Tag Archives: forms

Happy customers through an improved checkout

Posted in User experience on by Paul Boag

You would think that the checkout form would be simple. However often users abandon their purchase, because the checkout form fails to deliver.

How hard can it be? All you need to do is collect their name, address and credit card information. That is all it takes to complete a purchase. Surely that is pretty straightforward.

In fact there are many ways you can make or break a checkout form, which is why I have compiled this list of common issues to consider.

I suggest you look at your own checkout and ask the following questions…

Do we provide positive feedback?

Most ecommerce sites are all too keen to tell you when you have done something wrong. However, users also sometimes need encouragement that they are doing the right thing. A visual indication that a field has been completed correctly goes a long way.

example of positive feedback

Do we provide examples of how a field should be completed?

If there is any doubt about how a field should be formatted (for example date formatting) it is worth providing an example for clarity.

Checkout form that includes an example of how a name should be formatted

Are we validating form fields as users enter information?

Instead of only validating a form when it is submitted to the server, also validate on the client side. This creates a more seamless user experience and avoids data potentially being lost when submission goes wrong.

 

 

Do we place error messages next to the problem that needs correcting?

Too many website only list their error messages above the form leaving the user to identify where the problem lies. Instead place the messages beside the form field that is causing the problem.

Example of error messages placed next to the problem

Have error messages been written with the user in mind?

Often the error messages on checkout forms are written by developers. Sometimes they are written more with debugging in mind than helping users overcome problems. What makes sense to a developer does not necessarily make sense to a user. Always ensure error messages are reviewed by somebody with UX and copywriting skills.

Finally, remember that although it is not bad to add some humour and personality to your error messages, they should also help the user overcome their problem. Examples like that below maybe amusing but are not very helpful!

 

 

Are we saving the user’s progress and handling timeouts gracefully?

There is nothing more annoying than searching for your credit card only to return to checkout and find your session has expired.

Actually I tell a lie, there is something more annoying. That is when you make a mistake checking out and not only does it returns a validation error but also wipes the form you had carefully filled in.

Data can be lost for all kinds of reasons from timeouts to connectivity problem. Save user data often, so they do not need to re-enter it if anything goes wrong.

Have we set good defaults?

Picking good defaults for fields can save users a lot of time when completing forms. For example the vast majority of users want you to remain logged into a site and so have the ‘remember me’ option selected by default.

An example of a login form that has remember me checked by default

Are we allowing people to see their password when entering it?

Another nice feature of HuffDuffer is the ‘show password’ checkbox. This overcomes a common usability problem while maintaining security.

Users often mistype passwords without realising it because the password field is blanked out for security reasons. By allowing users to reveal their passwords when in private, Huffduffer substantially reduces user error.

 

 

Are we pre-populating as many fields as possible?

The only thing users hate more than filling in forms, is doing so twice. Despite this a surprising number of websites ask users to do exactly that.

For example some websites require users to fill in both delivery and billing address even when identical, or enter their name again when the site already knows it.

Even if you cannot be certain what a field should contain, pre-populate it with your best guess. The user can always overtype your guess if required.

 

 

Are we forcing users to register upfront or waiting until the end of process?

As is pointed out in an excellent article on econsultancy.com, most users do not like to register.

When buying, users are focused on purchasing and believe that registering will slow that process down. In fact the only additional piece of information required is a password.

Although registration provides benefits for both parties, users will often abandon the checkout process if forced to register.

A better approach is to offer them the option to register by creating a password at the end of the checkout process rather than the beginning. The sale has been made and the user is now mentally ready to consider the benefits of registering (like order tracking).

The registration form at the end of the checkout process on the Speedo website

Does the checkout work with Javascript disabled?

I am appalled at just how many websites do not work with Javascript disabled. This is not some moral comment about the accessibility issues surrounding Javascript. Instead it is a financial argument.

As many as 1 in 20 users have javascript disabled for numerous reasons and no self respecting retail outlet would turn away 1 in 20 people from its store.

This is an area that causes a lot of confusion so let me be clear: I am not saying ecommerce sites cannot use Javascript. I am just saying that it needs to work when javascript is turned off.

I have already mentioned a number of techniques that require Javascript to work. However, the site should still work if these extras are not available.

I am not talking about building two versions of the site. I am talking about building the site without Javascript and then layering some additional javascript on top to create a better user experience for those that have it.

Is the validation on fields forgiving enough to understand different formats?

One of the most common problems I see on ecommerce sites is the frustration caused by forms not accepting user entry because it is formatted incorrectly. This typically includes:

  • Dates
  • Credit card numbers
  • Passwords

The most frustrating part is that the user has entered the correct information, just not in a format which is accepted by the system.

Take for example credit card numbers. Do you enter them with spaces, without spaces or maybe even with dashes? Why should the user have to worry about this? It is a simple matter for the website to reformat the data later. This should not be the users problem?

A checkout form that requires users to enter a credit card number without spaces or dashes.

Is the user suffering because of technical constraints?

The problem of data entry formatting is part of a wider issue where developers make users responsible for problems that they should not have to deal with.

For example, why should users have to fill in CAPTCHA fields because the website has a problem with SPAM? It’s not the users fault.

Cartoon highlighting how hard CAPTCHA is.

Image source, Geek and Poke

Ask yourself if there are places on your website where the user experience has been compromised for the sake of an easy life for the developer.

Does the browser back button work?

For many users the browser back button is an invaluable tool that they rely on for navigation. However too often in the checkout processes, hitting the back button either entirely loses the users progress or returns strange errors that cause confusion and uncertainty.

Are we being greedy in the personal data we ask for?

It is understandable that those running ecommerce sites want to collect information on users, discover how they found the website and get permission to correspond with them in the future. However, users see these as barriers to making a purchase.

Even when these fields are marked as optional, users have to mentally process them and decide whether they should be completed. At the very least they have to check that they are not being opted-in to junk mail as in the example below.

Example of a checkout form where the user is being asked for unneccessary information and is being opted in to unsolicited email.

Keep these kinds of marketing questions until after the product has been ordered. You are less likely to alienate the user and will gain a better quality of response because the user has not been tricked into completing the fields.

Are we rewarding users who go the extra mile?

When a user does go the extra mile and signup for a newsletter or tell you how they found the website, make sure you reward them for their time. Instead of using their email address to spam them why not email them a gift certificate or some other form of thank you.

During the US election, those who donated to the Obama received a free T-Shirt. This is not only a great gesture, it is also an excellent advertising strategy. Why couldn’t you do the same for your customers who are willing to signup for your newsletter?

Obama fundraising website

Are all of our buttons descriptive?

Users often do not read explanatory text, instead relying on links and buttons to decide what action to take next. However, when those buttons do not make sense out of context they can prove confusing.

Take the two examples below. If you were scanning those pages quickly and didn’t read the copy which is clearer:

Example from ebuyer.com that requires the users to read both text and button

Example of a site where the button describes the next action without the help of explanitory text

Could our instructional text be clearer and more concise?

Many websites suffer from verbal diarrhoea during their checkout process. There is a belief that by using more words the message is clearer. However, in reality they just put people off from reading the text.

Take for example the amount of copy associated with this field in a checkout form:

The copy reads: if you have any additional information or special instructions that you want us to pass over to our courier please enter them in the text box below (maximum 30 characters) and click the Add Instructions button. This must be done before selecting your shipping address. Please be aware that neither Ebuyer nor our delivery partners can accept responsibility for any loss or damage when the special instructions provided have been followed.

In reality all that is required is:

  • A heading entitled ‘Do you have any instructions for the delivery driver?’
  • A field for instructions that has a character limit to prevent a user entering too much.
  • A link to your terms and conditions
  • A submit button.

There is no need for the current amount of text.

Do we require users to remember a username as well as a password?

Why does any site (let alone an ecommerce site) ask a user for a username? Surely you are just giving the user another piece of information to remember in addition to their password. This just doubles the chances of them failing to login.

A better way is to use their email address as their unique identifier. Its easy to remember, is guaranteed to be unique and is already a required piece of information on almost all ecommerce sites.

How do we handle bank card validation?

Sooner or later even the best designed ecommerce site has to hand control to the bank for credit card processing. Unfortunately there is little chance to control the user experience once this happens. From the paypal website to VISA card validation, these sudden changes in user experience can make customers nervous.

Verified by Visa example form

It is important to clearly communicate what is happening and minimise the impact to the user. Too often users are simply dumbed onto these pages with no indication as to whether the order has been completed or why they are there.

Conclusions

The reason I have written this checklist is because in the rush to deploy it is easy to forget these nuances of design. However it is these details that make the checkout process pain free and trustworthy.

We often concentrate too much on functionality and not enough on user experience.

I am not suggesting that failing to implement any one of the points will drive a user away. However, combined they have a significant impact on how somebody perceives the reliability and ease of use of your website.

Sometimes it just needs another set of eyes to look over your checkout and pick up on these problems.

So what did I miss? What things would you add to my checkout checklist? Post your ideas in the comments below.

Are you concerned about your checkout process? I would love the opportunity to review it and help fix any problems found. Email me and I’ll take a look.

Looking for more ecommerce posts? Try my post on Calls to Actions.

How not to alienate visitors who just want to talk

Posted in Marketing on by Andy Wickes

Too many websites owners are more concerned with gathering data from their users rather than initiating a dialogue. If your users want to talk to you, don’t make it difficult.

It’s an age old gripe amongst web users. The over-long form. Field after field of questions and tick boxes when all we want to do is ask a question. A simple question:

‘When is this product likely to be back in stock?’

But still we are asked for our fax number, postal address, age, marital status and whether we have any ‘dependents under 18 living with us’ The mind boggles.

Now we’ve lived amongst marketeers long enough to realise that this is their work. This is an opportunity to gather as much profiling data about a consumer as is possible in order to

  • assist in customer relationship marketing
  • better inform the brand of their audience’s habits
  • aid new product development
  • a combination of the above

While I’m no fan of these forms, I count myself as at least 30% marketeer and am therefore aware that in my experience alone, this data has always gone to good use. To providing a better service / product / experience.

What I find remarkably absent though, is the website owners willingness to engage their audiences in a dialogue on their terms. I accept that I the website owner would like all this information, but do I deserve it? Do I? Well, in a lot of cases, no, you don’t.

If I want to open a dialogue with a brand via their website, I want it on my terms, and I often care little about the future requirements of that brand, no matter how earth-shattering my responses might be to a short questionnaire.
To that end I thought I’d give a few examples of how we can build better websites, where we deliver dialogue to our users, rather than just delivering data to our clients. And then perhaps, we can make people care about our needs, by good old customer service.

Social Networks

If you feel your audience have a significant presence on these networks then be sure you do. Publicise how to get in touch with you on these networks, and when people do respond in a timely fashion. If that is there chosen way to make initial contact, then respect that, and in time you will build their loyalty. Answer queries and in time if that prospect decides to enquire about your product or service then they will call and you can ask all the ancillary questions you might have then. By that point they are a hot prospect and already favourably disposed to you and will do so willingly.

social networks icons

Telephone Numbers

Provide one. Always. There are people out there who will always prefer to call. I know because I am one. And if that is their choice, then do not put obstacles in their way. Don’t make someone search endlessly through the site to find it. Don’t make them read pages of FAQ’s and Knowledge Base articles before presenting a phone number after one last click of a ‘Was This Information Useful – Yes/Know’ button. Make it easy to open a dialogue, and then if you have a genuine need for profiling data then you can always ask if they would mind asking a few questions over the phone.

After you have answered their questions first of course.

telephone

Contact Forms

If we haven’t already said enough about these already, then some further observations. Your customer has a query about you. The very least they need to raise (IMHO) are the following:

What my query is:

  • How would I like to be contacted regarding this?
  • When am I likely to get a response?

Now this is a very slim form by anyone’s standards. But at its core is the idea that you are putting as few obstacles in your audiences way as possible, and providing them with a chance to choose how they are contacted and informing them as to when that will be. Deliver on those last two and you are in business. Again, the dialogue is made easy, and is delivered on your audience’s terms.

Wufoo

Ask Questions

Why is this one so often overlooked? You have a CMS. You might even have a blog. You might even have comments enabled. You want to know some information about your audience, and yet you still build forms so convoluted that to ask a one line question I must still answer 10 unrelated ones. Ask questions of your audience on your site. Add them into comments on your blog. And provide an email address where if they would be so kind, they might want to send their thoughts / ideas about such and such. Again, any dialogue is on their terms. Entered into at their own will, with as much or as little effort required as they see fit.

Credit Where Credit is Due

Quite often a customer will ask good question about your product. You provide them with a swift answer and then pat yourself on the back for your helpfulness and timely response. The trouble is you have scores of similarly confused customers you could also benefit from the same help. So post the question on your site – ‘Mr Andrews of Lambeth asked a great question – where do I find the off switch on this petrol chainsaw?’ – Well, it’s on the handle, just by the power cord. Thanks Mr Andrews!

Credit your audience with asking a valid question, and then broadcast that to your other clients. Some of the best customer service is born out making public that you are only human and like everyone else, sometimes make mistakes.

Sign saying thankyou

Mind Your P’s and Q’s

Be grateful. For goodness’s sake, be grateful. As Paul has said in the past, people are aware that their opinions and their data has a value to brand / business owners, and so if they give their time and their opinions to you free of charge then the least you can do is be grateful. If you are a small business or a start-up, then this could be the only chance you might have to have a one-on-one relationship with your customers. If you deal only to 10 or 20 clients then you have no excuse really not to have a close relationship with them and to provide a good customer experience. Larger organisations have to use a more automated approach down to sheer volume. But even these, in fact primarily these, can benefit greatly from making their experience suit the user, rather than the website owner.

Sample feedback form

So there it is. Think for a minute about what is really going to drive the sales process. Are you a more profitable business because you know all there is to know about your prospects, or because you are accessible and helpful when dealing with your customers? Do you deliver what they want, or what you want? Is your website a barrier to real contact, or is it a conduit for it?

Food for thought.

Building better forms with Steve Marshall

Posted in Development on by Paul Boag

Steve Marshall from Yahoo! draws on his many years of experience to share with us best practice in form design.

Paul: Joining me today is Steve Marshall who is here to talk about form design. Hello Steve.

Steve: Hey Paul.

Paul: Good to have you on the show, thanks for agreeing to do this. I think a good place for us to start is a little bit of an introduction about who you are and I guess why form design? Why we’re discussing that with you? So a little bit about those two things would be great.

Steve: OK, so I guess I’ve been working on the web for about ten years or so now, for the last three of them working at Yahoo. And a lot of what I’ve been doing at Yahoo has been on fairly high-profile sites that no-one would really think of, if that makes sense. You know the kind of unsung heroes of the web, that serve hundreds of thousands of page requests a day that no-one really thinks of as interesting websites in our community. Things like Yahoo TV, Yahoo Music, Games, video games – these sorts of things. And I guess really the reason I wanted to talk to you guys about this was it’s kind of a subject that’s very close to my heart because a lot of basic interactions on the web that can be made brilliant for everyone, if only people put a little thought into it – things like: search forms. A classic example for me is on google.com and even on Yahoo Search you have a search box and then you have channels, if you like, for that search so you can say “I would like to search the entire web,” “I would like to search for images,” “I would like to search for video,” these sorts of things. Typically they’re done with links. Now, if a screen reader user, for example, say goes to use that form they can fill out their search keywords, but they will never ever get to those links because in forms mode they don’t get presented with the links in the form. And so you know a little bit of thought about what actually the use case for this form is means you can maybe think about using the right elements for the right purpose.

Photograph of Steve Marshall

Paul: OK, fair enough. That makes a lot of sense. Well, you could come back with the question: “Why does that matter? Why is form design particularly important? Why is it worth us discussing?” How would you respond to that?

Steve: I guess there are a couple of things really. For one it’s essentially using the tools of HTML, CSS, Javascript the way they were intended to be used – using the right pieces of HTML for the correct use. Rather than grouping things in a semantic context, you wouldn’t group list items (<li>) with a paragraph (<p>), you’d group them with an unordered list (<ul>). And it’s just a case of doing the same with forms. Furthermore, though, it allows you to enhance accessibility and enhance usability in general, it means that your forms just work better for all the users of your site, whether they be using full on Javascript-enhanced CSS or if they’re on a really, really old crappy mobile phone that can only just about show HTML forms.

Paul: Yeah. I think as well there’s the aspect to it that forms are a fundamental user interaction on the web.

Steve: Exactly. Particularly given that we’re getting into web applications these days. A really good example of bad use of the web is Google Mail. When they first brought Google Mail out it was all Javascript and all really badly built. And because they did it this way and didn’t want to lose any functionality, they tacked on a basic HTML view. Now if they’d made the page properly and designed it with correct use of forms, correct use of semantics, all this sort of thing, then they could have just progressively enhanced until they got to the point where the main interface is and, for those user agents that couldn’t support all of the funky multi-selection and blah-blah-blah-blah-blah, they could’ve just… they would’ve just not gotten that because they couldn’t support it. And it would mean that they would have one interface to maintain rather than the, and I’m just looking at my Gmail account now, rather than the at least three that they have.

Paul: I mean, the thing is that so often forms are used, you know on an eCommerce site a form is used to make the purchase, you know it’s the call to action. On another site it’s used to signup to a newsletter, it’s kind of really fundamental stuff and don’t often get enough attention really.

Steve: Exactly. There’s a lot of talk about the ‘read-write web’ and the form is the ‘write’ part. The form is essentially the only tool – Flash aside – it’s the only tool that we have in the core HTML, CSS, Javascript bucket that we can use for all users of the web to allow them to contribute back to our sites or allow them to interact with us. So it is very important, but it very often gets really heavily overlooked.

Paul: So let’s talk about some potential ways to make your forms more user-friendly. What kind of advice would you have in regards to that?

Steve: It’s really about going back to basics; stopping for a moment and… you know it’s great to have really flashy ideas for the brilliant, wonderful things you can do with Javascript, but thinking about how your form would be interacted with if you just were using HTML. And a lot of people say “I test my site with just HTML; no CSS and Javascript.” But quite often that goes out the window when they’re talking about forms. A superb example of this is the work that Brad Wright did on Yahoo Answers with their workflow for adding a question to Yahoo Answers. Now there are hundreds of nested categories on Yahoo Answers that you can add your question to and in the Javscript-y workflow, as with quite a lot of sites, you select from the first drop-down and then another drop-down appears with a whole bunch of other categories in it, you know subcategory type things. Now what Brad could’ve done, like most websites, is just present one initial drop-down with all of the initial choices and then another drop-down with every subcategory from every choice, or presented one big drop-down with every subcategory listed with its major category or something like that. And that would’ve worked. It would’ve allowed people to select the right category, but it would’ve meant that you would have to scroll through a couple-hundred different categories to put your question into. What Brad did instead is use nested fieldsets and radio buttons so that you can select your top-level category with one group of radio buttons and then that is essentially the header for a fieldset, if memory serves, and that fieldset then contains the radio buttons for the subcategories of that category.

Paul: Wow.

Steve: It’s not elegant; you do get a really, really big form, but it makes sense and it provides the same level of information and the same flow that you would get with the progressive drop-downs. It’s things like that, just putting that little bit of extra thought in, thinking about how this might work with HTML. To go back to the search example I used earlier I have to – you know full disclosure here, this is something that I did myself about two or three years ago when I first started working for Yahoo and it’s something that various people trumpet as brilliant and I’m very proud of it.

Paul: Very modestly so.

Steve: No, but I feel like it’s an example that gets abused, but it’s a good example. Essentially, everyone as I was saying uses hyperlinks to create the channels for their search. Of course, if you don’t have Javascript, you type your search keywords into the box, you click on the ‘images’ link, for example’s sakes search for images about let’s say ‘Britney Spears,’ and what happens is you get redirected to the Image Search homepage with no keywords. Which will be really frustrating. The way I fixed that, if you will, is – rather than using links, which as I said won’t be presented to screen readers and will lose your keywords, as just two problems with it – I changed them for radio buttons and styled them to make them look like links. It’s a really, really simple change and it just changes the interaction ever so slightly so that people without Javascript, people using alternative browser modes, all these different things, can use that interaction and can benefit from it.

Paul: It’s interesting that you mention that search example. What other kind of accessibility problems are you seeing coming up when people are creating forms?

Steve: I guess most of the problems are around people not thinking about the way that their form would be interacted with in alternative browsers, and the classic example is the screen reader. But things like screen magnification: people may not necessarily group the form fields together or may put the errors away from the form fields to which they’re related and so if you’ve got someone with screen magnification or tunnel vision who doesn’t get quite such a broad view of the page – they only get maybe the couple-hundred pixels that they’ve got magnified – they don’t necessarily have the context of the error message right next to the form and so they don’t get to see that error message and will get frustrated by that.

Paul: To be honest I think that even applies with normal-vision users as well, that if you have an error message at the top of the form and you’ve scrolled down to the bottom, you need to put the error messages where you’re interacting; where the error’s occurring really.

Steve: Yeah exactly. And almost all of this stuff, with a couple of exceptions, it makes life easier for your regular users as well. It just… if it doesn’t improve life for everyone, it improves life generally for a significant enough portion of your user-base that it’s worth paying attention to, I think.

Paul: What about Javascript? You’ve mentioned Javascript a couple of times and although I would entirely agree that you need to use Javascript to progressively enhance a basic HTML version, there are some cool things and some useful things you can do with Javascript when it comes it forms and I was just interested in your opinion about what examples of good Javascript use have you seen with forms?

Steve: The absolute best one, well in fact two, that I’ve seen are on the Yahoo Finance site. One of which is the currency converter. It’s a really simple thing to do a currency converter, or so you would think. But the work that’s been put into the currency converter on Finance is so superb. They do things like: you type into the text box to specify which country or currency you want to convert from and as you type it will intelligently search through lists of countries giving you their currencies if you don’t know the currency for them. Currency codes if you search for currency codes. The full name of the currency and a whole bunch of other stuff. It’s just really smoothly designed. But if you don’t have Javascript, it still gives you a very good base interaction. The other example on Finance is, you have the ability to change the layout of the ‘Top Stories’ page. Changing layouts is something that a lot of people do on a lot of different sites, typically CMS type things. What they’ve done on the Finance site is made this thing work with Javascript, but it’s actually been built so that for screen readers and for various other users it works flawlessly; you don’t necessarily have to be able to see the form to be able to move the items up or down in the list. And quite a lot of people would say: “OK, well you should be able to drag and drop the items.” Well, that’s great, but what about the people who can’t use a mouse, for example… and things like that have been considered.

Paul: Do you think that there is a case where, although something works at a basic level without Javascript enabled, that it’s not always necessary to provide exactly the same functionality?

Steve: Oh, completely. That’s the interesting thing about the likes of the currency converter and the Finance layout changer: it’s the fact that the functionality is not presented identically, but it still gives you the core functionality, particularly with the currency converter – it still gives you the core functionality you want to be able to convert from one currency to another – it’s just that with the Javascript version it gives you much more entry into it, so you can do things like say “I’m going to Guatemala, I don’t know what the currency is, but give me the Guatemalan currency exchange with the Pound.” You don’t have to know that, whereas, with the non-Javascript version if memory serves, you would have to know which currencies you want. It gives you the option to search for them, but to use the interface you would have to know those currency codes. So yeah, using Javascript to provide a different, but enhanced interaction is perfectly fine so long as you can achieve the same results. And that’s the key thing, it’s thinking about what the problem is and what the best way to solve that problem is in the situation you’re in, whether that be plain old HTML or whether that be fully WYSIWYG, Javascript crazy nonsense.

Paul: Heh, “crazy nonsense,” is that a technical term?

Steve: Yes, that’s a very technical term.

Paul: OK, for some of the people out there that maybe are not the Yahoo’s of this world, they’re not the Google’s of this world, that are just basically creating fairly basic sites, what’s the fundamental advice that you would want to give people about form design? What are the things that they should be considering at the most basic level?

Steve: OK, I guess the big thing is, as I’ve said a couple of times, think about what your HTML is doing. By all means think about how you would like it to work with Javascript, but before you start implementing, think about how this should work without Javascript and without CSS. It’s also worth paying attention to accessibility experts in the world because that may impact the way you create copy for your form, for example. One of my absolute favourite pieces of advice is one that Ann McMeekin gave at a talk she did for the Web Standards Group where she told everyone there that apparently screen readers in certain configurations will read out the legend of a fieldset before each and every field, before each and every input within that field. So for example if you have a field whose label is ‘The Web’ and the legend of the fieldset that it’s in is ‘Search’ that’ll be read out as ‘Search The Web’. Try to use these sorts of thing to your advantage, but at the same time at least be aware of them so you’re not flying in the face of your users essentially and making their experience worse. Yeah it is really all about just thinking about what is the lowest barrier to entry, what is the core functionality that you’re working with.

Paul: You mentioned earlier ‘form mode’ for screen reader users. Can you explain that a little bit more? Because I don’t think… I confess I only relatively recently found out about this ‘form mode’ and I don’t think a lot of users realise the consequences of that. Can you explain how that works?

Steve: OK, so – full disclosure, I’m not an accessibility guru, this is all information I’ve picked up from having conversations with our accessibility gurus here. Essentially, screen readers are modal. Because the users of screen readers can’t see the web page, the screen reader presents them with various different interfaces onto the page and you can read through the page as a normal user would in HTML, reading through element by element, paragraph by paragraph. And that’s fine. But when you want to interact, you obviously need different types of controls and so screen readers provide what’s known as ‘forms mode’ and this is a special mode for editing input and working with forms where the screen reader will only present, as I understand it, form fields, labels and titles of fieldsets. So links, paragraphs of text, these sorts of things won’t be presented when you’re in ‘forms mode’.

Paul: That has real serious consequences doesn’t it?

Steve: Exactly, that has massive implications. So quite often people will provide explanatory text after a form field that’s not entirely clear or whose label is not entirely clear, saying ‘You need to fill out this field in this format’. Date fields are a classic example. They will put a paragraph underneath saying ‘Must be in the format ddmmyyyy’ and the screen reader user will never get that because it’s being presented to them in a paragraph (<p>). If the person building that form just took a couple of minutes to rethink the way they were putting the label together and put the label with ‘Date’ and then a <span> around ‘Must be in form whatever’ inside of the label and then styled it however they wanted, the screen reader user would get that and they would get all the advantages of knowing what format it should be in.

Paul: It strikes me it’s all about actually using the form tags that are available to us to the full degree. So many of us don’t use things like groups and legends and all of those kinds of things.

Steve: Yeah precisely. The interesting thing is that these things that aren’t really used are actually really, really beneficial. So for example fieldsets – again, as I understand it, I may be slightly misquoting here – fieldsets allow screen reader users to more easily jump between sections of a form. So if for example you have optional pieces of your form and they’re grouped in a fieldset which says ‘Further Details (optional)’ as the legend of that fieldset and they don’t want to fill out those further details, they can just jump over it to the next fieldset.

Paul: Which, yeah, is amazingly valuable. I mean as soon as you listen to a screen reader and hear how laborious it is, being able to skip over content is really important.

Steve: For those of us who are lucky enough to be fully visually capable and fully able to use motor skills – because of course this, whilst I think about it, this doesn’t just apply to screen reader users, this applies to people who have potentially fine motor skill issues so they have to navigate with a keyboard.

Paul: Which then you get into things like ‘tabindex’ and stuff like that.

Steve: Exactly, exactly. Which you know is a whole other holy war that I dread to get into for fear of upsetting someone. Yeah, these sorts of things again can help with that, and thinking about those sorts of things just makes everyones life easier. Because I mean, for example, I don’t always use the mouse, I will quite often use the keyboard. And I’m perfectly able with my hands and perfectly able to see, but I will quite often ‘tab’ through a form simply because my fingers are already on the keyboard and it saves me moving my fingers a couple of inches… because I’m lazy.

Paul: (CHUCKLES) So you’ve kind of mentioned a couple of people in this that you’ve learned various things from. If people want to learn more about form accessibility and form design and that kind of thing, where would you refer them to? Who do you really respect in this kind of field and you know that they should be following?

Steve: Oh, wow. I guess the people who, in terms of pure accessibility, I would say definitely Mike Davies who goes by Isafarro or Isolani exchangedly, Ben Hawkes-Lewis who I don’t think has a blog, or if he does, doesn’t blog enough. Dirk Ginader who is weboutput.de. Those three guys particularly, Ann McMeekin who guys by the name of pixeldiva. All of those guys are absolutely invaluable resources in terms of HTML, CSS, accessibility type stuff. Other than that I have to admit I don’t really know because this stuff is stuff that people don’t talk about enough.

Paul: Yeah, yeah totally.

Steve: So it’s very much a case of scratch what you can find from what’s left on the web, if you like.

Paul: Yeah. OK Steve thank you for that, that was very helpful. It’s good to kind of dig under the surface a bit. So thanks for coming on the show and hopefully we have you on again soon.

Steve: My pleasure. No problem. Yeah, hope so. Thanks a lot Paul.

Paul: Bye bye.

Thanks goes to Simon Hamp for transcribing this interview.

187. Jedi Mind Tricks

Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

On this week’s show: Paul looks at how to better communicate and we ask whether you should mask your email address to avoid spam.

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Housekeeping

Although we promised you ClearLeft on this week’s show we have had to postpone it until next week. However, that gives you a whole extra week to submit questions via the comments on our blog.

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News

A web designers time is precious

We are all too busy, period. However, life can be particularly intense if you work as a web designer or developer. The pace of change is so fast it can be hard to find the time to keep up.

Fortunately there are some great articles around that provide time savings tips. Take for example Sitepont’s post this week “How to take control of your time.” It provides some excellent advice including the importance of prioritising, the need to leave adequate time and learning to say no.

Smashing Magazine has a post of their own entitled “20 time saving tips to improve designers workflow.” This includes ways to customise your work environment and better work with tools like Photoshop.

Speaking of Photoshop there is a great cheatsheet that contains all of the keyboard shortcuts you need to speed up your workflow in Photoshop. When combined with the IE6 cheatsheet for solving common IE6 bugs you will find yourself saving considerable time.

The answer to overload is not to work longer hours. It is to work smarter and that is what these posts enable you to do.

15 common ecommerce mistakes

I love working on ecommerce sites. They are by far my favourite. The reason – you get to see an obvious return on your work, because they have an obvious call to action. Conversion either increases or decreases. Profits either rise or fall. You are in no doubt as to whether you have made a difference or not.

However, the other reason I love working on ecommerce sites is because so many of them are terrible. Often when you start working on an ecommerce site there are loads of quick wins that make an instant difference to revenue.

People make the same mistakes again and again. In fact these mistakes are often so predictable that you could write a top 10 list of them… and guess what… that is exactly what Smashing Magazine has done: “15 common mistakes in ecommerce design and how to avoid them“.

