Tag Archives: project management

The plight of the in-house designer

Posted in Web strategy on by Paul Boag

The more organisations I work with the more sympathy I have for in-house designers and developers. It is a role that can be thankless and isolating. How then can their lives be made that much easier?

I last worked as an in-house designer/developer over 8 years ago, so I don’t feel I can really comment on the subject. I therefore enlisted the help of the boagworld forum and dug out various emails I have been sent over the last couple of years. I also picked the brains of Paul (our researcher) and Ryan (our producer) to compile 10 quick tips for improving the lot of in-house staff.

1. Coding with others in mind

The general consensus seems to be that as an in-house coder it is important to consider the next guy. Whether you are working as part of a team or as a lone developer, sooner or later somebody else will have to pick up your code and work with it.

Two techniques were suggested for coding with others in mind. The first was to carefully comment all of the code your produce and if appropriate even create supporting documentation. The second was to have a library of reusable code so that all work produced is consistently marked up. That way it can be passed around the team easily.

Personally, I believe this is good practice whether you are working in-house or not. Certainly Headscape use an extensive library of HTML, CSS and Javascript snippets.

Of course, if you are working alone the need for a library of snippets is less pressing. However, our next problem is a bigger concern.

2. Seeking out like minded people

Many in-house designers/developers are working in isolation. There are a relatively few organisations that can afford a web team. Working alone has two obvious drawbacks. First, it is hard to keep up-to-date with new approaches because you are learning on your own. It is easy to get stuck in a rut, using the same old techniques. In web design stagnation can be dangerous both for your career and for the evolution of the site you are supporting.

Second, it can be lonely. Even though you have other people with whom you work, they do not share your experiences as a web developer. You cannot moan about shared problems or ‘geek out’ on code or typography.

The solution is something we have spoken a lot about before. Make contacts within the industry both online and off. Use tools like forums, twitter, and mailing lists. Offline, look for meetups and conferences you can attend. Nothing in your area? Don’t let that put you off. Setup something yourself. If somewhere as backwards as Dorset has a web designer meetup then there is no reason why your area cannot!

3. A demonstration speaks a thousand words

The feeling of isolation can be exasperated because management often simply fail to ‘get’ what you are trying to do. It can be amazingly frustrating when you have a great idea but you fail to make others see why it is so good.

One solution might be to build a proof of concept or prototype. It is often much easier to convince management of an idea if they can see it in action. Some even spend their evenings producing prototypes as they are not given the opportunity while at work. Personally, I cannot help but wonder whether you should actually be looking for a new job if you are forced to develop ideas in the evenings!

4. Impose some structure

One idea I agree with is that in-house developer you should work within the same rigid structure used by external agencies. Too many in-house teams are treated like a free resource people can turn to whenever they like. This leads to scope creep and (more importantly) to the web team being undervalued.

So what do I mean by a rigid structure? I am talking about things like:

  • Statements of work
  • Change control procedure
  • Client signoff
  • Project milestones (for both yourself and the client)
  • Resource assignment and budgeting

These techniques ensure projects run smoothly, limit scope creep and project a professional image to the internal clients improving their perception of the development team.

They are also worth applying no matter how small the job. For example if you have been asked to change some copy on the website always confirm what the requirement is via email. This acts as a mini statement of work. Project management doesn’t need to be onerous to be effective.

5. Encourage internal charging

Of course the best way of making somebody value your work is to charge them for it. There seems to be a general consensus that where possible internal charging is a good idea. However, often this is outside of your control.

If you are unable to charge internal clients there are alternatives. One option is to calculate how much you cost the company per hour. Once you have this figure (even if it is an approximation) you can start to include it in statements of work. List all of the tasks to be done, associate a time with each of these tasks and include the cost to the company for each.

Hopefully this will make internal clients think twice before using up your time. If you want further leverage start submitting a monthly report to management outlining what work you have been doing and the associated costs. Let clients know you are doing this as a further incentive for them to think twice.

6. Be the authority

Another piece of advice that was generally agreed upon is the need to be seen internally as an expert. How you are perceived is important if you want your opinion to be respected.

Avoid being hesitant or negative about ideas because you are unsure how to implement them. Instead research solutions and if appropriate bring in an expert. Using specialists does not undermine your authority. Rather it demonstrates that you can manage a project even if it is bigger than your personal capabilities.

7. Exude confidence, personality and enthusiasm

On the subject of negativity, avoid saying ‘no’. Many internal web teams are perceived as a barrier to be overcome. Internal clients often turn to external agencies in an attempt to bypass them entirely. Once you are ‘out of the loop’ you loose control entirely.

A better tactic than saying ‘no’ is to say ‘yes’ but go on to explain the consequences. Once you have explained the negative impact of a suggestion, be quick to provide a positive alternative of your own.

Be confident and enthusiastic about every project. Avoiding being perceived as the stereotypical geek sitting in the dark barely uttering a word. Ensure you are likeable. If people like you they will listen to and respect your opinion.

8. Broadcast your successes

To further enhance your reputation internally make sure you broadcast your successes. If you launch a new sub-site or feature, ensure you tell as many people internally as possible.

If the company has an internal newsletter or mailing list make sure you write something for it explaining what you have done and why in plain English. Focus on what the project brings to the business rather than how it works and why it was challenging.

Offer to run workshops about the web or give a mini-presentation on web strategy to management. Anything to make you appear pro active and a benefit to the business.

9. Understand the politics

A lot of the points so far relate to company politics. Every organisation has its internal politics and ‘rising above them’ isn’t a realistic option.

One area where politics becomes particularly important is sign off. If you are having trouble getting something approved ask yourself the following questions…

  • Does my internal client have the power to sign off themselves or is there somebody else I should be talking to?
  • Who are the people influencing those signing off?
  • Who are the opinionated trouble makers slowing down the process?

In many cases the person who appears to be the decision maker is not really. They are being controlled by management higher up or influenced by a few vocal individuals. If this is the case you need to speak directly to these people or at the very least give your client the tools to force sign off through.

10. Stick to the facts

Finally, always have facts to back up your opinion. This is especially important if people within the organisation do not respect your opinion.

Facts and figures are especially good but when that is not an option turn to an expert opinion. Quoting an internationally respected author like Steve Krug will generally carry more weight than your own opinion.

That said, remember to explain who this person is and why their opinion matters. You cannot expect the heading of marketing to have a clue who Steve Krug is.

Where an internal client remains unconvinced by an experts opinion turn instead to the weight of evidence. Don’t quote just one expert, quote ten. The shear number of people saying the same thing will impress.

So there you have it. Advice straight from the boagworld community. If you have anything to add, post it in the comments below.

119. Fluid Elastic

Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

On this week’s show Ed Merritt joins us to discuss fluid, elastic layouts and we take a look at PHP Designer, a feature rich code editor.

Download this show.

Launch our podcast player

Watch the behind the scenes video

News and events

Harness the power of "frilly bits"

I love watching design trends come and go on the web which maybe why I love Patrick McNeil’s Design Meltdown so much. One trend that has caught my eye is the move away from the Web 2.0. look to something more ornate.

This style makes use of what can only be called "frilly bits". You know the kind of things, those swirls and ornaments buried in typeface sets but rarely used. They have been around for years, used by blacksmiths and typesetters alike. They turn up on everything from wedding invitations to architecture, and now it would appear, the web.

