know this sounds like an ad but it isn’t. They aren’t giving me anything. I just liked their product.

Anyway if you know of any other cool apps that you want me to go after a discount on that drop me a line.

News and events

The Mobile Web

This last week has seen the release of Cameron Moll’s book on the Mobile Web. I have been waiting a long time to read this book and although I have yet to finish it, what I have seen justifies the wait.

You maybe tempted to think that the mobile web isn’t really something you need to concern yourself with, but I would strongly encourage you to reconsider. In Cameron’s book he explains that 59% of the entire world population will have a mobile phone by 2010. In 35 years – roughly the same amount of time as the PC and nearly one-forth the time of the landline phone – mobile phone penetration has surpassed the PC and landline phone combined. It is a massive growth area. Admittedly not all of those phones are internet enabled and even if they are that doesn’t mean people use them. However, in the UK and US mobile access to the internet is already one-fifth the size of those accessing from a PC.

The book is only $19 and can be downloaded in PDF format from mobilewebbook.com.

If that has wetted your appetite for the mobile web you should also check out an iphone article that has appeared on the List Apart website. It provides loads of great advice on developing sites that work well with the iphone and although it is iphone specific a lot of the information applies to other mobile devices too.

Incredible image scaling

Next up is a video demonstration that is causing considerable excitement online. The video shows an amazing technology that can dynamically scale an image up or down to fit the available space. We are not talking pixel scaling here, we are talking about adding or removing pixels in a seamless way by following the contours of the objects in the picture.

Its an incredibly hard thing to describe on an audio podcast and so I would encourage you to look for yourself.

What I can say however is that this is an incredibly exciting technology which the big players are taking seriously. Adobe has already hired one of the creators of this technique.

Finding a domain name generator

My next news item for today is a great little post I came across on the sitepoint.com website which lists three domain name generators. These “generators” help solve a growing problem you encounter when launching a new site or product; finding an available domain name.

You can tell just how hard it has become to find a good domain name by the way that web 2.0. companies have started dropping vowels in order to get the word that they want.

The sites listed in this blog post allow you to enter keywords and it will suggest domain names based on word combination, plurals and even thesaurus lookups. Best of all one of the sites mentioned also works nicely for those of you who are looking for language specific URLs.

Very useful indeed.

The ultimate design brief

Last up in today’s news segment of the show is an article about writing a design brief. It is not directly written with web design in mind but ever word is applicable. The article applies equally to designers as to clients and talks about the important role that a design brief fulfills. It suggests that designers need to encourage clients to put together a formal design brief outlining exactly what their requirements are. It then lists a series of suggestions of things which should be included. The list it includes is far from being comprehensive (at least not for web designers) but it is an excellent starting point.

I really cannot emphasis enough how important a formal brief is no matter how small the project. It is a strange coincidence that this post comes out in the week that I am drafting a chapter on brief writing for my book. While working on this it has reminded me of just how bad things can become if all parties are not entirely aware of each others expectations.

If you tend to be a bit slack when it comes to writing down requirements then make a point of reading this article.

Marcus’ bit: Music on the web

I remembered writing an article for the Headscape website a long time ago on this subject so I thought I’d go back, have a look, and compare it to how things have actually changed in the past five years.

At the time, before the general take up of broadband, the use of music on websites was limited to annoying, over-compressed loops that bore little relevance to the rest of the site. I hoped that the advent of broadband for all would lead to music being created for sites a lot more often and the role of web music developer/designer becoming a reality.

So, has anything changed?

Well, to be honest, not really. The sites that used to include music; ‘cool’ sites like trendy design agencies, band sites etc still do and they do it a lot better. The quality has improved along with the choice of what you can listen to. But that wasn’t what I was hoping for.
At the time, there was a bit of a buzz about audio branding – promoted by Intel’s audio ‘logo’. This lead me to think that a lot more companies would start to introduce audio branding and add it to their sites. This hasn’t happened at all apart from a few big names

like Philips and Ford.

Why not?

The main reason for the lack of take up of music on sites is, I think, that music needs to either sit on it’s own i.e. you don’t associate imagery with it at all or, it needs to synchronised with imagery. Music works great with films/ads/etc because they’re fixed – you can stop and start them but that’s about it. They can’t be viewed in a random way like the way people navigate websites. This means that music on websites will always feel like a bit of an add-on and, at worst, as a distraction.

Additionally, websites are generally seen as information portals and not as places of entertainment per se. They provide entertaining things to download, watch, etc but in themselves they are simply shells for content, most of which is written text. While I’m on ‘text’, one thing I thought we would see more of was voiceovers – but again, this hasn’t caught on.

Any positives for the composer?

Yes. What has exploded since the take up of broadband is video. We are seeing more and more video online. Video, which is a fixed entity, usually benefits to a lesser or greater from the addition of music.

Though the creation of quality video is a specialist field, I can see web design agencies being asked to produce more and more video (for example: client testimonials, staff interviews, product demos etc). Quite a lot of the time I expect that library music will be used but I expect that little by little, more new compositions will be required for video on websites.

I’ll check again in five years!

Paul’s corner: How much to blog?

I recently received a question from Dan:

For as long as I can remember the prevalent thought has been that the key to success for blogging and podcasting is to post frequently and on a regular schedule. Now, this made a lot of sense because websites had to get visitors to comeback manually to find new content. But now in the age of RSS feed is this advice still as important as it used to be if at all? Also in terms of how web managers spend their resources is it more important to do a few updates with stella quality or to manage your time so that frequent updates are the priority?

With over 66% of blogs not updated in over 2 months and anywhere between 60% and 80% abandoned within their first month this seemed a good subject to examine in more depth…

Hicks and Oxton on home working

Paul:
Okay. So joining me today are two towers if British web design genius, in the form of Jon Hicks and John Oxton. Hello guys.

Jon:
Hello.

John:
Hello. I think he is trying to tell us that weíre fat.

Jon:
[laughs]

John:
[laughs]

Paul:
[laughs]

John:
I was just agreeing with him. [laughs]

Paul:
Itís always good practice, if you are doing a podcast, to butter-up your guests in advance.

Jon:
[laughs]

John:
[laughs]

Paul:
[laughs]

John:
Oh, I always wanted to be greased up. Thank you.

Paul:
Enjoy. Okay so the reason we dragged these two guys onto the show today is really to talk about a change that they both made in their carriers recently. So you guys have been freelancers for a while, is that right?

John:
Yes. Iíve been 5 years. How long have you been John?

Jon:
On and off for about 5 years as well.

Paul:
Okay.

Jon:
With three years committed.

Paul:
So that is quite a while to work as freelancers. And I guess that you both used to work out of home offices. Is that right?

John:
Yes. Iíve worked for the first three years from a home office. And the last two years I have renting a little desk in a local print design company.

Paul:
Okay.

Jon:
So it kind of like the next step-up.

Paul:
What about you Mr. Oxton?

John:
I worked out of a bedroom, like every proper developer should.

Jon:
[laughs]

John:
For as long as I have been doing web design I never had my own office.

Paul:
Okay. And then, relatively recently the two of you decided to get together and move into an RAF base, is that right?

Jon:
[laughs]

John:
[laughs]

Jon:
Thatís right… over. [sound of CB radio clicking off] Yeah, I mean… do you want to tell the story John? Or should I tell the story?

John:
You tell the story.