Some of my personal favourite mistakes include:

  • Hiding contact information
  • Long winded checkout
  • Poor customer service
  • Not highlighting related products or otherwise upselling
  • Hiding the cost of delivery

If you are designing or running an ecommerce site then you really should check this post out. You will be surprised just how many of these mistakes you make.

The benefits of inline form validation

I have said it before and I will say it again: “forms are the most important feature on most websites.” Most often a sites call to action requires the completion of a form. Get the form wrong and you frustrate users potentially driving them away.

Nobody likes filling in forms. Whether it is a contact form, site registration or just a simple login form. It is therefore vital that we make the process as painless as possible.

There is a post on a List Apart which I have only just gotten around to reading. “Inline Validation in Web Forms” does not sound like the most exciting read but it does provide some invaluable best practice for dealing with forms. However, it doesn’t just provide somebodies opinion on best practice, instead it backs those views up with valuable testing.

The post takes a typical signup form and trials different forms of inline validation with real users. They didn’t just monitor success/failure rates. They also looked at errors made, satisfaction rates and completion time. They even did some eye tracking.

Although the results are not surprising, it is nice to have some numbers to put against what we have known to be true. For example, it was obvious that inline validation makes an enormous difference to both actual success and perceived success. Just validating a form on the client side increased success rates by 22% and satisfaction by 31%. Those numbers went even higher when the user is given feedback as they completed each field.

A valuable post, worth reading.

Innocent smoothies: A case study into corporate communication

When you speak at as many conferences as I do, you often find yourself referring to the same examples of good or bad practice. Whether it is comparing Google and Yahoo or fawning over Apple’s great UX design, the same names keep coming up.

One of the names I often reference is Innocent Smoothies. I love them. They just ‘get the web’. Actually, that is a lie. They get people. They know how to communicate and they know themselves. They have a distinctive voice that makes people warm to them and that is carried through to their website.

This week Anna Debenham has written an excellent case study on Innocent Smoothies looking in detail at what makes them successful online. In particular she looks at their blog and mailing list.

As Anna says at the start of her post:

A lot of the clients I work with who have just set up a web presence for their company think it’s a good idea to start a mailing list and a blog. Everyone else is doing it, so why shouldn’t they? The problem is, so few companies get it right and very few people will bother to read them.

So what makes Innocent different? Anna gives 6 reasons:

  • They show you the real people behind the business
  • They make their copy fun
  • They don’t just talk about their products
  • They are generous
  • They provide useful information
  • They make good use of imagery

Anna’s post is packed full of examples, so be sure to check it out. There is a lot most corporate bloggers could learn from Innocent.

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Feature: How to persuade your users, boss or client

Whether you are trying to get signoff for a site’s design or persuade a user to complete a call to action. We all need to know how to be convincing. This week, we look at how to present our message

Read Jedi Mind Tricks: How To Persuade Your Users, Boss, Or Clients

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Listeners feedback:

Email masking

One of the more popular suggestions for topics was how to mask your email address so it doesn’t get harvested by spammers.

This is something that everybody worries about from designers to website owners. However, unfortunately there is no good solution. In my opinion you need to just put your email out there and deal with the spam.

Sure there are a number of possible solutions but none of them are acceptable. They either require the user to be running Javascript (which creates accessibility problems) or they place extra burden on the user. Giving users the ability to contact you is a fundamental part of almost all websites and, so you do not want to make it hard.

There are however two ways of minimising the impact.

First, you could choose not to publish your email address, but instead offer a contact form. Although spammers can spam these too, it is harder and there are ways of minimising spam without putting an added burden on users. However if you do use a contact form, send a copy to the user so they have a record.

Second, you can fall back on good spam filters. Use a site specific email address and make sure it is guarded by a good quality filter. I personally find Google Mails spam filter particularly good, so you might want to consider routing enquiries via that.

However, at the end of the day if a spammer is determined to spam you there is very little you can do to stop them. Unfortunately, this the price of being online.

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161. In or Out

Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

On this week’s show: Paul announces Micro-Boagworld, we discuss the pros and cons of outsourcing web work and see what recommendation the Boagworld forum has to offer.

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Housekeeping

For a while I have been toying with the idea of doing a Micro-podcast that works in a similar way to Twitter but with audio. It would provide the opportunity to share hits, tricks and reviews too short for the main show. My problem was that I needed an application which made this as easy as posting a tweet. Anything more and it would prove too demanding.

Fortunately a new iPhone application has launched that does exactly that. Called AudioBoo it allows you to record 3 minute audio snippets that then get posted to a website, twitter, facebook and a podcast feed.

I am therefore pleased to announce Micro-Boagworld…

View Micro-Boagworld posts here

Subscribe to the RSS feed here

Boagworld AudioBoo Homepage

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News

Pricing and projects

Alyssa Gregory has written two good posts this week both relating to the pricing of web projects.

The first post tackles the notoriously difficult subject of How To Estimate Time For A Project. After all, time is money.

Estimating how long a project will take is tricky and although this post doesn’t provide any magic formulas it does provide good solid advice.

As well as considering the obvious deliverables Alyssa also recommends time for project management, reviewing work, debugging and client turn around. Finally, she recommends adding a buffer for the unexpected.

Of course, she doesn’t discuss how all of this time translates into your final price. How much you charge is a matter of conjecture. However, in a second post she does explore a related subject – How To Raise Your Rates.

In this post, she handles the sensitive subject of how to tell a client that you will be raising your rates for future projects. She suggests five techniques you should employ…

  • Give Notice
  • Set a schedule (make increases annual for example)
  • Make it fair (keep the increments small and manageable by the client)
  • Send it in writing
  • Balance it out (Balance your increase with an incentive – e.g. a special, a one-time discount)

Its all good advice and important too. As your skills and experience increase, you will need to ensure your rates reflect that. Knowing how to hand those rate increases is vital if you want to keep your clients happy.

IE8 and IE6

Microsoft have announced that IE8 will be released via the Windows Automatic Update starting on the third week of April.

The final version of the browser has been available since March and yet adoption has been sluggish. Hopefully Automatic update will change this trend significantly. However, it does not guarantee universal adoption. Although the update will be marked as important users will not be forced to upgrade. In fact Microsoft has released a blocker toolkit so corporate users can avoid the update entirely.

Worst of all, it is likely that the update will impact the numbers using IE7 more than IE6. IE6 users tend to be hold outs and are unlikely to upgrade now when they did not upgrade to IE7.

The only hope is that many IT departments have a policy of running a version behind the current release. If that is the case, the arrival of IE8 may encourage some of them to adopt IE7.

The entire web design community is keen to reduce its level of support for IE6 and hopefully this update will allow that. In fact, another post this week entitled – 10 Cool Things We’ll Be Able To Do Once IE6 Is Dead – points out just what a wonderful world it would be.

Once IE6 is gone we will be able to…

  • Use child selectors
  • Make full use of 24-bit PNGs
  • Use attribute selectors
  • Use a wider range of display properties
  • Use min-width and max-width
  • Throw away 90% of CSS hacks (and 90% of the reasons for needing them!)
  • Add abbreviations that everyone can see
  • Trust z-index again
  • Save time and money
  • Enjoy ourselves again!

Simple and impressive design techniques

Last week I was doing a consultancy clinic with a developer who wanted advice on designing his website. He was a great coder but did not have much experience designing.

Although I recommended The Principles of Beautiful Web Design by Jason Beaird it would have been great to point him at the latest Smashing Magazine post – 10 Simple and Impressive Design Techniques.

This post has some easy to implement techniques that are ideal for developers trying to improve their design skills. Techniques include…

  • Adding Contrast
  • Using Gradients
  • A Better Use of Colour
  • Improved Letter Spacing
  • Changing Case
  • Use of Anti-Aliasing
  • Adding Imperfections
  • Implementing blurring
  • Careful Alignment
  • Trimming the Fat

Read the whole articles for more details and great examples of these techniques in action.

Influencing user behaviour

A big part of good design is guiding the user to complete the actions you want. Influencing user behaviour can be achieved through a variety of techniques. However, it can often be hard to know where to begin.

One resource that might help you influence user behaviour is The Design with Intent Toolkit. This is essentially a printable ‘cheat sheet’ that suggests a variety of techniques you can apply to your projects.

The techniques do not just apply to web design but all aspects of design. Consequently not all of the techniques will apply. However a lot do, ranging from the use of metaphors to setting up good default options.

Some of the techniques contained in this cheat sheet are also beautifully demonstrated in another post I wanted to mention. Entitled 12 Excellent Examples of "Lazy Registration" it addresses the problem of user signup.

Essentially it is a post that showcases methods for getting around the problem of user registration. As the post itself says…

Signup forms have long irked the casual visitor. During the process of discovery, nobody wants to stop and fill out details before they can "unlock" the rest of the site’s potential.

It has certainly been my experience that signup forms are a barrier and so it is interesting to see how different web applications have overcome the problem.

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Feature: When to outsource web work

Your in charge of your organisations website. It has become moderately successful and now you have a decision. Do you hire a full time web designer or outsource to a web design agency?

Read the full article

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Listeners feedback:

In this week’s listener feedback section we look at a series of recommendations from the Boagworld forum…

A good introduction to Javascript

Jake writes: I’m curious as to whether or not anyone on the forum has strong opinions on a good introductory javascript book? And by introductory I mean something that’s more about initial learning steps such as syntax, etc. and then talks about best practices.

Doug answers: You might want to look at one of the books out for coding in jQuery, if you’re planning on going in that direction anyway. As for how to learn javascript I usually push people towards Lynda.com.

Matt also replies: Awesome book – DOM Scripting – I’d start with this before jQuery as I think you need some javascript knowledge to use jQuery to its fullest.

A good but free survey tool

Simon asks: I want to create some simple(ish) survey’s to get clients to fill out after a training session. I know of some paid for solutions, but does anyone have any suggestions for any free tools?

Laura replies: For something short, I’d use the survey function on PollDaddy. You can get up to 100 responses, and I think ten questions. Ten isn’t many, but you can do conditional branching for free, which is rare, and good.

I’ve also used SurveyMonkey before, it’s clean and simple.

A review of Clicktales

Peter shares his experiences of Clicktales…

On the recommendation of Paul, I tired out ClickTales.com; and I have to say the results have been interesting (sad, in my personal case) to say the least.

For those of you not in "the know", or missed episode 141, ClickTales is an app that lets you record and review the actions of your website’s visitors. And I’d agree with Paul: inexpensive, revealing, but limited in essence because you can witness what a user goes through.

In my case it was most effective because my results have been telling me that I should redesign my website’s structure completely… so I decided I should start from scratch all together and redesign. :)

Web Design for ROI

Bill reviews Web Design for ROI by Lance Loveday & Sandra Niehaus…

Each year I find one or two books that really stand out. This book, Web Design for ROI, changed the way I look at current eCommerce projects and helped me identify better strategies for building web sites.

Rich adds: I agree this is an excellent book.

Not too much new for a seasoned pro like myself, but I did still learn a fair bit and I’d recommend it to anyone with an interest in websites that make money.

Pro Paypal e-commerce

Finally, Ian shares an extensive review of the book ‘Pro Paypal e-commerce‘. Ian writes a very thorough review but here are a couple of highlights.

I thought this was a great read. It’s not often you finish a book and feel confident you have all the information you’re going to need to complete your project. The book isn’t just technical but also has lots of useful nuggets on business practices and background on payment systems in general for those that are unfamiliar with them at this level.

I feel confident in recommending this book to anyone who is involved with developing E-commerce systems or is going to be in the future. The author Damon Williams has a very readable style that is mercifully faux-humour free but never dull and explains everything clearly and concisely and despite its relatively low page count at 260 pages or so, still manages to cover a lot of ground without ever feeling as if it’s being too terse.

For more reviews about everything from web design books to software visit the Boagworld forum. We are also going to do some cool new stuff on the forum over the coming weeks. Keep an eye on it. We have already added a Jobs category for those of you who are looking to hire a web designer, so be sure to check that out.

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160. Education, Education, Education

Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

On this week’s show: We speak to Aarron Walter about teaching web standards. Ryan Carson starts a series on web applications and Paul talks about remote user testing.

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Housekeeping

A couple of quick pieces of housekeeping to kick off with…

  • Huge thanks to Ryan Taylor, Paul Stanton and Sarah Parmenter who did a stellar job standing in for myself and Marcus on last week’s show. They were actually far too good and I have already started receiving requests that they become the permanent hosts! Anyway, if you didn’t hear last week’s show then make a point of downloading it.
  • My second piece of housekeeping is a quick plug for Bamboo Juice, a grass roots conference taking place in Cornwall on the 24th April. Myself and Jeremy Keith are just two of the speakers in what will be a packed day. It’s so good to see smaller conferences like this springing up outside of London and so I would encourage as many of you as possible to attend. Best of all its only £99 (£79 for Boagworld listeners!)

News

To be honest, what with SXSW and my week’s holiday I am feeling completely out of touch with the web design world. Fortunately, Mr Stanton is continually updating our twitter feed with juicy stories. I have therefore picked 4 that caught my eye.

How to create a great web design CV

Poor old Smashing Magazine. People do like to tease them (myself included), but they write some damn useful articles. A recent example that caught my eye was ‘How To Create A Great Web Design CV and Resume?‘.

This post is essentially two articles in one. It starts by asking 10 designers to design a hypothetical CV for a fictional individual. Each designer writes a short paragraph about their chosen approach and you get to look at some nice examples.

The second part of the post provides 10 useful tips for creating a great CV. Suggestions include…

  • Make it printable
  • Have a summary
  • Link to online projects
  • Show your personality
  • Keep it simple and understandable

For the complete list of tips read the whole post.

Its a good post, but I am not sure whether producing a ‘designed CV’ is entirely necessary for web designers. If I was hiring a print designer then I would expect a CV to look impressive. However, if I am recruiting a web designer I think I would be just as happy receiving a cleanly designed CV that links to a stunning portfolio website.

There are a lot of differences between designing for the web and print. It is possible to be good at one and not the other. Therefore, a printed CV doesn’t tell me much about a persons capability as a web designer. That said, a well designed CV isn’t going to hurt your cause!

Design: Make it Memorable

One tip that could have gone in the Smashing Magazine article, is to make your CV ‘memorable’ and not just ‘flashy’. This picks up on the theme of a post over at 37 Signals entitled Designers: Make it Memorable.

The post talks about the difference between making something visually appealing and actually memorable. Too many sites are impressive but fail to leave a lasting impression. At one point in the post the author writes…

I started to recall those amazing Flash Sites of the Day. You know those sites that get passed around via IM in your office on a slow day? Simply amazing design and programming. Problem is: I can’t for the life of me remember what those URLs were much less the company/product that was being featured! Isn’t that the point with those sites? That the impact should be profound so that you remember Product or Company X?

This is a lesson that all those involved in the web design process need to learn. Whether we are designers or website owners, we have a tendency towards thing that provide the wow factor. However, often it is the thing that makes us go wow we remember rather than the message being communicated.

Statistics and website owners

Our next article of the week is an ‘all too brief’ post on web stats entitled How to Sell Statistics to Clients.

The post focuses on a common problem – most website owners know they should be tracking website statistics, but don’t really know what they are looking for. In fact the author writes…

In my experience, the loudness or frequency of a person’s request for web statistics is inversely proportional to their understanding of them.

That has often been my experience too.

He goes on to identify three ways that we as web designers can help rectify this problem. These are:

  • Providing cheat sheets that help the client understand terms like ‘hits’ ‘page views’ and ‘unique users’.
  • Add web metrics training into the budget of your projects.
  • Provide summaries and reports for the client on key metrics such as conversion rates or sales.

To be honest this is a much bigger problem than can be covered in a short blog post. Too many website owners think that having Google Analytics will solve their statistics needs. However, having the data is not the same as understanding it. If this information is misread it can lead to bad decisions about the future development of a site.

Specialist vs. Generalist: Who Wins?

The final post this week is of interest to pretty much everybody who listens to this show. It asks which is better – the Specialist or the Generalist.

This is an important questions for both web designers and website owners. As web designers we need to know whether we should be specialising in a specific area of web design. It is important for our careers and our businesses.

As website owners we want to know whether the pain of dealing with multiple specialist suppliers is worth the increased expertise you would receive over a generalist.

It has to be said the article is written mainly from the web designers perspective. However, I think there are lessons to be learnt for all sides.

The post outlines the pros and cons of both approaches, but ultimately comes down on the fence when it says…

There are advantages to being in both groups, but I think the only way to be truly successful is by being a little of both. You can be a specialist, but in order to be able to develop a profitable business, you may need to be able to supplement your specialty services with some add-on services that may not be exactly in line with your focus.

Personally, I think it depends on how you define specialist. The type and level of specialisation can vary massively and the way you position yourself will define your success. For example, you may specialise in a certain discipline (e.g. Ruby on Rails development) or in a specific market (Higher Education).

Ultimately, whether you are a website owner seeking an agency or a web designer forging a career, it is all about balance.

As a web designer, if you specialise too much you will not find work. If you generalise you cannot differentiate yourself.

As a website owner you want a web designer who is enough of an expert to deliver an outstanding solution, but you do not want so many specialists that your project turns into a nightmare.

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Interview: Aarron Walter on Interact

Paul: Hello, and so joining me today is Aarron Walter. Good to have you on the show, Aarron.

Aarron: Thanks for having me.

Paul: And the reason we have Aarron on the show is because he is going to talk about a new initiative.. is ‘initiative’ the right word, Aarron?

Aarron: Yeah, yeah.

Paul: Let’s go with that. A new initiative from the web standards project, called Interact. Now, let’s kick off, Aarron, by maybe you telling our listeners a little bit about what Interact is.

Aarron: So, whilst Interact is an open curriculum framework, basically we’ve been recognising that the Web Standards Project has been around for a long time and we’ve done a lot of things to try to get standards into industry. And to a certain degree we’ve made some big triumphs in that respect, but there are still a lot of websites out there that aren’t following standards and people that are sort of behind. And we saw the Achilles heal as to why that’s not happening, as really, education. So, you know, our medium’s really young and it hasn’t really found it’s bearings with how we’re going to marry industry and education, so whilst Interact is a curriculum that has a series of courses that teach not only web standards, but best practices.

So there’s of course the stuff that you would expect from WaSP which is the front-end development courses that teach progressive enhancement and semantic markup and that sort of thing. But we have six learning tracks that include foundations; there’s a course in there that’s like an intro to internet concepts and how people can use the internet to teach themselves and use RSS, that sort of thing.

So there’s front end development, there’s a design track, there’s server side development, there’s user science and then there’s also professional practice. So what we’re trying to do is create a collection of courses that are very modular, to try to get these into schools. And we recognise that not every school is just going to take the entire curriculum and integrate that into their program. You know, if you’re a Computer Science program maybe you’ll take a course or two, if you’re a design program you’ll take a course or two, or even just grab the assignments or look at our competencies.

Each course is based on competencies, which are the things a student has to master before they can pass a course. And then the evaluation methods: So each course has assignments, it has exam questions, it has readings that come from Operas own web standards curriculum – we’ve been collaborating with them. It has textbooks, it has pretty much everything that an educator could need to teach a particular topic.

Paul: Okay, so is this something that is then aimed entirely at educators, or if somebody wanted to get into web design and they were trying to learn it in their spare time, could they just go to this and use it in isolation by themselves?

Aarron: To some degree, I guess they could, but Operas web standards curriculum is really learner-centric, so if you’re trying to teach yourself, that’s probably the place to go. But ours is very much focused on educators, because we feel like there’s a lot of great resources out there on the web if someone wants to teach themselves, but there’s not a lot of great stuff for educators to get stuff into their courses.

Paul: So, when you say ‘educators’, I mean what kind of level are we looking at here? Earlier you mentioned schools. Are we talking about school age, or are we talking about higher education? What are we covering here?

Aarron: I’d say our primary target is higher education, colleges, universities, even training programs to some degree. But we are also seeing some of our content in high schools as well and we’d like to see that more. Especially foundations courses like the web design one course or the internet fundamentals course. If students could go into college with a solid foundation, then they can start to focus more on "What can I do with these techniques?" than theory and concept.

Paul: So is this design to be fairly international or is it quite U.S centric in the way that it’s written.

Aarron: We want it to be very international and the people that have worked together on this are from lots of different places. We’ve got some folks in Europe, Canada and of course some folks in the U.S, so it is in an international group that’s coming together and we’re actually working with WaSPs ILG group – that’s the International Liaison Group. And we’re working on, this year one of our big goals is to try to get a lot of our content translated to different languages.

Paul: Okay, so there will be multiple language versions of all of this as well at some point?

Aarron: That’s the direction we’re heading, yes.

Paul: So, I mean, how did this come about in the sense of, you know, well, how did you get involved in it for a start and what was the motivation behind it?

Aarron: So, I’ve been teaching for the past ten years in different schools in the U.S and colleges and universities, but I’ve also been working in the industry as well. And I got on WaSPs mailing list, I just joined the mailing list and started to talk to some folks and then they invited me to join – it was a year ago, I guess it was at the very beginning of 2008 – and so I joined the education task force who created the Interact project. And basically there were ideas about the curriculum and I’d heard lots of people say "Yeah, what we really need is, you know, education’s way behind" and they’re happy to point fingers and "We need a curriculum", but it just never was really transpiring from anyone coming from the industry and so we kind of just decided we need to do this. And I’ve helped create curricula before as a faculty member at the Art Institute of Atlanta and so I had some ideas and we had a really great group of folks that are in the education task force – people that are educators and people that are experts from the industries. So, yeah.. actually South by South West was where this all started, which is pretty amazing, of course there are lots of great people there. So Glenda Sims, who’s one of the heads of WaSP these days introduced me to Chris Mills from Opera who was working on his project and we kind of had some drinks at the Geeks Club bowling event and we just kind of went crazy talking about these ideas. And Steph Troeth then Leslie Jensen-Inman and we all had these ideas, and then we just set a goal for ourselves in 2008 at South by South West and we said "In a years time, we’re gonna be back and we’re gonna have a curriculum." and that’s what we did. This year we launched our curriculum at South By.

Paul: That’s quite an impressive turnaround for the amount of information that’s in there. How did you draw everything together? Where did it all come from?

Aarron: Well, we met every week online and we talked and we established a course template, which really helped us. The stuff that we really needed to put in these foundation courses, we all know what needs to go in there. It’s just a matter of getting around the pedagogy or the educational part of it. So we developed a template for assignments, a template for a course and a template for learning modules which are basically like, you know, a teacher could teach a concept like let’s say, HTML forms in a weeks time. So we developed those templates and then from there we just assigned courses to different people and we used a wiki and we just met regularly and.. I gotta say, you don’t have to have a huge group to develop a curriculum.You just have to have a few people who really have their heart in it and.. we have some amazing folks, so..

Paul: So, what kind of response are you getting so far from H.E institutions? Are they interested in adopting it? If they are, how are they going to go about that, because, I mean, my impression is that it always takes forever to get a curriculum approved at a university or whatever. So I’m just interested in how that process is going.

Aarron: Yeah, education is.. one of it’s benefits is that it’s slow to move, so once it gets a solid foundation it keeps that solid, but you know, one of it’s drawbacks is that it’s slow to move. And so we’ve got some schools that are really excited about it and generally the folks that.. you know, it’s only been a couple of weeks that this has been live, we’ve got some folks that are really excited about it and those are folks that were kind of headed in the same direction themselves. So we’ve gotten some responses from schools in Europe and some schools in the United States that are interested in pulling some stuff in. And we have a school that’s looking at using a lot of our content right now. So we’re in the early stages of trying to get this out there. I think the easiest part is building the curriculum, because we know what needs to go in there. The hardest part is getting it into schools. So one of our strategies is to get the endorsements of folks in the industry, so we’ve gotten endorsements from Google, from Yahoo, from Adobe, from W3C, from Opera, from Mozilla – they’re all just super excited about what we’re doing and that sort of brand recognition can help us get our foot in the door with schools. And of course going out to conferences, we’ve got folks at the European Accessibility conference right now, talking about it, so we’re just trying to get out there and let people know.

Paul: Excellent. That sounds brilliant. I mean, I know that a lot of people that listen to the Boagworld podcast – there’s a large number of students that we’ve got listening and I often get complaints about this, that what they’re being taught at university bears no resemblance to what they’re hearing on this podcast. And I’m hoping that that’s because the podcast is right and the university is wrong and not the other way around. So if they’re listening to this and they’re getting really excited about it and, you know, they’ve gone to your website and they’re seeing the curriculum – I’ve got it on front of me now and it does look really exciting – how do they make this happen in their institution? What would you encourage them to do?

Aarron: So, this is the interesting thing – that so many of us have complained about a problem, but there aren’t a lot of people that will take that complaint and turn it into action. So if you’re a student or if you’re an educator what we need you to do is, there’s a page that’s called Advocate Standards (http://interact.webstandards.org/advocate/) – you can get to it from the homepage of http://interact.webstandards.org. It kind of just describes what standards are, why they’re relevant to you and we need people to share that information with their teachers, we need people to share just this website with their colleagues and show them the testimonials of the people who believe in this and want students to come out of schools with these skills. So we need people to act in a bottom-up sort of way, you know, grass roots. Take this to your classroom, take this to your teacher, take this department chair and just let him know. That’s the most powerful thing that people can do right now.

Paul: I mean, what I’m quite excited about from looking at this curriculum is that it contains a lot more than "Here’s how you code in X language" or whatever and even has got more in it than just design and user experience stuff. All this stuff about professional practices is very exciting too. Could you perhaps tell us a little bit about that?

Aarron: Yeah, so professional practice, we want people to not only get the concrete skills of "I can code a standard compliant page" or "I can construct a usable website", but we want people to be able to present their about their work and you know, be able to survive in a real career in the web. And so professional practices is going to have a series of courses to do that. We’ve got some pretty exciting ones that are coming up. There’s ‘writing for the web’ – it’s going to be a really cool one, that Alan Hussain from a List Apart is going to be creating. And we have a presentation course that’s coming down the line. So, we’ve got a number of those coming up.

Paul: That’s quite interesting, you just said something that I hadn’t grasped which is that there’s more to come here. That this isn’t the end of the line. It sounds like you’ve got lots more that you’re still developing. Is that right?

Aarron: Yeah. We call it a living curriculum, because you never write a curriculum and then you’re done. Especially in our industry, things change so fast. is what of course we’re going to be working on this year. Our design track is light right now and we want to try and address that ASAP, so we’ve got Dan Rubin and Ethan Marcott, are working together to create a foundation design course, that is specific to what web designers need to understand. And we also have Dan Mall is going to be helping us with a Flash course and Aral Balkan is also going to help us with some flash stuff too. We have a lot of stuff going on this year for new courses, so we hope next year at South By when we see everybody that we’ll have a brand new stack to add to Interact.

Paul: Excellent, so do you kind of envisage, from an institutional point of view that, like we were saying, it takes a long time for a curriculum to get approved and that part of the problem has always been that, by the time it’s approved it’s out of date, when it comes to the web. So is the idea that you’re going to get institutions to buy into the Interact curriculum in its evolving nature so that they always get the most up to date version of it. Is that the kind of plan? They’re not grasping one moment in time from it, if that makes sense?

Aarron: Yeah, exactly and we want to take some of the hard work out of being a teacher. I speak from experience, there’s so many things you have to keep track of and trying to keep pace with a lot of changing technologies and concepts, that’s hard on top of the umpteen other plates you’re spinning. So that’s exactly what’s going to happen, is that our courses, they’re not chiseled in stone, they’re published on the web, they’re in an expression engine and we’ll change those as they need to be changed. But that said, we need to strike a balance, because we can’t be chasing every new technology all the time, we have to evaluate and there has to be foundational concepts that remain steady. Separation of presentation and content, that’s steady foundation concept. But new technologies or techniques, they might change.

Paul: Okay, I mean, the whole area of education and web design is massively exciting and there’s so much going on at the moment in so many different fields. I mean, from your perspective, what else out there is really exciting you at the moment that you’re seeing.

Aarron: There’s so much, I just feel like last year that I just saw so many companies, organisations, individuals that, it seems that everyone just was pissed and they just walked out their house and they were headed in one direction until it was like everyone sort of meets up in one big mob. And so, what Opera’s doing, what Chris Mills has done with the 55 articles that he’s brought together and edited for Opera Web Standards Curriculum, that’s huge. Those are all rolled into WaSP Interact as our recommended reading, so that was fantastic. Yahoos Juku project, if you’ve heard of this it’s quite amazing. Nick Fogler, who’s the running Juku – Yahoo actually has a training program, where they bring students that are not employees, they’re not hiring them. They bring them in and they train them to be front end engineers over the course of a few months. And they’re doing it because they’re trying to solve this problem on their own. So, we’re talking with them about how they’re solving problems and looking to collaborate and discuss what we can learn from them. John Allsopp who runs Web Directions (the conference series), he brought myself and Chris Mills and Steph Troeth together with a number of other experts and we did Ed Directions, which was a day long workshop that taught teachers how to teach these concepts in their classroom. So there’s just so much stuff that’s happening right now and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Paul: Exciting stuff. It sounds like it’s a really good time and it’s great to have you on the show. How you manage to fit all of this in alongside earning a living too is quite beyond me, but it’s really good that so many people are volunteering and pitching in. That’s great. Okay, let’s get you back on the show, I guess in a years time and sees what’s changed. But thank you very much for coming in now and I will talk to you again soon. Thanks.

Aarron: Thanks for having me.

Thanks goes to Andrew Marquis for transcribing this interview.

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Listeners feedback:

We have two emails this week dealing with two totally unrelated subjects.

Remote user testing

Our first email is from Steve. He writes…

Catching up on past podcasts, I listened to the episode on User Testing (#150). A method I’ve used that I haven’t heard tossed around much is remote user testing using a screen sharing program like GoToMeeting.

I used this for usability testing of our Intranet and it has several advantages:

  • No need for people to come to central testing facility, or you to go to them.
  • The user is at their own computer, so more comfortable.
  • Ability to record the entire session (screen and audio) so others can look at it later.
  • Tester can conduct testing while in his underwear only (I didn’t do this, but you could.)

What do you think of this method?

Sounds interesting although it would not be my preferred approach.

It’s easy to become a snob when it comes to usability testing and so let me make it entirely clear – any usability testing is better than none.

If you have no budget for user testing, test on friends and family. If time is tight, test on a colleague sitting nearby.

In the same way, if you are having trouble arranging sessions then use Steve’s approach. Something is always better than nothing.