One of the first sites I saw them was Cameron Molls blog. He is an amazing designer with a very ornate and delicate style (about as far away from my own as possible).

Recently one of Cameron’s readers asked him where he sourced such beautiful ornaments and he has been kind enough to share 25 different sources of similar frippery.

Unfortunately, simply knowing Cameron’s sources will not grant us the ability to design as well as him. However, it is an extremely useful list and definitely worth perusing at your leisure.

The cure for content-delay syndrome

Returning from the world of creativity to the realities of project management, our next post tackles the frustrating subject of clients failing to deliver content on time.

Entitled the cure for content-delay syndrome this article addresses once again the subject of copy-writing.

We have talked about the need for a copywriter many times before. I have encouraged you of the need to engage a professional to craft your sites copy, while at the same time struggling to convince my own clients of the need.

The problem is that ultimately many clients believe they can write their own copy. After all they are experts in their field and know their own audience. Some argue that it takes as long to brief somebody as to do it themselves. When budgets are tight, these sound like convincing arguments and are hard to dispute.

This post suggests that the answer in not to promote the use of a copywriter but an editor. An editor refines the clients text rather than writes it from scratch. This is considerably cheaper but still brings improvements in continuity, accessibility, usability and SEO. What is more, the client no longer needs to worry about the quality of his writing. Instead he can concentrate on "bashing it out" and let the editor improve its readability later.

Its a persuasive argument and gives me hope that I might soon be able to encourage my clients to engage a professional to work on their copy.

The roles of a web entrepreneur

From the role of an editor to the many roles of a buddying web entrepreneur.

We haven’t spoken much about developing web applications on the show (this is definitely something we should try to do soon). Traditionally web design has been a service industry and for the vast majority that is still the case. However, a growing number are looking to add a product line to their offering or make the switch entirely. Certainly this is something we are doing with getsignoff.com

But what does it take to be a web entrepreneur and build web applications? Well, unless you have a lot of venture capital it requires you to wear a lot of hats as explained in this post on Think Vitamin.

From marketeer to customer service representative, you are required to fulfil many more roles than you are used to. Its a challenging undertaking but the benefits are substantial. Get it right and you have a regular income without the overheads associated with a service based business.

Intranets revisited

Another subject that we have neglected on the show is intranets. They continue to grow in importance and yet have fundamental unresolved problems.

In two great posts Gerry McGovern exposes these flaws including the tendency for intranets to become dumping grounds for information and their lack of decent search.

Both posts in their own way focus on the fact that intranets should be about "getting things done". They should provide tangible productivity benefits but often fail to do so. Each post identifies a reason for this being the case.

The first points to the way intranets are perceived. Many see them as an information repository. This appears to be a fancy way of saying "where information goes to die". Viewing an intranet in this way, McGovern argues, is to miss the point. We should only be distributing information if it aids productivity or encourages collaboration.

The second post argues that intranets fail to aid productivity because information is just downright hard to find. In particular Gerry targets search but he also argues there is a wider problem of find-ability. Why is it he asks, that even in the largest of organisations nobody is dedicated to ensuring employees can quickly access the information they need to do their jobs?

If you have an intranet or are involved in developing them, then these are an excellent read.

Back to top

Feature: Fluid Elastic Design

When it comes to planning the layout of your new website there are just three commonly used website layout structures to choose from: Fixed; Fluid & Elastic width layouts. None of these are perfect; each comes with its own advantages and disadvantages and in this weeks feature we have Ed Merritt with us to disuss them.

Back to top

Review: PHP Designer 2008

This week’s review is on PHP Designer 2008 has actually been submitted by Simon Jones of Zako Media. He writes…

As a web business, I needed stable coding platform or IDE which would allow me to be as productive as possible. Money was no object so I researched everything available from open-source packages to expensive commericial software. I discovered phpDesigner from www.mpsoftware.dk and was blown away. It’s much quicker than Zend and has most of the same features. phpDesigner has all the usual code highlighting and auto-completion for PHP, CSS, HTML, Perl, XML, Javascript, along with easy buttons to tidy this code on the fly. We all know how hard it is to keep code tidy… now we don’t have to. phpDesigner also allows you to arrange files by project without disrupting the standard windows folder system. If you ever want to transfer away from this software, you don’t need to worry about compatibility.

The smaller features I find most useful are: bracket matching, code explorer (to jump to functions, variables and arrays), code snippet library to store your most commonly used functions from project to project. Tooltip syntax reminders for PHP and rightclick to view PHP.net help page for that function. Finally it validates your syntax on the fly, without affecting performance… all other editors stalled, slowed and chugged away as they scanned the whole file every time a character was added. phpDesigner offers the same ability with very little processor time, as soon as you’ve finished a line, it hilights unobtrusively to show missing semi-colons, brackets etc. A more detailed error message can be accessed. This saves valuable Alt-Tab, Control-F5 time. (or for apple users, switch task and refresh browser) as you know the code is error free before you start.

The software offers links to internal ‘browsers’ for phpmyadmin and php help, has an inbuilt ftp client or allows you to call an external one like filezilla. It helps integrate nicely with Smarty templates and works with phpDocumentor for instant php documentation.

On the longer term projects, it has built in bug tracking information, project and global todo lists.

One of the most important and major strengths with this software is it’s stability. It has a few issues sometimes closing down if it’s travelled through a laptop’s standby mode, but otherwise it has never crashed or lost data in the years I’ve been using it. mpsoftware is obviously passionate about this product as updates are available very regularly offering additional functionality and fixing minor bugs.

This is by no means the full feature list, but more information can be found at www.mpsoftware.dk where they have a free cut down non-commercial version and sell the full version. Compare to other available software and it sounds expensive, but mpsoftware.dk is charging a ridiculously low €39 for a single license with further discounts for groups of 10.

Thanks to Simon for that review.

Back to top

Listeners feedback:

Can you set up a web design company in the evenings

John Bullock asks: Hello boagworld team, my name’s John and I’ve got a question for you. Basically I’m starting up my own web design company and I’m in what I think is an unusual situation of trying to do it along side my 9 to 5 job which has absolutely nothing to do with computers, it’s actually an engineering job so I actually have no chance at all to work with computers in my normal job. Now I know trying to set up a company alongside your 9 to 5, while obviously tiring, is a very sensible and safe way to do it, is it actually possible? Do you think it’s a realistic way of setting up a company or do you think I would have been better going with the freelance option? It’s great to have the show back after what seemed like a decade and keep up the good work.

Yes it is definitely possible. In fact it is the way the vast majority of freelancers begin. That is not to say it is easy. However, it is the most sensible approach. If you don’t your options are fairly limited…

  1. Wait to be made redundant and hope you get a payoff
  2. Live off the kindness of friends and family (a guaranteed way of losing friends)
  3. Borrow money from the bank

Personally, I am very much against borrowing money. It substantially increases the risk. If you setup loan free then you can get another job if things go wrong. With a loan you are left in debt and struggling to pay the rent.

Build up a freelance business on the side and save the money to pay for the first few months. Also if you are able, land some regular customers. This will give you an existing client base to bring in much needed cash. At the very least you will have a portfolio of client work to show off.

We were fortunate. The web design company we worked for folded. Although we didn’t get any redundancy payment we were able to take several of the clients with us. These not only provided valuable income in the first few months but also allowed us to attract other clients.