Jon:
Iíve been renting a desk for two years. It was a nice place to rent and nice people. But it really was though… ìWe have a spare desk in the corner and you can come and use it.î John mentioned that we wanted to find an office, so we were looking for anywhere sort of halfway between where we lived. And this place came up and I think I have to admit, there was kind of a boy-appeal to the whole RAF based thing. I mean it is not big, an RAF base, about 8 or 9 years ago. But, there is still an airfield here and it is still being used. And, itís great.

Paul:
So, beyond this being some nice reminiscing about how youíve got a lovely office together and shouldnít we all be envious of you? I mean, the reason I kind of got you on is to talk a little bit about home working and working in an office, and working as a freelancer really. And setting yourself up and stuff like that. What made the decision for you to move out of a home office and into an office working together? What triggered that decision?

John:
I think for me, the key was having young children. Working at home with young children is an nearly impossible I think.

Paul:
Hmmm.

John:
But it is also the fact that we kind of worked together for the year before hadnít we, on a project, and we found out that we get on quite well.

Jon:
[laughs]

John:
[laughs]

John:
So those were the two elements for me really. Find someone you can get along with and just wanting to get out of the house because of the kids.

Paul:
So was it a desire to be in an environment where you could bounce off of somebody else and have other people you could speak to as well? Or was it just getting away from the kids?

Jon:
That that is one aspect of it. Certainly, going back to the place that I was renting the desk from, they are lovely people and they were good print designers, but I couldnít talk to them about anything web related.

Paul:
Yeah.

Jon:
Ummm. I mean, they did websites using Freeway.

Paul:
Right.

Jon:
So you know you couldnít talk code to them, you could talk about IE bugs – and that kind of thing. Ummm, although I could do my thing of asking people what color something is, if I needed to check… but that was about it. So yeah, that is an element to it. Having someone there you can actually talk to about these things, or you know passing around things like… discussing things like the blueprint of CSS framework or what was that one called Moonfall, or something. It was the Perl script for doingÖ

John:
Oh yeah.

Jon:
CSS variables. These sorts of things, beforehand I wouldnít know anyone to talk to about that. You know, that makes the difference.

John:
And Iíve got somebody that can identify fonts for me now…

Jon:
[laughs]

John:
[laughs]

Paul:
[laughs]

John:
…which is a huge bonus! And what about merging two big iTunes libraries.

Paul:
Ah, I didnít think about the iTunes libraries.

John:
It is all about the music really.

John:
I mean it is difficult. There are definite advantages to home working. Ummm. Not having to travel is a huge one. Especially when you think about the environmental costs. As well as the financial cost of traveling somewhere to work.

Jon:
If anyone mentions carbon footprint, I hang up.

Jon:
[laughs]

John:
[laughs]

Paul:
[laughs]

John:
Yeah. We donít think it matters a bit. And everything is there. If you want to go and make a bacon sandwich at lunchtime you can. If donít have to go out and shop necessarily. And it is a nice familiar environment. And it is definitely cheaper. Thatís the thing. You are paying less over head.

Paul:
Hmmm.

John:
But, for me that would only work if I could afford a big house.

Jon:
Yeah.

John:
And we had the space to do that. And the space enough to be far enough away from that other activity as John says like children.

Paul:
Hmmm.

John:
And even if you lock yourself away in a room they still come in and talk to you.

Paul:
Do you think there are actual business benefits to being in an office rather than working out of your home?

Jon:
Well definitely. One of the things here, when they took over the RAF base, they took over what was the officers mess. They turned the rooms into separate suites. So there, what do you say John, about 20 other companies here?

John:
Yeah.

Jon:
Quite a lot.

John:
As well as some other virtual companies. Yeah, and a load of them Jon is working with other companies in the building.

Jon:
I think there is definitely an element where, ìYou can afford an office you must be doing something right.î I think he makes it look a bit more professional, for a start.

Paul:
Umm hmmm.

Jon:
You have a real live office, and you are not working out of your bedroom. It is a nonsense perception, but never the less it is true and it is a factor.

Jon:
And it is somewhere you can bring a client to. When I worked home, we would always have to meet clients at their place or at a pub… which wasnít a bad thing.

Jon:
[laughs]

John:
[laughs]

Paul:
[laughs]

Jon:
But sometimes a pub isnít the best place to meet. If you actually have got the nitty-gritty to discuss. So like here for example, there is a huge meeting room and a smaller meeting room. You hire it by the hour and they bring you in tea and coffee. And clients like coming here, donít they John?

John:
Yeah. Itís a nice journey.

Jon:
Again, as we all said about the other thing, clients here are greeted properly. Not like knocking on your house door and being jumped on by children.

John:
Yes. [laugh]

Paul:
Yeah.

Jon:
The phones get answered properly. There are lots, from a perception point of view ñ making you look more professional ñ I think.

John:
Absolutely.

Paul:
I mean we have a quite a few people listening to this show that would be enthusiastic amateurs at the moment. People that donít do web design full time, but maybe thinking about going freelance. Or, they are working for an existing company as a web designer and they are thinking about coming out of that and setting up freelance. What would you advise to people like that? Would you say start off in a home office or would you say go professional and go into one of these units straight off at the bat?

John:
Iíd be inclined to say, ummm, to start off at home if you can, but it depends what you are going out to do really. If you are going out with share holders and big plans for a product then probably go straight into offices. But if you are going out to be a freelancer who builds backends or frontends then you probably want to keep your overheads a small as possible to begin with.

Paul:
Hmmm.

John:
And then you can cut your position a little bit. And I think that was my attitude for a long time.

Paul:
So I mean would you have any particular advice for people who are working out of their home? As to… what things to avoid and what things to do in order to make yourself as productive as possible?

John:
I liked the Mark Bolton thing that he wrote, where he said to actually leave the house and walk around the block in the morning – to put his shoes on and actually leave the house. Because you know there have been days I have sat and worked with just my socks on. [laughs]

Jon:
[laughs]

John:
And it is all too easy to sit down and read a book. You know trying to make some mental separation between home and work is one of the key things.

Jon:
Yeah, definitely. That is something actually as well that I have to do here too. Ummm. Perhaps less than I did at home, but…

Jon:
And the longer you stay in front of a computer the less productive you can be. And a lot less stimulated your brain is. And just a simple thing of like, it doesnít have to be a long walk, just a couple of minutes. Get out and get some fresh air. Go around the block and come in again. And it has reinvigorated you. You if do it like a curve graph you see a sort of dip and over time it would get lower and lower the longer you stay in front of a computer.

John:
Yeah. That is for sure. I tend to go for short bursts, I pace a lot.

Jon:
Yeah. Yeah. We recorded ourselves recently doing that. And it proves how much I stay just rooted to a computer, while John paces and jumps up, and dances quite a lot.

John:
[laughs]

Paul:
[laughs]

John:
I like dancing.

Jon:
[laughs]

John:
[laughs]

Paul:
[laughs]

Jon:
But…

Paul:
That would be worth seeing. You recorded that…

John:
Ah huh.

Paul:
…on YouTube?

Jon:
Video I think.

Paul:
The actual work environment that you create, either at home or in the office. You know is there a certain setup that you like? That kind of makes working easier for you?

John:
I think it is a little bit like, old men and their sheds.

Jon:
[laughs]

John:
[laughs]

Paul:
[laughs]

John:
You know how when youíre an old man youíve said, ìWhen they get old they wouldnít even need their space.î When they need things around them they would say, ìI am going to my shed.î And when I was working from home it was like, ìI am going to my office.î

Paul:
Yeah.