That said, I do have some concerns with remote testing. These include…

  • It sets a minimum bar of technical competency. A user has to be able to connect to the system in order to participate. I know this would have been beyond the capabilities of some test subjects I have worked with.
  • It is less personal. Face to face usability testing puts users much more at their ease and allows you to build a relationship that facilitates honest feedback.
  • It does not allow you to read non-visual signals. Users will often pull a face or shift their positions when they are frustrated. As a facilitator you need to be able to see these signals and ask what they mean.
  • You are not seeing exactly what the user is seeing. You can only see their screen. You cannot see other distractions such as TV in the background. You cannot see the position of their keyboard and mouse. You have a limited field of view.

My preferred approach is to test in people’s homes. Not only are the users more relaxed, you also get a unique glimpse into their world. You see where they access the web, you learn about their home environment and even gain a better understanding of their character.

However, we do not always live in a perfect world and so would definitely use remote testing if better options were not available.

Finding a job

Our second email is a rather despondent one from Andrew…

I have one question, In the past you’ve talked about hiring new for staff, but as far as I can tell you’ve never discussed how to look for a job. I’m currently looking for a career in the industry, but I can’t get a resume to any company or even talk to someone of said company. Almost all the businesses I’ve approached (or at least tried to) either work from home, are no longer at that address, or no longer in business, and actually are just freelancers. And when I find a job posting online its for someone far more experienced then I am. I’m completely demoralized.

You have my sympathy Andrew and I have to say its a tough time to to break into any new sector including web design.

I am also probably not the best person to answer this question. I have been completely unemployable for some time now due to my ill defined skillset and opinionated character :)

So, I am going to try something different with this question. If you have some advice for Andrew, post a comment below. That way we can get the Boagworld community helping each other.

In the meantime here are a few random ideas from me…

  • Give up on the cold calling technique. Randomly contacting agencies is largely a waste of time. You have to get amazingly lucky to contact an agency who happens to be currently recruiting.
  • Try for an internship. Admittedly you will not get paid, but it is a foot in the door. You get a chance to improve your skills and also get to know the people in the industry within your area.
  • Be willing to move. There are jobs out there but they are often further a field.
  • Put yourself in a neat little box. Potential employers need to know what you do. Are you a designer, a coder or a server side developer? Companies don’t know what to do with people who know a bit about everything.
  • Start networking. The best place to find job opportunities is by attending conferences and meetups. Even if you cannot afford the conference itself, turn up at the parties and stand in the halls. Just get yourself out there.
  • Register with recruitment agencies. As an employer I hate recruitment agencies because they cost me money. However, we do still sometimes use them and it doesn’t cost you anything to be listed with them.
  • Ensure your website is perfect. The first thing I do when I look at a potential employee is check out their website. Their site has to be outstanding. It needs to look amazing, be well coded and rich with great content that demonstrates a passion for the web.

Hopefully that helps Andrew and keep an eye on the comments for more advice.

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Series: Building A Better Web Application by Ryan Carson

Ryan Carson: Hi I am founder of Carsonified a small web company in Bath, England. I am an American as you can probably tell, as for living in England I have been here about nine years. So a little bit of history about us real quick so you know who I am. I have a computer science degree and I have been involved in building four web apps and we are building a fifth truvay.com which will be released later in 2009, and we have sold two of our webapps dropsend.com and heyamigo.net. So the stuff that I am going to share with you today are lessons I have learnt the hard way basically as we have built web apps.

So the first thing I want to talk about is the Admin area that you will build for your web app. What a lot of people don’t know is that the Admin area is really the key to good customer service. If you haven’t enabled really easy customer service then it makes it hard to actually please your customers when they have problems so the first one to make sure you build into your admin for your web app are one click refunds so if someone calls and complains and says hey I am having trouble this month I am really frustrated please help you want to be able to just go into the admin do a search for their email address, their name or their company or anything and bam one click and refund their last invoice and what this does is it gives you, it gives you the ability to just make them happy right away. With a lot of web apps these days on recurring billing you will probably be charging people 5,10,15, $20 a month so losing that amount of revenue in return for really making a customer happy is super important. So make that easy for yourself to refund that money.

The second thing I would make it easy to do is have one click password reset that automatically sends out email with the new password, so with Dropsend it was really hard to reset people’s passwords and that was the number one request people had problems with, they couldn’t remember their password. So if I was to do it again what I would do is I would actually build the admin so I could forward an email from somebody presuming they had sent it from the email address of the account, forward it into Dropsend or the admin and it would automatically know that what it needed to do is reset the password for that email and then it sends out a new one so literally you do not even have to visit the admin area to reset someone’s password you just forward an email that would be amazing, so that’s the way I would do it next time.

The next thing I would do is also doing a one-click resend invoice. So a lot of people they don’t understand they can go into their "My Account" area of a web app to see their past invoices and what they will do is they will just email you and say hey you know I need last month’s invoice. If it is hard for you to find that or send that it is going to make you less likely to help that person so I would do a search on the email address show a list of invoices bam one click and it emails them a pdf version of the invoice. That’s another, that leads me onto another area that I would like to talk about that is invoicing. If you are doing recurring billing sort of every month billing your customers make sure that you are not re-inventing the wheel I would recommend a web app called Spreedly.com and what it is basically it is a web service for recurring billing they have done all the hard work, written all the code, the code for the Dropsend recurring billing was at least I think 1200 lines of PHP and it was good solid code but it was really hard and painful to write. So I would recommend don’t re-invent the wheel use a service like Spreedly because it is making calls to an API if later you decide you don’t want to use a service like Spreedly any more that layer has been abstracted out so you could replace it with your own billing system or another one and it won’t kill you, but I would say hands down don’t rebuild reoccurring billing it is a real pain in the ass.

The last tip I would say about your admin area is make sure that it is easy to give your customers credits. you want to be able to login search for an email address and just give them, hey I want to give them five bucks towards next month, ten bucks just to make them happy and you will have lots of happy customers. So that is my five minutes of tips, thanks Paul for letting me be a part of this. Take care Bye.

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10 criteria for selecting a CMS

Posted in Development on 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.

Illustration of a sales man selling a CMS the client does not need.

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.

Blogger Homepage

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.

Wordpress WYSIWYG

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.

Illustration demonstrating the inflexibility of some CMS

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.

Illustration showing the consequences of not having a permissions system

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.

Movable Type admin system

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 ways to Battle Site Bureaucracy

Posted in Web strategy on by Paul Boag

Running a large institutional website is frustrating. Your site is often held back by internal politics and bureaucracy. Let me show you 10 ways to cut through the crap and get results.

My recent post ‘10 harsh truths about corporate websites‘ generated a huge number of comments both on my own blog and on Smashing Magazine. I seemed to tap into an undercurrent of frustration that exists within the industry.

However, although there was a lot of agreement about the points I raised, there was also resignation. There was a feeling that little could be done to overcome these problems because institutional websites are too entrenched in bureaucracy and politics.

Although I can sympathise with this position and have myself suffered from the problem, I am not one to give up! Over the last decade of working on these sites, I have developed a number of techniques which (sometimes) help to smooth their evolution. Hopefully they will help you too.

1. Educate and inform

At the heart of any technique for dealing with politics and bureaucracy has to be education.

Although there are occasions when people are just ‘trying to be difficult’, in most cases their objections are based on ignorance.

You cannot expect people to be as knowledgeable as you about the web. If you want people to make informed, sensible decisions you must educate them.

Education is also not just about giving them the background to a specific decision so they understand ‘why you are right’. It is about increasing your organisations general understanding of the web.

Run workshops, publish email newsletters, do anything that informs people about the latest web innovations. Increasingly I am invited into organisations to run short seminars on everything from accessibility to facebook! This kind of ongoing education means people are better informed when tough decisions need to be made.

2. Hold stakeholder interviews

One technique that we find very effective at Headscape are stakeholder interviews.

Stakeholder interviews involves meeting individually with anybody who has a ‘stake’ (interest) in the website. This is typically members of the marketing and IT teams, as well as departmental heads and senior management. However it should also include suppliers, customers and users of your website.

These one-to-one meetings provide two opportunities…

  • Requirements gathering – It is easy for website owners to live in isolated bubbles, separate from the rest of the organisation. These meetings provide an opportunity to understand the real needs and objectives of others within the business. It will highlight ways that your website can help, which you might not have previously considered.
  • To be inclusive – Stakeholder interviews offer a ‘political benefit’ as well. By meeting with people individually they feel included in the process. They feel their opinions are valued and listened to (which they should be!). People are much less likely to object if they have been consulted before a decision is reached.

People often complain about the website in stakeholder interviews. Allow them to do this and avoid becoming defensive. They will feel more favourably towards you and your website, if you listen to their concerns. We all like to be heard.

3. Avoid group committee meetings

The key to stakeholder interviews is their one-to-one nature. Group meetings can be very destructive. This is for a number of reasons…

  • The need to defend – In large organisations that have internal politics, everybody feels the need to defend their own ‘turf’. If somebody criticise the website, you are forced to defend it to ‘save face’ in front of others. Equally others feel the need to defend their own positions for the same reason.
  • A tendency to compromise - When two individuals in a group reach an impasse, the others try to find a compromise. This kind of ‘design on the fly’ inevitably leads to a bland solution. It will neither offend or inspire anybody. Unfortunately, to create a successful website you need to make tough choices that some will not like. A group approach does not lend itself to this.
  • A loss of control – It is easy for you to loss control in a group meeting. One-to-one meetings work better because you can divide and conquer. Only you know what the other stakeholders said. This puts you in charge and allows you to ‘cheery pick’ the feedback you receive. In a group meeting things can easily get out of hand and decisions are made without your buy-in.
  • The dominant individual - Every group has one or two dominant individuals. These are the people who bounce the rest of the group into agreeing with them, forcing their agenda through. A dominant individual drowns out quieter members, who become resentful later that nobody listened to them. Meeting with people individually prevents this because the dominant individuals cannot force their point of view on others or overwhelm quieter ones.

One cannot expect a larger organisation to run its website without some form of committee. However, there is no reason why that committee needs to meet as a group.

4. Target your influencers

Talking of dominant individuals, another successful tactic is to target influencers.

An influencer is somebody that others respect and follow. Their opinion is incredibly valuable and if you can sway them to your cause, others will fall into line. However, be careful not to confuse dominant people with influencers. A dominant person will ‘bully’ others into publicly agreeing with them. An influencer will fundamentally alter somebody’s attitude.

Identify who influences your decision makers and speak to them personally. This person might not even be a decision maker themselves, but they carry enough clout to make them worth your time.

When you meet with your influencers, really listen to what they have to say. They often have valuable insights which may change your strategy significantly. Do not go into a meeting with an influencer simply intent on pushing your own agenda. Instead try and shape your approach around their perspective.

If you get an influencer enthusiastic about your project it can make a huge difference.

5. Use third party experts

A variation on the influencers technique is to back up your ideas with third party expert opinion. This can be done in two ways…

  • Reference the work of a third party expert – For example, if you wish to discourage internal stakeholders from overwhelming users with options on the homepage, you might refer them to Steve Krug or Jakob Nielsen who have both written on the subject.
  • Hire a third party expert - I often find myself brought into companies simply to confirm what in-house staff have already been saying. Unfortunately, decision makers often doubt the opinion of their web team because they either undervalue them or feel they are pushing a hidden agenda. An independent expert can add creditability to your opinions.

Of course, for this approach to work the stakeholders need to respect the expert. There is no point referencing Steve Krug or hiring Jakob Nielsen, if the decision makers have never heard of them. It is often necessary to sell the credibility of your expert first.

6. Rely on evidence, not opinion

Sometimes it is better to avoid personal opinion entirely (even if that is the opinion of an expert). In such cases statistics can be your friend.

Nothing is more powerful for driving home a point than referring decision makers to Google Analytics. However web stats are not the only evidence you can draw upon. Others include…

  • Surveys and polls are an excellent way of getting feedback from your users that can then be presented to decision makers.
  • Twitter search and Google Alerts can be used to gauge how people view your site and brand. These can be powerful testimonials to present decision makers.
  • Heat maps can be used to take some of the subjectivity out of design.

Of course one of the most powerful evidence you can present is the results of usability testing.

7. Focus on the user

As website owners we know that a successful website is user focused. However, not all our decision makers will understand this and even those who do may get ‘distracted’ sometimes.

It is therefore important to constantly move our decision makers away from their own personal preferences and back on the needs of users.

User testing is one way of doing this. Being able to show decision makers how real users interact with your website is incredibly powerful. It helps them empathise with the needs of users rather than thinking only about their own agenda. Play them video clips of users interacting with your site or at the very least quote them the feedback of users.

However, even if you involve decision makers in user testing, they can still get caught up in their own agendas. One gentle way of preventing this is to word your questions carefully. When you need a decision makers response to something don’t ask…

What do you think?

Instead ask them…

How do you think users will respond to this?

This will keep them focused on the needs of users.

8. Control the feedback

As well as wording questions carefully there is also a need to control the feedback you receive. This is important if you want the decision makers to make considered decisions.

Take for example design sign off – never ask a decision marker if they like a design. It is too broad a question that will lead to a plethora of uninformed and ill considered responses. Instead ask them more specific questions such as…

  • Does the design conform to the brand guidelines?
  • Does the design meet the needs of our users?
  • Does the design emphasis the right content?
  • Does the design have a clear call to action?
  • Does the design fulfil our business objectives?

This prevents the decision maker from falling back on their gut reaction (i like it / I dislike it). It forces them to focus on the issues that define whether the design is successful or not and ignore personal preference for specific colours or layout.

Of course, sometimes you will not like the answer to these specific questions. When that happens you need to ask why.

9. Ask why

This is probably the most powerful of all the techniques I have listed here and yet by far the simplest.

When you face opposition to your plans, always ask why. Too often we switch to defensive mode and focus on better communicating our own position rather than understanding the opinion of the person opposing us. This is a mistake.

The question why is powerful for three reasons…

  • It informs – Often the objection raised initially is not the true underlying issue. By asking why you get to the root of the problem and that allows you to offer alternative solutions. Asking why ensures you have all the information required to deal with the issue.
  • It can confound – Most of us make decisions based on an intuitive leap. We do not always think through our decisions and so find it hard to articulate the underlying reason. By asking why you force people to stop and consider their logic. When they struggle to express the underlying reasons, they weaken their position.
  • It shows interest – By asking why you allow them to have their say. You demonstrate an interest in their opinion and establish empathy with their point of view.

    • Ultimately asking why avoids the disagreement from turning into an argument with entrenched position.

    10. Avoid confrontation

    I avoid confrontation at all costs. Going head-to-head with somebody especially in front of their colleagues achieves nothing. You can rarely get somebody to shift their position through confrontation.

    Once a disagreement escalates into a confrontation, nobody can afford to ‘lose face’ by backing down. It becomes a matter of ego, where pride dictates the outcome. Your website will almost certainly be caught in the cross fire.

    A better approach is to agree. The word yes can be immensely powerful. Whenever somebody suggests something to me, no matter how stupid, I will do the following…

    • Acknowledge and thank them for their input.
    • Say yes we could do that.
    • Go on to explain the consequences if we did.
    • Offer an alternative which could achieve the same aims.

    In short I tend to go around problems rather than bashing my head against them. I always look to work with others rather than against them.

    Conclusions

    So there you go, 10 techniques for battling site bureaucracy. I do not claim these techniques are foolproof. Neither do I suggest they are always appropriate. However, they are useful techniques in your arsenal which you may want to call upon from time to time.

    Finally, this is not a definitive list. I could have written more but then it wouldn’t have been a ‘top ten list!’ However, I would be interested to hear what works for you. Post your techniques in the comments.

    150. User Manipulation

    Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

    On this week’s show: Liz Danzico talks about user research. Paul explains how to create an effective call to action and we discover how one button cost $300 million in sales

    Download this show.

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    News and events

    The $300 Million Button

    Our first news story is an incredibly tale from usability expert Jared Spool, which really shows the power of usability testing.

    In the post he writes about a client who had a fairly standard checkout process on his website. The process began with a login form:

    The form was simple. The fields were Email Address and Password. The buttons were Login and Register. The link was Forgot Password.

    It is the kind of form I have seen on many ecommerce websites. This feature, which had been designed to help repeat customers, created two distinct problems:

    • New users resented the idea of having to register. One user said: "I’m not here to enter into a relationship. I just want to buy something."
    • Repeat users rarely remembered their username or password. They wasted substantial time guessing, before eventually resorted to creating a new account. In fact after examining the database Jared discovered that 45% of all customers had multiple registrations. Some did go as far as clicking on the forgotten password link but of those only 25% went on to place an order.

    In the end the site was redesigned, allowing the user to continue without registering. Within a year this created a $300 million increase in sales.

    Of course $300 million is a meaningless figure in itself. It is the percentage increase that matters. In this case is was a 45% increase. That is a staggering number and one that really drives home the importance of testing with real users.

    Read the ‘$300 million button’

    The UK government and graded browser support

    A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the importance of graded browser support. In my post I explained how we should not limit our support to the browsers we test and how it is unrealistic to push for identical support across all browsers.

    This is an approach which has been adopted by the likes of Yahoo! and the BBC for some time, but which now also extends to public sector website in the UK.

    According to The Web Standards Project the rules surrounding browser testing on public sector websites have been changed to better reflect best practice in graded browser support.

    Changes include an emphasise on functionality over identical layout across browsers (paragraph 39):

    You should check that the content, functionality and display all work as intended. There may be minor differences in the way that the website is displayed. The intent is not that it should be pixel perfect across browsers, but that a user of a particular browser does not notice anything appears wrong.

    As well as support for progressive enhancement (paragraphs 17-18):

    You should follow a progressive enhancement approach to developing websites to ensure that content is accessible to the widest possible number of browsers.

    This is excellent news and certainly provides a great reference for UK designers and website owners looking to convince others of the importance of graded browser support.

    BBC Graded Browser Support Table

    Read the UK government guidance on browser testing

    50 Illustrator tutorials

    List of Illustrator tutorials

    From development to design now, and a list of 50 tutorials that help you get your head around Adobe Illustrator.

    The list is compiled by UK web designer Chris Spooner. He echoes my own experiences when he writes:

    Adobe Illustrator can be a little tricky to get your head around, particularly after getting used to the workflow as applications such as Photoshop. The difference between layer use and creating and editing shapes can be especially strange at first hand.

    I am a Photoshop man and I have found it very difficult to make the transition to a vector based world, so this list was particularly appealing to me.

    Its a great list that you will definitely want to check out, if like me you have never got to grips with Illustrator before.

    Read 50 illustrator tutorials every designer should see

    A new approach to PNG Support

    Finally today I would like to draw your attention to a new technique that has been developed by Drew Diller for using PNG transparency in IE6.

    Unlike previous techniques this one allows you to use PNGs as background images instead of just as IMG tags. This opens up a world of possibilities and overcomes one of the most annoying limitations of IE6.

    This minor miracle is achieved not by using AlphaImageLoader as has been done in the past, but with VML.

    Implementation seems fairly straightforward and involves adding a Javascript library to your page. Because this is for IE6 only you can embed the code within a conditional comment. This means other browsers will not even download it.

    Although I have yet to use this approach myself, I have high hopes that this will finally solve the IE6/PNG barrier.

    Download DD_belatedPNG now.

    Back to top

    Interview: Liz Danzico on User Research

    Paul: So joining me today for our little interview is Liz Danzico. Liz, why don’t you start off by introducing yourself a little bit. Telling us a bit about yourself and your background.

    Liz: Sure. Um, I am a user experience consultant, I am here in New York City, I have been developing web sites and user experiences online for about 12 years now. Um, I do a lot of work with Happy Cog Studios here in New York, with Jeffrey Zeldman and Jason Santa Maria. Um, I’m also chair of the new MFA interactions design program.

    Paul: Okay.

    Liz: At the School of Visual Arts in New York.

    Paul: Excellent. I mean, so, to say that you’re an expert in user experience would be a slight understatement then, Liz.

    Liz: Well I wouldn’t go that far.

    Paul: You’d be too modest, obviously, to say that. Okay, so we got Liz on the show, I met Liz when I went to Future of Web Design and we got talking. Um, she’s got some fascinating insights into the whole area of user research, and usability generally, so I thought let’s get her on the show and let’s maybe, you know, try and cover things from, from the very basic level, a kind of introduction to this concept of user research. Um, so, perhaps a good place to start, if you’re okay Liz, um, would be, how would you go about defining the area of user research? What would you include, what would you exclude from that?

    Liz: Right. So … user research, even today, we’ve been doing user research on the web since, uh, the very beginning, so it’s a very old concept but it’s still fairly controversial. So the basic concept is it tells you what really happens when real people interact with your product or service. So, there are no real rules about what it includes and what it doesn’t [inaudible]. You can basically speculate about what your users want, or you can find that out, um, you know? And uh, and the, uh, the latter is probably a more useful approach for you to take than speculation. But with either one, thinking about your audience is useful no matter what. And so, so there are no real rules, now um, when you disconnect thinking about your audience from your business objectives, and you start getting, you know, very excited about behaviors that they’re doing that are sort of disconnected from the real mission that you’re trying to sort of accomplish, then it becomes, um, a bit murky, and confusing. But thinking about your audience is, just in general, is an extremely useful approach.

    Paul: Okay. I mean one of the things that, that, um, I’ve heard said before by, particularly cynical clients I have to say, but I’ve heard it said before, you know, ultimately user research, and all of this kind of stuff feels in some ways like, um, just another way for web designers to suck a bit of extra money out of us, you know that fundamentally how, I know my audience already, is the kind of attitude that many web site owners have, so why do you see it as an important part of the process?

    Liz: Well uh, you know, as we’ve been seeing design flaws often translate to lost business opportunities, you know, usability is becoming more important than ever as the number of web sites and products is, you know, increasing more and more every day. So, we design these products and services, and we are at the same time users of them, but there’s no way that we can really tell what are users, um, might want. And the best way to, you know, usability research doesn’t cost a lot of money, so, the best way that you can help your clients kind of understand that you need to do usability research in some way is to let them know that usability research is important and it doesn’t need to, um, suck up a lot of time or money in the, in the process. So there’s a great fantastic book by Steve Krug, called Don’t Make Me Think, which I’m sure you’re probably well aware of.

    Paul: Uh huh.

    Liz: And in one of the chapters towards the end, he has a chapter called "Usability Research on a Shoestring", or it’s probably better titled, which talks of this approach of going out into the hallway and kind of grabbing people, and just sitting them down, and putting them in front of your product or service, and getting some feedback. So getting some feedback from people, no matter who they are, is better than getting none at all. And so, I think starting there with clients, instead of the, you know, $100,000 user research project that’s going to take you across 8 markets, you know, in the United States, the UK, and Asia, then, is going to be a much better approach than kind of intimidating them with the very extensive projects.

    Paul: Mmm, I mean, when it, the kind of one scenario that I’ve come across before, um, is where we’ve come across with clients that say "Well we’ve already done user research, we already know our audience ’cause we’ve got somebody in to do this or that." Is there a difference between user research that’s been done primarily with an offline audience, and those with, you know, when you’re interacting with people online? Is there a difference in the kind of results and information that you’re after, and even the techniques, maybe, that you use?

    Liz: So, they are probably, when they say that they’ve done user research, they’re probably talking about focus groups. I would venture to guess that when they talk about that they’re probably talking about either focus groups or surveys of some kind and those are not, well, I wouldn’t say that they are, those are bad things to do, but those are not the kinds of user research techniques that are going to give them feedback about their product’s usability. Those kinds of techniques are going to give them good information about, um, certain kinds of things but they are not going to give them information about whether or not people can use the product or service that they’re looking at. So, you want to find out exactly what kinds of user research they’ve conducted. If they say the words "focus group" then you know you want to move them towards something that is a one on one kind of interview. Focus groups tend to be conducted with groups of people, as the name might suggest, um, and when groups of people get together to talk about, you know, they put forth a question for these people, and when they, you know, groups of people get together to talk about the question they might influence one another in their answers, they’re typically aren’t talking about an interface, they’re typically talking about ideas, so you’re not getting good feedback, like in a one on one kind of scenario. So you want to sort of guide them to a more individual, one on one kind of experience. Surveys, on the other hand, are good, but they don’t get that kind of personal experience with a moderator, sitting with an individual, kind of looking at an interface in a kind of task-based scenario.

    Paul: Okay, yeah that makes a lot of sense. I mean, let’s then talk about some of the techniques that can be used to better understand individuals, or how those individuals will interact with your product. What different kind of techniques do you use? I mean, there’s the kind of very basic usability session, but do you do, or are there other things above and beyond that, that you do?

    Liz: Right. Well, the sort of big secret is that, there are names and there are certainly techniques, but the big secret is there are really no sort of techniques beyond knowing who your users are, kind of documenting what you’re seeing, and then kind of analyzing/prioritizing the results of what you see. So, you can, I’m gonna tell you a number of techniques that we can go through, but if those basic sort of constructs are there, then you’ve done sort of good user research. Now, that being said, the techniques that you can do are usability testing, usability testing traditionally has taken place in a user lab where a moderator is sitting with an individual looking at a screen, or a product, or a sketch of an interface and going through questions in sort of a task-based way, asking people "Show me how you would search for x" or "Show me how you would check out," or, you know, and seeing, measuring the success or failure of that kind of task. The clients are typically sitting behind a one-way, a one-way glass, or mirror, and observing these kinds of things. People have been not so thrilled about this technique recently, saying that it kind of, um, is not, it doesn’t produce natural reactions from users, but that is one kind of technique. There is, uh, kind of creating personas, and using personas, user personas which are an archetype of your site or product’s users, and getting everyone involved in activities around those personas, whether that be using those personas as your talking through features around, you know, a brainstorming session, and getting people to sort of role-play those personas. That’s another user research method. There are, there’s sort of the ethnography kind of take, where a lot of people have been doing kind of in-home interviews and observations recently. Ethnography, cultural anthropologists and people who have been doing traditional ethnography have been watching closely the design research that we’ve been doing recently, and wondering if we’ve been doing it right and so on, but ethnography, in that sort of observing users in their "natural environment", has been I would say a more successful way recently of watching people use products and services, um, so I would say that those three things, usability testing in a lab, sort of using personas and scenarios, and ethnography or kind of going out into the field and watching users, whether they’re in their homes or their offices, are the three kind of key ways to gather user research with users. The fourth way that I’ll mention, and we can talk about this in a little bit, is not with users directly, but it is certainly user research that’s available more and more now, and that is data on sort of analytics, which you can gather from Google Analytics, Shaun Inman’s Mint, these kinds of things. Watching site data and user behavior through site analytics is another form of user research that gives you, you know, some information, and you can watch these traffic patterns on your site. It doesn’t answer the question "Why?" but it does show you some evidence as to how users are behaving on your site.

    Paul: It’s quite interesting that you bring up eth, ethnography, whoa I can’t even speak today, because, that’s of interest to me, because that’s an area that we’re beginning to explore a little bit more, and have kind of discovered the same thing, that there’s a real value of going into you know, somebody’s home, seeing the environment that they access the internet on, you know, do they have kids under their feet? You know, where they access their PC, can they sit comfortably at it? All those kinds of things. Um, I guess it’s also an advantage you don’t have to hire an expensive usability lab and all of the rest of it. But I have to confess, I’m a little bit new at it, so talk me through maybe some of the things, you know, how does it differ from a usability test that you would do in a usability lab, other than that you’re in a different environment?

    Liz: Well, uh, it depends. It doesn’t have to differ at all — it depends on the goals of the test. I would say that you could construct a test that’s exactly like one that you’d conduct in a lab, it just happens in someone’s home or office, or in a different environment. But as you said, you get the more realistic interruptions, and that kind of thing, and are they going to be able to complete this task given the natural kind of occurrences of their day. And that, depending on what kind of test you are constructing, that’s either going to inform your results or not. If you are doing task-based testing, so I could maybe talk about the different kind of usability testing that you could do.

    Paul: Yeah, that’s good.

    Liz: Yeah so there are different ways that you could conduct a usability test. Um, traditionally there is task-based testing, where you set up pre-written questions, before you get to the test, that are based on the goals of the testing. So, if we were testing a photo site, we would test whether or not users could upload photos, could they task photos, you know, those kinds of things. So we would write those kinds of questions up beforehand, and then ask those questions during the test. Um, that’s one kind of test. You could do that in a lab, and you can do that same test in someone’s home. In a lab there would not be the children screaming, and the phone ringing, and that kind of thing, or, if someone say were uploading a photo, you would never be able to tell if sort of, timing out, would be an issue, or if anything with time or space or motion would be an issue. If those kinds of things are a goal of your test, then you might want to think about doing it in real time, in someone’s home environment. Another type of testing is something that, I’ll say it was first coined by Mark Hurst, who is a user experience consultant at Good Experience, I think he coined it, it’s called "Listening Labs". Listening labs are, I’ll call them experimental, but they’ve probably been going on long before I was aware of them, where people are designing usability tests in real time. So in other words, you go into the test with absolutely nothing written down, and you sit down with users, and based on your initial interview with them, you hear who they are, and after understanding a little bit about how they use photos in general, say, then you kind of write the questions on the fly, and then sort of develop a test around who that person is and their behavior, with your product, or product type.

    Paul: Which I guess, makes people more engaged with the test, because it’s about what they specifically interested in. Is that the idea?

    Liz: Exactly. So it’s a more natural way of doing the test. That’s the idea. That kind of thing you could do either way, and probably is even more rewarding if you’re doing it in someone’s natural environment. And then the third type of test is sort of a web, a web wide kind of test, where you have people just surf the internet, as it were, and uh, and just have them think out loud, and that kind of thing is also, I’ve found, more rewarding and fruitful in someone’s home environment, because they have their bookmarks there, and they have their post-it notes. Whereas you put them in a sort of artificial setting and they don’t have those things around them. So, if you, it kind of just depends on the type of testing that you’re doing. If you’re doing just the first kind I talked about, just task analysis and having people go through that kind of task-based testing, doing it in a traditional usability lab is great, you know, I mean you really do get the answers that you’re looking for, and it just depends on your goals.

    Paul: I mean, it’s interesting, going back to Steve Krug’s book that you mentioned, I mean he talks about, I guess his agenda in that book is to get people to do testing who perhaps aren’t previously, and so, you know, he really downplays the demographic of who it is that you test, and that it’s more important that you test than that you get the right people, you know and all of that kind of thing. Um, but when you’re going into somebody’s home, and interacting with them, I’m guessing it’s more important to get the right demographic? Is that right?