Domain names

Robert Prior asks: Hello Paul and Marcus, my name is Robert Prior and I am from Waco Texas, i’m currently a beginner web designer but in the future I would like to set up a small web design agency here where I live and my question is, when you’re trying to get the URL for your company name, how important is it to get different extensions like .net, .info, .tv are those important at all? Or do you just need to get the one main one like the .com name? Really enjoy the show, appreciate all the hard work you guys put into it and looking forward to future episodes. Thank you.

In my opinion your domain name is incredibly important. You should definitely try to get the domain extension for your country and .com as well. We have never managed to get headscape.com but as the vast majority of our business is in the United Kingdom headscape.co.uk has been adequate.

However a good domain is about a lot more than the extension. Personally I am not a fan of these new web 2.0. urls (flickr, del.icio.us, digg). They are hard to spell and hard to remember. In my opinion a good url should be a well known word (or words) even if not directly associated with your product. Headscape for example sounds more like a hair dressers than a web design agency, but at least it is memorable and easy to spell.

Another common mistake is to go for a domain name with hyphens. This never works well as it is hard to tell somebody. For example "headscape dot co dot uk" is much easier then "head hyphen scape dot co dot uk". Also users often later forget that it contained a hyphen.

The ideal domain is also descriptive of the site. For example we were blown away to discover getsignoff.com was available. It describes exactly what we do and is memorable too. That said more recent studies suggest that a brand name (Amazon.com) is more valuable than a generic name (books.com), so if you are forced to choose pick the former.

Finally, be careful to avoid words with multiple spellings especially if working internationally. For example don’t choice a domain like colorTheory.com because it could equally be spelt colourTheory.com.

Many claim that there are no good domain names left. Although it is harder these days getsignoff proves they are still out there. With a bit of lateral thinking (or using one of the domain suggestion tools) they can be found. There is no reason to start randomly start dropping vowels.

111. Utopia

Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

On show 111: Designer and developer work together in utopian harmony. Two great listener reviews and Aral Balkan announces the biggest online web design conference ever.

Play

Podcast: Download (31.2MB)

Download this show.

Launch our podcast player

News and events | Designers and developers in perfect harmony | Aral on Singularity | Listener emails

News and events

Fixing your product pages

I want to kick off this week’s news with an article on Think Vitamin which I missed when it originally come out back in November. It is a post by Amy Hoy providing some basic advice on user experience design, focusing in particular on product pages.

Amy starts by giving some basic tips. These include…

  • Be nice to your users and customers (and potential customers).
  • Design as if your main goal is to inform and educate.
  • Be honest and forthcoming.
  • Help your users and customers to do what they want, not what you want them to do.
  • Be consistent with your message and quality of service (and I’m including software design here, folks).
  • Scientific, measurable “usability” doesn’t necessarily make for a good experience.
  • Good design makes people feel good.

She then moves on to look at specific examples. She compares the product download pages of Opera and Firefox. This is a fascinating insight into what can go wrong with user experience design.

What I particularly like about this article is Amy’s engaging writing style. She is incredibly personable and her writing really drew me in. It is a long time since I have read a post word for word.

Being inspired by newspaper design

I often talk on boagworld about looking beyond the web for inspiration. Too often as designers we look at other websites, when we should be looking to art, architecture and the world around us for inspiration.

Admittedly this can be somewhat of a stretch at times. It’s not always easy to see how a piece of art or kids toy can inspire a website. Many of us don’t even try as a result.

How about starting with an easier comparison? This week I came across a superb post that looks at award winning newspaper design and it really excited me about the possibilities when I finally get around to redesigning boagworld.

I think we have a lot of learn from newspaper designers and in many ways there are a lot of similarities. Both web design and newspaper design rely heavily on white space and grid layout. Both have to deal with large amounts of written content. Both have to copy with constantly changing content. The list goes on.

Take a few moments to read this post, even if you just look at the designs. It will definitely inspire you.

Using browser history to improve the user experience

My final news story of the day is an interesting idea centred around a users browser history. Niall Kennedy has proposed a technique where you could use CSS and Javascript to display content based on what sites a person has previously visited.

Although I am not sure I like the idea of websites snooping through my browser history, it does provide some ways of improving the user experience. If nothing else it can remove some of the clutter from our websites.

Let me give you an example of how it could be used. A website could check your browser history to see if you regularly used digg.com. If you did then it could post a “digg it” button. If not it could be hidden away. The same principle could be used to show only a RSS subscribe button for the specific news reader you use, rather than showing them all. The possibilities are endless.

Whether you can see an application for this or not, it is still a very impressive and clever idea. Definitely worth investigating further.

Back to top

Feature: Designer and developer in perfect harmony

In this week’s feature Marcus is looking at the working relationships between web design teams. He brings together a few Headscape employees to discuss how to ensure a good working relationship between all parties.

These are the roles that we look at and who represents them in Headscape:

  • Requirements analysis, information architecture development (consultancy) – Marcus
  • Design, templates – Leigh Howells and Paul
  • Technical development – Rob Borley
  • Project management – Charlie Allen

These are the issues we covered…

  • What are the things that really make a project work well for you?
  • From the other perspective, what are your pet hates?
  • Designer and developers – should clients be able to talk to you directly?
  • Most projects have a habit of their scope creeping. How can that best be avoided?
  • At Headscape we use a number of different tools to manage projects. How do these tools work?
  • Particularly with designers and developers, we have set up ‘buddy’ systems. How does this work? Is it effective?
  • Some projects stall or go on hold for a while. Are you able to just pick up where you left off?

Back to top

Expert interview: Aral Balkan on Singularity

Paul: So, joining me today is Aral Balkan. Hello Aral.

Aral: Hi, Paul. How are you?

Paul: Not too bad. It’s been a while since we’ve had you on the show.

Aral: It has been a while. I’ve missed it.

Paul: Uhm, so yeah, basically, I’ve been keeping a secret from Marcus. Which is I stoically refused to tell him what Singularity is all about.

Aral (laughing): Was he curious?

Paul: He was.

Marcus: It’s something to do with Star Trek, isn’t it?

Aral: Well I am a big fan, but no.

Paul: So why don’t you tell him what Singularity is all about.

Aral: Well, Singularity is going to be the world’s first large scale online web converence.

Marcus: Okay.

Aral: In a nutshell, that’s what it is.

Paul: So, I mean how does this work from a technology point of view, from an organizational point of view. Tell us a little bit about how it’s going to be organized.

Aral: Uh, sure! Well, basically it’s a web conference, so in terms of topics, it’s very eclectic. We’ve got a really cool group of speakers who have confirmed already, about 24 of them, from all parts of the web really. We have web standards people. We have JavaScript developers. We have artists who work on the web and they’re going to be presenting their sessions online. It’s going to be streamed through a custom interface built in Flash, based on the Flash platform, using technologies like Adobe Connect which used to be called “Breeze”. It allows the real time streaming of audio, video, and also sharing of interactions or objects through the web. Beyond that, we’re also going to have a very local character to it with local hubs where people will be able to gather and watch the audience and interact.

Paul: Oh, ok, so it…

Aral: I mean, watch the conference and interact.

Paul: Right, so people will actually get together as well, because that was one of my questions. One of the best thing about conferences is meeting up with people.