John:
The thing about the office it that, it is the place where you control how it looks. It is your posters, your books. Your not necessarily mingling with everyone elseís. I think what we have done here, weíve created an environment that… well we havenít got an interior designer or anything… but we just kind of say we are an RAF base so letís go with an RAF theme. Some really nice 1940ís posters up on the walls. Even the famous ones you see everywhere, ìCome and Carry Onî, and Government advise posters.

Paul:
Yeah.

Jon:
It isnít too corporate in here is it?

John:
No.

Jon:
Itís clean and white. But the important thing is that it has all of our books and itís got our music.

John:
And we are quite lucky that we have some space in the back where we can hide all of our horrible stuff like filing cabinets.

Jon:
Yeah.

Paul:
Oh. Thatís good.

John:
We can keep it quite clean, canít we?

Jon:
It is a bit like the extension of the house really.

John:
Yeah. You know I have a window sill with all of my Doctor Who toys on it. It is creating an environment that makes you feel glad to be here.

Paul:
Ummm.

John:
That is one thing that I felt I when I went on holiday for two weeks, and coming in on Tuesday I felt it was great and feeling really excited to be going back into my office.

Paul:
Hmmm.

John:
We have quite a lot of things there and we have looking like we want it to look.

Paul:
Yeah.

Jon:
I find that quite a thing in the morning for me. Especially having this be the first office, with the actual leaving the house and coming to work, my brain actually starts thinking, ìI am going to work. I am going to work.î

John:
Yeah

Jon:
And at home, it was always a bit of a hard thing to do. Sometimes I would have to go out and come back, you know go and get something from the shop and come back to get the mental thing kicking in. So…

John:
Yeah. Well that is a huge thing. A lot of people talk about that, the separation of your home life and work life.

Jon:
But the actual office itself isnít geared up for relaxation really. It is geared up for calm working moments.

Paul:
When you guys worked at home, did you make sure you had a completely separate room dedicated to work? Because that always strikes me as being very important…

Jon:
Yeah. I did.

Paul:
…not to mix the two.

John:
There was occasions when I would go downstairs if I was doing something that I wasnít really motivated. I would sometimes go downstairs and just be amongst the family.

Paul:
Yeah.

John:
To have other people around me so I wasnít so excluded. So occasionally that could work for me to get me going, but generally… yeah, shut the door, put the music on and design away.

Paul:
I mean you talked about several things here about the need to get out and walk around a bit to clear your head. The need to sometimes to go and sit with other people, just to get that external stimulation. You talked about needing a quiet environment sometimes. What other kind of techniques do you use to help you be productive and get stuff done?

Jon:
Yeah. Setting deadlines is a big one for me.

Paul:
Okay.

Jon:
You know. Setting myself with burst deadlines when I had to get something done by setting that with the clients with an expectation otherwise I tend to get all, ìWell Iíll research that for a bit longer.î

Paul:
Yeah right.

Jon:
Deadlines are a important and acknowledging that sometimes Iíll do my best work at 3 oíclock in the morning – and going with that for a certain extent.

Paul:
Okay.

Jon:
Yeah, but I try and not do that too much anymore. But sometimes if I am struggling on something, 3 oíclock in the morning seems to be a good time.

John:
[laughs]

Jon:
I donít know why.

John:
Well I think for me, the simple fact of moving into an office was a big motivation booster. For a start, the change in environment was great kind of it reinvigorated me. But also, just the simple fact of, ìIíve got to do work to make money to pay for this place.î

Paul:
Yeah.

John:
…is a big booster in itself. But, yeah I use various things to sort of productivity in the sense I set a to-do list in yoJimbo a Mac application. I use Billings and BaseCamp a lot. Which I find that Billings can be very motivating the way I do these timesheets for everything I am doing.

Paul:
Okay.

John:
I never used to be very disciplined about recording time spent on things. But for some reason now, I am starting to do this. It is a very easy way to do it in Billings. And I find that quite motivating actually.

Paul:
Yeah.

John:
Actually recording how long things take.

Paul:
So, I mean kind of the final question that I wanted to ask is… The two of you have moved into an office together. But you still work very independently in your businesses or do you find that you are doing more stuff together? Is this the first step in becoming Jon and John Design, or…

Jon:
[laughs]

John:
[laughs]

John:
If you ask us that, we will put to you a different answer from the both of us.

Paul:
Oh dear. I have touched a nerve.

Jon:
[laughs]

John:
[laughs]

Jon:
You b****rd! [laughs]

John:
I mean at the moment we are very much independent. Ummm. But that is not to say that in the future…

Jon:
…I think that we touched on the subject and we are not willing to commit to any kind of answer yet are we?

John:
We are kind of looking at the projects in the future that we can collaborate on.

Paul:
Hmmm.

Jon:
I think there is more of a chance of us hooking up, because we are in the same office to collaborate on something ñ than we are about to becoming suddenly a big limited liability company with loads of employees.

John:
Yeah.

Jon:
That is nothing that I can see in the future… yet.

Paul:
Okay, well thank you very much guys for coming on the show and you never know, one day in the future we might get you to actually come in and talk about web design or something.

Jon:
[laughs]

John:
[laughs]

John:
I donít know anything about that. [laughs]

Jon:
How many episodes of Boag World have you done so far?

Paul:
You canít ask me that question because I do not know when this interview is going to go out.

Jon:
[laughs]

John:
[laughs]

John:
I see.

Paul:
I am going to take a stab and say 92.

Jon:
Well, there you go. After 92 podcasts what could we add to your web design conversation? [laughs]

Paul:
Obviously I know absolutely everything about web design. And there is nothing more to say other than what I have already said.

Jon:
Or catch me on a day when I am in a bad mood, and then I will tell you what I think about web design.

Jon:
[laughs]

John:
[laughs]

Paul:
[laughs]

Paul:
Excellent. Well, it was really good to talk to you and no doubt we will get you back in soon.

Housekeeping

And so that pretty much wraps it up for this week’s show. However, I do want to quickly mention one or two things before we go. If you are a web designer and live in the South West of England I just wanted to mention a new mailing list I have setup. It is exclusively for those in the South West and is designed to help build a community among web designers there. There is so much going on in places like Brighton and London and I thought it might be nice to build up a community in the more “rural” parts of Britain! You can find out more about the group at groups.google.com/group/swwd.

Also a quick reminder about the live recording of our 100th episode up in London on Saturday 20th October. If you are intending to come please sign up at upcoming.yahoo.com/event/224744.

Finally, because of d.construct and a trip to Cork I have at the beginning of next week, I am not 100% sure when we can get the show out next week so it might possibly be a few days late. However, don’t worry it will appear.

Thanks very much for listening and don’t forget to vote for our panels at this years SXSW at panelpicker.sxsw.com. We need all the votes we can get!

Show 88: Two fat ladies

Posted in Classic shows on July 31, 2007 by Paul Boag

On this week’s show: Paul shares some thoughts on recording your creative ideas, Marcus discusses setting up a web design company and we review the Principles of Beautiful web design by Jason Beaird.

Podcast: Download (19.7MB)

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Housekeeping

Before we get into the news there are a couple of housekeeping items I want to share with you all…

Eric Meyer Competition

In last week’s show we ran a competition to win a free ticket to Eric Meyer’s upcoming London workshop. The response to the competition has been truly phenomenal with a surprising mix of answer to our question…

“In which episode of the boagworld podcast did I first mention the subject of web standards?”