    Liz: Yeah, I mean one of the, um, I think it’s always important to, it’s always important to get the right demographic. Um, but, well I would say that there is a hierarchy of common mistakes around usability testing that kind of has a trickle down effect. You know, the number one mistake is not conducting any research at all, um, and conducting research on the wrong audience is kind of further down the list. So, you know, yeah if you’re doing research on the wrong audience, it’s not going to affect, whether you do it in a lab or you’re doing it at your desk, or at the water cooler, or at home, it’s going to affect your results and your analysis, you know, no matter where it takes place. So, you know, I think that the drawback is you are going to waste more time going out to that person’s time going out to that person’s time, so it’s going to be a drawback for you, but I don’t think that, it doesn’t matter really where it happens, because if you’re testing on the wrong audience, you’re testing on the wrong audience. Um, you’re probably going to get more information out of that experience if you’re in someone’s home, than if you’re not, so if you’re going to test on the wrong audience, do it in someone’s home, because you’re going to, it’s a richer experience, you’re going to get more information out of it than if you’re just testing in a lab.

    Paul: No that makes perfect sense, I kind of see that. No, it’s difficult, isn’t it? Because, uh, obviously finding the right demographic of people, and picking the right people to test on is tricky, you know, it’s a more difficult thing and it can be time consuming. So have you got any advice about that? What really matters here? You know, for example, if you’re designing a web site for an over-60s audience, you know, are you, do you want to concentrate on the age aspect of that? Or the technical literacy aspect of that? You know, is it okay to have somebody younger if they’re not as good with the internet, if your audience is, do you, I’m kind of not wording this very well, but you get the idea — what’s important when you’re trying to match demographics?

    Liz: Um, well, it’s very specific to your clients. Developing a, so, whenever you are trying to match demographics, you want to work with your clients to develop what’s called a screener, and a screener is a, I would say, whether you’re trying to develop a pretty rigorous recruiting demographic with a professional recruiter, to say, recruit 300 people for an extensive study, or whether you’re going to go out into the hallway and grab some people, or whether you’re going to recruit from something called Craigslist, which a lot of people are familiar with, um, which a lot of people do, I would say developing a screener which kind of outlines your demographic is a really good idea.

    Paul: And what kind of things would that include? Sorry I interrupted you.

    Liz: Yeah, what a screener is, it kind of goes through, it’s a questionnaire that outlines a number of questions that you would ask a potential recruit, that says, if this person can answer a particular question we should keep them in or out, so it’s actually a really good exercise to go through that allows you to kind of think through the type of demographic that you would have. So that doesn’t answer your question in any way.

    Paul: It’s very interesting, though. Can you give me an example? Sorry, I’m interested in this screener thing, cause I haven’t come across it before. Can you give me an example of the type of questions? I mean obviously they’re going to be specific to the individual client, all the rest of it, but what kind of questions?

    Liz: Um, what kind of questions? So, let’s see, would this person, so, let’s see, has this person, I mean typical questions could be around financial demographics, age demographics, you know the sort of typical things. But let me think of some more interesting things. So, is this person a full-time student? Has this person been fired from a job in the last 6 months? Has this person participated in usability research in the last 6 months? Those types of things, so if the person answers yes or no, then they’re not a good candidate. But there are other kinds of things you could put into that screener that would be more specific to the project.

    Paul: So could it include something like is this person aware of a certain brand, because you want to associate with that brand?

    Liz: Absolutely, so does this person drink Coca-Cola on a regular basis, yes or no? That kind of thing. But I’ve found that the screener, because the clients that you work with are often kind of speaking in those terms about their audience, the screener is a really good way to kind of help them understand how you’re recruiting audiences, and a good tool to kind of work together with them to narrow down who you want to be in the target audience for your testing, or your research in general. So, that said, how do you develop a good kind of set of participants for a research study for, say, a product for people over 60? Um, what’s most important, you know it depends on, and I know I hate to say that it depends, but you’re going to develop a goal for the testing, right? And the goal might be about usability, the goal might be about navigation, it might be about design, it might be about, it’s going to have, you have to first identify the goal, and depending on what that goal is, then you can identify the audience. So, the audience, you know the goal might have nothing to do with age, although the product has to do with age. So you can kind of strip away, you can pull apart the product from the goal of the testing a bit, and sort of just focus on the goal of the test. That’s why developing goals for user research is so critical, um, because often times you can separate those and therefore develop a better set of participants for that user research.

    Paul: Mmm, that’s really good. I think what we’ve done here, is, a lot of people that listen to this show probably have a basic understanding of user testing. Maybe they’ve done some basic user testing before, or maybe they’ve even written a persona before, but I think what we’ve done, or what you’ve done, is push people a little bit further to kind of consider it in a little bit more detail what they’re doing in order to kind of refine the results that they’re getting back, and that’s really, really great. I mean, if somebody has just kind of done the very basics, you know, they’ve grabbed some people, they’ve done some user testing, maybe in their own office in front of their own PC, and they’ve got a few people in, um maybe they’ve created a couple of personas, what’s the next step for them? What should they be pushing? Is it through this screener? Is that the number one thing they should be doing? Is the goals more important? Is getting a better demographic more important? What’s the kind of next step for them?

    Liz: Mmm, that’s a good question. I think that one of the most, well, doing the research is really key. Analyzing the research and connecting the research to the next iteration of a design is also key. We haven’t talked about that at all.

    Paul: No, we haven’t, we ought to.

    Liz: It’s often a grey area, um, you know there are lots of reports that are produced, you know, diagrams and things, but there’s a lot of kind of intuition that happens between sort of translating the research and putting that research, feeding that research back into the design. There are hunches, leaps of faith, um, you know kind of between that analysis and design. I mean there are clear cut recommendations that one can make, but then there are a lot of more grey areas. So I would say that, I still think, even though I mentioned we’ve been doing this kind of research for at least, you know, more than a decade online, and you know quite a long time offline, I think we still need to get better at the rigor at which we translate those recommendations and findings. So that’s one place I think we need to focus. Um, in terms of the actual research itself, uh, you know, there’s something, I think there are other sorts of techniques. I’m interested in these kinds of emergent, I would say emergent techniques like the listening labs, um, you know where the kinds of things that we’re looking at today with kind of mobile research, where people are, we need to be looking at how people are using our sites not just in the browser on their desktop but, you know, in the browser on their phone, and how their context is changing constantly and how we need to sort of look at that adaptation. So how do we develop tests that are more emergent and can be a bit more flexible, rIght? So I think there’s something interesting about that listening lab, where we kind of understand the person, and then develop the questions around a person and how they use a product, rather than having a pre-written set of questions. So, something that’s more emergent, I think that’s an area that’s interesting to kind of look at. Then, uh, ethnography, really understanding, goes right along with this sort of, emergent, as you said you’ve been getting more excited about ethnography as well, so, thinking more about kind of fine-tuning our approach to people’s own context, whether that be ethnography, going into their homes, their offices, you know, where people are using our products, whether that be on the street, in the hallway, wherever it is, but really understanding how to find people where they’re using our products and test them or do some research around that, I think that’s really exciting and a really interesting opportunity. Um so that, that’s the next step for us, uh, and I think that the way that people are designing tests and doing some usability testing now, is, you know, is good, I don’t think that there’s a big next step that we can all take together, but I think these are three areas that I think as a discipline that we’re going to see people moving forward together in.

    Paul: Excellent. Let’s finish off, then, with a kind of where people should go if, you know, they’ve been excited by this interview, they want to learn a little bit more, um, about user research and user testing. You’ve mentioned Steve Krug’s book. What other resources are out there that people should be looking towards?

    Liz: Well, let’s see. You know, I was thinking about, I was thinking about that and there are physical places that people can go, but they’re all in San Francisco in the United States, so that’s not going to help anyone. There is, you know, A List Apart has a User Science topic that often publishes user research related methods-like articles, there’s always BoxesandArrows.com which publishes user research related topics, um, Adaptive Path, which is a user research consultancy, or at least one aspect of what they do, they have published a number of articles but they also do events. A lot of events are in the United States right now, but they may have international events as well. But they do kind of give away a lot of their content. Um, and then last but not least, there’s a new-ish publisher called Rosenfeld Media, and the books that Rosenfeld Media publishes are about methods in user experience and, one recently in web form design, was about the usability of web form design by Luke Wroblewski (called Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks).

    Paul: Yeah, I saw that. That looked very good, I have to say.

    Liz: Yeah, so that’s something to keep an eye on as well.

    Paul: Excellent. Thank you so much, Liz, that was absolutely superb. And I will be fascinated to get you back on the show in the future to talk more depth about some of these issues. Thank you very much for your time, Liz.

    Liz: My pleasure.

    Thanks goes to Jason Rhodes for transcribing this interview.

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    Snape and Keith, separated at birth?

    Video: Introduction to WCAG 2

    Posted in Accessibility on by Paul Boag

    I recently gave an internal presentation at Headscape about WCAG 2. A number of people expressed an interest in seeing it so I made a point to record it.

    At the end the presentation I references a stripped down version of the guidelines found here.

    I also refer to a quick reference guide to WCAG 2 that can be found here.

    Apologises

    Apologises for the poor audio quality of this video. Unfortunately the decision to record the presentation was made at the last minute and so we didn’t have a proper mic setup arranged. You can also tell it is not quite as slick as my normal presentations :)

    I would also like to apologise for the lack of transcript of this video. Again, it was not my initial intention to put this video online as this was an internal presentation containing my initial thoughts on WCAG 2. I am still learning a lot about the new guidelines and will publish a more considered article when I have a better understanding of the subject.

    Feedback

    On that subject, I would be interested to hear your feedback on the thoughts I present. Do you agree with my interpretation of the new guidelines? Have I misunderstood anything? Are there other elements I should have addressed? Your thoughts would be appreciated in the comments.

    Update: We now have a transcript!

    Thanks go to Anna Debenham who braved the horrendous audio to transcribe the presentation. If you cannot face the video we do at least now have a written version!

    Paul: Ok, this has worked out a little bit weird because the idea initially with this presentation was that it was really about bringing us up to speed with WCAG2 now that WCAG2 has been released. But I made the mistake of mentioning it online and several people said “ooh, can you record that?” so now it’s a little bit of both, a little bit of a presentation to you guys and a little bit of a presentation that will go on the web.

    Paul: So as you guys probably know, WCAG2 has now been released, and as accessibility is a big part of what we deliver and we talk a lot about accessibility, we need to be up to speed on it and we need to know what we’re doing. Obviously accessibility has become such a part of what we do day in and day out that we don’t necessarily think too much about it, it’s almost an intrinsic part of what we do, but with changes to WCAG2, or with the arrival of WCAG2, there have been differences, changes, things that have altered, so I want to make sure that everybody is up to speed with it. Feel free to butt in with questions, that’s absolutely fine.

    Audience: Will the video be able to see the screen?

    Paul: The video will be able to see the screen. Ok, so, WCAG2. Basically, WCAG1 came out in 1999 which is a good old time ago, in Internet terms that’s like forever, and there was a real need to make some changes and improve WCAG1. Let me just pop back and just explain.

    The Journey to WCAG2

    Paul: So, yeah, like I said, WCAG1 came out in 1999, it quickly dated as technology evolved, and some of the guidelines actually became harmful in a way. So you guys know that for example, we don’t always take note of what they say about Access Keys, we don’t always take note of what they say about “make sure you put text in an empty form field” and things like that. And WCAG1 was very much built with HTML in mind, and obviously the web is a lot broader than that and there are a lot more formats about. But unfortunately development of WCAG2 was very slow, and also fraught with controversy. I mean, famously with Joe Clarke who is an accessibility expert wrote on A List Apart “to hell with WCAG2″ because it basically had become a bit of a joke, because it was very generic; they were trying to write a set of guidelines that really made no effort to mention specific technology because they didn’t want it to date like WCAG1, but the result is it became unreadable and nobody could understand it.

    WCAG2 Reborn

    Paul: But, things did change. Major changes were made to the WCAG2 draft and things did improve dramatically. They really listened to the community, and the language in it now is much clearer. So what I want to do now is talk a little bit through what WCAG2 includes and what it doesn’t, and how we’re then going to go about implementing it and how it affects us.

    Principles

    Paul: Ok, so let’s look at the structure of WCAG2. Basically WCAG2 has 3 tiers to it that you need to know about. Tier number 1 is the idea of Principles. So this is kind of the most generic of the tiers, you know, it’s really kind of aimed at the kind of things you would tell a board of directors that doesn’t really understand anything technical, that doesn’t really understand accessibility at all. And there are 4 principles which are the foundations of web accessibility and these principles I’ll come onto a little bit later.

    Guidelines

    Paul: Underneath each of those principles are Guidelines. So, within each principle there are 3 or 4 guidelines or a number of guidelines that is different for each principle. But there are a total of 12 guidelines, and these are goals that you should be working towards in order to make your content more accessible to users.

    Success Criteria

    Paul: Under each guideline, there are Success Criteria. So now we’ve really hit the nitty-gritty, these are kind of specific, measurable goals that you’ve got to achieve. And this is how you judge whether your site is WCAG2 compliant, if you like. So, this is the really important level if that makes sense, but it’s organised within this hierarchy of guidelines and principles.

    Techniques

    Paul: Now, actually, there is kind of a 4th tier as well which is techniques. So you’re trying to, maybe as designers, you’re trying to conform to the Success Criteria, well there’s a whole load of different ways and different techniques that you can do that and you could read about those, and you could make up your own techniques if you wanted to, but there are some laid down that can help you get going.

    Working with WCAG2

    Paul: So those are the 3 levels that WCAG2 is built around. Now let’s dive into those a little bit. I had to think about how much detail I want to go into in this room. Obviously we don’t want to go into every technique that you could possibly apply and we don’t even want to go into necessarily every success criteria. That’s really for you guys to look through afterwards. What we are going to do is look at those guidelines and those principles, and hopefully help you to understand where WCAG2 stands over stuff.

    Perceivable

    Paul: Ok, so, the first… heh, totally illegible text, isn’t that great. Very accessible!

    Audience: (laughter)

    Paul: So the number 1 principle is Perceivable, and that’s 1 of your 4 principles that you’ve got here. And perceivable is basically talking about “information and user interface components must be presentable to users in ways that they can perceive”

    Audience: (laughter)

    Paul: Unlike that! (points to presentation)

    Audience: (laughter) Is the rest of the presentation like this?

    Paul: Yes.

    Audience: (more laughter)

    Paul: You actually don’t need to read this anyway which is very useful. So, Perceivable is basically about “can you see it?”, that is it as far as the principle is concerned, and the answer is “no you can’t”. But perceivable then breaks down into a series of guidelines. So, let’s have a look at what these guidelines are. So basically, perceivable is broken down into 4 guidelines. And if we talk through each of those it should give you an idea.

    Text Alternatives

    Paul: The first one is text alternatives. So this is stuff we already know. “Provide text alternatives for any non-text content so that it can be changed into other forms people need, such as large print, braille, speech, symbols or simpler language.” So this really applies to things like video, audio, forms that you create, and interestingly CAPTCHA is particularly mentioned here. And that is a particular accessibility problem that hasn’t been particularly well solved I don’t think.

    Time Based Media

    Paul: The next way that Perceivable works itself out is in time-based media. What we’re talking about here is that you need to provide an alternative for anything that is time-based. So here we’re talking about captions for video, sign-language maybe, media alternatives, but it also applies to live and pre-recorded video. So if you’re streaming stuff, then you need to think about this as well as with stuff that’s pre-recorded. Now, it does take into account the difference between “crap, how are we going to make streaming video accessible?”. If you read into the guidelines it does give some good advice there. So that’s not quite as scary as it first sounds.

    Adaptable

    Paul: Anything that we produce needs to be adaptable. In other words, content can be presented in different ways. For example, a simpler layout maybe for people with cognitive disabilities for example. Really, this boils down to things like using semantic markup, meaningful order in your HTML so that if the CSS is stripped away it still makes sense in the order that it is presented, and not relying on colour and other sensory elements to convey information.

    Distinguishable

    Paul: And then finally it’s got to be distinguishable. So it’s about making it easier for users to see and hear content including separating foreground from background and that kind of stuff. So we’re talking here about contrast, colour, and control over things like audio and video, that kind of stuff. So that’s where we’re at with perceivable.

    Operable

    Paul: Let’s move onto the next principle which is Operable. So, Operable is about user interface components and navigation, and making them easy to use so that somebody can use them whatever disability they may have. So this again breaks down into 4 different guidelines, the most obvious of which is Keyboard Access. So everything that we produce has to be accessible via a keyboard. So, for example, the Flash video that we’re currently creating for the Wiltshire Farm Foods home page needs to be keyboard operated, alright? Which I bet it isn’t at the moment! And to be fair, it’s part of production, I’m sure they’d put that in at the end if I hadn’t reminded them. That existed under WCAG1, so there’s nothing different there. So everything needs to be keyboard accessible.

    Enough Time

    Paul: You also need to provide enough time for people to take in the information that they’re being presented with. So giving the ability to pause, stop and control time based material is really important as well.

    Seizures

    Paul: You’ve got to take into account seizures, some people can have seizures triggered by animation and that kind of thing, so there are various limits that the guidelines lay down about flashing objects and stuff like that.

    Navigable

    Paul: And then finally it’s got to be navigable. So this includes things like skipping content, having descriptive page titles, tab order, links that make sense out of context, lot’s of headings, that kind of stuff. Is this all making sense?

    Audience: Yes, apart from time-based media, I don’t understand that.

    Paul: Time-based media, we’re talking about video and audio. So let’s say you had… one of our podcasts. So, there are certain things we need to ensure. One is that it is operable, in other words, a user can pause the podcast if we get annoying, or they want time to take in the information that we’ve said, but the other thing is that we also need to provide an alternative way of them getting it which is why we provide the show notes that we do and the transcripts and stuff like that.

    Audience: Ok, well that kind of fits under Text Alternatives and giving it control so it’s under Operable… I just don’t get where it is under perceivable, as a perceivable thing, it has to be perceivable?

    Paul: Yeah, basically.

    Audience: Video, audio… all has to be perceivable then?

    Paul: Yes. Some of these principles and certainly some of the guidelines do overlap to some degree. But when you draw down to the Success Criteria level, of how you actually apply these things, then there are more specific techniques. I think what they did is create a load of success criteria, and then kind of chunked them together in meaningful groups, but sometimes they’re not so meaningful. But it is a vast improvement on WCAG1 as far as being able to understand it.

    Understandable

    Paul: Ok, talking of understanding it, our next one is Understandable. So this is the next one of our 4 top-level principles, so everything you produce has to be understandable. So what does that mean? Well that results in 3 guidelines. It has to be Readable, Predictable and has to be able to provide Input Assistance. So how does that work itself out in practice?

    Readable

    Paul: With Readable, we’re talking about making content readable, text content mainly. So this works out in things like setting the language in your HTML, you know, setting what the language is in the header, avoiding using jargon, finally we’ve got a decent reason to go back to clients and say, you know, “you can’t use that kind of language, nobody understands it!”. Also things like abbreviations need to be explained, and also reading level as well, and that’s something I really want to get through to a lot of our clients because a lot of our clients, especially the public sector clients that we have, have this attitude of “well of course, people that look at our site are of post-graduate degree people, and they have excellent reading level”, but that doesn’t take into account things like people that speak English as a 2nd language, who can be very intelligent but not particularly good at reading, also people with Dyslexia can be incredibly intelligent but not particularly good at reading. So reading level is an important aspect of it.

    Predictable

    Paul: For it to be understandable it also needs to be predictable. So with this we’re talking about things like consistent navigation, and no uninitiated changes. And this is a particularly important one in our world of AJAX and JavaScript and all this cool stuff that we’re doing where we can often trigger events without asking the user’s permission first. When I say “asking for permission” I mean they haven’t clicked on link or they’ve not initiated it in any way. Users need to initiate these actions… and no pop-up windows without them clicking first to trigger a pop-up and being aware of what’s going to happen. It’s all about making it understandable and making them aware of what’s going on.

    Input Assistance

    Paul: The last guideline under Understandable is Input Assistance. So this is going into the realms of when we do forms, how do we handle errors, what kind of feedback do we give to the user, what labels – are things clearly marked up as labels, are they descriptive of the fields and the forms and that kind of stuff. We’re also talking about help, what additional help are you provided in terms of tool tip and contextual help and anything else that you care to mention. So that’s Understandable, that’s what that principle is driving at.

    Robust

    Paul: The final principle is Robust. “Content must be robust enough that it can be interpreted reliably by a wide variety of user agents, including assistive technologies.” In other words, what we build has to work on everything.

    Audience: What about AJAX?

    Paul: I think that’s where we get into the realm of progressive enhancement, that it’s fine to use something like AJAX as long as, if the AJAX is taken away, it still operates. Or, you provide an alternative version, the guidelines do actually accept that you can do alternative versions of something. So Gmail is a good example of that, Gmail, it actually doesn’t work if AJAX is turned off but they do provide an HTML only version of it which does the same thing. I’m not a great fan of that because it’s twice as much stuff to maintain, and one version become out of date and all the rest of it. My preferred technique is to build it so it works normally, and then to layer on the JavaScript and AJAX on top of it to provide enhanced functionality, which is what we guys have been doing pretty much all along and we need to continue in doing that.

    Compatibility

    Paul: So that Robust principle actually only comes down to one guideline which is Compatible, so that’s about maximising compatibility with current… listen to the wording of this… Maximise compatibility with current and future user agents, so we also need to be looking forward as well and predicting the future which is always good. But that’s where it comes back to using solid, good code that is’nt reliant on lots of hacks in order to get it to work, and it goes back to the conversation that we’ve been having recently about browser testing, upgraded browser support and that kind of stuff as well. So Compatibility and Robustness is the last principle. The other thing I should have mentioned with Compatibility is this also includes things like validation, making sure that your code validates, and just generally other markup type stuff.

    What, no AAA, AA, A?

    Paul: Ok, another thing that might have occurred to you is AAA, AA, A.. Priority 1, 2 and 3. Priority 1, 2 and 3 are still there, there are still those levels of conformance, but I get a real sense from the tome of this document, and this is just my personal opinion, people watching this video who know a lot more about accessibility might jump all over me on this, but my sense is that they were playing down those 3 levels of conformance. To be honest, I think I’m pretty keen on that. I don’t think those levels of conformance have done a lot of good generally speaking, because I think it’s kind of developed a checkbox mentality amongst some of our clients “We must be AA compliant” or “We must be A compliant” and they’re not actually thinking about the needs of the users, they’re just ticking the boxes so they meet some quota that has been established somewhere. One of the things that’s quite interesting, and I’m not sure if it’s a change from WCAG1 or not, I couldn’t find the reference in WCAG1 but again someone will correct me no doubt, but conformance in WCAG2 seems to be on a page-by-page basis. So you’re no longer in a situation where you want to claim conformance so you’re claiming conformance for an entire site, but you’re rather conforming on a page-by-page basis. And this allows you to basically pick-and-mix the level of conformance you want to reach on any particular page which is much, much more sensible because there are some elements where you might be building a particularly complex application that really isn’t going to manage being AAA compliant, whereas the rest of the site is AAA, and this one page isn’t. So it’s giving you the ability to mix and match. In fact, in the guidelines it says “It is not recommended that Level AAA conformance be required as a general policy for entire sites because it is not possible to satisfy all Level AAA Success Criteria for some content. In other words they’re saying it’s just not possible to be AAA in some situations, so don’t even try.

    Start With Basics

    Paul: So how does this relate to what we do on a day-to-day basis? Well, I think the language we use with our clients pretty much will remain consistent with how it was with WCAG1 which is that we need to start of by encouraging all our clients to start with the absolute basics. A lot of people are put off of accessibility because of the enormity of it, of all the things they’ve got to do. And even to be single A compliant there is quite a lot to do if you’ve got a site that has never been built to be single A compliant before. So I think our attitude has got to be that you work towards this over time, it is an ongoing process, you don’t need to do it all in one big go and that you need to start with the absolute basics, the quick wins, the stuff… you know, it’s the 80/20 rule, 80% of the problems that people are going to encounter from an accessibility point of view is caused by 20% of the accessibility issues if that makes sense. So we can solve a small number of issues but have a big impact on the site. So we’ll start off with some real basic stuff. Things like putting in “alt” and “title” attributes, providing alternatives to media, things like video and audio, being aware of JavaScript and the problems that JavaScript can create if it’s not implemented correctly, providing resizable text so that the user has the ability to either increase or decrease the text size on sites, to build everything to be standards based because that makes it so much easier in future.

    Audience: Aren’t we moving away from resizable text?

    Paul: We’re moving away from the resizable interface where the whole thing scales up and down, but there’s no reason why we can’t keep the text itself rescaleable. The layers should be able to push up and down. It has to be said with resizeable text, it is becoming less of an issue. The reason it’s becoming less of an issue is because browsers now have this zoom functionality built into them. But I don’t think we’re quite there yet to be able to drop resizable text entirely is my current feeling… I’ve got mixed feelings about it. But the obvious aim we’re going for here is to be single A compliant.

    Build Over Time

    Paul: So all of this is about building accessibility over time. Taking the guidelines by themselves is not going to be enough, and taking this checkbox mentality that I talked about earlier is not going to be enough. Once you’ve done these quick fixes, the next step on from that is to start consulting with your community. We need to encourage our clients to start talking to their users and find out what accessibility concerns they have. I also think, which I think we’re quite poor at, that we need to start testing with real users some of the accessibility stuff that we do, and the big problem there is persuading clients to pay for that. It’s really hard to get clients to pay for that kind of testing but I do think that it’s a really useful thing to do, and there are organisations out there that provide people you can get in to do testing, or that you can send sites out and they test with them. So, testing with real disabled users is really worthwhile. I think it’s about identifying major issues and dealing with those first, just pragmatic kind of prioritisation of issues, something you do with usability. With usability you look for the quick wins and the showstoppers and those you deal with first, exactly the same with accessibility. Now, what the major showstoppers are for those navigating the site need to be dealt with. And over time you build towards AA and AAA compliance if you can. But you only do that maybe on some pages. The big concern clients have and the reason they get into this check-box mentality of saying “we’ve got to be double A or we’ve got to conform to the WCAG guidelines” is fear, a fear of litigation. Especially our bigger clients, they’re really worried they’re going to get serious issues. But I think it’s important to stress with clients that litigation doesn’t happen overnight. You don’t suddenly have come through the post a writ saying “you need to come into court about this accessibility issue on your site”. It doesn’t happen like that. What happens in reality is the user complains. And if the user is repeatedly not heard and not listened to, and not responded to and not cared about and rejected, they get angry enough to maybe approach someone like the RNIB who then take it on into litigation for them. That’s the reality of what happens.

    Quick Response

    Paul: So as a result, you can diffuse that by responding to complaints quickly. So as you’re building up over time with the accessibility policy, if someone does complain, you need to write back to them and you need to deal with that issue straight up. Ok, so that’s how the client should be dealing with all this and there’s loads more I could say on this but I don’t want it to go on forever.

    Headscape’s Approach

    Paul: Let’s briefly talk about Headscape and our approach and how we should be approaching the subject of accessibility.

    Establish Approach With Client

    Paul: Well first of all I think everything that we do in our approach should be in conjunction with the client. I don’t think necessarily we talk enough to the client about accessibility. Some clients are just so bamboozled by it that they want us to take control, others want a say in it and what to be reassured that we’re doing something about it. So I think there’s a dialogue that we need to make sure happens. And if a client just wants us to take control of it, that’s great. If they want to be involved in the process, then that’s great to but we need to engage with the client and talk to the client more about it.

    Remain Pragmatic

    Paul: The second thing and I think this is really important is that we need to remain pragmatic in our approach to accessibility. Everything I’ve been talking about before like building up accessibility gradually, about doing the quick wins first and the show stoppers and that kind of stuff, that’s all pragmatic. I don’t want us on one hand to ignore accessibility, and it needs to be an integral part of everything we do, but on the other hand you can become extremist about it. We could spend hours and hours trying to get something to work in every conceivable user agent in the world and we can worry about every type of disability to the point where it becomes like a paralysis that stops us actually doing anything. So there’s a real balance that we need to strike here. And we need to strike that with our clients and working with our clients.

    Have a rationale

    Paul: Now I think it’s worth saying that if we decide not to comply with a guideline for whatever reason, we need to have a rationale for that. So we might not conform even to single A compliance in certain situations, although to be honest I can’t think of any off the top of my head, but if we do decide not to conform, we need a damned good reason why not. In other words, we need to have thought about it. And the other thing about accessibility is that we always think about it at the end of the project. It’s too late by then, we’ve built everything. So it really needs to become an intrinsic part of everything that we do.

    Responsibilities.

    Paul: Let’s talk about the idea of responsibility here and whose responsibility accessibility is within Headscape. Basically I’m going to say, everybody. One of the absolute great things about WCAG2 is because it’s got this 3 tiered approach, it is “accessible” to everybody. It’s understandable by everybody. So therefore it can be everybody’s responsibility to keep an eye on accessibility. And so this is how I think it should split down.

    Sales/Client – Principles

    Paul: Marcus and Chris and the Client should be worried about principles. The Operable, the Perceivable, those basic top-level principles. And you should be looking at anything that goes out from the company and going “well is that really operable?” So you can take a very top-level approach to it. And I think as you talk to clients as well you take this very top-level approach to it. That’s the level you guys should be working at.

    Guidelines – Project Managers

    Paul: Project managers, I think you need to be looking and understanding from the guidelines point of view. So you need to go in and read what those guidelines are, and you need to be sure that you understand them. And as you look at any work that goes out from the company, you need to be thinking “does it conform to those guidelines?” You don’t necessarily care about the nitty-gritty of how those are measured, or the nitty-gritty of how they’re achieved, but has that guideline been met? That’s the level you need to be working at.

    Success Criteria – Designers and Developers

    Paul: Then when it comes to the designers and developers, you need to get right into these guidelines. And you need to understand the success criteria and how to apply the guideline and how to make them work in practice.

    Check Everything

    Paul: So basically, we need to be checking everything that goes out the company for accessibility. And I have to say I’m making the mistake of saying this on camera, but I think we’ve got a bit lax recently when it comes to accessibility. We reached a point where it was becoming quite intuitive to us, and we were doing it quite naturally, and then as a result of that, we stopped checking because it was the natural process of what we were doing, and then bad habits start to seep in again. So WCAG2 is a great opportunity for us to say “ok, we need to start reviewing everything we’re doing as it goes out again”. So I’d really, really encourage you to check everything.

    Needs to be second nature

    Paul: basically we need to get to the point where this is second nature to us, so that we’re doing this intuitively again, but not to the point where we’re no longer checking.

    Audience: Clients often say “what’s the difference? If I just got for single A compliancy, what won’t my site be reaching?”

    Paul: I have to say that I think I would stop talking about double A, triple A and single A compliancy. I don’t think there’s really any value any more in talking about that to the clients.