Aral: Definitely! The bit that I don’t like is the travelling. It’s being stuck in coach next to someone who’s, you know, not feeling too well or is kind slumping onto your seat or having the hotel from Hell experience that I’m currently having over here. (Paul laughs)

Aral: Don’t even get me started on that. There was techno music until 2 AM from the bar downstairs.

Paul: Nice!

Aral: Well, it was refreshing in the morning, though, because the shower went from boiling from freezing back to boiling and kept doing that. So, yeah, I think this is going to hopefully take the best parts of what attending a conference means, and maybe leave some of the bits that aren’t as great.

Paul: Are you going to leave it for local groups to set up local meetings or is that something that you can organize centrally?

Aral: I want to see it as decentralized as possible. I am talking to a few venue sponsors, potential venue sponsors. We’re talking with Yahoo at the moment. The BBC, I’m talking with Ian there. There are very interested and very excited about it. But, beyond that, I want it to have a grass-roots character. So, we’re already getting people volunteering for regional areas. I’ve called them Ambassadors. We have an ambassador from Bristol and there are people from Singapore, Mexico, all over, that are very interested in volunteering. So, we’re probably going to have regional volunteers and ambassadors who organize local groups, user groups, to have meetings around Singularity, where attendees can go and join and hopefully take it further, you know, add a local character to it.

Paul: OK, let’s cover some of the basics. How many speakers are you looking at, first of all. Let’s start with that.

Aral: Okay. We’re going to have a little over 100 hundred speakers.

Paul: Wow!

Aral: So, yeah, it is actually a large web conference.

Paul: Yeah.

Aral: And the that its online.

Paul: So when… how long is this going to be over? You know, if you’re going to have 100 speakers…

Aral: It’s three days.

Paul: It’s going to be over three days…

Aral: And it’s multiple track.

Paul: Multiple track, okay. That’s what I was going to ask.

Aral: And I think one of the things, just cut you off there, with uh… it is multiple track, but everything is recorded.

Paul: Oh, Okay.

Aral: So, its presented live and we’ve got some really great ideas for making those presentations a little bit more interactive than you can get in the real world. But, it will also be recorded. So, if you do miss something on the day, you’ll be able to watch it later.

Paul: Cool! How are you going to deal with things like time differences? Are you going to have it going 24 hours? Or, how are you dealing with that?

Aral: Well, initially, I was thinking about having it 24 hours. Just because it sounded really cool.

(All Laugh)

Aral: You know? “Three days! Twenty four hours!! One hundred plus speakers!!!” But then I thought about it. Especially the local meet ups. I want those meet ups to have a BarCamp-like character to them, you know? Where people can stay over. And I didn’t want the conference, the somewhat one-way part of it taking up part of the day.

Paul: Right…

Aral: So, I think it would be nice to have the presentations during the day and then after that, leave time for people at local gatherings to create their own sessions to talk about what they’ve been listening to, to add to it, to localize it for themselves in a matter of speaking.

Paul: Sure.

Aral: You know, to have, to do things to tell you the truth, I have no idea what they’ll come up with, which is great.

Paul: So, when is this scheduled for? What are the dates that people should book for it?

Aral: Well, we finally have dates. We’ve been going back and forth internally before we announced, but it’s the end of October. October 24th through the 26th.

Paul: Okay, that sounds good. And do you know a price yet, or are you still working on that?

Aral: Well, the pricing we’re still working on, but I think we’re going to be very positively surprised by the pricing. We’re actually working to get it even lower than we initially thought we wanted it. And we’re working closely with certain sponsors and we’ll definitely be announcing more about the sponsorship that we have as they become official, but some of our sponsors are interested in keeping the ticket price low as well and supporting us.

Paul: So, how many people are you expecting to attend this conference? Have you got any idea of what you’re aiming for?

Aral: Well, my conservative estimate right now is 10,000.

Paul: WOW!

Aral: And that’s based partly on past experience. We did 2 one-day open source flash conferences using similar technologies, for which we got about a thousand attendees at each one. Those were much smaller. One day, three or four speakers. My conservative estimate is that this will be about ten times the size of that.

Paul: That’s amazing. I mean that will be really cool to, you know, if that comes off. Are you trying to get a range of different speakers? Are you covering any particular areas of web design or are you going as eclectic as you can?

Aral: Well, the tagline that I was going with initially was that Singularity would define web 08. And I’m kind of trying to get people away from using version numbers when talking about the web. We’re getting away from using version numbers when talking about software because you know the moment you slap one on its outdated. So, I think maybe using the year would be easier because you’d at least know that you’re talking about a definite stat of time. So, my initial idea is that it would define Web ’08, and as such, I’m trying to get as eclectic a mix of speakers as possible. And also, I see that there is a lot of overlap with which to send applications for example. There’s a lot of overlap over what people using AJAX are doing and then traditionally web standards people are getting interested in applications as well. So, I want to have a real mix. I also don’t want people on the Flash platform to be excluded, as they sometimes are. But, this is definitely not… that’s not the focus of the conference.

Paul: So, where can people find out more about this? I mean obviously, some people are going to want to be signing up. Obviously, you can’t do that yet, until the price has been set. So, is there any kind of way (

Aral: Of course.) they can express their interested or find out more information or whatever?

Aral: They definitely can. The site is “singlularity08.com”. You can also get to it from “singularityconference.com”. And, basically, we have a blog there and you can express your interest. You can email me directly as well. My email address is “[email protected]”. Or just email my private address at “[email protected]”. Yes, so definitely, if you want to be kept in touch when we do release information, but there is also an RSS feed that you can subscribe to on the site.

Paul: Cool! Well thank you very much for coming on the show.

Aral: Thank you for having me, Paul. And of course you’re speaking.

Paul: Well, yes, of course. That goes without saying (Paul laughs).

Aral: Are you excited? Have you decided what you are speaking about?

Paul: I have not a clue yet, no. (Aral laughs)

Aral: Have I just put you on the spot?

Paul: Yes, totally. Thank you very much. (Aral laughs) And its going to be a weird one. It’s going to be a different way of speaking and so you kind of need to tailor what you’re doing to approach. It will be interesting.

Aral: Exactly. And we’re going have dry runs and we’re going to try out the interface as well.

Paul: Cool.

Aral: And maybe tweak it for different types of presentations. We just have so much potential with what we can do.

Paul: Mmmm. Yeah.

Aral: Because, we can actually control the medium. So, it’s really exciting.

Paul: Excellent! Excellent stuff! Really looking forward to it and we’ll get you back on the show closer to the time to see if we can drum up a bit more support for it. Excellent stuff. Thank you for your time.

Aral: Sounds great, Paul. Thank you so much.

Paul: Alright then.

Back to top

Listeners email:

An alternative wireframing tool

A few weeks back I talked on the show about wireframing tools. Not long afterwards I received an enthusiastic email from Wen talking about a product called OverSite. He was so passionate about the product that I thought we should get him on the show to talk about it. This is what he had to say…

I’ve been catching up on my episodes of BoagWorld, and I just recently listened to your discussion about wireframing. As a UI designer, I completely understand the importance of mocking up a UI, and testing the mockup, before ever launching Photoshop.or Dreamweaver. So I thought I’d provide a review of a wireframing tool that I use, called OverSite. I haven’t seen many other tools out there like it, so I figured you and your listeners might find it useful.