The answer was actually the very first show although we did have many suggest it was show 2. Although Show 2 was dedicated to web standards they were actually mentioned in the very first episode. Very well done to all of those of you who spotted that little trick in the question.

Anyway the winner, selected at random from the correct answers is… John Thixton.

Congratulations John, we will be in contact shortly to get you signed up.

Thanks very much to the guys over at Carson Systems who were kind enough to supply us with the free ticket. Don’t forget that even if you didn’t win you can still sign up for the workshop on the Carson systems website.

100th Boagworld

Next up, you may remember that a few weeks back we talked about the fact that we wanted to have a little celebration to mark the 100th episode of the boagworld podcast. Well, thanks to the organizational skills of Ian Forrester we now have a date and a venue. We will be recording the 100th episode of boagworld live at Ye Old Cock Tavern, London on Saturday 20th October 2007.

As well as recording the show live we are going to put a big wad of cash behind the bar so there should be free drinks for a while. We really appreciate all of the support you guys have given us over the last couple of years and want to in some way say thank you.

If you can possibly turn up it would be great to see you. Book it in to your calendar and sign up on upcoming. Please take the time to sign up on upcoming because it gives us an idea of how many people are coming.

News and events

Web redesign is a bad strategy

My first news story of the week is yet another post by Gerry McGovern. This article definitely makes up for his previous post about the best sites being ugly sites! This time around he talks about a particular passion of mine. He argues that website redesigns are nearly always a bad idea and that it fails to address the underlying issues.

This is certainly a position I have held for a long time. I believe that sites should evolve instead of going through a succession of wholesale redesigns. McGovern argues that redesigns too often happen for the wrong reasons such as changes in management, boredom, or a feeling the site has fallen into disrepair. I couldn’t agree more and would encourage people to think twice before complete overhauling their website.

YSlow for Firebug

Those lovely folks over at the Yahoo! Developer Network have been kind enough to produce a great plugin to the firebug firefox extension. I have spoken on the show before about how firebug provides loads of useful functionality to web developers including the ability to edit, debug and monitor both CSS and Javascript on live sites. However YSlow adds to that already impressive line up of functionality.

YSlow analyzes web pages and tells you why they’re slow based on the rules for high performance web sites. It analyzes any web page and generates a grade for each rule and an overall grade. If a page can be improved, YSlow lists the specific changes to be made. It also calculates the total size of the web page for both empty cache and primed cache scenarios, as well as information about cookies. Finally, it lists all the components in the page allows you to view the HTTP response headers for any component.

Find redundant CSS selectors

Talking of useful development tools for firefox, you might want to check out the Dust-me selector which has been released by the sitepoint guys this week. The dust-me extension helps you find unused CSS selectors.

You know what it is like. Maybe you are working with somebody else’s CSS file or maybe you are working on an old website and can’t remember what you have done. Whatever the case you don’t know what half of the CSS selectors do and so dare not remove any just in case they are used somewhere. Enter Dust-me.

Dust-me will monitor the pages of a website you surf around making a list of any unused styles it finds in attached stylesheets. The list is constantly updated as you move from page to page. Once you have looked around the whole site you end up with a definitive list of styles which can be safely removed. Nice!

Although this is useful I am sure there must be something out there which scans all of the HTML pages and saves you the effort of navigating around the site. If you know of such a tool post it on the show notes.

Marcus’ bit: Setting up a web design company

We got this question from Ali:

Have you done any podcasts on how to start a business? More specifically a web design company such as the one you have. Just a request if you have not done a podcast, could you have a whole one dedicated to starting a web design business. I mean how to start one, start with business plan or just start one day building websites for various people and build your own portfolio?

We have previously discussed the aspects of running a web design company, recently covering who you should look to employ and a little bit further back a fairly long piece where Paul and I reminisced about setting up Headscape. However, we haven’t really looked at the initial set up properly.

Though we’re not going to dedicate the whole podcast to it, I thought I would cover some of the things you need to think about.

Business plan?

To be totally honest, unless you are looking for funding, then I think writing a business plan is a waste of effort. I do think it is a good idea to write down what you want from the business and how you think you want the business to be viewed – in essence, a mission statement (though it has to actually mean something!).

It is also worth asking yourself where you want the business to be in 2, 3, 5 and 10 years time. Keep reviewing and don’t be afraid to change as your views and your business changes.

Coming back to funding; unless you are looking to develop a product and therefore require R&D time (and therefore backing) you shouldn’t really need any funding. If you can run your business from home the set up costs are fairly minimal.

Forecasting

Running a web design company, from a business point of view, can be a fairly nervy existence. Put simply, there is only so much work you can take on at any one time and clients will rarely wait for you to be ready, so there is always a point in the not too distant future (1, 2 maybe 3 months) where the work ends.

Therefore, not only do you need to be out there pitching for work, you also need have a good idea of what you need to make each month to break even. This takes thought and usually the input of someone with some accountancy experience. Producing an annual financial forecast has been invaluable to us as we know exactly where we stand throughout the year.

Keep a close eye on productivity as this is the bane of the fixed price service business. It’s very easy to get excited about a big new contract but they are usually the ones that end up being priced badly, take much longer to complete than originally expected and therefore ending costing you; not only on the visible bottom line but also in lost sales because you couldn’t take on new work.

Keep searching for new clients

When a business starts it tends to rely on a handful of clients to survive. This is perfectly normal but it means that young businesses are placed at risk if they lose one good client. I have always said that sales get easier and easier as time moves on based simply on numbers. In other words: the more clients you sign up, the more referrals you will get.
So, in the early days, make a particular effort to gain new clients as well as relying on existing ones.

Ok, that covers some general good practice, but what about some of the more detailed stuff.

Decide on branding

Here’s a few fundamentals:

Company name
URL – Obviously relates hugely to the previous point!
Logo/ corporate ID – you will need letterheads, business cards, invoices etc
Build your website – much as this is the biggest pain possible, it is fundamental. In the beginning it’s that old rock and hard place scenario where you can’t win new web design work because you only have a holding page, but you can’t build the site because you are working on precious paid work. I wondered recently why I tend not to work so many evenings as I used to – now I remember!

Boring stuff

You will need to register your company. In the UK this costs money, not a great deal but you will need to do it.
Limited company, partnership, sole trader? Take advice from professionals on this and other items here.
Insurance – I covered this in a recent podcast so I won’t go into detail, but you do need to look at:
- Professional indemnity
- Public/product liability
- Employers liability
- Key man
Contracts – you need to sort out your standard contract documentation before you start and make sure that it is used for all jobs.

Pitching early on

Even though it can feel like you don’t stand a chance against more well-established agencies, you do hold a few aces:

You have fresh ideas
You’re keen
Even though your company doesn’t have a much of a portfolio, there is no reason at all why you can’t demonstrate work done at previous companies as long as you’re honest about it and explain, in detail, about your role
You’re cheap! However, don’t continually undercut your own margins or you won’t be in business for long. Be prepared to walk away… be prepared to walk away!

Initial prospects

This is when friends, family and old work colleagues come to the fore. Even though I have just pointed out some of the good points relating to early businesses, gaining some business ‘easily’ through your contacts is highly recommended.

The cost of sale is usually much less so, again, you are helping out that bottom line and giving yourself more time for production work and pitching.