    Audience: I think there is because having the page by page conformance is a really good thing and that we can now argue that yes, we can now make the majority of your site triple A compliant, but for a page full of videos, we can make it single A compliant.

    Paul: Ok

    Audience: Clients will continue to reference it in briefs. You can’t not talk about it.

    Audience: I think it’s actually quite a strong thing.

    Audience: is it a page by page compliance, or template by template compliance?

    Paul: I think it has to be page by page because the content that goes into the page, into the template, could invalidate it. This is why I think it’s something that should be downplayed. I accept the clients will still talk to us about it, but clients still talk to us about doing speculative design, it doesn’t mean we do it. I think there’s an education thing there whereby we need to move clients away from being obsessed by double A, single A compliance, and to start thinking about accessibility policies. What is there accessibility policy and what is it that they are trying to achieve on their site? Our base mark is going to be single A, it’s always single A, and I think it should continue to be single A.

    Audience: but if you don’t talk to them about it, you could argue that less caring clients would just say “well why would I do anything about it, bottom line?”

    Paul: Yeah, I said you shouldn’t talk about single A, double A, triple A, but that doesn’t mean you can’t talk to them about accessibility and the improvements that accessibility brings because for people that have got that sort of attitude you don’t want to talk about the disabled if they don’t care about the disabled, you talk about search engines, and that’s the best way to sell accessibility, by talking about search engine placement. That’s the reason you want to be accessible for people who have that kind of attitude. For those that care, and are talking about single A, double A and triple A, you need to say to them “well actually, conforming with any level, it’s great that you want to do accessibility, and certainly single A should be an absolute minimum, but we’d encourage you to start working up an accessibility policy and looking at your site as a whole and say could this area do more in your site, your accessibility policy should do real world testing with real users…” all kinds of things.

    Audience: So you think that we should be encouraging large organisations that have accessibility policies themselves that refer to double A, triple A, to try and persuade them to kind of move away from that?

    Paul: No, not necessarily, I wouldn’t go that far. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that they’re a bad thing, I’m saying they’re not the be-all and end-all. And at the moment I feel like the vast majority of clients think they are the be-all and end-all. They’re obsessed with putting that little badge on the bottom of the page. And it’s not about putting badges on the page. The trouble with institutions that have these policies of single A, double A and triple A is that these policies are in place for the institution, not for the user. And that’s my problem with them. That’s why I think we should try to break that mentality with clients. And I accept that sometimes we’re going to lose, and that’s fine. Exactly the same goes when we were talking about browser support. I accept sometimes we’re going to lose that battle as well. But it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try and fight it.

    Audience: I just wondered why WCAG2 still does it, because yes, you’re right basically, and accessibility requirements should be based on user requirements and not ticking boxes, so why is it still in there?

    Paul: I think it’s in there because… my impression… I hate talking about accessibility on camera! You remember what happened last time in the podcast? It was just a nightmare! I think the reason it’s still in is because some of those success criteria are hard to meet. Some of them are damn difficult. When you start talking about streaming video, you’ve got some difficult challenges there that need to be met. So I think as a result, what the W3C is saying there is that we accept that some of these things are difficult to do. And we accept that you’re not always going to be able to do them, so we’re going to make them triple A. But come on guys, some of this stuff is dead simple and we should be doing it, that’s single A. That’s my impression of the mentality behind it, and that’s a great mentality, but it’s when someone changes that to being guidelines, which is what they are, to being rules, really instilled by Moses and presented to the people. You know it’s not that and I think that’s an important differentiation to make.

    Where to Start

    Paul: I know what you guys are like, especially designers. Ok I’m making sweeping generalisations here. But, if you guys go along to the WCAG website and you look at the WCAG2 guidelines, it’s horrible! It’s intimidating and it’s scary and it goes on for pages. And there’s a lot of text around it.

    Audience: There’s no pictures? (laughter)

    Paul: There’s no pictures! The design isn’t even very good. So what I’ve done is I’ve taken that page, I’ve literally all I’ve done is I’ve stripped out the explanation text in front of it, and the waffle at the end of it, and I’ve left you with just the set of guidelines so it looks like a slightly less intimidating list. Not much but slightly. So that’s up at http://www.headscape.co.uk/WCAG2 so if you go to that, you can get just the actual list of criteria. There’s also, on the WCAG2 website, there’s a thing where you can go and you can say my site uses tables, my site uses video, my site has this and that, and you untick the ones that it doesn’t have and it narrows down the list of success criteria to only show you the ones that you need to care about. So you might want to check that one out as well. Ok, so that’s basically all I have to say, are there any other questions before we wrap up?

    Questions

    Audience: Clients are going to ask us the 1 minute elevator pitch. What’s the difference between WCAG2 and WCAG1? What would you highlight as differences?

    Paul: I think there’s a bigger acceptance of things in the world other than HTML, so things like Flash, PDFs, all that kind of stuff, there’s much more reference to that kind of thing. It’s much better written, much better organised. I think it’s more pragmatic. It’s a little bit more… I think it will last the test of time more. It’s hard to pin down exactly what I mean by that. There is actually a document out that talks about the specific differences between WCAG1 and WCAG2 if you wanted to get into that level of detail. And to be honest, I couldn’t tell you what that is yet because I haven’t looked at it in that much depth myself.

    Audience: I think you and I do need a couple of the more detailed stuff, to get the guidelines, just one or two examples basically. Something that’s new between WCAG1 and WCAG2, and also some of the differences between single A, double A and triple A. The streaming video is an excellent example.

    Paul: Just go along to http://www.headscape.co.uk/WCAG2 and you’ll be able to see those different levels.

    Audience: It seems like, an almost unwritten principle, or unwritten in your list of principles. It’s technology agnostic.

    Paul: WCAG2 started off as so technologically agnostic that it wasn’t understandable.

    Audience: WCAG1, the first line is all about “it must be W3C technologies”.

    Paul: Yeah, it will pretty much accommodate anything. You know, it talks in terms of audio and video. It doesn’t mention Flash for example specifically, at least I don’t think it does, but it refers to those kinds of things. It refers to documents that are not HTML. I’m saying this as much for the video as anything else, I’m still learning about it as well. So I think it’s going to be a learning process for a while for us to really get to grips with this, and truth be told we probably should have started a little sooner than this, but it’s not radically different from WCAG1. This is as much getting us back into the habit of thinking about accessibility as anything else really. Ok?

    Audience: 1 more question. Are they new Keynote animations?

    Paul: Yeah, they are new Keynote animations.

    147. Ho Ho Ho

    Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

    This week on Boagworld: IT’S CHRISTMAS!

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    This week’s Boagworld is our live Christmas special recorded via ustream.tv. It is our last show before the Christmas break. We return on Wednesday 14th January 2009!

    News and events

    Kevin Rose’s Christmas Shopping list

    Later in the show we are going to share your top geek gifts. However, before we do that I thought we would start with Kevin Roses’ list to Santa.

    Kevin has posted his top 10 gifts for geeks and it makes interesting reading. His list includes:

    • Amazon MP3 Gift Certificates – Notice this is not iTunes
    • A USB Drive that can go through the wash and survive to tell the tale
    • A clever little box that can stream Netflix films to your TV
    • A kit for getting you into building your own electronics
    • A HD flip camera
    • Some awesome luggage that is perfect for conferences
    • An insane all in one printer with touch screen
    • A Drobo
    • A micro tool with 19 different functions
    • A Casio slow motion camera

    I whole heartedly support the inclusion of the Drobo in this list and I love the look of the luggage. However, personally I would prefer iTunes vouchers because then I can waste even more money buying Apps for my iPhone.

    20 signs you don’t want that web design project

    Admittedly this next post is not very festive but it brought a smile to my lips and isn’t that what Christmas is all about?

    Zeldman goes all ‘ba humbug’ this week when he shares 20 signs that you do not want that web design project. There are some real gems in here. My favourites include:

    A previously uninvolved marketing guy starts telling you, your client, and your client’s boss that the minimalist look “doesn’t knock me out.” A discussion of what the site’s 18-year-old users want, backed by research, does not dent the determination of the 52-year-old marketing guy to demand a rethink of the approved design to be more appealing to his aesthetic sensibility.

    At meeting to which you have traveled at your own expense, client informs you that he doesn’t have a budget per se, but is open to “trading services.”

    Client begins first meeting by making a big show of telling you that you are the expert. You are in charge, he says: he will defer to you in all things, because you understand the web and he does not. (Trust your uncle Jeffrey: this man will micromanage every hair on the project’s head.)

    Very funny stuff and sadly, depressingly true. Nice to know even the mighty Zeldman has to deal with this kind of thing!

    2008 on the Web: The 20 Key Events

    Our final story for this Christmas show comes from Mashable. They share with us the 20 key events that have shaped the web in 2008.

    You get a lot of these retrospectives at the end of the year but this is actually a very good list.

    According to Mashable some of the key events of 2008 include:

    • The presidential election being fought online
    • The growth of data portability
    • The Apple apps store
    • Citizen Journalism
    • The Facebook redesign
    • The economic downturn
    • Streaming TV
    • Twitter
    • Microsoft and Yahoo!
    • Justin.tv suicide
    • Rick Rolling

    The complete list and more detailed analysis can be found on Mashable.

    It makes interesting reading if only to reinforce how fast things move online. In one year so much has happened. It makes you wonder what 2009 has in store. No doubt we will have a plethora of predications in January.

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    Geek Gifts this Christmas

    On last years Christmas show we shared our ideas for the perfect geek Christmas gift. This year we thought it might be more fun for the Boagworld community to share their ideas.

    You guys have submitted and voted on some great suggestions and here is the top 10:

    1. A new Macbook Pro
    2. Adobe CS4 Design Premium
    3. iPhone 3G
    4. Marcus to play his guitar
    5. A Nintendo Wii
    6. A moleskin notebook and Lamy 2000 pen
    7. Apple TV
    8. Nikon D300 DSLR
    9. New iMac
    10. USB slippers

    I was a bit gutted to see that ‘A decent joke from Marcus’ didn’t quite make it into the top 10 list. However, I thought it deserved a mention anyway :)

    Other entries worth a mention include a netbook, A job and the Website Owners Manual!

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    Boagworld Christmas Appeal

    Last year I decided at the last minute to raise some money for a charity on the Christmas show. The Charity we chose to raise money for was called the Bethesda Project. It is a school and children’s home in rural India. The children who attend the school or live in the home come from very deprived backgrounds and the project provides them with a unique opportunity to better their lives.

    The Boagworld community last year raised over £1000 to help this project and our money was able to buy an entire new building for the school. It was an incredible achievement and one that you should all be proud of.

    However, over the last two years the project has doubled in size and they continue to need our help. With that in mind we are providing you the chance to give again.

    I know you guys are constantly bombarded with appeals for money from various faceless charities. Its hard when you feel no connection to the people involved. I am lucky because I grew up with Sarah who helps run the project. I know her and her husband. I know the amazing sacrifice they have made to help these kids.

    I therefore thought it might help if I shared a short video interview I did with them last Sunday while at church. Apologises for the poor quality but this was a spur of the moment thing and recorded on my little digital camera.

    Occasionally I get emails from people asking who my ‘web design heroes are’. It always strikes me as a bizarre question. The web is an amazing place and I am honoured to be involved in developing something that is the pinnacle of human achievement and knowledge. However, in my opinion it does not generate heroes.

    My heroes are people like Sarah and Simon. These people are intelligent and talented. They could have earned a fortune in the commercial sector. Instead they have devoted their lives to serving others. That is to be admired and respected. In my opinion that should be supported.

    That said, I know times are tough and people haven’t got a lot of spare cash. SO, I have decided to bribe you. If you give something to the Boagworld appeal no matter how big or small we will give you the chance to win a GetSignOff T-Shirt. As an added bonus I will get Marcus to sign it (he used to be a popstar don’t you know!) and I may even sign it myself.

    So can I ask everybody to give something even if its just a few dollars. The majority of last years £1000 was made up to tiny individual gifts. Simply go to http://justgiving.com/boagworld/

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    Question time

    The remainder of the show was dedicated to answering questions either sent in by listeners or asked directly in the chat room. Questions included:

    Paul asks – What would be you’re ultimate (non-electrical/non-computer related) Christmas present and why?

    Doug asks – what’s been your favorite site redesign, either that you have done or you’ve seen done on the internet in the last year or so?

    Paul asks – For someone interested in getting into the Web Design industry, what would be the 1 piece of advice you give them?

    Matthew asks – What would you be doing, career wise, if the web did not exist?

    Jamie asks – How much do you think technical competency counts for or against a good sales team.

    Matthew asks – What is your innate age? Have you alway been a 42 year old in spirit? Or a 12 year old?

    Paul asks – What Christmas present did you really want that you never got as a kid?

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    145. Baby Jack

    Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

    On this week’s show Paul looks at how to communicate better with your users. Marcus examines ways to improve your contracts and Ryan has a baby (not actually on the show).

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    Housekeeping

    Two pieces of housekeeping before we begin:

    • First, congratulations to Ryan Taylor our producer and Michelle on the birth of their first child. We want to send our love to them all and welcome Jack Taylor to the world!
    • Second, just a quick note to say we will be holding our live Christmas special on the 8th December at 2.30PM UK time. The show will be an open question and answer time so either send in your questions in advance or come along and join us in the chatroom. We will also be doing a feature on this years top Christmas gifts for geeks. You can vote for your suggestions over at UserVoice.

    News and events

    Google goes social

    The biggest and most controversial story of the week is the addition of SearchWiki to Google search results.

    SearchWiki is a way for you to customize search by re-ranking, deleting, adding, and commenting on search results. You can move the results you like to the top or add a new site. You can also write notes attached to a particular site and remove results that you don’t feel belong. These modifications will be shown to you every time you do the same search in the future.

    However, most controversially you can also share some of these changes with other users. This has led to fears of spamming and negative commenting as users attempt to manipulate the results.

    Personally, this feels like a storm in a tea cup. It is an interesting new feature but I really do not see it catching on in any significant way. Only the most extreme power users will bother using these features and the majority will never see the change.

    For example, even if website owners do attempt to manipulate users by spamming notes or adding negative comments about competitors, the vast majority will never see these notes. Users have to actively choose to view other users notes from a tiny link in the footer.

    I say let stupid website owners spam these comments. It will keep them busy doing something which ultimately will make no difference to the popularity of their site.

    Where this could be useful is when I can identify friends who I trust. Being able to see their notes or reordering of results would be of interest to me. Until then, this is non-starter.

    In browser web development tools

    In last week’s show we listed your top web development applications. Interestingly several of those applications were browser addons such as the web developer toolbar and Firebug.

    This week Smashing Magazine has reviewed 15 in-browser web development tools that offer a variety of debugging and coding features.

    The list ranges from the web known like FireBug to the more obscure like Fangs (for showing how a screen reader might read a page) and ColorZilla (for quickly listing all the colors on a particular web page).

    Other tools featured include:

    • YSlow – a Firefox extension that analyzes a Web page for front-end performance.
    • Fiddler – an Internet Explorer extension that analyzes and profiles a Web page’s HTTP traffic.
    • DebugBar – a debugging extension for the Internet Explorer.
    • Web Accessibility Toolbar – an extension for Internet Explorer and Opera that quickly evaluating and analyzing your Web content’s accessibility.

    If you are regularly coding this list is a must read.

    From tables to CSS and back again

    Kevin Yank, the co-author of Everything You Know About CSS is Wrong has written an excellent article on Think Vitamin telling us it is time to build websites using tables.

    Before you all start sending Kevin hate email I should point out he is referring to CSS tables.

    Let’s face it, the worst thing about CSS is its support for column based layout. Sure, it does a great job at absolute position but floats just make no sense! As Kevin writes…

    You couldn’t come up with a more convoluted way of expressing page layout if you tried!

    Fortunately with the imminent arrival of IE8 all major browsers will soon support CSS tables. This means any group of elements can be made to display like rows and columns within a table. Suddenly designing layout in CSS is as easy as using HTML tables.

    I know what you are thinking… ‘what about IE6 and 7?’ Kevin addresses this in his article. He suggests that because it is so easy to layout using CSS tables we will have the time to design in CSS tables for modern browsers and the fall back on floats for IE6 and 7. He goes on to suggest that perhaps it is worth simplifying your design slightly for these older browsers to further speed up the process. He believes (and I agree) that clients would agree to this if they understood the cost savings.

    Overall, I think this is a very exciting transition and one that will help bring across those hold out ‘table based designers’.

    Advice for long term success

    Our final news story today is some advice from the founder of Amazon. Jeff Bezos has done an interview with the ‘US News and World Report’ on how to run a successful business. The advice he shares is something that applies to all of us whether we are running a website or building a freelance career.

    From reading the article I took away three lessons…

    • Have a long term strategy – Whether in business or running a website, you need to look ahead. Too many of us are thinking about the short term. What feature should we implement next? Where is the next salary is going to come from? Jeff encourages us to look further and work towards long term and visionary objectives.
    • Do not be distracted – Jeff also encourages us not to be put off by others who do not ‘get’ your long term vision. Stick to your guns and keep going. It is easy to have your confidence knocked by the criticisms of others or problems you encounter along the way.
    • Take risks – I am a great believer in taking risks from time to time. A part of this is excepting failure. If you want to double the amount you succeed you must also double the number of times you fail. As Churchill once said Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.

    Sure, the interview is not about web design and is written by a guy who can afford to think long term, ignore others and take risks. However, it is still good advice and something we need to take on board both as web designers and website owners.

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    Feature: Successful communication

    We put a lot of time and attention into the content on our sites, but what about our other communications? We send out newsletters, post blogs, participate in forums. All of these reflect on our brand and the way we are perceived.

    In this week’s feature Paul examines how to improve our communications with users.

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    Listeners feedback:

    Sign-off and payment

    We have this question from an anonymous listener:

    I have a designer’s contract in front of me and I am getting a ‘feeling’. The contract doesn’t discuss much in terms of scope; just really limits risk for the designer. Though I can understand the need, I raise an eyebrow to focusing more on ‘not getting burned’ than ‘providing a good design’ … so here is the big question. The designer wants 50% upfront and 50% on an arbitrary completion date or “prior to file relinquishment, or upload and/or assembly of website on clients web server.” My thought is I am not paying $X for a pdf mock-up … I am paying for a site redesign and would like to see it work live prior to getting signoff. (or payment) Inevitably, there is a trust issue; I believe we have both been burned in past client/ designer relationships and are treating each other cautiously. Is there an industry norm which could help the situation? My perspective is how it will look live, especially considering different browsers, am I off base as a client to see the design work live prior to payment?

    Ok, so picking this apart from the top:

    Firstly, having a contract is a good thing. Full stop. But, you don’t have to blindly agree to whatever is put in front of you. If you don’t like what you’re reading then amend and send it back. This may also mean that you want to get legal advice – I guess that depends on your confidence dealing with the legalese involved in most contract documentation.

    Contracts should be made up of two parts:

    1. the terms and conditions (the legal stuff) that should cover obligations, deliverables, rights, liability etc.
    2. the Schedule that should be a detailed description of the project – tasks, timescales, price, payment terms etc. It should also include detail on what the testing process is, what browsers/operating systems etc.

    Ideally risk should be limited for both parties. A good contract makes expectations clear for both sides and lays out what should happen if something goes wrong.

    Regarding payment terms, it is perfectly normal for a contractor to ask for a percentage of the total cost up front. But, it doesn’t necessarily have to be half up front, half on completion. We often spread invoicing over 4 or 5 different points over a project. This is good for our clients as it is an incentive for us to reach certain milestones along the way. One question I have here is – does this particular designer want payment literally on commencement? We provide 30 days for our clients to pay bills, so even though we may invoice on commencement, we will be a month into the project before we receive payment.

    Ok, more detail… the contractor wants final payment:

    • On an arbitrary completion date – you should not agree to this. Payment by a particular date is not acceptable as the work may not be completed and the delay may not be down to you.
    • Or “prior to file relinquishment” – this is not unheard of. Basically, they are saying ‘you pay us and you’ll get your stuff’. Which is fair enough as long as you (quite rightly point out) have witnessed the site operating correctly in a ‘live’ environment. I’ll come onto this shortly.
    • Or upload and/or assembly of website on clients web server – this is what you want I believe.

    A ‘live’ environment doesn’t necessarily have to mean your web server. We test all our web development work on our own development server prior to making it live and we ask our clients to sign-off on this environment prior to pushing live. We do, however, rarely invoice until the site is live because there are possible issues with the live environment that we may not have envisaged. Particularly, hosting platforms often need to be able to support certain technologies – if they don’t, you have a problem. If the designer is providing the hosting then that is unlikely to be an issue. It also gives them an option of taking your site down if you don’t pay. That way, they can happily make the site live prior to sending you the final invoice. Do they offer hosting?

    So, in conclusion, I would push for the final invoice to be on live and tested release of the website. I would also propose that payment is split into 3 points – on commencement, on design look and feel sign-off and finally, on live and tested release.

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    144. Scale

    Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

    On this week’s show Paul talks to Joe Stump from Digg about scalable websites, we review the best apps for web designers and investigate services for sending bulk emails.

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    News and events

    How much should you charge?

    If you are starting your freelance career the number one question you will have is ‘how much should I charge?’ It is important and yet strangely it is not something you are taught at college. Perhaps they don’t teach it because it is a damn hard question to answer. It is certainly something we have avoided talking about on this show.

    Fortunately an article entitled ‘Six things to consider when setting your freelance rate‘ has been released this week. Although the article does not give a magic number, it does provide 6 valuable insights that will inform your final decision. These include…

    • Young freelancers and recent grads almost always ask for too little.
    • You can do things your clients can’t.
    • Your rate influences your perceived value.
    • You don’t get to keep it all.
    • An hour worked is not an hour billed.
    • The higher you start, the less you’ll need to increase.

    I couldn’t agree more with everything said in this article. However, the one that really resonated with me was ‘You do not get to keep it all.’ Your rate has not only got to cover your billable hours but the cost of sales and marketing, as well as your various overhead. The article has a link to a superb rates calculator that helps you work out your chargeable rate based on these various costs. Definitely worth checking out.

    A plethora of accessibility posts

    With the implement arrival of WCAG 2.0. we are seeing a resurgence of interest in accessibility. This has led to a plethora of accessibility posts over the last few weeks. These include…

    • Writing good ALT text – This is a simple post about the use of the ALT attribute. It suggests two rules of thumb when it comes to writing ALT text. First, if you were to describe the document to someone over the phone, would you mention the image or its content? If you would, the image probably needs an alternative text. Second, does the alternative text of any images in the document make sense if you turn off the display of images in your web browser? Simple advice, but well worth remembering.
    • Designing for Dyslexia – This is a series of 3 in depth articles that look at the subject of Dyslexia. It asks what Dyslexia is and how we as web designers can improve our sites to accommodate the needs of Dyslexia users. Its interesting stuff. Part 1 defines what Dyslexia is. Part 2 looks at some of the conflicting requirements with users who have visual impairments. Part 3 suggests some specific things you can do to improve the legibility of your designs.
    • Accessible forms using WCAG 2.0. – This extensive post aims to provide web developers and others with practical advice about the preparation of accessible HTML forms. It compares the WCAG 1.0 accessibility requirements relating to forms with those contained in WCAG 2.0. Important stuff but not a 5 minute read!
    • Too much accessibility – The RNIB explains how the LEGEND tag can cause more harm than good if not concise and relevant. The reason? LEGEND text isn’t read at the start of the FIELDSET, it is read at the start of the label. It repeats at the beginning of every single text label in that FIELDSET.

    A business case for deleting content

    I find myself using the word ‘simplify’ a lot when I talk to clients these days. So many website owners are constantly wanting to add features or content to their site. However, in reality we should be removing not adding to our already bloated websites. This is particularly true for large institutional websites. However it does also apply to smaller sites.

    Take for example the Headscape website. When we started the redesign process for our site, I sat down and really thought through what information prospective clients wanted. The answer was very little. In the end our large text heavy website was reduced to a single page. That is the power of simplicity.

    Gerrry McGovern summed it up perfectly this week in his post entitled the ‘Business case for deleting content‘. He wrote:

    The more you delete, the more you simplify. The more you simplify, the more you increase the chances of your customers succeeding on your website.

    We may think that we cannot delete content because ‘somebody might want it’ or because we believe ‘it will help our search engine ranking’. However, bloated sites bring complexity and with complexity comes confusion. The more content on your site, the less chance a user will be able to find the content they need.

    12 principles for keeping your code clean

    We finish today with a great post for those who need help with their HTML code. Whether you are a student learning HTML or a designer who is more comfortable in Photoshop than Coda, this is a very useful article.

    The post provides 12 excellent tips for keeping your code clean. These include…

    • Use a strict doctype
    • Set your character set and encode those characters
    • Indent your code
    • Keep your CSS and JavaScript external
    • Nest your tags properly
    • Eliminate unnecessary divs
    • Use better naming conventions
    • Leave typography to the CSS
    • Add a class/ID to your BODY tag
    • Validate
    • Order your code logically
    • Just do what you can!

    The article explores each of these points in depth and communicates clearly current best practice in coding HTML. Well worth the read even if only as a reminder.

    Back to top

    Interview: Joe Stump on Building a Scalable Site

    Paul: Ok, so joining me today is Joe Stump from Digg. Good to have you on the show Joe.

    Joe: Oh, good to be here.

    Paul: Have we had you on the show before?

    Joe: Ah, not that I’m aware of.

    Paul: Oh, wow, well we need to rectify that then. It’s good to have you on. Well, I have to say, this interview was arranged by Ryan, who is our producer. And he’s a developer, and I’m a designer. And he suggested we got you on the show, not that I wouldn’t like you on the show, obviously. That we got you on the show, obviously about scaling websites. Now, I’m going to be out of my depth very quickly here, so you’re going to have to be very gentle with me Joe.

    Joe: Sure

    Paul: So, in fact, it was so bad, that as I sat down to write questions I thought: "I don’t know what I’m doing here" , so I went and talked to some of the developers at headscape, and I asked some of the Boagworld listeners, and so we’ve got a little selection of questions for you, that, hopefully we can learn a little bit about how you go about doing things at Digg. Lets start off, what’s your job title, what is it that you do at Digg?

    Joe: Ah, I have a really fancy job title that doesn’t mean a lot of anything, but ah, my official job title is "Lead Architect" and um, I think what best describes it, is that I manage the technical implementation on the code side.

    Paul: OK

    Joe: So, Digg’s broken up into a lot of different arenas on the tech side, we’ve got, R&D, which is headed up by Anton Cast, we’ve got operations, which is headed up by Scott Baker, and then under that are the people that I work with, ah, probably most closely in implementing solutions for Digg. Ron Gorodetzky is our lead systems engineer, Tim Ellis, also known as timeless, is our chief DB wonk, and then, Mike Newton is our lead network guy. So I think us four kind of steer the technical implementation along. The managers, ah, the manage, and handle the strategy and partners, and stuff like that.

    Paul: You managed to say the word manager with real distain.

    Joe: Oh, no actually, I have a great manager, John Quinn, he’s our VP of engineering, he’s by far the best direct manager I’ve probably ever worked with. Yeah, he’s really good.

    Paul: OK, well lets go back in time a little bit. And start by, well, when was the point when you realized, that you were going to start having scaling issues with Digg? When did you start thinking about the whole subject of scaling?

    Joe: Um, well Digg was pretty big when I came on board, so Digg was about 10 – 12 million uniques when I joined on.

    Paul: Wow.

    Joe: And I think we’d just cleared 35 million last month. So scaling was obviously an issue, but the big difference is that, I think sites generally go through a few different levels of scaling, where like the first one’s like, "I’m just going to throw it on a virtual server, or an Amazon server, you know, you’re basically just seeing if things are going to just "stick to the wall", and then they do. Ah, so the first thing you normally do is start breaking services off onto separate boxes. I want to put my DB on one box, my server on another box, and maybe memcached on each of them. And then you hit, read saturation on that one DB server, so then you go to the kinda next level of scaling. Which is where Digg was when I started, where you start dangling, a whole bunch of read slaves, off of your DB master, so, and for those who are not familiar with the master / slave terms, you send all your writes to one database server, and then that disseminates those writes to a whole bunch of slaves, and then you send all your read traffic to those slaves. So that’s where Digg was when I started. It’s write http traffic across a whole bunch of servers, its read traffic across a whole bunch of slaves, and then we have one master. And we’re now going through, what I think is the third phase, where you hit write saturation on your master, which is a bigger problem, because you then need to start sending some write traffic to some masters, and we’re actually going with a strategy that’s common with Facebook, and Flickr, and those kind of websites, where it’s called horizontal partitioning, where you put some of your records on one server, and the other records on another, so it’s like, you can say, for users, all users whose names start with A through J, would go on this database server, and K to Z live on this other database server. So we’re in the middle of implementing the first swipe at that. So we’ll be pretty aggressively into where everything will be federated and partitioned across a whole bunch of servers.

    Paul: OK, one of the questions which kinda came up, which kinda relates to that, is, once you start spreading things across multiple servers, how do you handle things like user sessions, which have obviously got to be persistent.

    Joe: Aha, so there are a couple of ways to handle that which, I’d say most people are handling it by.. There’s two ways, probably that you can do it easily. One of them, is if you have what they call "session affinity" on your load balancer, so the load balancer will say: "Oh, well this person, last time I had them here, they went to server A, so we’ll send it back to that server". So the session always lives on only one box. That’s one way to do it, we don’t do that here, we have a custom session handler in PHP which sorts the session in Memcache, and that allows you to.

    Paul: Can you just clarify what memcache is, for idiots like me who don’t know.

    Joe: Sure, memcache is a distributed caching system that’s actually, basically what it allows you to do, is expose a machines RAM over the network, and cache stuff into another machines RAM across the network.

    Paul: Ah, OK

    Joe: Yeah, it’s insanely fast, it was developed by Danga back in the day, and Brice Fitzpatrick, yeah so it’s heavily used by anyone whose scaling with LAMP, even a lot of people who aren’t. They all use memcached.

    Paul: Wow

    Joe: So, yeah, we store all of our session data in memcached, so PHP creates a unique session id, and we just stuff session data into that in memcached, and we can distribute that across, I don’t know, 50 or 60 memcached servers, and what not.

    Paul: So how many servers do you guys have, it must be a staggering number by now.

    Joe: Um, yeah, it’s kinda funny, every time I ask Ron that, he’s always like "Ah, I don’t know"

    Paul: Laughs

    Joe: Because we really can’t I mean, I couldn’t give you a specific number because on any given day, we’ll pull or push into production, a dozen servers, so, hundreds, there’s definitely hundreds in production. So.