OverSite is a shareware application that runs on Windows as well as Mac OS X; I use the Mac version myself, but am able to exchange OverSite files back and forth with my PC-using colleagues. OverSite lets you create a full or partial representation of your site structure: all of the sections and pages that make up your site. You can do this in one of two ways. The first way is fairly predictable; you add one section or page at a time by clicking a button, entering a name in a popup dialog, and clicking OK. The second way is fairly clever. You open a window that OverSite calls the Rapid Structure Creator. There, you type out your entire site structure in one text area, putting line breaks between sections and pages, and using indentation to indicate nested levels. Then you just click OK and viola! OverSite generates a tree depicting your entire site structure.

At this point, you can dive into your wireframing. Each page contains its own wireframe canvas. You can place the usual widgets on the canvas: buttons, textfields, checkboxes, images, etc. You can also place basic geometric shapes like circles, rectangles, lines and stars on the canvas. Each component can be individually styled; you can also create global styles that apply to all components, or to components of a specific type. OverSite also lets you create what it calls composites, which are complex elements that are made up of individual widgets.

Let’s say that you have a search form that will appear on a few different pages. You can create a composite representing this form. The composite might contain a few labels and text fields, maybe a checkbox or two, and a couple of buttons. If you want, you can tell OverSite to automatically draw a border around the form elements. Once you’ve created that form composite, you can drop it into your wireframes where ever you want it.

OverSite does lack built-in, complex widget types, such as tables. You can create them out of the widgets that OverSite does provide, but it would be nice for OverSite to create them for you.

While each page has its own wireframe canvas, so does each section. The purpose of a section’s wireframe is to create elements that will appear on all of the pages within that section. For those who have used server-side-includes, it’s kind of like that. As an example, say you had a navigation bar that should go on the top of every page in your Products And Services section. You would create that navigation bar once, in the Products And Services wireframe canvas. Then the nav bar will appear in every page within that section. In addition, OverSite provides tools to modify that nav bar in specific pages, for example, to change the color of a specific link in the nav bar when you’re actually on the page that that link refers to.

Static wireframes are fine, but I prefer being able to test the interaction between screens before I actually build the site out. OverSite lets you link any widget or composite to another page. If you don’t want to do the work yourself, you can also tell OverSite to auto-generate a simple navigation bar. Then, you can use OverSite’s built-in web browser to test out your site’s navigation.

Another useful thing I’ve found is OverSite’s notes. The notes functionality lets you provide details about specific widgets. That way, when you print or export your wireframes, you can include more information to whomever you’re handing them off to.

As an added bonus, OverSite will also create a graphical sitemap based on your website structure. You can tweak the appearance of the sitemap… the operative word being “tweak”. Fonts, colors, spacing, and icon sizes are under your control, but not much more. Here’s where I think the application could do better to allow you to fully customize the sitemap. Still, it’s created automatically for you without your having to lift a finger, so that’s something. Plus, the sitemap can be exported into a number of formats: GIF, JPEG, PNG, PDF, Scalable Vector Graphics, and others.

Once you’ve finished your wireframes and want someone else to be able to play around with them, you can export them as web pages for non-OverSite-using people to click-through. You have two options here: export your stuff as pure HTML, or export them as imagemaps. The trade-off between the two is fairly obvious: pure HTML will provide you web pages that looks more “real world”, but won’t look exactly like your wireframes do, and they’ll look different in different browsers. Imagemaps ensure that you know exactly what your pages will look like, but it’s typically not going to look like a real web site.

As a UI designer, OverSite’s become a pretty indispensable tool in my software arsenol. You can get it at the developer’s website.

A vertical rhythm calculator

In the same show we also had Jason Beaird talking about vertical rhythm (among other things) and this promoted an email from James. He wrote…

Hi I’ve been listening to your podcast for about six months now and really enjoy the mixed style of content and witty banter.

With all the talk of CSS vertical rhythm and em based layouts I thought I would point you in the direction of a vertical rhythm calculator that I built in Flex to help people work out all of those nice em values. My own site has been developed using the same principles with all typography and measurements set in em’s for an elastic layout. I am developing an AIR version that has an integrated browser so that you get visual feedback of your calculations, I remember one of the John’s comment on how useful such a tool would be on the fabulous Rissington podcast.

I have checked it out myself and have to say it is very impressive. What is more he has now created that desktop version. Check it out.

Show 98: Flybe Farce

Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

On this week’s show: Paul looks at the ongoing role of the website manager. Marcus looks at when to allow a loss leading project and instead of an expert section we are looking at the ultimate web design reading list.

Play

Podcast: Download (18.7MB)

Download this show.

Launch our podcast player

News and events | Loss leading projects | Ongoing role of the web designer | Web designers reading list | Question of the week

Housekeeping: Prizes and problems

A free ticket for FOWD (New York)

With the 100th boagworld show coming up on the 20th October I am beginning to feel guilty. After all its going to be such a great time and all you poor Americans are going to miss out. I know how hard done by you all are and I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t offer something as compensation.

Fortunately the guys at Carsonified are insuring that at least one of you poor hard done by Americans have something to cheer you up! They are offering you the chance to win a free ticket to the Future of Web Design conference in New York City between the 6-8 November. The ticket normally cost $195 and you get to see great speakers such as Jeffrey Zeldman, Andy Clarke, and Ryan Singer.

Now obviously this is not as good as going to the recording of the 100th boagworld but you will have to just struggle through. For your chance to win a ticket simply email me your name by the 22nd October and we will pick a random winner. For more information on the conference itself visit futureofwebdesign.com.

Download problems

From time to time I get emails from you complaining that episodes of Boagworld are getting cut short in itunes. Its rare but does happen. Unfortunately this is one of itunes less publicized ‘features’. I just wanted to say that the files are complete, the problem is that the connection gets dropped part way through and itunes thinks it has finished. If this happens to you simply delete the file and re-download it from scratch. It almost always comes down fine second time.

Back to top

News and events

Em Calculator

Personally, I love using ems. Although I don’t use them extensively on every site I build but I do use them a lot. They strike me as the perfect compromise between the pixel perfect control of fixed design and the accessibility and flexibility of fluid. Ems based sites scale as the user increases text size providing a rudimentary zoom functionality.

However I am not claiming that ems are perfect. They are not always the most appropriate solution and have their own technical difficulties. One personal problem I always had with ems was working out the sizing. The problem is that ems inherit from one another. 1 em may equal 10 pixels in one part of the HTML but equal something entirely different deeper down because of inheritance.

I always hated maths and so it is unsurprising that this inheritance issue made my brain want to dribble out of my ears. You can therefore imagine my relief to discover this week that somebody has built a great little em calculator that works out this nesting for you. Simply set the base size and then add the nested tags and em setting for each. The calculator does the rest.

Check it out. I guarantee if you work with ems regularly you will think it is a real time saver.

How to disarm 10 difficult client observations/requests

Next up, a great article about dealing with clients. We all know what it feels like, client after client churn out the same old comments…

I’ll know what I like when I see it.

or…

I love beige; can we get more beige in this?

… the list goes on. These kinds of questions are horribly frustrating and despite the fact that we hear them time and again we are often left floundering as to how to respond. This article lists 10 such comments from clients and proposes some ways to respond to them.