Consider outsourcing

Finally, try to build up a group of trustworthy contacts that you can outsource to a) when it gets really busy and b) if there’s a part of a project that is outside your skillset.

Paul’s corner: Recording creativity

I like to think of myself as an ideas person. I guess that is another way of saying that I am crap at implementing the ideas I have. One problem I used to suffer from was recording the ideas I had in a form that I could refer back to later. Overtime I have developed a couple of techniques that help me manage my ideas better. Whether you are a designer, developer or website owner, we are all required to be creative in our jobs. We are all looking for ways to become more creative. With that in mind I thought I would share some of those techniques with you.

Review: The Principles of Beautiful Web Design

This week I have received probably the most sarcastic and rude question ever to be sent to me. However, at the heart of all that cheek there was actually a very good question…

Once you have got to grips with the basic of HTML and CSS where do you go next?

Its a good question and there are a lot of potential answers to it. However one of the more sarcastic comments that surrounded the question made me think that perhaps the next step is to ensure a good grasp of basic design principles such as layout, typography, imagery and colour.

This in turn made me think of the book I am reading at the moment, “The Principles of Beautiful Web Design” by Jason Beaird.

Jason’s book really is a basic introduction to good design practices for the web. It is ideal for developers, amateurs or indeed anybody looking to improve the look and feel of their website. It is made up of 5 chapters each dedicated to one aspect of good design; layout, colour, texture, typography and imagery. It really is very good and talks a lot of real sense. I could imagine this being very useful for web site owners who want to understand the design process better and be more informed when signing off designs submitted to them by an agency.

However, what surprised me the most was how useful i found it myself (as somebody who calls himself a designer). I was intending to have a quick flick through the book so I could get the gist of what was being covered. However, I found myself being drawn in by Jason’s friendly writing style and by finding myself continually going “oh I forgotten about that” or “I really should spend more time doing that”. In short it works as a useful reminder service to designers too.

Check it out. Its a worthwhile read if you want to go over the basics.

Taking a brand online

Posted in Design on July 6, 2007 by Paul Boag

“and here is our style guide”… thump! A huge tome lands on the desk in front of you. When it is written entirely for print, how do you begin to turn it into something that will work on the web?

Of course not all style guides are “huge tomes”. Some are nothing more than a logo and some colours. However, with only a few rare exceptions, they all tend to be written with print in mind. Sizes are set in millimeters and not pixels, logos don’t display well at 72 dpi and colours often just don’t work well on screen.

Many designers feel that style guides limit their creativity, but I would argue that actually you have to be extremely creative to get some guides to work for the web! Below are 4 areas that can be particularly challenging and a few pointers about how I deal with each of them.

Typography

Style guides often set fonts and rarely are those fonts as universal as those found on the web. Generally speaking there is not much you can do about it except explain the limitations to the client. Normally speaking the client will accept the inevitable.

However, once in a blue moon you come across a client who starts insisting. He talks about having headings as images so you can set the font.

Although it is possible to work around the limitations of web fonts using techniques such as sIFR you also need to consider legibility.

The trouble is that often the fonts selected in style guides are picked because they look good in print. However, not all fonts that look good at print resolution, work when reduced to the screen. They often pixelate and become difficult to read especially at smaller sizes.

If you do use corporate fonts make sure they are used at a reasonable size in order to maintain legibility.

Layout

Layout can be another tricky area that is often included in a style guide. The guide might suggest a 3 column layout or stipulate the position of the logo. Although where possible it is good to stick with these recommendations, you should not do so when they conflict with web conventions.

For example I recently worked on a project where the style guide specified the logo should be positioned top right. Unfortunately it has become a convention on the web to display the logo top left and the search top right. Both myself and the client agreed that conforming to this web convention was more important that sticking rigidly to the guidelines.This decision was made easier by the fact that we had stuck very closely to the guidelines in other areas.

Another thing to be wary of in regards to layout is that guidelines often have a bias towards A4 portrait style layout. It also works on the assumption that you have pixel perfect control over positioning. Neither of these assumptions are correct when it comes to the web.

In short I think guidelines about layout need to be taken with a huge pinch of salt. It is extremely hard to replicate them faithfully on the web and as long as other areas of branding are better represented then their absence will not damage the brand online.

Logos

Unfortunately, where you maybe able to get away with changes to layout, you rarely can when it comes to the logo. This can prove an incredible challenge when the logo wasn’t produced with the web in mind. A poorly designed logo can often become illegible when reduced down in size.

Although I sympathize with designers who have to deal with “bad” logos, I would argue that a logo is so central to an overall brand identity (which extends way beyond the web) that changing it is out of the question.

However, although you cannot “change” the logo as such, minor tweaks to correct poor web rendering is possible. I have been known to tweak font size, weighting and spacing in order to aid legibility at smaller sizes. I have also been known to make minor changes to colour which brings us nicely onto…

Colour

Gone are the days when we worried about the web safe palette. However, that does not mean we can now apply colour guidelines without a second thought. There are still 2 major considerations to take into account when working with colour guidelines.

The first is the differences you see in how colour is displayed. I have spoken about colour display numerous times before so I wont repeat myself here. However, the fact that colour can often appear either lighter or darker on some monitors does mean that certain colours that look great in print (where its displayed is carefully controlled) will look terrible to some users.

The only solution to this problem is to manually adjust colours so that they sit nearer the middle of the brightness range. Light colours are made darker and darker colours lighter.

Another aspect of colour I have talked about before is colour bleed. This is explained brilliantly in a 24 ways article by Jason Santa Maria. In essence it means the smaller the text the more the colour of that text is influenced by its surrounding colour. Text on a white background becomes lighter and text on a black background becomes darker.

Again in order to counteract this problem it maybe necessary to manually adjust the brightness of a colour when used on smaller text. You cannot rely solely on the pantone numbers supplied in the style guide.

In conclusion

The key to successfully bring a brand online is to pick and choose your battles. Keep in mind the ultimate aim, which is to associate the website with other marketing collateral in the minds of the target audience. Making this association does not require compliance with every aspect of a style guide. If you comply closely in some areas, this can give you more flexibility in another area without significantly damaging the brand.

Podcast 42: Choosing the right design

Posted in Classic shows on July 10, 2006 by Paul Boag

It’s not unusual to be in a position where you have to choose between more than one design for a site. This podcast may help with the question “which design do I pick?”.

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In this week’s podcast Paul and Marcus discuss the decision making process involved in settling on a design for your site. Whether you are a designer or web site owner this podcast provides some interesting techniques for choosing the right design.

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How to approach choosing a design

Your approach to assessing a design is as important as the quality of design itself. Approaching your assessment in the wrong way can quickly lead to the wrong conclusions. Below are a few quick tips on assessing a design:

Avoid personal opinions

Design is very subjective. We all know what we like and yet we very rarely agree on what that is. It is easy to simply assess a design based on your personal preference. However, the chances are you will not be the end user of your site and so the design should cater for a wider audience than just you.

Be careful who you show

Although you don’t want your decision to be based on your personal preference you still need to think twice before you start showing it around. The temptation is to show it to work colleagues to get their feedback however they aren’t your target audience either (unless you are building an intranet). Try and avoid design by committee, have one decision maker that collates feedback from end users rather than co-workers.

View the design in context

It’s important that you assess a design within its context. Never print a design out to make your decision. Access each design on screen and within a web browser. After all, that is how other people will view it.