    Paul: I mean, with that many servers, so obviously you’re talking about taking servers on and offline, and all that kind of thing, I mean, making updates to the site, when Daniel comes up with some stupid idea, that you’ve got to apply to the site, of a new feature that he wants to apply on the site, and you’ve gone through the process of making it work. And you’ve then got to push it live.

    Joe: Aha

    Paul: How does that work? How do you go about pushing something like that live when there are so many servers involved.

    Joe: So we have Ron Gorodetzky our lead systems engineer guy. So us developers have a bunch of M4 make files, that, when you check the code out, you run basically Make, Install, and it, for lack of a better word, it builds or compiles the website into a cohesive package, and then Ron pushes that to each server, I think he is still doing it by rsynch, but I know we are migrating over to Puppet, so it may happen via Puppet soon. The production side of things, is something that’s handled completely by operations, so I couldn’t tell you specifically how it happens, but generally, we make a tag of the website, and tell Ron, we need you to push "9.4.15" or something like that, and he does a checkout, builds it, and pushes it to all of the different servers.

    Paul: So is that – do you actually have to take the site offline to do those updates? How do you minimize the downtime that’s involved with that.

    Joe: Oh, well there’s a bunch of different ways. Um, we don’t bring the website down normally for pushes, it depends on the size and complexity of the push. But like, day to day pushes, we probably push I guess, a minimum of once a day, just little bug fixes and stuff like that. And those happen generally in the middle of the day, and nobody notices, it’s no big deal. Ah, the outages these days, are completely dependant on database activity, you know, like database fixes and stuff like that. And the ways that we’re getting around that these days, is using a different method of partitioning called vertical partitioning. Where, like for instance, like I think our comment Diggs table, of like, who’s dug a comment, up or down, that’s like 15 billion records in it.

    Paul: Wow

    Joe: that’s like, yeah, if you’re like to alter that table, you’d probably crash mysql, but if you were, it would probably take a week to alter it. So instead we probably create another table, where we have like comments, and then we have another one called comments_made_up, or something like comments_diggs, comments_diggs_beta, and that has a couple of extra fields in it. And so we’ll say, OK, we’re about to push the code, at the end. When we push the code, the first comment id that was added to the table was 15,000,000,001, so then you start at 15,000,000,000 and work my way back in the table. So we do some of that live as well. For the next push that we’re doing, we’re using a migration table, which will tell us how far along each record is, and which records we’ve actually migrated, and stuff like that. And then we’re going to use this package called "GearMan" which is a queuing system which we’ve had in production for a while. And we’re basically turning our servers into a giant BotNet, so we’ll back fill all those partitions quickly.

    Paul: Wow, that kind of amount of data, it must create huge problems, even adding a new piece of functionality onto the site, to actually code it in a way that’s not going to have a momentous impact on the database. This must be something that’s always constantly on your mind I guess?

    Joe: Yeah, I’ll tell you a really funny story that highlights that perfectly, we have these little green badges that are on the Digg button, and they indicate, that a friend of yours has dug that story. And when you hover it shows the last four friends to dig it or something. So that’s a pretty knurly query, against a very big table, and we’ve actually had to, what I would call "dial it down a bit", so that it only shows up on the stories that are 48 hours old, and it won’t show up if there are more than 500 diggs or something. So the features fairly usable, but it’s not like… Well before if someone went to the top of 365, it was basically crashing our servers. So we’ve been rewriting that, and we basically, the way that we’re rewriting it is: If you write something, we take that Digg and we drop it into each of your followers buckets. So we make a bucket for each story for each person. Any time one of their friends digs it, we drop that dig into their bucket, but the problem is, like Kevin Rose is followed by 40,000 people, so every time he digs something, I need to drop 40,000 things into 40,000 different buckets. And we did the math, and just to get that feature up and running in a vast sane manner, so that it will scale, so we can bring it back in full capacity so everyone can use it all the time. We need 1.25 GB of storage, and we need to be able to sustain 3000 writes per second in order to keep just that small feature online.

    Paul: So that really kind of illustrates that a relatively small feature that someone comes up with, has massive ramifications from your point of view.

    Joe: Yeah, this is something that has kind of been something that I always talk about. I mean even back when I was doing consulting, I’d kind of have clients come to me, and it would be: "Check out this awesome design", and I would be like "that designs awesome, but that little feature down there, that’s going to cost you know, $100,000 in servers, and 500 man hours. But it’s, like, well the designers think of sizes and shapes, and so Daniel always jokes around and says: "Well I can make it purple" if that will make it easier for you" you know, it’s like…

    Paul: Laughs

    Joe: Laughs – well that doesn’t make it easier!

    Paul: Well, we’re going to get you and Daniel back on the show to talk about this whole design / developer relationships, so you can lace your side of it now, and get your side in first. Before he defends himself.

    Joe: Sounds like a plan.

    Paul: So are you at the point now where you’ve got an architecture that’s kind of infinitely scalable, or are you going to have to go back to the drawing board if Digg just goes even more, you know off the scale than it already is?

    Joe: Yeah, well we’re actually at the drawing board right now.

    Paul: Yeah?

    Joe: Yeah, Ron, myself, and some of the other senior peeps, about 8 or 10 months ago, we started putting together… well we knew that we were going to start to have serious limitations, especially since we were going to be scaling internationally. You know there is a problem with latency. With you guys across the pond hitting the west coast and other things like that. So we want to be in multiple data centers. We want to be actively serving traffic from multiple data centers, so we’re are, well we need to horizontally partition, we need to make sure we can do that. And we need to live in two different data centers. We need to be able to survive one data center disappearing. So we spent basically a week in front of the white board, and we created this thing called IDDB, which is kind of an elastic storage engine, built on top of SQL, and memcachedb, that we’re going to be putting the first bits and pieces into production, probably over a month or so. And really, the whole partitioning thing isn’t the difficult thing to figure out. The difficult thing is basically spanning multiple data centers, and also we’ll have a couple hundred gigabytes of data, and I need to spray that across, you know, a couple dozen different servers, without bringing the site down. So we have a couple million – 3 or 4 million users, and I need to take all of their records, and all of their auxiliary records, here’s like your user record, and there’s also a bunch of cruft related to that. So I need to take all of that, and migrate it to different partitions. But I need to do that while the site’s still up and running, and I need to do that without breaking the site for you. So, that’s the more complex problem at this point.

    Paul: I mean you talk about spreading across multiple data centers, and if one of those data centers goes down, the site does too, and whatever. How are you currently handling redundancy? How are you making sure the site stands up at the minute?

    Joe: Right now, our only single point of failure at this point, is our actual data center, so if the data center falls off the planet, then we’ve got problems. But we’ve got a general architecture. We’ve got a couple of general balancers up front. And those two have, what we call a "heartbeat" between them, and if one of them falls off, the other instantly takes over traffic for it. And that balances traffic across, I couldn’t even tell you, dozens and dozens of web servers, and of course, the load balancer does help checks on those, so if any of those falls over, it will drop it out of the pool. Behind that, we have, I think, 4, I guess our masters are technically single points of failure, but we have multiple masters as well, and we have dozens of read slaves hanging off of them. I think right now it takes about 10 minutes to bring a new master into production if one fails. So, and then we have, to store our files, we have a thing called MogileFS, which is a distributed web dav storage engine of sorts, and we can loose multiple nodes on that, and not have any problem with that as well.

    Paul: Yeah, so at the moment it’s a physical problem that you have, that if your data center gets hit by an earthquake or whatever, then you have problems. Please tell me it’s not in San Francisco?

    Joe: It’s not in San Francisco.

    Paul: Ha ha, yeah, you’re not actually going to say where it is are you?

    Joe: No I can say we have one on the west coast, and we have one on the east coast.

    Paul: Oh, well that’s at least something. Um, I mean so far we’ve concentrated a lot on scaling technology, but there’s kind of another side to this, as well, where you get something like Digg, that has grown incredibly rapidly, over a very short length of time, and that is, kind of scaling the team behind it. You know, I don’t know how many developers were working on Digg when you joined it, but there would certainly be a heck of a lot more now. And I’m quite interested in how you went about growing the team. And how you deal with that kind of rapid growth, and making sure everyone knows what they’re working on, and not overwriting others work, and all the complexity that goes along side of that. How have you dealt with that?

    Joe: Sure, I guess, to put things into context a little bit, when I was hired, we had both Kurt Wilms and I, were both hired on the same day, and were respectively employees 18 and 19, and developers, I think there were 7 of us. So, now we’re at the low 20′s as far as developers, and we’re in the mid 80s, as far as total employees, and that’s been in a year and 9 months. So as far as scaling the teams go, some of the building blocks were well in place by the time I got here. Like, source repository, stuff like that. But I think the crucial things that we’ve done, since I’ve come on board, that were, we had some coding standards that were out there, but they weren’t really in force. And then we had, we didn’t really have any frameworks in place. I think one of the problems, you know, when Jay, our CEO, was asking, where do we find more senior developers, I told Jay, like that’s not the right question, the right question is like, how do we get the code, and how do we get the technology, in a position, where we don’t have to hire really senior people. So I think the keys to that are, we do have pretty strict coding standards, so we do enforce those rigorously, through continuous integeration environment, and code reviews. Every piece of code that gets pushed to production has to be reviewed. And that’s literally 4 or 5 coders, sitting in a room, going line by line through change sets, and stuff like that. And that sounds really time consuming, but without question, on every code review I’ve sat in on, we’ve found one show stopper bug. So, those have been crucial, in getting things put together. The other things we did as we grew, is we broke the team up into smaller teams, so we have a development team of 20 – 25 developers, but that’s broken up into teams of between 3 and 5 developers. This really helps in a couple of areas. 1, it enforces code ownership. So everybody has this problem. I code this, then I go and work on something completely different. And 6 months later I come back to this code and I’ve forgotten. I don’t remember any of that. Where as if you’re always working in the same area of the sites, not only do you remember a lot more, you’re a lot more familiar with that. But also, you feel a bit more of a sense of ownership over that. You’re not just this hired gun that’s come in and ploughs through this feature then moves on to something else. You have your own territory that you need to keep track of. You need to keep really nice and what-not. So we did that, and then we have a bunch of core frameworks, that we’ve built. We have a small application framework, we have an AJAX framework, and now, we have this data access layer that we’ve been building up called IDDB. So I think those are pretty crucial too. It’s difficult to find coders that are intimately aware of memcached, and race conditions that exist in memcached, and um, we have to be very selective about what fields we add indexes on in mySQL. We also have to be very selective about how we store that. Normalization flies totally out the window, if you’re a DBA guy. A lot of concepts, they are not bad developers, by any means, they do great AJAX work, they do great application level PHP work, but if you don’t have frameworks in place for them to not have to worry about the super-super complex stuff. It’s going to be really difficult to hire, and it’s going to be really difficult to, you know, get a lot of stuff running in parallel and stuff.

    Paul: Wow.

    Joe: Yeah, and then we also, another one of the things we’ve adopted, is the agile SCRUM. So we’re doing sprints, and we’re running those in parallel now across all the teams. So right now we have 4 major projects going on right now.

    Paul: Ok. So you talk about a sense of ownership there, and the developers are split down into multiple certain areas. You know, does that not get boring, for the developer, having to work on the same bit of code long time, or do you rotate people?

    Joe: Well, we don’t currently rotate people, the team structure’s been in place for about 4 or 5 months now. And you know, most of the work they get is fairly immediate, and we’re moving major projects like Facebook connect, so the "Tools and integration team", their doing facebook connect now, and after this, they will maybe work on a new version of the API and so on. It’s written out to wide swaths of the site, so that we have "Site Apps" which does like, all the different applications on the site. And then we have "Tools and Integration" where we have the external projection of Digg, then we have "Core Apps" which is like, search, R&D stuff like recommendation engine, and what not, and then we have "Core Infrastructure".

    Paul: So it’s probably enough to be interesting?

    Joe: Yeah, we have pretty broad teams, and also, when we put people on those teams, even if someone has an amazing core infrastructure background, but they say, look, like, one of our UI guys, used to be really heavy into core infrastructure stuff when he worked at Quest, and managed massive warehouses, but he says, like, "That’s not what gets me up in the morning any more". It’s like, "Javascript UI interfaces are". So we try to put people on the teams where, you know, where their passions lie. And that’s kind of another thing that people need to recognize. And that’s like, not all developers are driven by, or interested in the same things. We have some, what I would call "UI / Frontend" developers, where like, they could care less about PHP, but we have PHP guys who could care less about Javascript. So I think, recognizing strengths and weaknesses, and capitalizing on those, is pretty important too.

    Paul: OK, one last question to finish off, and that is, well you know, the kind of things that you’ve been talking about are fascinating to hear, about the kind of challenges that you have to face with the size of Digg, and the amount of traffic you have to handle. But obviously a lot of people who are listening to this podcast, aren’t at that stage. They are not working on massive projects like that. So I’m really interested in what advice you would have, for those who are just beginning to suffer from scalability problems, and they feel that it’s coming, and it’s something they need to be paying attention to. But it’s not on the enormous scale that you have to deal with. What things can they do right now to prevent problems down the line?

    Joe: Um, I think, the easiest things you can do, is you need to re-think the LAMP acronym, because that stack is actually no longer really that stack. I would take Linux, and I’d take Apache out of that stack, and it doesn’t matter, as long as you’re running on a Unix. And as far as Apache goes, Lighty and EngineX are much better at getting a lot more money out of your box, as far as scalability goes. The two areas, that I think people, they sound hard, but they are really easy. One of them is installing and using Memcached, and the other one is installing and using a queuing system of some sort. And I think, like, recently I went through this with a little side project, called "Please Dress Me" which AJ and Gary Benashack and I did.

    Paul: Oh, yes yes.

    Joe: And we had a very small virtual server at MediaTemple, that survived pretty crushing blows from TechCrunch, Digg, BoingBoing, with almost no load. And that was like, beforehand, memcached is so second nature to me at this point, that I was just like, "Oh, well I’m just going to cache everything in memcached", and it was literally just like this RAM spewing machine. It didn’t actually hit the database. Actually my sysadmin at MediaTemple was like "Something’s really weard, MySQL is only doing like 1 query a second, and you’re doing like 500 requests per second from BoingBoing. So I’m cached. Yeah memcached is just like, it takes literally 10 minutes to install, and probably another hour or two to implement.

    Paul: Wow, that sounds excellent, that’s really good advice. Joe, thank you so much for coming on the show, and I can’t wait to get you and Daniel fighting with one an other in the not too distant future. I’m hoping to get a good violent argument about designers and developers, just because I can.

    Joe: Laughs.

    Paul: I was a little bit disappointed when you guys sat down at Future of Web Design, were far too nice to one another, compared to the evening before, when you’d had a bit to drink, and you were talking in the restaurant. That’s the kind of conversation I want, that real vicious session.

    Joe: OK, I’ll make sure that Daniel and I get liquored up before coming on then.

    Paul: Yeah, that’s the answer. Ok, thank you so much Joe, that’s really good advice, and we’ll talk to you soon.

    Joe: Thanks Paul, bye.

    Thanks goes to Nathan O’Hanlon for transcribing this interview.

    Back to top

    Listeners feedback:

    Top web designer applications

    Often this section of the show consists of questions for myself and Marcus. However for a change, I thought we should ask the questions. Via the forum, the boagworld site and twitter I recently asked you to vote for your ‘favourite web designer application‘. The response was overwhelming and you can see the complete list of suggestions on UserVoice. However, here are the top 5…

    1. Firebug – Firebug is a Firefox addon that puts a wealth of development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page. A less popular suggestion was the Web Inspector in Safari.
    2. Web developer toolbar – The Web Developers toolbar is a Firefox addon that provides a variety of web development tools. You can disable CSS and Javascript, visually highlight elements, manage cookies and much more. A less popular alternative was the IE developers toolbar.
    3. Adobe Photoshop – A professional image-editing and graphics creation software from Adobe. It provides a large library of effects, filters and layers. This is the grandfather of such applications and many (like myself) use it out of habit more than anything else. Less popular suggestions included Fireworks, Illustrator and Inkscape.
    4. Coda – Coda is a one window development environment for the mac. It includes FTP, text editor, browser preview and even terminal window. A beautifully designed app it appeals to the more visual web designer. Simple, easy to use and elegant.
    5. TextMate – TextMate is a powerful text editor for the mac with an extensive plug-in architecture. From its code highlighting in near endless languages to support for numerous version control systems, TextMate is probably the most powerful text editor out there.

    If you disagree with the Boagworld Listeners top five or want to see the other entries then head on over to UserVoice and vote for yourself.

    Sending out bulk emails

    My second listener contribution comes from the forum. It is a question from Richard about sending bulk email.

    Richard writes: I need to send out bulk emails to approx 200k registered (opted in) users on a monthly basis.

    Does anyone have any recommendations for an outsourced bulk email provider?

    As with the previous contribution I want to focus on your responses rather than my own. This is what the Boagworld community had to say…

    Jamie was the first of a number of people to recommend Campaign Monitor. Judging by the feedback from the forum they offer an excellent service but are expensive when compared to others.

    As well as recommending Campaign Monitor Nick mentions Silverpop, which he described as ‘an enterprise affair’. Apparently it is not as polished as campaign monitor but considerably more powerful.

    Phil recommended two more, Mail Chimp and Mad Mini. He hasn’t used them personally but the prices look good and he says the user interfaces appear polished.

    Doug doesn’t recommend a specific service but does refer Richard to a post on Creative Tips which provides a comprehensive review of Campaign Monitor, MailChimp, AWeber, and Constant Contact.

    If you have suggestions for Richard or would just like to share your experiences of using bulk email services then contribute to the thread in the boagworld forum.

    Back to top

    139. Brand

    Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

    On this week’s show we’re joined by Ryan Carson to discuss building an online brand. We look at promoting your site with minimal budget and Marcus shares his views on working in an office.

    Play

    Podcast: Download (33.1MB)

    Download this show.

    Launch our podcast player

    News and events

    Understanding progressive enhancement

    Its funny how we spend our whole lives telling clients to avoid jargon and yet web design has more jargon than most. Every few months we seem to make up some new term that is thrown around like everybody knows it.

    In reality some we have never heard certain terms, while others seems so similar to one another that the difference escapes us. Take for example ‘graceful degradation’ and ‘progressive enhancement’. Have you heard of them? Could you tell me the difference?

    I have to be honest, I couldn’t. In fact in a few weeks you will hear an interview I recorded with Paul Annett from clear:left where I make a comment about graceful degradation and he said ‘no its more like progressive enhancement’. I had no clue why one was right and the other was wrong and I am supposedly a web design expert. Does that make me thick? Possibly. However, more likely I just missed the memo on that one.

    The trouble is we are all too busy looking intelligent to clearly communicate with one another.

    I have to some extent criticised A List Apart (among others) in the past for perpetuating this kind of ‘in the know mentality’. However, I am now being forced to eat my words (gratefully so) as they published an excellent article on Progressive Enhancement and why you should care about it.

    Now if only somebody could explain what Web 2.0. really is.

    A free conference (kind of)

    I realise that some of the advice I give on this show is unrealistic for some. For example, I talk about the importance of attending conferences. However, when a conference can cost hundreds of pounds it is not always possible.

    One alternative is to listen to the podcasts that most conferences published. Unfortunately, they are slow to appear and are hard to follow without being able to see the slides.

    Fortunately, the FOWA in London has significantly raised the bar and other conferences will be forced to follow suit.

    FOWA has released video of most talks. These appeared within hours of the speaker taking the stage, and are beautifully done including both speaker and screen.

    There are also ‘highlights reels’ for most talks. These are a cut down version of the presentation, ideal if you are too busy to watch the whole thing.

    With some of the most influential people in web design taking the stage, this is an invaluable resource and Carsonified should be congratulated for making it freely available.

    Design Float

    Talking of useful resources check out Design Float. Design Float is basically a Digg clone. However it is a clone aimed at designers.

    I have to say I don’t like sites that rip off Digg. I have huge respect for what people like Daniel Burka and Joe Stump are doing at Digg. I hate to see people directly ripping off their work (normally badly).

    However, Digg does have one flaw. It doesn’t serve the niche very well. Even Kevin Rose recently said: "We don’t really do a good job of servicing the long tail of content." And he is right.

    As a web designer, categories such as technology or design are just too broad for me to bother following Digg regularly. Until this problem is resolved, Design Float is an alternative.

    Design Float allows me to only see stories relating to web design and although the smaller community means that stories are posted less regularly, what is posted is pretty good.

    I recommend checking it out. However, if you are a designer don’t just limit yourself to web design posts. Also look at the other design posts. There is some pretty inspiring stuff there.

    Can we stop supporting text scaling?

    Finally today, a post by Dave Shea in which he discusses page zooming.

    Most modern browsers now support page zooming. The only exception is Safari and that will soon change. This allows users to zoom an entire page, not just the text. Obviously this is beneficial to those with visual impairments. However, is also exciting for web site owners and designers.

    Traditionally websites have been forced to support text resizing. This significantly increased development time as well as making design integrity challenging. As text scales, designs often breakdown especially when fixed sized images are involved.

    With page zooming these problems go away. It provides the designer with more control and reduces the costs of development. A cost normally passed on to the website owner.

    Dave asks whether it is time to support page zoom rather than text resizing. As can be seem from the comments, there is no wrong or right answer. Nevertheless it is an interesting question and one you might want to start considering for your own site.

    Back to top

    Interview: Ryan Carson on Building an Online Brand

    Paul: So I’m really excited to have joining me today Ryan Carson from Carsonified. Good to speak to you Ryan.

    Ryan: Thanks for having me Paul. Good to be here.

    Paul: It seems that we are crossing paths more and more often with me doing various things with Future Of conferences and you guys kindly giving discounts to my listeners, so it’s good to finally actually have you on the show.

    Ryan: Thanks. It’s great to be here.

    Paul: So the reason I have asked Ryan on to the show today is to talk a little bit about building an online brand. Carsonified have got lots of different brand identities going on with obviously Carsonified itself and then Future Of and ThinkVitamin and various other things. Ryan’s a bit of an expert really, or he comes across like that anyway, at building an online brand and I wanted to talk to him about how he’s gone about doing that. But before we get into that, Ryan, tell us a little bit about the background of Carsonified. How did it come into being, so to speak? How did it end up being what it is today?

    Ryan: Well, it was kind of born four years ago. It started off basically as just me in our top bedroom. I used to be a developer in a web design studio and when Jill and I, my wife and I, got married four years ago we just decided to start our own company. At that point it was just me and I was trying to build web apps and attempting to make money and didn’t really do a great job of it. Then I kind of slowly moved into doing sort of more workshops and things and then we built our first proper web app, which was DropSend, and then we just kept growing and growing and doing more web apps and more websites, for ourself not for clients, and then we launched a couple big conferences, Future Of Web Apps and Future Of Web Design, and all of a sudden now we’re about eleven people. Located in Bath and just love what we do and are really excited to be part of the web industry. So that’s us kind of in a nutshell.

    Paul: It’s quite interesting, the approach that you’ve taken. You’ve come from the same background as the vast majority of us yet your business has gone in a completely different direction. You haven’t gone down the road of delivering solutions to clients but you’ve done this quite eclectic thing of a bit of web apps here, conferences here. Was that an intentional thing or has it just kind of naturally evolved that way?

    Ryan: It kind of naturally evolved but my mother, and your mom always knows you best, she always said there’s a vein that’s been running through my life for a long time, which is just connecting people. I don’t know, for whatever reason I just get a lot of joy out of connecting people and physical events are just a great way to do that. I’m passionate about the web and therefore it’s kind of like, well, connecting people in the web industry, in the technology sector is just kind of made sense. It did start off with this thing called BD4D which you probably don’t remember, By Designers For Designers. A friend and I did that and it was bd4d.com which is now gone but the idea was we got together designers for free just at a bar and people showed their work. It was in London originally and it kind of took off and I think then it was always just a for fun thing. We called it the Creative Fight Club. I think that was kind of the genesis of our events career. We don’t really see ourself as an events company we see ourselves very much as lovers of the web and technology and we just kind of happen to connect people at events so, it just kind of worked that way. I’m also not a big fan of working for clients because it’s just so hard. I really respect what you guys at Headscape and any web designer web developer because constantly doing work for clients is really hard work and it’s fun but it’s hard and because we run our own conferences and build our own web apps thankfully we’re our own client which gives us a bit more freedom. So that’s kind of how we ended up there.

    Paul: It depends on how you look at it Ryan because from my point of view you’ve got thousands of clients while I only have one at a time because you have all those users of your apps and the people who come to your conferences. You’ve got far more trouble in my opinion.

    Ryan: I guess you could look at it like that but they tend to be less demanding. They’re not paying us thousands of pounds each so it kind of. But you could look at it like that. We try to treat all of you who come to our show with the same respect as clients, it’s just a shorter term, lower economic value relationship.

    Paul: OK, so let’s talk about brand a little bit and profile and stuff like that. Carsonified has kind of built quite a significant online profile and I’m just quite interested in some of the techniques that you’ve used to achieve that. You know, how have you made that happen?

    Ryan: OK, well I think underlying everything we do is genuineness. I think that we care very much about honesty and being genuine and being kind and friendly and that sounds a bit fuzzy and happy but that’s just kind of, I don’t know, the way we are. And I think that’s been the key to our success, that when we do things people know that we’re not trying to pull the wool over their eyes or secretly sell them something. We have a genuine interest in the web and the tech industry and so when we do things people kind of know there’s real people that are behind this, we’re not some company. And I think we’ve always been very personal and very human and very transparent and I think that at least set the stage for being successful, but obviously we just follow through with pumping out tons of hopefully valuable content. We see building a brand as basically building friends and I think that on our blogs and through our tweets and at our events and through our communications we try to treat everybody as friends and that’s kind of, I think, a little bit of the key to our success.

    Paul: I like that idea of talking about treating people as friends. I think that’s a good way. Too many people treat people as potential customers in preference to actually having any real interest in them as human beings I guess. So it’s good.

    Ryan: Well yeah. I just kind of think about who do you like being around? I mean, It’s your friends and there’s a reason for that. I think why does business have to be different? Of course there’s an element of professionality but when you go to the pub and you relax it’s because you feel comfortable with people and I think that whole idea should permeate business. You know with your friends you just buy them a beer, but with your customers there’s significant money being exchanged I think that should involve even more trust than friendship. Hopefully our customers, our attendees and our sponsors really believe that we’re doing the right thing for them. You guys probably do something very similar when you work with your clients. You want them to know that you care about them. That this isn’t just about money that you actually are trying to build something beautiful and worthwhile for them.

    Paul: Yeah. I mean it’s interesting. You talking about friends reminds me a little bit of the Innocent smoothie guys that I heard talking at Fuel, which is obviously one of your conferences, where they were talking about how they refer to their customers as family, don’t they? And I always thought was quite a. It sounds naff when you say out loud, referring to your customers as family but if you kind of treat them with that kind of respect, I don’t know, it’s good but it depends on how you get on with your family I guess.

    Ryan: Yeah. It could be good or bad but the problem is that would never work if you didn’t actually think Innocent cared about you. If you looked on their bottle and there was E numbers and preservatives and stuff you’d think, “Well, they talk this stuff, but they don’t really seem that committed to doing this.” So I think it really needs to be backed up with a sincere and real effort to support. I mean, we’ve been talking about accessibility, this is a good example, at Carsonified for years. You know, “Yeah we care about accessibility and it’s a great thing,” but we don’t actually know what we’re doing and so we just met with AbilityNet yesterday with Robin and we said we want to get serious about this. I know that you guys are really good at accessibility and sort of putting our money where our mouth is. We want people with disabilities to be able to attend our shows and to use our websites. Let’s actually spend some money on that and get serious about it so at the bottom of each page we’re going to put a little thumbs up symbol that will go to a site that explains why accessibility is important to us and what we’ve done to move towards that with also sort of some tips and hints for people who are disabled like how can you use this site better and get more out of it so trying to put our money where our mouth is really.

    Paul: Yeah. I tell you one of my favorite moments I ever had at one of your conferences was, I can’t even remember who the speaker was but the question that came out for the panel was about promoting your business and can you do that outside of San Francisco and California and this guy said you had to be in California you had to be at San Francisco if you wanted to launch a web app and you stood up afterwards and you completely laid into this guy and you said, “No no no, that’s not the case, blah blah blah.” But it does strike me, you know, you’re a Bath-based company and Bath isn’t exactly the beating heart of the web design world and I’m quite interested as to whether you feel that that’s been a barrier to you in any way, being based where you are.

    Ryan: That’s a great question. It makes it harder, for sure. You know, we have to go to London to have meetings to go to drink, parties, to network, blah blah blah, but the way we make up for that, and I think a lot of your listeners won’t be in London necessarily or New York or Silicon Valley so this is applicable to all of you out there. It’s all about being visible on the web. And you guys do a good job of this as well. You just have to get yourself out there. So we blog as much as we can, we tweet as much as we can. We try to gather a community around us and that’s the way we make up for the fact that we’re not in London or Silicon Valley. I was going to say another important thing about building a brand, and this fits into that, you need to have an opinion in order to be heard, and that means that you have to be comfortable with the fact that people will completely disagree with you sometimes. You know I think in a way I’ve been successful at building a brand because I’m willing to say something that pisses people off really. You know and I think it’s only interesting to hear from someone who has an opinion. When Paul Graham said that “You know you need to be in the startup hub,” it just really made me angry, because he was basically saying to every one of us, well, you know you’re just kind of screwed, and I just thought, “You know what? That’s just not true, and it makes mad and I’m gonna sort of put my reputation on the line by going on stage and disagreeing with you, a well known entrepreneur.” And if I kind of was afraid to do that you know, not so many people know about et cetera. So yeah, get out there, blog, be as controversial as you can, you know as long as you’re being genuine and be ready for people to say mean things about you really.

    Paul: Talking about mean things and people say mean things about you. You’ve come under some criticism for being somewhat pushy in your self-promotion. Do you think that’s kind of justified in any way? Do you think maybe there’s a cultural difference there, the fact that you’re American and are us English more uncomfortable with marketing and promoting ourselves?

    Ryan: Yes, I think there is a cultural difference. But I’m also kind of, I like to think I’m friendly but I am sort of a brash person. I’m not afraid to tell you my opinion and do what I think I need to do. While being kind, I don’t want to sort of hurt anybody, but I think there is a cultural difference and I do think that, I mean my wife is English so I’m obviously very familiar with English culture now and British culture and I think there is kind of a slight uncomfortableness with getting on stage and blowing your own horn. I think that in the UK we need to get over that. Not change our culture here but be willing to admit that in the UK if we don’t start to step up to the plate and start talking about ourselves, the rest of the world’s just gonna carry on in the tech space. Mike Harrington, he’s not going to shut up. You know and unless we really start to kind of compete with that and start talk about all of the great things that are going on in the UK and really kind of get out there I think unfortunately it means that the startups and the web designers and web developers that are British are going to start to fall behind in the world stage. For instance, I was trying to think, who are the rock star developers in the UK? Who can you name? I mean I can name a couple but who do you think?