Obviously everybody has to respond to these questions in a way that suits them. However, it is still interesting to see how others suggest you answer these questions. Check it out and then post how you would respond to those questions in our comments.

The resurrection of downloadable fonts

Next up, the return of the downloadable font. Some call it the Holy Grail of web typography. Others just believe it would be used and abused. However, whatever you think you cannot deny that being able to define whatever font you like on a website is something that there is demand for.

The idea has been around since 1998 but different implementations of it by browser manufacturers meant it never gained traction. However according to a number of courses including Robert Nyman it looks like it is back on the cards again.

Both Safari and Opera have now implemented a standards based solution to the problem called @font-face, which is certainly good news. However, until IE and Firefox follow suit this is still not going to get a lot of traction. We will have to wait and see.

Creating better user personas

I feel like I have been talking about user personas a lot recently. They are certainly a tool I have been using for a long time and with good reason. I find them incredibly useful in focusing the designer and client on who they are developing for. They help to define functionality, content, tone and design.

However although I have done an introduction to personas on the show I have avoided going into too much depth. Developing a really good persona is a skill and I am far from an expert. However, if you do want to learn more about personas then you should consider reading Ten Steps to Personas a relatively short article outlining some more advanced techniques.

Now I should warn you up front this is not the easiest of reads. It is certainly more heavy duty than most of the things we cover here. However, I wanted to mention it because I know many of you are already using personas and this will take you to the next level. Also if all else fails it has a very useful chart outlining the steps accompanied by lots of pretty pictures ;)

Back to top

Marcus’ bit: When to allow a loss leading project

Even after going on at length in this podcast about making sure that contracts are in place, tasks are recorded in detail, requirements consultations are paid for and project management effort is not underestimated – all to avoid under-charging – sometimes there are occasions when you should take a hit and do a project as a loss leader. In this week’s show Marcus explains why loss leaders are sometimes a good idea.

Back to top

Paul’s corner: Ongoing role of the website manager

While writing my book I have been thinking a lot about the role of the website manager. In particular it has struck me how underestimated the role is. One aspect of the job that is particularly overlooked is the long term commitment involved. In the book I talk about what that ongoing role is and what companies need to consider if they are going to properly support a website over it life. Fortunately my publisher is keen for me to share my thoughts on various aspects of the book so I have put together a blog on the ongoing role of the website manager.

Back to top

Web Designers reading list

Instead of doing an ask the expert section this week I thought I would answer the single most common question I get from people who listen to this show…

What books would you recommend.

This is something I have blogged and spoken on before but I am going to give you my latest list of top picks based on my ever growing reading list.

Back to top

Question of the week

What books would you recommend about web design? Answer in the comments.

Show 84: Maybe

Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

On this week’s show: Paul explains why Headscape does Design Testing, Marcus talks about growing your web design and Mark Buckingham provides an introduction to Search engine optimization.

Play

Podcast: Download (24.1MB)

Download this show.

Launch our podcast player

News and events

Pagination 101

I came across a great post this week that provides a solid introduction to producing pagination. If you haven’t come across the term pagination before it refers to the navigational elements that allow you to move through multiple pages of results. They often include links marked previous and next or numbers to allow you quickly to jump to a specific page of results.

We use pagination all of the time and most websites seem to have them. However, they are an overlooked function that doesn’t get the attention they deserve. The post I found this week, entitled pagination 101, explains to the reader through examples what make pagination work. Although I am not convinced I agree with everything written here it generally provides some very sound advice.

Personally I love posts like this that cover very basic stuff. It helps remind us not to get so caught up in the cool stuff that we neglect the fundamentals.

Free CSS based design course

John Allsopp and Maxine Sherrin have released a free online course that introduces people to CSS based design. If you are still to make the switch from table based design or are finding the change challenging then I would highly recommend this course.

We are not talking about a short introduction here. Rather, this is an in-depth course that builds up over a series of weeks into a comprehensive guide to building with standards. Not only does the course tell you how to build with standards it also explains why which in my opinion is just as important.

Zeldman says no to Maybe

I wanted to quickly mention a post I saw from Jeffrey Zeldman this week. Its not exactly earth shattering stuff but it caught my eye nevertheless. Zeldman, suggests that it is probably a mistake to use 5 star ratings on websites or indeed any other option which allows a neutral answer. The problem is that if you allow people to rate something between 1 and 5 they will often rate it as a 3 because 3 is the most neutral response.

As Zeldman points out this problem is a lot broader than just 5 star ratings. It also applies to any response that allows for people to be uncommitted. Given a choice people will normally take a neutral stance.

As I said, this wasn’t an earth shattering post. But, what it did drive home is that web design is as much about understanding your users psychology as it is about good design or clean code.

IE Net render

I came across a site this week called IE Net Render that takes free instant screengrabs of your site displayed on IE 7, 6 or 5.5. This is a great way to see how your site is rendering on IE 6 or 5.5 once you have upgraded to 7. Its also damn useful if you are a mac or Linux user.

Of course, there are similar services out there but most of them charge and those that don’t are incredibly slow. What impressed me about IE Net Render was the speed with which it returned results. The only draw back is that it does not return content below its artificial fold.

Paul’s corner: Design testing

Headscape has always used design testing as part of its development process and yet we seem to be in the minority. We are often met with a lot of skepticism about the benefits of putting a design concept in front of real users as well as questions about how the process works. As I have received two emails on the subject over the last week I thought it was about time I explained the idea properly.

I have blogged about design testing. How we do it and why we think it works?

Marcus’ bit: Growing a web design buisness

Got this question from Andrew:

Last year I started my web design business from a back bedroom with very little experience and an old copy of Dreamweaver! I’m pleased to say I’m still here and the business is growing steadily. Your forum and podcasts have been invaluable and offered loads of great advice and support and no doubt helped many others in my position so thank you!
My question for you both is have you any advice on managing the growth and development of a web design business? As a one man band, when is a good time to take someone on, or could I realistically work with freelancers all the time? It seems that to take someone on is very costly (not just in terms of skills) but if I want to expand the business and our services for clients I can’t do it alone. Should I hire someone who can do everything, or someone who can sell leaving me to do design and development work? What are the pitfalls that I should look out for?

Any thoughts or insight into your experiences would be really helpful.

Interesting question, and one we have a lot of experience of but… one I feel I need to add a caveat to. What I am about to say is my personal opinion and does not constitute legal advice!

Ok, the easy bit first:

Sales people

Bless ‘em… we had enough bad experiences of sales people during our tenure at our previous company to know that the only people who reliably sell the services of a web design company are the people that own it.

I’m not saying there aren’t any good sales people out there, just that selling quite highly priced solution based work does not fit well with the standard sales ethos. Sales people like products. They like products with set prices (that they can cut). They like having demonstrable ROI.

Design, in particular, is very hard to put figures to. I can’t tell a company that redesigning their site will boost sales by X or Y percentage. I can talk about brand values and the importance of conveying quality online but I can’t put hard figures to it.

Most web design sales involve responding to a tender with a lengthy proposal and subsequent pitch that is tailored for that particular prospective client. It usually draws from all aspects of the business – design, technical, consultancy – and therefore needs someone with a good understanding of the business to put it together. I.e. the company owner/director.