Check on multiple monitors

A design can look radically different on various monitors due to colour balance and gamma settings. Make sure you look at the designs on as many different screens as possible. A good design needs to be flexible enough to accommodate the different screens your site visitors will be using.

View at different resolutions

A design not only needs to work on different monitors but also at different resolutions. The resolution your PC is running at affects what can be seen on a design before you need to scroll. It is therefore vitally important to ensure key content doesn’t slip below the fold.

Accessing the design

Once you have worked out how you are going to go about assessing the design the next step is to establish the criteria by which you are going to make that assessment. Below are some initial ideas you might wish to use. Each of these areas could go into a lot more depth but I have tried to keep to the main points within each area.

Colour

Colour is a very subjective area, so rather than asking people what they think of a colour, ask them what words they associate with a colour palette. That way if they say a colour conjures up images of "progressiveness" you can compare this with the messages you want the site to convey.

Layout

There are two things to look out for when assessing the layout. Does the design have enough white space and does it have an underlying grid structure. White space allows a design to breath, making content more readable. A grid structure provides some organisation to the design and its absence can leave a design feeling chaotic.

Weighting and flow

Does the design draw the eye to key content and show the user what to look at next? Ensure that the design you choose puts the emphasis on the right elements in the same way a newspaper always makes it clear what the lead story is.

Typography

As with layout there are two key things to look out for when it comes to the text on your site. Firstly, make sure that the text has a decent space between lines. Tightly packed text can be really hard to read and will dramatically reduce dwell time. Secondly make sure that the designer has broken up larger blocks of text with headings, sub headings, bullets etc, as this dramatically improves scanability.

Accessibility

Obviously accessibility is a huge area but within the context of choosing a design there is only one main thing you need to know: Can you read the copy? Is there sufficient contrast between foreground text and the background? Avoid designs that you have to strain to read because ultimately they will drive users away.

Usability

Is it obvious what the user should do next? Do links look like links? Is the main navigation clearly positioned and labelled? Is the user overwhelmed with too many options? In many ways usability is the key criteria I use for judging design. Ultimately users just want to get at information as quickly and easily as possible and the design should not get in the way of that objective.

Branding

To a website owner this is probably the most obvious of the assessment criteria. How well does the design conform to your style guide and tie in with existing print material. A continuity across marketing collateral is vital for establishing a strong brand identity and the web is very much a part of that.

Imagery

The final area of assessment is the choice of imagery. Imagery can make or break a website. Some warning signs to look out for include:

Small busy images that are hard to see
A lack of consistency across the site with different styles of imagery, all mixed up together
Images that grab your attention away from content rather than directing you to it.

The golden rule

If there is a golden rule to choosing the right design it would be communication between client and designer. A client should listen carefully to what a design has to say about their design approach and the designer should be able to clearly communicate their ideas and why they have made the decision to produce a certain design. Too many designers fail to justify their approach and too my clients make up their minds about a design without listening to the logic behind it.

Also in this show

In this week’s show we take a look at a number of web conferences including the @media podcast feed, Refresh Orlando (which Paul will be speaking at) and d.contruct. We also discuss the ethical issues surrounding being "inspired" by another website, as well as a review of the Wiltshire Farm Foods website.

atMedia: Real world application

Posted in Reviews on June 16, 2006 by Paul Boag

Yesterday I posted my thoughts on each session as I went along. Today I have decided not to post on each individual session but rather sum up the overall lessons to be learnt from this year’s show.

I have really enjoyed this year’s conference and have unsurprisingly learnt loads and met some great people. The trick is to now take what I have learnt and apply it to the real world.

This blog and podcast has always been aimed at two specific audiences:

Those that run and manage websites but aren’t web developers
Those that are web developers, but don’t have time to keep up with all the latest trends in this constantly evolving industry

A lot of what is written about web design is full of techno-babble and therefore incomprehensible to anybody who isn’t an ubergeek. The same is often true for web design conferences and atMedia was no exception. Discussions about WCAG 2.0, microformats and the DOM can often seem to have little relevance in the real world simply because they are not clearly explained in real world scenarios.

Bearing all of that in mind I have attempted to summarise the key issues raised from atMedia in such a way that they are relevant to the daily experience of the boagworld audience.

atMedia for website owners…

Pragmatic Accessibility

Probably the most depressing session at the conference was the one that discussed accessibility. I won’t bore you with the details, but sufficed to say the new accessibility guidelines that are currently being developed have some serious issues.

Many website owners have traditionally simply asked their web design agency to "make their site compliant with the accessibility guidelines". All they cared about was ticking the accessibility box so they didn’t get sued.

The lesson from atMedia is that you need to change that thinking. Accessibility needs to be more about finding the right solution for your users, rather than conforming to a generic checklist.

Are you more likely to be sued if you take this approach? No, not if you respond in a timely manner to any accessibility problems that your users identify.

Sites that work together

In the two atMedia conferences I have attended there has been more and more discussion about sharing information across multiple sites and in a variety of different ways. Whether it is turning contacts into downloadable business cards that can be taken into outlook or allowing events you show on your site to be published on other sites. Whatever the situation there are more ways than ever to share information. Not only is this an excellent way of getting your message in front of a larger audience it is also a great way of creating closer integration between websites.

Although this is still an evolving area I would encourage you to start thinking about what information on your site might be worth sharing and possibility some of the ways you would like to share it.

Also it is worth noting that there are a lot of other sites out there that allow you to integrate their content into your site. For example it is now easy to take Google maps and plug them right into your pages. In the closing panel of the conference the idea of sharing content between sites came out as the big area of growth over the next year, so it is definitely worth your attention.

Internet Explorer 7

Probably the most pressing issue for web site owners is the release of IE 7 within the next two or three months. It is vitally important that your site is checked in this new browser as changes to the way it works could mean that your site appears broken. Fortunately this is relatively easy to check by downloading the beta version of IE 7 and simply visiting your site. If you do spot problems, now is the time to contact your web design agency. But don’t worry, the fixes shouldn’t be that difficult or expensive.

More than just web pages

Without a doubt, the biggest shift in thinking between last year’s conference and this one, is in the area of web applications. What that means is that your website can now be more than just a collection of pages, but rather has the potential to behave more like a piece of software on your desktop. How does that apply to your site? Well, that depends. Let’s say that you have an events section. Instead of allowing users to click through a series of pages showing lists of events and then detailed information on an individual event, you can now show it as a calendar very similar to the one found in outlook. The key is that it is no longer necessary to wait while a new page loads but rather that information can appear instantly in the same way it would in a piece of software on your desktop.

Now it is worth saying that it is early days for this kind of technology and you might want to wait for the cost of development to come down. However, it is worth having a long hard look at your site and thinking about where it might be appropriate to add richer interactivity.

This isn’t the most straightforward of concepts to grasp so if you are left wondering what I am talking about then don’t panic. We will cover this subject in more depth later. However to get you started check out Google maps and then compare it with a site like Mapquest. Notice how on Mapquest everytime you zoom in or out the page reloads, while in Google maps it all happens without the refresh.

Don’t underestimate branding

Although this isn’t a new concept, it was really driven home in one of the sessions: you get what you pay for. It came up in a discussion about design and that great web design takes time. Often web design companies will cut corners on design in order to stay within a clients budget. This is unfortunate as research highlighted at the conference demonstrated that users make their mind up about a site based largely on how it looks. Once those first impressions have been formed it is very hard to overcome them no matter how good your content is.