    Paul: It’s hard. It’s hard to say. I think there are more rock star designers than there are developers. You know you can think of people like Rachel Andrew, and Drew. Two that spring to mind. Jeremy Keith is kind of a developer but maybe not really.

    Ryan: Matt Biddle. You know, there’s a few but it’s just. It’s not the plethora that are sort of being spoken about, in the US particularly, but I have no doubt there’s just as many talented people here. It’s just that, that hesitancy to say, “I’m going to do my own startup. I’ve got a good idea. I’ve got what it takes. I’m gonna start talking about it.” It’s just less common over here. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing and that everyone here should change but I think if you want to build a brand in the web space you just need to admit that I’ve got to get out there. You know I had an interesting conversation with Alex Hunter who is sort of really big in Virgin, The Virgin Group, he’s high up and he’s met Richard Branson a bunch of times. And you know what was crazy? He said that Richard was really shy. And I was like, “Really?” That’s a great example I think of a guy, he’s obviously driven and I don’t think everyone should be like Richard Branson but he’s obviously driven and he understands that in order to get Virgin talked about, to build a brand he’s got to be kind of crazy and get out there. He’s always hanging from helicopters or you know flying spaceships and you know, that’s why people talk about him.

    Paul: I think there’s also a little bit within the web design community here in the UK of kind of almost false modesty and a little bit of trying to persuade the world that we’re being very altruistic in what we’re doing and not being up front. I receive criticism for the fact that I’m very open about the fact that Boagworld is a marketing tool and that we make money out of it.

    Ryan: But it’s the truth.

    Paul: Yeah, exactly. So I think I prefer to be up front about those things, than kind of hide them behind a façade of false modesty to be honest.

    Ryan: Well yeah and that kind of goes back to my thing I said earlier about being genuine. I think you’ll always be better off if you’re genuine. And of course we’re sort of painting with broad brushstrokes here, but there’s some very talented people here and I just think, let’s get on our soap boxes and sort of shouting back at the Americans really. And people are doing it, I just think there should be more of it.

    Paul: Talking about effective marketing tools, ThinkVitamin, let’s talk about that for a little bit. ThinkVitamin is a website that you run which is basically web design related and web app related kind of articles and stuff like that. I’m guessing that was set up as a marketing tool. Tell me a little bit about why it exists and how you came about setting it up and what its aim is for you.

    Ryan: Yes. So thinkvitamin.com has two purposes. It’s to build good will and to give back to the community but it’s also a marketing tool and those things are actually very related. If we pump out great content we give away for free it will be valuable, but those of you who read thinkvitamin.com will also probably come to our shows. It’s a symbiotic relationship. We’re very happy to do that. There is a little bit of altruism there, we do actually want to provide good content and give it away for free but we also realize we needed a platform to talk about our shows. We kind of kept calling in favors like, “Do you mind blogging about Future Of Web Apps?” and “Can you mention it?” We just thought we need to build a big site that people go to so we can tell them about that and we’re fortunate to have great connections. We know people like you and Molly Holzschlag and Kevin Rose and just big Internet people and they all agreed to be on the advisory board and really that’s just a group of people that we trust that occasionally write for us but we’re actually taking ThinkVitamin in a new direction where we want it to pretty much become it’s own little business. So we’ve hired a full time Editor named Simon Mackie and he was really high up at SitePoint actually. And he’s come over and he’s taken the reigns and we’re gonna, yeah we’re gonna basically grow that team and expand that out into its own little business.

    Paul: That’s interesting.

    Ryan: It’ll be better for the readers. It kind of was dying. The publishing schedule was going down and I think we realized, “Man this is so valuable we have over 50,000 RSS subscribers, closer to 70 if you count the news feed,” and we thought, “This is great, we should grow it.”

    Paul: Yeah. I mean it’s interesting in some ways you’ve kind of taken the same approach that we have at Headscape using ThinkVitamin that you could have created a blog on the Futures Of website and you could have put this content there. There’s actually a value in separating it out and making it a standalone thing. It feels less salesy I guess. The same way as I could have posted my Boagworld stuff on the Headscape site. You know it could be the Headscape podcast instead of the Boagworld one. All the rest of it. It just comes on a bit too strong if you do that I guess.

    Ryan: I totally agree. And it’s interesting because I had a good conversation with Mike at FreshBooks, and freshbooks.com for those of you who don’t know is an app that helps you send out invoices. He had this blog and he was really slogging his guts out on it and at freshbooks.com/blog or something and he said, “I don’t get it. No one’s really reading it,” and to me it was obvious for that reason you just said. Well it’s clear that this is just a marketing tool. Why would you put a blog on your company’s site, on your product’s site? It’s just kind of obvious and that’s exactly why we haven’t done it for our events, you know we put occasional updates there but it’s hard. As much as I like Web 2.0 Expo or something I would never read a blog from Web 2.0 Expo. It’s just too blech, you know what I mean?

    Paul: Yeah totally. It’s interesting that the other thing that you’ve done, which again is something that I do, which is that you haven’t just relied on people coming into your sites, whether it be ThinkVitamin or the Futures Of sites or even the Carsonified site. You’ve made a big deal of kind of going out there and using tools like Twitter and Qik and YouTube. I’m just interested as how effective you’ve found those things.

    Ryan: I find Qik to be really effective, or Qik, however the heck you say it qik.com and I was really shocked as soon as I started broadcasting was that just tons of people were interacting and I almost couldn’t wait to do the next one. Annoyingly 3G is kind of spotty in Bath so it makes the quality a little bit bad but I’d highly recommend Qik or any other comparable service. It’s so fun you just take your phone with you, I had to get a kind of crappy Nokia phone or something, because I use my iPhone for normal business but just grabbed it from the 3 store, got a plan I think it’s 20 pounds a month that gives you unlimited data which you’ll need if you’re streaming live video from a phone, and whenever I’d walk to Starbucks or something I’d just turn it on and start talking and people would show up because the way Qik works for people who don’t know is you actually see comments live on the phone screen.

    Paul: That’s very cool.

    Ryan: Yeah, it’s great for interaction and any tool you can use to interact with your fans will increase your connection and that friendship. It will show you want to be real and you want to connect with people and I think hopefully we’ve achieved that where people think, “Gosh you know Carsonified we know who’s there we know it’s not a company it’s really these people that are there and they’re interested in hearing from me and talking to me,” so that’s been good. YouTube has been amazing, I mean I hate YouTube, it’s ugly, it’s a bit crude you know but man there’s just a lot of people on it. I used this cruddy little video camera, filmed myself giving some tips about business, threw it in iMovie, put some music to it and popped it on YouTube and I think I can’t remember the figures it’s up to, it’s up to like 10 or 15,000 views in literally like two hours work.

    Paul: Yeah, I keep meaning to get around to that myself and I’ve never quite managed it.

    Ryan: Now you can use a Flip camera. Flip is just a type of camera, you just record and then it’s got a USB dongle built right into it. You pop it in and it actually automatically uploads it to YouTube.

    Paul: That’s nice.

    Ryan: There’s a couple tools you can use to make it easier. And then Facebook, I’ve been using Facebook a lot just to connect with people and remember people’s birthdays and say hello and just be a friend to them. The more connections you can have to people the better, which builds your brand and I feel that, like a mercenary when I say that, and I don’t like it, like I do believe it’s just a better way to live to connect with people and it happens to build your brand which is great and I like that as well, but I think it’s important that you need to be genuine and actually care about people for this to connect.

    Paul: What about Twitter? How have you got on with that? Have you found that a useful tool?

    Ryan: I love Twitter. And it’s been probably the best way I think for me to communicate I’ve got I think around 4,200 followers now and I don’t know why people follow me. I don’t think I’m particularly interesting but I do whenever I tweet I try to imagine if I was somebody else and I was reading it if I would find it interesting. I think with Twitter don’t tweet too much, maybe a couple times a day max. If you tweet too much people unsubscribe.

    Paul: That will explain my problem then, I tweet too much.

    Ryan: I still follow you so it’s not too bad. But you know Evan Williams had a good tip he said you should tweet things every so often that you’re not quite sure if you should tweet because they’re a bit too personal or a bit too blech, because that’s the type of stuff that’s actually fun and interesting to read. Initially we had a twitter account for Carsonified and we deleted it. I think we decided that that was kind of exactly what not to do. People don’t really want to hear from a company, they want to hear from you.

    Paul: That’s almost the same as having a blog on your own corporate website isn’t it? Having a kind of corporate Twitter account. After saying that we have set one up for GetSignoff but more as a for announcements. If something goes down with the service or if we’ve done some bug fixes or stuff like that. By far the majority I do via the Boagworld Twitter account which is just me talking about my life. I agree with what you’re saying about putting personal stuff there as well that people seem to like to know what’s going on with each other’s lives. I like to know how Jackson’s doing. People like to know, I don’t know. Making it personal, it’s about that personal connection again isn’t it really?

    Ryan: Definitely. And I think that that’s the future, you know just in general. Humankind you know it’s just kind of being personal and not hiding anymore behind companies or brands or policies or terms and conditions. It’s about, “Hey, how can I help you and how can I take care of you?” and that’s just a better way to live and it will massively benefit your company which is great. What’s interesting though is that everybody, including us, continues to look at the Signal vs. Noise blog from 37signals and kind of scratch our heads it’s like, it’s the one blog where it is a company blog, I mean yes it’s called Signal vs. Noise, but it’s on their domain, and yet they have over 90,000 subscribers. It’s funny because I think everyone is kind of, “How do you do that? I want to replicate that.” In the end I think you know, they were kind of first. You can’t have that many of those type of blogs and I think most of us are gonna have to be happy with just doing a good blog that is real and personal whether, and I mean ours is carsonified.com and it seems to work and we have about 4,000 subscribers and for us that’s a pretty good number. We should post more but that’s something I haven’t quite figured out yet and I’d be interested to hear from your listeners what they think about that. Is it possible to have a company blog that people care about or is it just not possible? I don’t know.

    Paul: I think what you said there about being first is quite significant. I think originality goes a long way. I mean even with the Boagworld podcast. Simply the fact that I was the first web design podcast it seems to give it a momentum that keeps things going, you know because you keep delivering the goods so to speak which obviously the guys at 37signals really have done. I think there is a momentum in being first in something.

    Ryan: Yes and that’s probably the secret sauce.

    Paul: OK, So let’s wrap this up with kind of a last question which is: What advice would you give to budding entrepreneurs seeking to increase their profile? Let’s have some kind of top tips if you’ve got some.

    Ryan: OK. The first tip I give is to start connecting with people that you feel are influential. You know, spend some time and try to get out and physically meet these people, get to know them and to not be creepy about it, but to get out there, to get in front of them and to get to know them. See if you can do something to help them out, to get on their radar, and I think building sort of a group of friends that trusts you but is also influential is just instantly valuable. So I’d do that and you can use all the tools we talked about for that: Facebook, Twitter, etc. etc. but physical meeting is always the best. I mean you want to have a beer with people.

    Paul: And you say you do that by trying to help them out in some way? Because that’s always the difficult thing. It’s all well and good to say, “Get to know influential people,” but how you do that’s the tricky part isn’t it?

    Ryan: Well my dad always did something that worked. If it was someone he really respected or cared about and wanted to get on their radar he would find an article about them in a magazine and he’d actually go to a framer and have it framed and then write them a personal note and just kind of say and send it to them and say, “You know, I bet you haven’t had time to actually frame a picture of your article so I thought you might want this for your wall.”

    Paul: What a genius idea. I love it.

    Ryan: And it’s genuine. I’m not trying to get anything out of you but I respect you and here you go. It’s very subtle. You have to be very careful to not try to sort of bribe people. If you come across that way it’s exactly what you don’t want to do. If you feel, and kind of think deep down, “Do I actually want to be friends with this person or am I trying to use them?” I think you should steer very clear of a person if you just think actually I don’t really like this person I’m just trying to get something out of them. But if you think there’s some synergy there, that’s a great way to do it. Remember people’s birthdays, it’s just a nice thing to do. Stuff like that is a great way. Most people’s friends don’t even do that for them. I’ve had people send me stuff and you know it just makes me smile and I’ll always take their call or answer their email now. So I think that’s a good idea.

    Paul: Any others?

    Ryan: Um, other tips. Um, probably put a real emphasis on customer service and build a real base of caring in your company. Not just for your customers but for your own team. I think that your team will never be able to treat your customers well if they don’t think that they’re treated well. So I think as entrepreneurs grow and they start to hire people I think it’s important to remember to take care of your staff first and then your customers second. And a really great resource for that is what zappos.com does. Zappos.com has an amazing company culture. They have this book called the Culture Book and every year it comes out and you can buy it and it’s basically a bunch of testimonials, thousands of them from the Zappos employees about why they love their job. And it’s just packed full of ideas of how to take care of your team and it’s a great inspirational resource. I think you can either get it on eBay or Amazon or you can buy it straight from Zappos. A couple hopefully useful tips?

    Paul: Yeah that’s excellent. Ryan thank you so much for coming on the show, it’s been really good to get you on and I think there’s some really good useful advice there for anybody looking to kind of build an online brand so thank you very much and no doubt we will have you back again soon.

    Ryan: Thank you, it’s an honor.

    Thanks goes to Todd Dietrich for transcribing this interview.

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    Listeners feedback:

    Site promotion with minimal budget

    Our first question is from Adam in the boagworld forum:

    I have got a site that needs an awful lot of promotion to work, and have got very little budget to do it with. I could probably spend a little bit on Google AdWords but on nothing else. So, how can I promote my site for little money?

    Adam went on to tell me it was a charity website. This makes it challenging. As Adam said…

    There are thousands of Charity sites, and many better funded, and just altogether bigger.

    In this situation search engine optimisation or Adwords is going to be tough. The competition is fierce and so it will be expensive to be highly ranked.

    The other problem with a charity site is that unless it is niche (e.g. bird protection) the potential audience is open ended. However, with limited resources there is little point in targeting ‘the general public’. You will have no impact on such a broad audience.

    Target a specific group as it will be easier to gain momentum within a smaller audience. For example, there are Christian charities who do general humanitarian aid. Even though anybody could be a potential supporter, they instead target other christians. Therefore they are well known in that circle. Better to have a lot of support from a niche audience than a small amount of support across the general populous.

    Once you have picked the audience use three techniques to reach them:

    • Offline promotion – Engage with your audience offline as well as on. Attend conferences, produce offline promotional material and target magazines your audience reads. As web designers we often forget to power of offline marketing.
    • Social marketing – Identify the social sites your audience You should be wherever your audience is interacting. Finally, seek out key figures who your audience admire and respect. See if you can get them on board and encourage them to promote your site.
    • Editorial promotion - Find out if your audience reads online blogs or magazines. Offer to write articles for these sites. Do not overtly promote your charity but instead write content which will be of interest to the audience. Failing that make use of comments to join in the discussions and increase your sites profile among that audience.

    However, be careful. In your haste to promote your site do not spam. The key is to offer something of value. You must earn the right to promote your site.

    Sitepoint has an excellent article entitled ‘10 rules for driving traffic using forums‘. Although it is focused on forums, its advice is applicable to most forms of online promotion.

    Office Or Not

    This from Brad:

    A question from Canada! I’m a long-time listener of the show, and I thank you both for your entertainment and inspiration.

    A little bit of background first… Two years ago I co-founded a small web development company, and to date we have not yet invested in office space. As we slowly move on to ‘higher profile’ clients, we find it increasingly important to have someone in-house, to answered the phones, do the books, etc, etc, so we can focus on growing the business.

    That said, I’m obviously touching on a huge spectrum of possible questions, so I’ll try to narrow it down. I don’t think this is something you have covered specifically on the show before…

    Is office space really important for a creative business? If so, what steps would you recommend. And if not, are there better areas to spend $2000 / month?

    If I had been asked this question only two years or so ago I would have said that office working for a web team is not important at all. If anything, I would have said that home working was better. The following extract from Paul’s blog, written in 2005, underlines this:

    The benefits of a virtual company

    By virtual company, I mean we do not have a central office. Each member of staff works from home and we communicate and file share with tools such as Skype, CVS and Groove.

    People are often curious about an entire company home working and ask how well it works in reality. My answer is usually that it is brilliant. From the employee perspective, you do not have to commute and you can see a lot more of your family. For example, if I were still working for IBM when I used to commute an hour and a half everyday, I would only see my 2-year-old son at weekends. As an employer, I love it because my staff tend to work the hours they would commute and generally home working is seen as a big bonus that keeps people at the company longer. Not to mention the savings made on premises.

    Communication really is not a big problem. There are so many tools out there these days that help, and broadband means that even telephone conversations are now free.

    Paul goes on to say that the only drawback of home working is that it lacks the social aspects of working in an office.

    Not true I’m afraid. Though of course home working does give you an environment to ‘get your head down’ without interruption, what it really lacks, that phone/email/IM cannot replace, is creative collaboration. People simply do not bounce ideas around like they do if they work together.

    Our current office is open plan and there’s nowhere to hide yourself away. This has meant that I haven’t really frequented it that often – I need ‘calm’ to write. However, watching particularly our development team grow and work really effectively together underlined to all of us the value of working together.

    So much so that we are about to move into our ‘dream’ offices where there will be a mixture of open plan spaces and areas where we can work quietly.

    So (finally!), in answer to Brad’s question, I think that office working is better for the business in the long run and I would say warrants the additional associated cost (though beware the costs, they can mount up – another podcast topic I think). That said, we have managed for nearly seven years before doing it properly (i.e. pretty much all of us will be in together most of the time) so it won’t necessarily damage you if you leave it awhile.

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    130. Air

    Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

    On this week’s show; Paul talks about better understanding disabled users. We have a tip from Jeremy about problem solving and Jonathan Snook introduces us to Adobe Air.

    Download this show.

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    Housekeeping

    A few pieces of housekeeping I wanted to quickly mention at the start of this week’s show.

    • FOWA – The guys over at Carsonified have been kind enough to offer boagworld listeners a 15% discount off of the upcoming Future of Web Apps conference in London. The conference takes place between the 8-10 October and is an absolutely superb event. To claim your discount use the code FOWA-bw at checkout. There are only 50 discounted places, so be quick.
    • SXSW – Talking of conferences can I ask a favour of you all. Marcus is desperate to go to next years SXSW conference in Texas. However he is only allowed to go if he is speaking. As you may know speakers for SXSW are chosen using a voting system. So, in order for Marcus to attend SXSW he needs your votes. Give an old popstar a second chance. Go vote for him now!
    • Think Vitamin - Finally I just thought I would quickly mention an article I have recently written for the Think Vitamin website. It is entitled "the 5 hidden costs of running a CMS" and I thought you might be interested in check it out. It is an extract from chapter 8 of my book the Website Owners Manual, which as I have said many times before, you can download right now ;)

    News and events

    Designing for emotion and flow

    Not long ago I wrote an article for boagworld on the importance of context. In that article I highlighted elements such as time, mood and environment as key factors that contribute to a users context when accessing your site. This context directly impacts how the user interacts with your site. What I didn’t tackle in my article is exactly how context should affect the way you design.

    An article called "Design for Emotion and Flow" on the boxes and arrows website, takes my post a step further by going into a lot more detail about what affects users behaviour and how we should design in a way that accommodates their state of mind.

    Its quite an in-depth article but worth the read. It touches on user physiology as well as issues of environment and although it can be slightly theoretical at times, it focuses in on what you can practically do towards the end.

    Articles like this always leave me with mixed feelings. They can easily feel overly analytical to the point where you wonder if they are applicable in the real world. However, in my experience if you take the time to read and digest them, they start to influence the way you design on an almost subconscious level.

    7 essential guidelines to functional design

    By contrast our next article is much more down to earth. The "7 Essential guidelines to functional design" is another post by smashing magazine and focuses on some fundamentals of good design.

    However, don’t get the impression that this is just an article for designers. The principles it talks about also apply to developers and website owners. Basics such as the goal and audience for your site are things everybody should be considering.

    According to Smashing Magazine the 7 essential guidelines to functional design are:

    • Consider our product’s goal
    • Consider who will be using it
    • Consider what your audience intends to do with it
    • Is it clear how to use it?
    • How does your user know it’s working?
    • Is it engaging to your users?
    • How does it handle mistakes?

    Whether this is the definitive list, I am not so sure. However, it is a worthwhile read especially if you are just starting out.

    15 companies that really get corporate blogging

    While we are on the subject of lists our next post is "15 companies that really get corporate blogging". What can I say, I am a sucker for a list!

    This one is really for those of you who run a website and in particular run a corporate blog. As the name suggests it lists companies that do a good job at blogging. However, it is not the list that attracted me to this article, it is the reason why the companies got on the list.

    There is a lot of good advice to be gleaned from this post. Just a few snippets I picked up include:

    • Don’t just pimp your products, talk about other stuff too
    • Post regularly
    • Encourage conversation
    • Be candid and open
    • Offer advice and lessons you have learnt

    The list could go on. Corporate blogging is by and large a disaster with many companies just failing to ‘get it’. According to a recent report, 56% of corporate blogs just republish press releases and two thirds hardly ever receive comments. However, as is highlighted in this post there are a growing number of organisations that are doing things right and we should follow their example.

    Learning from signage

    If you have listened to this show for any length of time you will know I am a great fan of looking beyond the web for inspiration. I also believe there a lot to be learnt from other forms of design including signage.

    It would appear that Mark Boulton would agree with this sentiment judging by his recent post on airport signage. Mark, compares the signage in two airports and looks at how the lessons learnt apply to web design.

    Some of the gems he discovered include:

    • Signage should work without colour coding
    • Only designers care about fonts
    • Don’t rely too heavily on pictograms
    • Always put your ideas to the test

    This is a great article which should (if nothing else) encourage you to look at the world around you for inspiration.

    Back to top

    Interview: Johnathan Snook on Adobe Air

    Paul: Joining me today is Johnathan Snook who I recently saw at the @Media conference. It was great to see you there again Johnathon.

    Johnathan: A pleasure to see you there as well.

    Paul: You really got me with your presentation. It was an excellent presentation. Very, very enjoyable, and you touched on the subject of Adobe Air. It wasn’t the main thrust of the presentation, but it was the bit that really grabbed my attention so I thought "let’s get you on the show and have a bit of a chat about it" if that’s O.K. with you.

    Johnathan: Absolutely.

    Paul: Good. So, let’s start from the absolute basics so that we’re all on the same page. Could you just explain very briefly what Adobe Air is so that people that haven’t come across it before kind of know what it does.

    Johnathan: Certainly. Adobe Air is a development platform for making desktop applications to make desktop applications cross-platform. So, something that you build once and that would work on Windows, Mac OSX as well as Linux.

    Paul: O.K. And this is built using web technologies…

    Johnathan: Yeah, It’s really great that they’ve managed to leverage what they know things like Flash, Flex, and really the kicker is being able to develop desktop applications using HTML, CSS and JavaScript that, obviously, a lot of us web developers are going to be familiar with.

    Paul: Sure. So, I mean that’s I guess why we’ve included it on the show even though it’s a web design podcast, that kind of line between the web and desktop applications seems to be blurring and Air is a big part of that. What drove you to kind of investigate it and kind of look into Air as a product?

    Johnathan: For me, it was just a curiosity. The platform, what it could do, knowing that I could create a cross-platform desktop application was kind of enticing. When we build for the web we’re trying to do things as cross-platform as possible make sure that we target as many browsers as we can, and really be able to reach out to the people and do really cool things. So, for me it was like, O.K., well what can I do with this what are the possibilities. One of the first things that went off in my brain was building a Twitter application. At the time, when Twitter was up for more than 24 hours straight, it was kind of cool to be able to build a desktop application to kind of separate out from the web, because the web site was frustrating me to know end, and to be able to put in stuff that made the site more usable for me and in the end was a tool that I got to use every day and that I enjoyed to use.

    Paul: Cool. I’ve kind of got a basic understanding of it. I understand what it does and I understand the kind of technologies that exist under it, but can you kind of give me an idea of, you know, how it works as such. I know how to create an HTML page, CSS and Javascript and stuff like that. How do I get from there into turning it into a Air application?

    Johnathan: It’s surprisingly quite easy. What happens is, if you look at the Air runtime, is it essentially runs your Air application, so you don’t create a .exe file or a .dwg file you don’t create an executable in the traditional sense. What you end up doing is creating a .air file that you use to distribute. The Air runtime actually handles that. Building that .air file, there is an SDK available from Adobe that allows you to compile this Air file. So, those Air files are pretty straight forward, they’re really just like a ZIP file with some extra information in it. So, to create an actual Air application, you can do it just using a normal text editor, you can do with specific IDEs like Eclipse. If you’re into Flex development, they have Flex builder. If you’re into just doing HTML and CSS kind of thing, you might want to look into Aptana they have Air support built right in. If you’re a fan of Dreamweaver, there’s a Dreamweaver extension for automatically compiling your application, and being able to set properties on your application. So, things like how big should the window be when it opens up, can I resize it, what kind of stuff can I do with it. That obviously, in this GUI sense, to a certain degree can make things a lot easier. So, I think there are a lot of benefits to using an IDE with built in support, but you don’t have to. There is the capability of just using a normal text editor and then running the SDK command line sequences to actually generate the Air file. It is really straight forward.

    Paul: So, the one selling feature or one thing about Air that’s been promoted quite heavily is the fact that you can take online applications offline in a sense. The application is still usable even if you’re not connected to the Internet at a particular point in time. I think they showed off, right from the beginning, an eBay example of that where you could do all kinds of things offline, and then when you connected it was all uploaded. How does that kind of process work? There must be some kind of local database that’s running, one presumes.

    Johnathan: That’s correct. I think some people may be familiar with Google Gears in having the local storage using the SQLite database. Adobe Air actually does something very similar. They do have a local SQLite database that you’ve seen create local databases and store any information there. There’s actually different ways. You have access to the local file system, so you can certainly write new files. Say, if you wanted to create new text files, xml files, new binary formats. So, if you wanted to create an image editing software that stores files in a binary format, you could do that. So, there’s a lot of flexibility there because you do have some access to the local system. You have network connectivity, so you can do either regular AJAX calls or you can do socket connections. You can connect to web servers. You can connect to remote database servers. You’ve got a lot of flexibility and a lot of control because of that.

    Paul: You seem quite enthusiastic about the development environment. What has been your impression of it. Was it something that was a steep learning curve, but when you get there it’s really cool, or is it easy straight out of the box? What were your impressions?

    Johnathan: I think it’s going to depend on what it is you’re trying to do. I think that there are going to be some frustrations. There are going to be some things that you have to understand about the environment. To give you an example; the HTML/CSS stuff is pretty cool it basically runs on a WebKit engine, which is the same engine that powers Safari. That gives you a lot of control and stuff, but ultimately that WebKit engine is still running within a Flash runtime. So, there are some limitations to that because of the fact that Adobe just simply hasn’t built in certain support. Things like support for double byte character encoding, so Chinese and Japanese character sets can be more difficult. However, they are working on that. Version 1.1 is supposed to be coming out soon it will have support for that, but right now you’re limited because of that.

    Paul: What kind of people should be delving into this. Is this the kind of thing that only a hardcore developer like yourself should be touching or is it something that somebody like myself that would be a front-end interface designer should I even bother picking it up or am I better keeping away?

    Johnathan: It’s really easy to develop in. I think you can make really quick solutions really straight forward. To give you a comparison; there is a Mac software called Fluid for creating site applications, but that is separated from the browser. You can kind of plot the same kind of things with Adobe Air because you do have that WebKit engine. You can basically use it as a browser. So, to give you a quick example; Muxtape, which is an online mix-taping thing you upload MP3s, and then people can go to your page and listen to your mix tape… The problem is that if you accidentally close the browser, you lose that information. I think there are a lot of websites that have this stickiness factor where you want to decouple the application from the browser. So, I put together a really basic example in which you type in a URL and it loads up a mix tape. That’s a very straight forward interface, but to be able to do that in a desktop application that I can minimize to the dock or the system tray is something that is, I think, a lot more appealing than running this kind of stuff through the web browser. And, it was really easy to put together. I spent about an hour one evening to put that kind of thing … I mean it is a very basic prototype, but the fact is that it is very straight forward to put that together. So, I think if web developers have ideas, they can really take advantage of that and build pretty cool stuff.

    Paul: So, it’s not something we need to be intimidated of, then.

    Johnathan: No, absolutely not.

    Paul: The other thing that maybe is a bit of a concern to us very standards-based designers in comparison to the Flash community is that Adobe says we support CSS and HTML, as well as Flash, but obviously Flash is their product. You kind of get this feeling that they’re going to always support Flash more and that CSS and HTMl are a bit of an afterthought. Is that the case, or is that unfounded?

    Johnathan: To a certain degree, it is the case. It’s, I think, unfortunate. I think they are more familiar with Flash. They’re more familiar with that environment. So, as you try to build the equivalent of a browser within this Flash runtime it’s going to be extremely difficult and I think things are going to get missed. And, I saw that sort of along the Beta process. Things like no support for "undo." I mean, that’s a pretty basic thing, but the fact that that’s not built in there does hamper people trying to build HTML-based applications. It works great in Flash-based applications and then what you end up running into is, to give you another example with Snitter, my little desktop Twitter application because it’s built using HTML and CSS, it had certain limitations, but there’s other Twitter clients built with Adobe Air that were built using Flash that actually have different limitations. So, people would say, "Well this application can do it just fine. Why can’t yours?" You have to kind of explain to them that it’s because of the limitations of how the environment was developed. Despite the fact that they are both still Adobe Air applications, technically they’re done differently and there are maybe more limitations as a result of that.

    Paul: Is there an opportunity to mix Flash and XHTML and CSS and whatever else together, or do you have to make this decision up front?

    Johnathan: No, absolutely not. Certainly, within the Adobe Air environment, you have that flexibility to create these little hybrid applications. I think Snitter, for example, is a good example of it. There’s a lot of Flash components out there that can do certain things. For example, a bunch of folks made an iMap component, so you can actually connect to an iMap server. However, that component is Flash-based. Another component out there that I saw was a Jabber client. So, let’s say you wanted to do a GMail chat client or some other Jabber-connected application, you can import those Flash runtimes into your application and use them from Javascript. So, you do have that flexibility to use both technologies and take advantage of that. I’ve certainly done that with Snitter, and I’ve done that with other applications as well because we have that flexibility of the environment. I think there is that sort of understanding that you can do that, and actually look out for the solutions that not only are HTML and Javascript, but that are Flash-based as well and come up with new ways of thinking because I think, traditionally, as web developers, we tend to separate those two as much as we can.