Who to employ

Headscape currently includes the following general production roles:

  • Designer
  • Developer
  • Project manager
  • Information architect
  • Testing facilitator

Again, the directors tend to share IA and testing with the project managers. Project managers are invaluable members of any team but if you are looking to employ your first member of staff you need to get a designer or developer on board first.

Look at your own skills and see where you’re lacking. Maybe filling the gaps is the right way forward. However, that may only be appropriate if you’re looking to take on more complex work and simply doubling up on what you already have may be the most prudent move. Often, a new project win will point towards who the right person is.

When we started we had Paul doing design and some technical work, Chris doing project management and me doing sales. At the time, we had a great client that kept firing Flash work at us. We outsourced a couple of times but eventually ended offering a permanent position to one of these guys (he is still with us, as is the other guy who we outsourced to then!).
You mentioned hiring someone who can do everything – Chris, who was the first guy to join us, is a bit of a jack-of-all-trades so was perfect for us at the time. As we have grown though, we have looked for more and more specialist people.

Permanent or freelancer

Taking on freelancers can often mean the difference between being able to deliver a job or not. However, they are expensive and will badly erode your bottom line if you do it all the time. So, ask yourself – if I had an employee instead of a freelancer over the past X months, how much would I have saved?

Employees are a responsibility though and need looking after . One thing we have learned over the years is that happy staff make for more productive and more effective staff. As we have mentioned recently, Headscape has started encouraging everyone to spend a few hours each Friday afternoon working on anything they like. We get together monthly to present our ideas to each other – best idea wins something cool.

But sometimes you have to have to be prepared to make some very tough decisions. The bottom line is that the company always comes first. One final point though – and in the words of the late, great Douglas Adams – don’t panic! It is very easy to see things as much worse than they actually are.

Ask the expert: Mark Buckingham on SEO

This week we have Mark Buckingham on the show from netseek.co.uk to introduce us to the world of search engine optimization.

Mark helps dispels some myths surround SEO. He discusses best practice and talks about specific techniques such as keyword density and link popularity.

To be honest I felt like we only just scratched the surface of the subject of search engine optimization and would be keen to speak with Mark again. Its such a massive area that it is hard to know where to begin. So, if you have any specific questions you would like answered on SEO then drop me a line at [email protected] and I will get Mark back on soon.

Book recommendations

Finally, I just wanted to let you know that I have finally sorted my act out in regards to my reading list. One of the most common emails I receive asks me if I can recommend a book or what I am currently reading.

Now, I posted a list of recommended books ages ago but I never got around to updating it. Well I have finally done so and also gone a step further by creating an RSS feed of any books I read (be warned these will not all be web design related).

I promise to keep both the post and RSS feed up to date from now on!

Show 81: Money Matters

Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

This week on Boagworld: Paul gives advice to those who work with content management systems. Marcus finally talks about charge out rates and we talk to Dan Mall and Mark Huot about swfIR.

Download this show.

Launch our podcast player

News and events

37signals in Time Magazine

I notice that 37signals have made it to Time Magazine. This is exciting stuff because it shows the growing awareness in mainstream media of the explosion of web 2.0 businesses. However, the real reason I mention this article is because of what it tells us about how 37signals work. You get to learn about their focus on simplicity, the fact that innovation can happen outside of Silicon valley and their approach to a distributed company.

The one part of the article I personally found particularly interesting is how 37signals’ current suite of products was born out of a need they had to communicate across a distributed company. The idea of building a product that meet a personal need is a good one. It is particularly interesting to me as Headscape has started development of a product which does exactly that. I don’t want to say much more at the moment (as it might never happen), but this article contained a lot of valuable lessons for us.

AJAX tools

I seem to find myself doing more and more ajax and javascript these days. One of the more tricky areas is keeping the user informed about what is going on. I am encountering two specific problems:

  • How to draw the users attention to content that has changed
  • How to inform the user that content is still loading

The latter is fairly straightforward as you simply display a loading graphic. However, I am a lazy sod and can’t be bothered to hand craft a beautiful animated gif. Fortunately this week I came across AJAXload which generates those pretty web 2.0. loading graphics for you. Very nice.

Informing users of changing content is a bit more tricky. I have been aware of the fade to yellow technique for a while but that requires a white background, which my designs don’t ways have. What I didn’t know until I finished Jeremy Keith’s “Bulletproof Ajax” is that there is also a fade to anything technique. This is basically the same as the fade to yellow approach but the background colour doesn’t matter. Simply download the code and away you go :)

Waves of creativity

I stumbled across an article this week talking about the relationship between brain waves and creativity. This explained a lot about my own personal creativity! The gist of the article is that your brain needs to be relaxed in order to be at its most creative. This makes sense for me personally as inevitably I am at my most creative when I am lying in my bed at night.

The sad truth is that we spend most of our lives in a more agitated state and so creativity is hard to achieve. This dove tales nicely with my experience of implementing “Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-free Productivity” (David Allen). Since reading that book I have felt much more relaxed and in control and hence I have been considerably more creative.

Eric Meyer explain why forms controls can’t be styled

A big thanks to Eric Meyer who has been kind enough to look into the incredibly confusing area of form controls and then explained it to the rest of us. Many web designers express a real frustration with the fact that you cannot consistently style form elements. Although personally I think it is generally unwise from a usability perspective to start mucking around with form elements, I have still always wondered why browser developers have chosen to give us so little control. In a recent post Eric goes into extensive detail about why form controls are “weird” but the upshot is that you are simply better off not styling them.

Agony uncle: Web Design rates

Another question from Bob in Iceland:

“Hi guys, I am becoming increasingly bewildered with what I should charge for web design work. I also do a fair amount of copywriting and content research. What should I charge? Should my rates change for different work? I am a one man band.”

Firstly, I should say that there is no real fixed figure for web design related work. It depends very much on a number of factors, such as:

  • Experience e.g. proven capability to deliver
  • Ability to deliver specialist services e.g. usability testing
  • Size
  • Diversity of staff
  • Location
  • Portfolio

However, to use a real example as a baseline, a survey carried out by eConsultancy a couple of years ago showed that English web design agencies employing 10 to 20 people with a turnover of approximately £1M, charged between £500 and £800 per day for most services. I expect this gone up a little since then.

Setting your rates is partly science, partly weighing up what the market will bear for what you offer.

You do need to work out to the best of your ability what your daily break even cost is but in, in theory, your annual figures should be able to tell you that. The biggest drain on any web agency, unless you have marble and gold clad offices in central London, will be your staff. Good creative/technical people don’t come cheap.

Be realistic from a number of different angles:

  • Don’t try and charge a grand a day if you’re straight out of uni with no experience under your belt
  • Don’t expect to have 100% effort allocation – 70% is excellent
  • Price projects as honestly as you can but remember that clients are human beings and really don’t like paying for project manager anywhere near as much as they do technical development

So should you charge different rates for different services. Again… it depends. Some jobs require a lower level of skill as part of the project. For example, recruitment (though an absolute pain) for any type of testing requires basic organisational skills and not,say, years of experience in project management. If you can outsource that work at a lower rate, then charge a lower rate, but if your PM ends up doing it then you have to charge at your PM rate.