The lesson to be learned here is that when you are looking at a web design companies proposal take particular note of how much time is dedicated to establishing the look and feel of your site.

Your site on a mobile phone

Without a doubt delivering the web through mobile devices like mobile phones is going to be a big growth area over the coming year. Already there are three times more mobile phones than personal computers, the vast majority of which can access the web. The question is; do you need to worry about this yet as a website owner? Well to some extent that depends. The key thing that came out of this conference is that mobile users want very different content from a user sitting at a PC. The chances are a user isn’t going to want to know about your company history while shopping in the high street. However they might be interested in comparing prices if you run an ecommerce site.

Even if you have content which might be useful to mobile users the current barrier to entry is very high. With so many mobile phones out there and so many different browsing experiences, creating a good mobile website is very difficult.

My advice is simple… wait. Wait for the industry to mature and standards to emerge. Although the mobile web is an exciting area it is early days and now is not the time for the majority of organisations to enter the market.

atMedia for busy web developers…

New accessibility guidelines: Don’t worry YET

So you have just begun to get your head around the WCAG 1.0 guidelines when you hear that the second version is about to be released. Don’t panic, you don’t have to worry about them just yet.

To be honest, it became quickly apparent from the session on these guidelines, that they are in a mess and not yet in a fit state to release. Even the accessibilit
y experts are havin
g trouble understanding them so I really wouldn’t waste your time at this stage.

The emphasis should be on creating the most accessible site you can irrespective of any particular set of "rules". That isn’t an excuse to slack off, but it should be seen as an opportunity to be pragmatic about the approach you take to accessibility.

Time to learn Javascript

If I had one message from last year’s conference it was "now is the time to learn standards". This year the message is "get your hands dirty with Javascript". Javascript is, without a doubt, having a real renaissance and it is a skill you should definitely develop whether you consider yourself a developer or a designer. More and more of your clients are going to be asking for some of the cool functionality that is found on the so called "web 2.0" sites and as these are mainly driven with Javascript you will need to brush up your skills. But beware, make sure the techniques you learn are up to date and that you get your head around concepts like unobtrusive Javascript, graceful degradation and progressive enhancement.

Preparing for Internet Explorer 7

As I am sure you are already aware IE 7 is going to be launched in the next couple of months. What you might not know is the new browser is going to be pushed out through windows update so you can expect this to become the dominant browser very quickly. Obviously this is an excellent opportunity to get some extra work from your clients (unless of course you are an in house designer in which case it is just extra hassle – sorry!).

In order to make the process of testing and fixing sites as painless as possible Microsoft have produce a set of tools for preparing for IE 7. Among them is an expression finder, useful for finding all of those annoying IE specific CSS hacks which may no longer work in IE 7.

Open data

From Google Maps to Microformats, there are more and more ways to share data across multiple sites. This kind of data sharing was seen as the biggest growth area for the coming year, so it is something that is worth learning more about. I couldn’t possibly begin to cover the many opportunities in this post but it is definitely an area to start researching.

One of the simplest places to start is with the subject of Microformats. Microformats are simply a consistent way tagging content across multiple sites. Because data is marked up in a consistent manner it can be identified by other systems and used.

The simplest example is the hCard which allows you to markup your contact information on your website in such a way as to make it readable by other sites and applications.

I know it may all sound very confusing but it’s actually very simple and very powerful. Definitely worth checking out.

Pricing design

One of the sessions at the event focused on what makes design great. It was presented by some of the best designers around and yet their answer was incredibly simple. Great design takes time. You need time to consider and tweak a design. The creative process just can’t be rushed. If you are anything like me, the look and feel of sites that you work on don’t get the priority they deserve. With so many time consuming tasks within an average project, design is often the first to suffer when the budgets are tight or the deadline is looming.

Although it is not easy, the moral of the story is that if we want to make our designs truly exceptional, we need to build more time for design into our projects. If you work out how to do that without sending the budget through the roof then let me know!

Designing for mobiles

Although designing for mobile devices is a huge growth area and you may well find clients interested in mobile sites, proceed with extreme caution. The session here at atMedia confirmed my worst fears about developing for mobile devices. There are approximately 40 different mobile browsers and over 160 different devices. Support for XHTML and CSS is minimal and designing for the mobile web is a very different beast to designing for the PC.

And so it ends

So that’s about it. A great conference. Thanks to all that were involved in presenting and putting on the event. It was incredibly enjoyable and had a great friendly atmosphere. If you missed out on atMedia then don’t panic. The podcasts will be out soon and you can still come to d.construct in September (for a fraction of the price!).

Site evolution

Posted in Web strategy on November 20, 2005 by Paul Boag

In this post I look at how a site can be enhanced over time rather than redesigned intermittently.

In a previous article I talked about changing the client/web designer relationship from a “per project relationship”, to a more dynamic continual association, allowing for site evolution rather than site redesign. In this entry, I want to unpack that concept a little further and look at how a site can be enhanced over time rather than redesigned intermittently.

Benefits of evolution

Before we look at how site evolution can be achieved, let’s take a moment to examine why it is worth doing in the first case.

Why throw money away?

As I indicated in my last article on the subject, there are significant cost savings to make by evolving rather than redesigning your website. Most organisations redesign their website every three years or so. The old site is thrown away, and a new better site is put in its place. This demands a significant investment each time as the entire site is rebuilt from scratch. By taking a more evolutionary approach, each financial investment into the website builds upon the previous work done. With evolution, it is about building on what has gone before not replacing it.

Something to shout about

From a marketing perspective, evolution offers some exciting opportunities. With periodic redesign, you get one decent chance to shout about your site every few years when it undergoes a major relaunch. However, evolution allows you to go back to your users continually, telling them about the latest developments on the site. Each time you make a usability enhancement or improve the sites accessibility you can inform your customers. Every time you add a new piece of functionality, you have something new to shout about. Evolution provides a continual stream of marketing opportunities even for the most unexciting site.

Keep them coming back for more

I have written before about the importance of generating repeat traffic and keeping users engaged. Traditionally this has been achieved through updates to the content. Things like regular news stories, constantly updating events and new product ranges are all great ways to keep users checking your site. However, site evolution now offering the opportunity to engage users through improvements in the functionality and appearance of the site. User return to the site to see how it has been enhanced as much as to see what content has changed. Small tweaks to the site are a good way of demonstrating that your site is constantly maintained and worth regular visits.

Laying the right foundation

The benefits of site evolution are obvious but how do you practically go about evolving your website over time? The key lies in laying the right foundation. Too many sites are built with redesign instead of evolution in mind. They are built with the expectation that not much will change on the site for two or three years and then it will be built again from scratch. Sites built with this mindset will be difficult to evolve because the fundamental building blocks of evolution will not be there.

If you are commissioning a website build, it is vital that you ensure your designers and developers build with evolution rather than redesign in mind. Only if they do this can be hope to move your site forward in incremental steps rather than periodic redesigns.

Building blocks of evolution

These “building blocks for evolution” can be summarised as follows:

Separation of content from design

I have talked about web standards many times before in this blog. Standards primarily revolve around separating the content of your site from its visual appearance.

This approach provides many benefits but the one that applies the most to site evolution is the ability to make global design changes simply and easily. Site evolution works on the assumption that you cannot guess how your site will change over time. It is therefore vital to make everything as easy to alter as possible. By separating design from content, you can adapt the look and feel of your site from a central location instead of editing each individual page. Without this separation, design changes become a painful process of find and replace across every page on your site.