    Paul: That’s quite interesting. You talked about this kind of hybrid approach of combining Flash and HTML at @Media combining them together and about how we had some fears as standards-based designers of even touching Flash in any kind of context. Is that a kind of approach that you would apply beyond Air to the web generally?

    Johnathan: Absolutely. I think MuxTape is a great example of that. To be able to play MP3s isn’t something that’s easily done using Javascript. However, you can take advantage of Flash and use its capabilities to play MP3s to create new interfaces that aren’t specifically 100% Flash-based; that we have something that’s still HTML and Javascript that interacts in ways that I think a lot of us are comfortable with, but still have access to a lot of features that Flash offers to us you know, the fact that we can create the bridge between the two; we can do that on the web just as well as we can do that within Adobe Air.

    Paul: O.K. That all sounds very interesting and it certainly has made me want to kind of pick up Air and have a play with it and kind of get my hands dirty. I guess, perhaps as the last question then, is what tips would you give to people like me that haven’t yet touched Air and are considering having a play. What are the big traps to avoid? What are the good things to start with. Where should I begin the journey, so to speak?

    Johnathan: I think probably one of the first things you should do is head over to the Adobe web site. They have a number of really good resources to start off with. Obviously, you’re going to need the SDK so you can actually build your applications, but they also have the dev center where they have a number of introductory articles to learn how to build applications and it doesn’t mean those applications have to be built using Adobe applications like Dreamweaver, you can certainly do them without. So, there’s a lot of really good tutorials on there. From there, they lead off to a number of resources outside of Adobe that would certainly help you get started.

    Paul: What about mistakes? What were the big mistakes you made up front that, with hindsight, you would avoid? Or, did you get it right the first time?

    Johnathan: I don’t make mistakes! Well, I think one of the cool things about the environment is certainly the flexibility to take advantage of a lot of advanced CSS. Because you are using the WebKit engine which, when it comes to CSS 3 support, is one of the most advanced, you know that you have support for things like rounded corners, border radius, that you have support for multiple backgrounds, image-based borders you can do some really cool stuff with that that is really fun to play around with. You can create transparent applications, so if you wanted something that was completely and uniquely shaped, you can do these really cool things. The downfall for that is that you can quickly start running into performance issues. If you start creating all of these alpha PNGs that are layered over the top of each other, they give you a lot of flexibility, but unfortunately are a performance drain on how much your system can actually handle. I think that was one of my initial mistakes going in and saying "Wow, I’ve got all of this stuff that I can use let me throw everything at it" and then realizing that, you know, maybe that wasn’t the best solution. I think we still have to be wise in considering how we structure our CSS, how do we structure the design in such a way that, while it’s still flexible, it still does things from a performance-minded aspect so we’re not doing things that are going to unnecessarily slow down or application. Those are things that we’ve got to think about.

    Paul: That’s some really good advice Johnathan. Thank you so much for coming on the show. That was a great introduction to Air. Hopefully it’s encouraged a lot of people listening to the show to go out there and give it a go. Thanks for coming on and talk to you again soon.

    Johnathan: Awesome. Thank you very much.

    Thanks to Aaron Cooper for transcribing this interview.

    Back to top

    Listeners feedback:

    Getting a feel for accessibility

    Our first contribution is from Kenneth and is about accessibility:

    I listen to your podcast all the time and am working hard to become a very good web designer. My question for you is about accessibility, I hear a lot of people talking about it but not a lot of web designers are working hard on it to create sites that disabled people can use. I want to be a person who builds accessible sites that really work. How would someone know if their site is really accessible? How can you feel what disabled people are feeling when they visit your site? Could you talk about the different tools that disabled people use to go online so that we can use those tools and try to understand how they feel.

    Okay. Let’s start by clearing up a minor point. Validation is not directly related to accessibility. Having a site that validates does not make it accessible. Equally, a site that does not validate is not necessarily inaccessible. Admittedly a site that validates is more likely to be accessible, but that is all. It is great you validate your code and you should continue to do so. However, it is okay if your site does not always validate. There are good reasons why Boagworld does not and I am sure the same is true for Clear:Left.

    Let’s turn our attention to the heart of the question; how can you better understand the experiences of disabled users? It is an admirable aim but one that ultimately is impossible to achieve. There are so many different types of disability that you cannot associate with them all. That said, I can make a few suggestions which might help.

    A good place to start is by trying out a screen reader. Increasingly screen readers are bundled with operating systems. Recent versions of Microsoft Windows come with a basic Narrator, while the Mac OS includes a more feature-rich screen reader called VoiceOver. However, the most widely used screen readers are the separate commercial products like JAWS for windows. This is probably a good place to start as JAWS offers a free trial version for you to experiment with.

    However, be warned. When you first use a screen reader it is an intimidating experience. They take a lot of getting used to and can leave you with the impression that a blind person will never be able to use the internet. An alternative would be to watch a demonstration of a screen reader in action. Ian Lloyd did an excellent demonstration for Boagworld a while ago.

    Of course not all visually impaired users are blind. Some use screen magnifiers which enlarge screen content. Again, most operating systems have this functionality built in so you can easily try this for yourself. However, there are also a number of commercial products you can try out too.

    The other form of visual impairment worth investigating is colour blindness. Although not as serious, it is far more common and affects a large number of users. There are a couple of tools which will give you an idea of what a colour blind person is seeing. The first is Colorblind Web Page Filter which allows you to enter a url and see what that page would look like to a colour blind user. The second is Sim Daltonism, a colour blindness simulator for the Mac OS. Both will help you better understand what the web is like for colour blind users.

    The final little tip I want to share with you is kind of stupid but does sort of work. I do a lot of design for the elderly and they often suffer from a mixture of visual problems and motor issues (like arthritis). In order to better understand their experience I have bought a pair to ski gloves and some reading glasses (I don’t need reading glasses). Every now and again, I surf the site I am designing wearing both the glasses and gloves. The glasses make the screen hard to read while the gloves hamper my use of the mouse and the keyboard. There is nothing more frustrating than trying to select something from a drop down menu wearing ski gloves!

    Turning problems upside down

    Our second listener contribution for today is not a question but a tip. It comes from Jeremy and he writes:

    I can’t remember the name of the book off the top of my head (Getting Things Done?) that you’ve been recommending, but you mentioning it reminded me of a problem solving method that I learned a few years back that I thought you might enjoy. It’s called turning the problem upside down. It sounds stupid, but honestly it works pretty well.

    The principle behind it is if you can’t figure out a solution to a problem or are having trouble coming up with different ideas, you turn the problem upside down, or invert it, and then come up with solutions for the backwards problem. For some reason it’s much easier to think of the backwards solutions. Then you flip them back to normal and there are your solutions. Sounds confusing, so here’s an example:

    Problem: You want to increase traffic to your website

    Turn the problem upside down: You want to decrease traffic to your website

    Some ‘off the top of my head’ Solutions:

    • Make the site unfriendly
    • Randomly shut it off
    • Never update anything
    • Be rude
    • Keep key content hidden or difficult to find

    Now let’s flip the solutions back again and see if they solve the original problem:

    • Make the site more warm/friendly
    • Make sure it stays up reliably
    • Be good about frequently updating content
    • Be aware how of my copy and if I’m talking down to my visitors
    • Make sure the good content is easy to find and prominent

    What a great little tip! Excellent when you are suffering from creative block. I love it when you guys send in suggestions rather than questions. I know from the forum that the boagworld audience is hugely experienced and its great when you share that experience. Keep them coming!

    128. Details

    Posted in Classic shows on 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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    Podcast: Download (23.0MB)

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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.

    Back to top

    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

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    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.

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    124. HTML 5

    Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

    In this weeks show we explore how to create better online surveys and Lachlan Hunt joins us to discuss HTML5

    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

    Removing Microformats

    The story that has generated the most email this week is the BBC announcement that they will be dropping the hCalendar Microformat. This decisions comes because of long standing accessibility concerns over the machine readable content within that particular Microformat. The problem is that code meant to be used programatically is potentially read out to screen reader users and displayed as meaningless tooltips to sighted users.

    The decision of the BBC to adopt Microformats was a huge boost to the movement. Equally the rejection the hCalendar is a blow. However, it is important not to get this out of proportion. Remember, they are only rejecting a single Microformat not the whole approach.

    The other thing to consider is that the BBC is a public service organisation with an incredibly high obligation to ensure maximum accessibility. In many ways they are in a unique position. Although it maybe appropriate for your organisation to pull hCalendars too, it should not be based on the decision of the BBC.

    My advice is as follows. If you already have hCalendar information on your site I would probably leave it (dependant on your exact circumstances). The Microformat community is working on a solution and I would implement that rather than removing hCalendar entirely. If however, you are not yet using hCalendar then I suggest you hold off until an updated specification is released.

    Becoming employable

    In the past we have spoken about becoming a professional web designer. I know that many people who listen to this show or read the blog are students. You are concerned that the skills you are being taught are out of date and will not improve your employment prospects. How then do you become a more employable web designer? What skills do you actually require?

    Andy Rutledge tackles this subject in his post "the employable web designer". Without a doubt it is the best post I have read on the subject of web design career development. I highly recommend you read it.

    The thing that impresses me is that it looks beyond the obvious design and technical skills required to be a web designer. It also tackles the business and communication skills too. He really drives home quite how wide an understand a good web designer has to have.

    My only criticism is that it could feel demoralising. You may read the list and think it is an unachievable aim. However, I don’t think that is the case. What Andy outlines is the optimal requirement of a web designer, rather than what is needed to get your first step on the ladder. I certainly did not have all of the attributes listed when I started.

    All we need now is a second post telling us how to gain the skills he lists.

    Better CSS font stacks

    David (a boagworld listener) sent in the next story. It covers a subject that I am currently still grappling with. It is a post about CSS font stacks.

    If you code in CSS you already know about font stacks. It is where you specify the fonts you wish to use. You can say for instance; use Helvetica and if that isn’t available use Arial. If that fails use a generic san-serif font.

    For many of us that is as far as our thinking goes. The majority of us use very basic font stacks that are uninspiring to the point of being insipid.

    I love this post because it lays out a very clear methodology for improving your font stacks. It also goes on to provide an impressive selection of font stacks organised into heading and body fonts, allowing you to instantly improve your site

    If your site is looking tired and boring, but you don’t have the time to redesign, consider adding a new font stack. Such a simple change could make a real difference.

    Do flexible layouts still matter?

    Our last story of the day is a post from Smashing Magazine entitled Flexible Layouts: Challenge For The Future. To be honest I was ensure whether to include this post or not. On one hand it covers an issue many people have been asking me about. On the other, its arguments seem stretched and the whole thing ends with an advert for a CSS framework.

    The article tackles zooming and fluid design. The new generation of web browsers – Firefox 3, Opera 9.5 and Internet Explorer 7 – provide full screen zooming. This gives users has the ability to enlarge the whole interface, not just text. Some are arguing that this is the end of fluid layout because zooming tackles many of the accessibility concerns associated with fixed width sites. However, this article strongly disagrees.

    The author argues that flexible designs are better for mobile devices, that pixels are becoming less important and that the user shouldn’t be required to customise a site to their needs (it should be done automatically). Although his arguments are weak at times and he uses some fairly dodgy comparisons I do generally agree with him. I see no reason to think fluid design will go away anytime soon.

    That said, I am in no doubt that page zoom does reduce the number of occasions fluid sites are necessary. Ultimately there is no right or wrong answer. It is entirely based on the situation. For example Boagworld, Headscape and The Website Owners Manual all use fixed designs. However, many of my client websites do not. That decision is based on numerous factors such as device, user base and business priorities.

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    Feature: Creating a Better Survey

    The web allows us to interact with our customers more than any other medium. One of the tools in our arsenal is the online survey. However, these are often badly implemented. In this weeks feature we find out how we make your surveys more effective?

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    Interview: Lachlan Hunt on HTML 5

    Paul: Joining me today is Lachlan Hunt; It’s good to have you on the show

    Lachlan: Thank You Very much

    Paul: It’s great to have you here I really appreciate you taking the time to join us, now the reason that we asked Lachlan on the show is because he posted a brilliant article on the A List Apart site about the subject of HTML 5 and I have been keen to look at this subject for a while partly because of my own ignorance to be honest, um, so lets kinda kick off by if you could perhaps tell us a little bit about where HTML 5 is at the moment I know that kinda getting a language to a release like this finalized is a massive process so can you tell us where we are at in that process.

    Lachlan: OK, it’s, um, a really an ongoing process with browsers implementing different parts of it progressively so it’s not, you know, going to be all implemented at once and ready to go in one, er the next few browser implementations. We have some features implemented already and shipping in browsers other features which are being worked on at the moment and other are planned for, but still a few years of yet. But it is gradually getting there. We are trying to focus on what authors really need, instead of trying to do it all at once

    Paul:Ahh, okay so that a slightly different approach that we have seen in the past, the idea of an incremental roll out. So how does that work from the W3C’s point of view are they doing modular releases is that how it works

    Lachlan: Um, at the moment no, but the way the spec is structured each part of the spec, what I am trying to indicate is the stability of each section of the spec as we go along. SO thing like the Canvas API which has been in browsers for a few years now, it should be getting to IE very soon. That section is pretty stable, Other things for example "data grid" or a lot of the web forms are not widely implemented.

    Paul: OK so that quite an interesting approach to the problem I guess from what you were saying earlier to me there is a community base element people can get involved and contribute. How is that all working then?

    Lachlan: Well we’ve got a REALLY REALLY open mailing list on whatwg.org anyone can subscribe at the moment there wa about 800 subscribers on that list anyone is free to subscribe and post feedback about the spec if they want to, but that’s not for everyone obviously because it’s quite a high volume mailing list and not everyone can keep up with that. We have also got an open blog on http://blog.whatwg.org/ where absolute anyone who wants to can write an article submit it and have it published. Anything to do with what the WHATWG are about, HTML5 and anything related to it at all. It’s also a good way to let the community know what’s going on by publishing articles also to find out what people think because they keep posting comments on there as well. We have also got an open forum which is at http://forums.whatwg.org/ again anyone can subscribe to that, am sue you know how a forum works

    Paul: So there are lots of different ways to be involved, I have to confess things like that can feel quite intimidating to get involved in. You’re kinda worried about putting your foot in it, and saying something really dumb, is there kind of Opportunities to lurk and are people fairly friendly over there? I guess you are going to say yes aren’t you

    Lachlan: Yeah everyone is friendly over there,they are nice sort of area to go to aim at web developers and people who aren’t quite as technical with the spec areas and stuff. You can ask any question you want and just learn whatever you want as well. Their is also the w3c side of it as well. Which is strictly related but is more focused on the actual technical side and issues so yeah. The What WG and the W3C are both publishing exactly the same spec and they both work on it together and feedback can be sent to either place, it will all be taken into account

    Paul: Oooh, that’s useful. So looking at kinda the state of affairs at the moment with HTML 5, reading through your article there was some things in there that really sounded quite exciting, there was this thing about structure and some kind of additional elements that could be used, which provide a little bit more structure, headers and footers and things like that can you tell us a little about that, and maybe explain a bit of what those do.

    Lachlan: Well at the beginning of the work back in 2004 / 2005 we basically took a look at what a lot of site where doing and we noticed that they were all using a similar structure. All the blog’s were using headers and footer and generally things like column layouts to show articles and stuff like that. So we wanted some semantic elements to come and cover each of those features that people actually used, solving the real problems that they were actually focusing on. instead of having to do "Div" elements for everything, which is what people do we give them an actual element and that also has a side effect of increasing accessibility because an element with specific semantics can be hooked into the accessibility API’s and help someone with assistive technology navigate the document a bit easier.

    Paul: Okay, because I mean reaction just glancing at it quickly and not thinking about it was what’s wrong with the div with an ID Equals footer, or an ID equal header or whatever but like you say, as you think about it more it become obvious that if those are considered distant elements, one person might call it a footer another might call it "the bottom" or whatever else if they have consistent semantic names then you know you can have screen readers and stuff jumping to the footer or avoiding / not reading the footer depending on what is set in their preferences, is that what you are thinking?

    Lachlan: Yeah that sort of it, it’s also helping the authoring side too, as there are lots of Div elements in source code which makes it easier to read if you have got elements with different names

    Paul: yeah very much so, I spend half my life trying to which closing Div relates to which elements, that very exciting. Obviously the other big area you talk about in your A List Apart article is the audio visual elements and there is a lot that’s happening in there. It’s always had the vague feeling that HTML has never had any kind of, erm, erm, the audio visual elements have always been and after thought, what happing in HTML 5 in regards to that?

    Lachlan: Well we have added the video and audio elements to the spec to try and allow video to be added directly to HTML, at the moment we have sites like youtube revel and all the other video site out there using flash to embed video and using the flash to give customized controls and stuff to the user, it’s really awkward, depending on proprietor technology, so we want to open that up a bit give a very very easy to use Javascript API to hook into and promote custom controls and all sorts of cool stuff with videos and of course audio as well. We have got experimental implementations of that in opera and in webkit. I have heard mozilla is considering implementing it as as it is now I am not sure of the status of their implementation. However the one big problem with video and audio at the moment is with Codecs, there are a whole load of software patent issues going around and we are not quite sure what codec we are going to standardize upon or if we are going o be able to get common codec support among the browsers, That’s an open issue but I am no lawyer to I cannot really go into that, so the ultimate aim is that you will be able to embed your movie file, your avid file or whatever directly into the HTML without the need to kinda pump it through something like flash

    Paul: cool

    Lachlan: that make it a whole lot easier to the authors hopefully

    Paul: Yeah, you kind of, to some extent got to ask the question why do we need that when we have got a solution like flash

    Lachlan: Well because Flash is a proprietary technology it’s managed only buy Adobe , they control it, they control the changes and what does and what does not go into future versions of it, however the thing with HTML is that it is an open standard platform which can be implemented by anyone and maintain interoperability between those venders.

    Paul: It’s intrusting isn’t it that adobe has just announced they are opening up the flash format, do you wonder if that’s a reaction to some of the stuff you have been doing to kind of force their hand if they want to stay ahead o the game and dominant they need to be open

    Lachlan: Yeah I don’t know how that going to work though, it depends, if they open the format up and actually make it an open development process where anyone can contribute to the future version and features which go into it or whether they just write the specs and tell other people to implement based on what they write, so I don’t know much about that. It will be interesting to see how it goes.

    Paul: Very interesting, Now the next thing you cover in the A List Apart article is something which you titled "Document Representation" now I have to confess this confused me, so do you want to explain a little about what you meant by document representation. What you were getting at there.

    Lachlan: Yeah, well in the past we have had HTM, and XHTML with two separate specs, HTML 4.1 which a lot of people use and XHTML 1.0 which a whole lot of other people use one of them is based on XML and is really really strict syntax that requires well formedness and is supposed to when you serve it correctly, if you make a well formedness error the browser is suppose to stop processing and throw and error message saying "Sorry I cannot handle this" where as HTML is more sorta loose and convenient in its error handling, it’s the traditional inspired by SGML, although really only syntactically similar these day but the error handling is a bit more lenient and you can get away with making a lot more errors. So instead of having two distinct language which you can use we have combined them into a single language which share the same elements and attributes and everything and as much a possible and when the browser reads those file it produces and internal representation called the DOM, a lot of javascript user will be familiar with the DOM as they work with that with their scripts to modify the document through the DOM. That’s an internal representation which is mapped, the DOM which is sort of mapped to by the syntax’s, the HTML and the XHTML syntax’s so it give the authors a choice of which syntax they want to use

    Paul: So why do we need that choice what is the key difference, I mean you talk about HTML being more lenient are there other reason for choosing one over the other.

    Lachlan: erm, well I don’t really know. However a lot of authors do prefer the strict syntax of XHTML like to make sure they quote the attributes and encode all their ampersands properly. They like to know they have done everything perfectly as with HTML a lot of people do make mistakes inadvertently and don’t want end users to see big error messages, so it’s a bit more user friendly if some little small error slips though their CMS and causes problems.

    Paul: So it’s basically come down to personal preference then

    Lachlan: yeah

    Paul: Okay, that’s fair enough, so both, we are going to see equal support for both of them in browser manufacturers are we

    Lachlan: Well that’s the hope we have said that we have got good support in most browsers, it’s just IE which is lagging behind

    Paul: (Sarcasm) Oh that’s a suprise (Laughs) Okay are there ant other things in HTML 5 that might be of interest to those listening to the show which we should be paying attention to?

    Lachlan: erm, well, as I said before we got canvas implemented in most browsers

    Paul: So tell us, what’s canvas

    Lachlan: It’s a 2D drawing API that you can use javascript to draw dynamic image with. People have used it to implement things like graphs that are built using tables of data which are on the page. People have also gone and done 3D games with it which is really cool

    Paul: Wow, that incredible. I mean that sounds very similar to SVG is it a different thing.

    Lachlan: It is different SVG is entirely done with XML, you modify that with script via the DOM by changing elements and attributes and stuff or with CSS. Canvas is an immediate mode graphics API where it is more like a bitmap sort of thing where as SVG is vector graphics, and canvas is bit map. They can both do images, the same sort of images, if you like but we have both vector images and bitmap images, so they both can serve different purposes.

    Paul: Right, I see. Okay that’s good, so okay the big question, kind of the final question everyone is going to have is when can they start doing some of the cool stuff. Now you said right at the beginning this is going to be modular support based thing so we are going to be able to see some of these elements before others. You know some parts before other, so what can we do now, what are we going to be able to do soon give us an idea of where things are at.

    Lachlan: erm, okay let’s see I think what’s being implemented at the moment. Cross document messaging is being implemented at the moment, that’s an API that lets you send message between documents with javascript without worrying about cross domain security issues,

    Paul: Oooo…. that’s good.

    Lachlan: Yeah it’s a really, really handy API that been implemented in opera for a while and I heard mozilla is implementing it soonish and should be in firefox 3 thought I am not entirely sure about that. That should be very very soon, erm, what else have we got, we got…. hmmm, this is tough

    Paul: Sorry put you on the spot there (laughs) is that last one supported in webkit?

    Lachlan: erm, I am not sure I would have to double cheek that

    Paul: Okay that’s fair enough

    Lachlan: yeah,

    Paul: Okay so any other elements? Things like the structural changes are any of those being supported yet?

    Lachlan: Not quite yet, erm as far as I know support for those requires changed to the phaser, and to implment the new pharsing algorithm in HTML 5, as far as I know browsers are not yet focusing on doing that because..

    Paul: Okay that’s a shame, because that one I liked the sound of, what about the audio and the visual stuff?

    Lachlan: We have experimental implementations in opera which supports OGG video, though it’s not really in a public build version yet, there is a experimental version which was released last year sometime. And webkit also has support in their nightly builds, which supports mpeg 4 unfortunate they don’t support the same codec but you can experiment with them.

    Paul: (laughs) That would be far to easy

    Lachlan: yes I know

    Paul: So it’s all progressing slowly but, erm you know obviously the one name which has been very absent in the list you keep mentioning is Internet Explorer, so I expect we can probably see some slower movement there. We are talking you know in the years before this all becomes mainstream and we can actually start using it. Is that a fair comment to make?

    Lachlan: Yes it will be several years before the entire spec is finished, we are hoping that it can get finished sooner rather than later but realistically it’s going to be quite a while yet, But it is important to know people will be able to use theses features before the spec is finished; so it depends on when browsers start supporting features authors can go ahead and use it.

    Paul: That’s great and real exciting that you can start to do that sort of stuff. you know that we don’t need to wait for it all to be set in stone before moving forward. And it’s always exciting as well to see the future, know what coming up and be aware of everything. so is there somewhere people can go a websites address and keep an eye on what is currently supported by browsers.

    Lachlan: Not at the moment but that’s something worth looking into, I think there is a wiki on the Working Group site, it does have some implementations listed but I am not sure how up to date. But it’s something I think we should look into

    Paul: Yeah it would be great to have some kind of single page which says what features are supported by each browser that you could check back every few months see what’s going, there you go there is my contribution to the working group (laughs). Alright it was really good to speak to you and thank you so much for your time, What we will do is to get you back in further down the line and have a check to see where we have currently got to in the development of HTML 5, Thank you so much for your time.

    Thanks to Jamie Knight for transcribing this interview.

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    Listeners feedback:

    Staying healthy on the web

    Evan writes: My question to you is not entirely related to design, development or management but rather about health in the web industry. This is very important but we often seem to forget about it. We spend hours upon hours at our desks but are unaware of the damage this could be having on our health. Eyeballs almost touching the screen, typing without a break, sitting incorrectly – just a few examples. So, what do you do to maintain good health while working?

    I am possibly the worst person in the world to answer this question. I consistently abuse my body while at work. In fact a physiotherapist friend said I had the worse posture in front of a computer she had ever encountered.

    However, there is possibly something to learn from my terrible example. Let’s look at what I do and compare that to best practice.

    • I sit with my leg tucked up under me – Posture while working is important. Both feet should be flat on the floor, rest your wrists on the desktop in front of your keyboard and make sure your monitor is at eye level (in other words avoid laptop screens).
    • I stoically refuse to use anything other than my preferred mouse and keyboard – Using the same keyboard and mouse in the same position day after day can cause damage. Try using a variety of different hardware and positions. Push your mouse and keyboard nearer or further from you to change the position of your arms.
    • I believe that an individual pixel should fill my field of view - Leaning too close to your monitor is a particular weakness of designers who want to position that pixel ‘just so’. This not only damages your eyes but also your back. When you learn forward your neck and back support the weight of your head. When sat upright, the head is supported by a straight spine and therefore your chair bears the weight.

    On the upside I do take regular breaks. I would like to claim this is because of my health. However, I think it has more to do with my short attention span. I get easily distracted and wander off to do something more interesting.

    From Photoshop to HTML

    I see a lot of PSD 2 HTML services on the internet but never tried any out. It seems to be an great option for an designer for making an quick website, to edit later myself.

    What is the opinion of you guys? Love to hear you discuss this topic in one the next podcasts.

    An long time listener from Holland.

    I have to confess to being a snob over these services. Until recently I have always doubted the quality of the code but after seeing some recent examples I have begun to change my mind.

    We are even considering giving them a try at Headscape, just to see what happens. Certainly from an economic point of view they make sense especially if you have more work than you can handle. That said, I do have three concerns.

    First, results may vary. Without a personal recommendation it could be hard to find a provider who can produce the quality you require. Anybody can convert a photoshop document into HTML. However, it is much harder to do so using techniques like microformats, semantic markup and accessibility. Also, just because the quality was good once, does not mean it will be so again. As the good providers get busy it can lead to a decline in quality.

    Second, people code in different ways. Unless careful attention is given to commenting, it is hard to pick up somebody elses markup. This is fine for relatively static sites where only small changes are required. However for projects where change happens regularly as the site evolves, it is more important that the markup is tailored to your style of coding.

    My final concern is that this could lead to designers not learning HTML. As I have said before on the show, I believe all designers should be able to code themselves. You need to understand how the web works and markup is apart of that. Also, if you cannot code how can you judge the quality of the markup you receive?

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    Creating a better survey

    Posted in Site content on by Paul Boag

    The web allows us to interact with our customers more than any other medium. One of the tools in our arsenal is the online survey. However, these are often badly implemented. How then can we make your surveys more effective?

    Let’s be honest, surveys are one of the less personal ways of communicating with your customers online. Chat rooms, forums, and other forms of online discussion tend to create more of a dialogue, although the results are less scientific. However the survey does have its place. Let’s look at 12 says you can improve your online surveys.

    Be focused

    Define a clear purpose for your survey. Why are you running it? What information are you seeking to gain? How are you going to interpret the results? Avoid the temptation to throw in additional questions as this increases the likelihood of drop out.

    Explain the survey

    Explain to those participating why you are running the survey. Users are more likely to participate if they can see the point. If they understand your objectives it may also help them to provide answers that are more useful to you.

    Show appreciation

    If people can see you appreciate their opinion then they are more likely to participate. Personally I am a cynical about achieving this using incentives. I believe a personal, well written, message can be as effective. If you wish to give a gift, then do so at the end of the process as a thank you. This changes the emphasis from a payment (if you complete this survey we will give you this) to a gift (we really appreciate the time you have taken and would like to thank you.) In my opinion this reflects better on the brand. People may even encourage others to complete the survey so they too receive the thank you.

    Do not distract

    Consider how and when you will promote your survey. This is a fine line. On one hand you want the survey to be prominent. On the other, you need to ensure that it does not distract from users completing more important actions. Avoid popups or other intrusive methods. This only serves to alienate users. Instead consider using your mailing list or adding a small (but prominent) link to each page of your website.

    Don’t make me think

    Be careful not to require too much effort from your participants. The highest completion rate will come from easy to answer questions. Asking somebody about their favourite breakfast cereal is one thing, asking them what they had for breakfast last Tuesday is more challenging.

    Start easy

    Take a lesson from phone surveys. These traditionally start with a few simple questions that require no thought at all. Typically these are questions like age, sex and location. They have found that if they can get somebody to answer one or two questions, they are much more likely to do the whole survey. If the first question is too challenging people give up, presuming the entirely survey will require too much effort.

    Use specific questions

    Ensure your questions are as specific as possible. Open ended questions are harder to answer and difficult to analysis. Failing to be specific can also lead to the wrong question being answered. For example you may ask "what do you think of this site?". This could lead to comments on content and download time when you were looking for feedback on design.

    Provide examples and context

    When clarification of a question is required provide examples of possible answers. However, be careful that this does not bias the responses you receive. An alternative maybe to provide some context to the question. By explaining why you are asking the question the user will better understand the type of answer you require.

    Avoid the non committal answer

    You should give the user the option to skip a question or specify an alternative to the options provided. However, avoid allowing non committal answers. The most obvious example of this is the 1-5 rating system. The majority of people will select 3 because it is a middle of the road option and requires the least thought. Effectively 3 is a decision not the answer the question. As Zeldman says "Maybe is one option too many".

    Avoid personal questions

    Always keep your survey’s anonymous. An online survey is not the place for collecting names and contact information. Although it is acceptable to ask for demographic information, people are going to be reticent to give you their email address and phone number. Asking for this with significantly decrease the number of people completing the survey.

    Watch your language

    The way questions are worded can make a substantial difference in results. For example using the word ‘should’ instead of ‘could’ has been known to alter results by up to 20%. Make sure the words you choose are as neutral as possible and even consider running A/B comparisons with alternative wording if the question is particularly important.

    Following good form design

    Finally, when creating an online survey carefully consider best practice for form design. This is something I have written about before so be sure to check out that article too.