Let’s say for example you change your corporate colours and your website needs to reflect this. With standards, you can edit your central design files (CSS) and these changes are shown instantly across your whole site. Without web standards, you would have to edit manually every page of your entire site in order to achieve the same result. The time involved in such an undertaking would almost be as significant as a complete site rebuild!

Separation of behaviour from content

In the same way, you separate content from design because you cannot predict what changes you may wish to make in the future, so you should also separate behaviour. For example, just because you currently want all links to external websites to open in a new window, doesn’t mean you will always want that to be the case. By putting this kind of behavioural functionality in a separate file, it is easy to edit them centrally rather than updating each page individually where the behaviour is used.

Well defined content

As important as it is to separate out the design and behaviour from the content, it is equally important to ensure the content is clearly “marked up”. “Mark up” refers to how the content on your site is defined. This definition is how your web browser knows what to do with it. For example, an important heading on your site would be “marked up” as follows:

<h1>This is an important heading</h1>

Without those tags, the browser would have no way of knowing that particular piece of text is a heading. However, more importantly without this clean, uncomplicated definition of content you cannot easily define how that content should look or behave. For example without the H1 tag you see above it would be impossible for you to change the appearance of all your major headings.

I know this is in danger of getting technical, something I try to avoid on this site. However, as a website owner you need to be aware that many web designers do not produce this kind of well “marked up” content. If they don’t do it on your site, then evolving the appearance or functionality is going to be that much more difficult.

Templates and content management

Most of the web pages on your site look the same. They have the same navigation, the same branding, and the same layout. Normally, it is only the content that changes. It is therefore sensible that these common areas in each page are built using a template. That way when you change the template you update all occurrences of these consistent elements across the whole site. Once again, this approach allows you to make site wide changes ease.

The only slight complication to this approach is that some special technology is required. In affect, each page needs to be built automatically from the template when the user goes to that page. In most cases, this process is handled by a content management system. If you are considering evolving your site overtime then a content management system is probably a good investment. Not only does it allow pages to use templates it also gives you (the site owner) a lot more control over the structure and content of your site. Typically, a content management system will allow you to edit pages, add new pages and reorganise the structure of your site. In short, a content management system allows you to evolve the content and structure of your site without the need for web designers.

Design flexibility

The final principle of site evolution is ensuring flexibility in the look and feel of your site. Although I have already outlined how separation of content from design enables you to make gl
obal changes to the look an
d feel of your site, you still want a design that is as flexible as possible. You do not want to be in a position where you are making major changes to a sites appearance just because you add a new top-level section or a new type of content. A design should be flexible enough to accommodate these kinds of additions without a major overhaul. This makes for a better user experience as dramatic changes in a sites layout and design can cause confusion and frustration. Far better that a sites look and feel evolves through a series of small changes that the user has time to assimilate.

Conclusions

There are obvious benefits to evolving a site over time rather than undertaking sporadic redesigns. However, it is important to remember that the foundations need to be in place before you can successfully follow this approach. It will be hard to evolve a site that has not been built with this approach in mind. Ensuring content, design, and functionality are all maintained separately is key to the success of a constantly evolving website. Without those the overheads of evolving your site will be too high.

Web Design Podcast (6) – The future of the web

Posted in Classic shows on September 27, 2005 by Paul Boag

So what does the future of the internet have in store? How will this affect your website? This week Paul and Marcus look at emerging technologies and how you can use them on your own site. All without technobabble!

Podcast: Download (17.8MB)

To download the latest podcast click here.

Below is a brief outline of the things covered in this week’s podcast as well as links to some of the sites mentioned:

Avoiding the technobabble

What we try to do is explain the complexity of web design in a way that is accessible to those who are responsible for their organisations website but do not necessarily have the hands on skills to build a site.

The boagworld.com blog and podcast aims to avoid in-depth technical discussion. After all, there are many people out there already doing that. What we try to do is explain the complexity of web design in a way that is accessible to those who are responsible for their organisations website but do not necessarily have the hands on skills to build a site.

With that in mind, this week on the boagworld.com podcast we look at how the web is changing and what impact this will have on your site.

Web 2.0.

The web is currently undergoing a dramatic transformation and many people have referred to this change as the birth of the 2nd generation web, otherwise known as web 2.0. So what changes are occurring and how do they affect your site:

The growth of broadband

Recently years has seen a dramatic growth in broadband with 50% of UK home users now connecting to the internet in this way. But, how does this affect your site?

Multimedia

It gives you the freedom to add more multimedia content such as video, audio, and product demonstrations.

Casual surfing

Broadband users tend to use the web more casually and are not so task orientated. Your website needs to take into account this shift in behaviour by using hooks to keep them coming back until they respond to your call to action.

Broadband services

Less consideration has to be given to the depth of your information architecture, as broadband users do not have to wait as long for additional pages to load. Things can be more clicks away if that helps your architecture be more logical.
Broadband users are more comfortable with services like Skype (internet telephony), podcasting and even IPTV. Consider how these services might fit on your site. Could you provide a "call us" button for Skype users or perhaps a podcast would compliment your site offering.

However, remember, it is more than likely a significant proportion of your users still use dial up so be careful how you implement broadband related changes.

RSS and XML

You will need to listen to the podcast for the details on this one. However, among other things XML provides the following opportunities to website owners:

The ability to put your content or products on a partner’s site so exposing them to a wider user base
Allowing better communication with users, while avoiding the pitfalls of email such as SPAM filters and poorly displayed HTML emails.

At the very least you should be considering adding an RSS feed for the news on your site.

User lead services

There is currently a new wave of social services such as digg.com, flickr.com and delicious that gives power to the users. Instead of relying on search engines to find content, these services allow users to recommend content to other users. This will affect the marketing strategy of your site:

You will need to place less time ensuring good search engine ranking and put more emphasis on the quality of your site
Because these services are user driven, old tricks used to "trick" automated search engines will no longer work.
Content will really become king and there will be a greater need than ever to ensure it is engaging.
Viral marketing techniques may become a more attractive option.

Web standards

I have talked enough about web standards elsewhere in this site so I wont say much here expect to point out that web standards (the separation of content from design) opens up a wide range of possibilities when it comes to branding. The same site could have multiple brands (looks and feels) depending on who is viewing the site and how they found it. Your site no longer needs to have a single look and feel, rather it can change to suit the person viewing or the device they are viewing on.

AJAX

AJAX is the coming together of a number of technologies which have been around for a while. They offer a new range of functionality that can really enhance the usability of your site. I recommend you take a look at the examples below and think about how that kind of functionality could benefit your site:

Google suggest (try typing in a search term)
Google maps (you can add this directly to your own site!)
Personalised Google (try dragging the boxes of content around once logged in)
Other great examples of AJAX at work

But remember not everybody’s browser can handle this kind of code so its important you can still use the site without it. Also, be careful that you do not just use it because it looks cool. Make sure it is useful to your visitors.

News: Headscape is recruiting

If you have a good understanding of XML/XSL/XSLT, web standards, JavaScript, ASP/PHP and SQL server then get in touch. We are happy to consider new graduates, however some form of commercial experience would be required.

You will be required to work alongside our lead developer and so will need to be able to commute to the Southampton area.

Send your CV to [email protected]

For more information on Headscape, visit our very out of date website :)

For more web design related news why not subscribe to my digg.com RSS feed or if you are a digg member add me as a friend at: http://www.digg.com/users/boagworld