For years we charged a flat rate across the board because it was simpler to manage and we felt clients liked it. Over the past couple of years we have done a lot more consultative work that has placed pressure on the timetables of the directors. This has led us to having the following rate categories:

  • Creative director – Paul
  • Consultancy – IA, business analysis, testing etc
  • Standard – design, technical, pm

We charge a fixed uplift (per client dependent on geographic location) for on site work – kick off meetings, testing etc.

Client corner: Advice for CMS users

I have been putting together a document for work that provides some basic advice for people who work with content management systems. It covers things like accessibility and writing for the web so I thought there might be some value in sharing it on the show. For complete notes on everything I cover check out the CMS user blog post.

Ask the expert: Dan Mall and Mark Huot on SWF image replacement

I was fortunate enough to get some time to chat with Dan Mall and Mark Huot the creators of SWF image replacement. We talked about:

  • What exactly swfIR is and how it works
  • What kind of scenarios they imagine it being used in
  • What inspired them to create swfIR in the first place
  • A little bit about the process of applying it to a site
  • What the future holds for swfIR
  • What it is like working at Happy Cog

No show next week

Just a quick note to say there will be no show next week as I am off on holiday to sunny cornwall. However, please continue to send in your suggestions for the show and don’t forget you can always check out the forums if you want your boagworld fix :)

The life of a web designer

Posted in Working in web design on by Paul Boag

Well we have just had our first show and tell day at Headscape.

The problem with Headscape is that we are a distributed company. That means we don’t have a lot of opportunity to just hang out and mess around.

To get around this problem we have started meeting up once a month. We chat, eat out and show off bizarre side projects we have been working on. It gives us a chance to play with stuff and get to know each other a bit better.

The first such day has taken place today and was actually really cool. Some of the projects people showed off were very impressive including some new project management approaches and a very in-depth (if slightly nerdy) football game.

Personally I went for the immature approach and put together a silly video using my new shinny mac to give people a glimpse of my working life. In good web 2.0 tradition I have added it to YouTube.

Believe it or not this is not the most immature of the entries. This prize surely has to go to Leigh and his incredible Blow Selector.

Show 68: Tagtastic

Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

This weeks show includes hints on email campaigns, writing Web design contracts and site navigation approaches.

Play

Podcast: Download (23.1MB)

On this week’s show; Matthew Patterson from Campaign monitor shares some handy hints on sending an email campaign, Marcus finishes his series on web design contracts and Paul looks at some interesting alternative approaches to site navigation.

Download this show.

To subscribe directly within itunes click here

News and events

Diversity in web design

This week the web design blogosphere has been dominated by discussions about the lack of women speakers at conferences. Jeffrey Zeldman, Eric Meyer, Jeremy Keith, Tantek… the list goes on and on. Frankly, I find the debate less than helpful. It is interesting to note that all of the women I have seen post on the subject have seemed very defensive almost as if they are under attack for not speaking more!

More on Open ID

Open ID continues to build momentum with both AOL and Digg.com saying they will support the standard. Dan Webb also provides a guide on how to support Open ID in your web applications.

Validation: why it matters

Ethan Marcotte has just published an interesting article on the List Apart website looking at the business benefits of validation and why it continues to polarise the web community.

The sorry state of web accessibility

The subject of web accessibility receives another body blow this week with Mike Davies posting a damning criticism. What is probably most disturbing is that I am yet to find a post disagreeing with him.

Client Corner: The statement of work (final chapter!)

This week sees the end of Marcus’ series on the statement of work (I know, it is distressing for us all!). In this final segment he takes a look a:

  • Milestones and timescales
  • Project management
  • Testing
  • Deliverables
  • Pricing

Ask an expert: Matthew Patterson on email campaigns

Matthew Patterson works for campaign monitor one of the best email management sites about. Their site is stuffed with great advice for those thinking of running an email campaign and so it seemed only natural to get him on the show and get his thoughts on how best to run a successful campaign.

Non hierarchical navigation

Headscape was recently approach by a potential client who had literally hundreds of thousands of web pages which were almost impossible to organise into a traditional information architecture. They wanted us to suggest some alternatives and so I thought this sounded like a great issue to cover on the show.

Instead of trying to stuff everything we covered in those show notes, I have instead posted a separate article on non hierarchical navigation which includes everything I said and the links I mentioned. Hope you find it useful.

Podcast 26: Technical considerations

Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

In this weeks show Paul and Marcus are joined by Chris and Mark to discuss the more technical aspects of launching a new website.

Play

Podcast: Download (24.8MB)

Download this show.

What are the technical considerations you need to take into account before building your new website? Understanding things like the technical constraints faced by your users or inherent in your hosting environment, helps to define the functionality of your site.

Techno buster: RSS

Every site you visit these days seems to have those little orange RSS buttons. But what is RSS, how does it work and why should you consider adding an RSS feed to your site? Listen to this week’s podcast to find out more or check out the following post on web feeds.

Main feature: Technical considerations

In this weeks show we look at three main areas for consideration when developing a new site:

  • The technical constraints faced by users
  • The hosting environment where your website will reside
  • The integration with other business systems

Technical constraints faced by users

Probably the biggest set of technical constraints imposed on us when developing a website comes from our target audience. Factors like; the browsers used, available plugins, screen resolution, JavaScript support and bandwidth, all affect how a site is designed and built. Understanding the technical environment your users work in will dramatically alter the way you approach a web project.

Hosting environment

If you have an existing hosting platform for your site that cannot be altered, this will significantly change how your site is built. Different hosting environments support different sever side languages and databases. Also things like bandwidth capacity and streaming media services can impact whether you are able to provide rich media on your site or not.

Business systems

Integrating your website into existing business systems can be problematic. Whether you are endeavouring to tie your site into stock control / accounting systems, or ensuring it is compatible with legacy databases, backend integration can be a time consuming (and expensive process). However, if it is not properly addressed, poor integration can lead to data inconsistencies and a lot of re-keying of data.

Web resources: Backup and recovery

In response to a listener’s question, the team discuss tactics and tools to handle backup and recovery of websites and data. In particular, two tools were mentioned:

CVS
CVS is a file recovery and version control systems that can be used to manage changes to your site. As well as preventing one developer overwriting another’s work, it also allows you to rollback your website to any previous incarnation. However, be warned, this does not handle database recovery.

Groove
Although this is not strictly a backup or recovery tool, it is still invaluable if you have a distributed network of developers working on a project. By using peer-to-peer technology, it can ensure that all development files associated with a website are backed up over multiple locations. It has some great project management facilities too.

Web Design Podcast (15) – Project Management

Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

Project management lies at the heart of a successful web project. This week Paul and Marcus discuss project management and look at was to ensure your web projects run smoother.

Play

Podcast: Download (16.0MB)

Download this show.

Whether you are a manager working with in house developers, a client commissioning a third party design agency or a freelance web designer working on a site, it is vital that you have good project management processes in place.

In this podcast, we cover:

  • Setting success criteria
  • Writing statements of work
  • Handling disputes
  • Managing changes
  • Setting milestones
  • Running kick off meetings
  • Ensuring successful sign off

However, most of all we look at ensuring good communication between client, developer and designer to ensure successful completion of your site.

Boagworld.com news

The boagworld.com podcast will stop over the Christmas break with our last show going out on the 12th December. We will start again on the 9th January 2006.

Design 101 Podcast

The next episode goes out on the week beginning the 5th December and will provide an introduction to front end interface design. If you have any questions or comments on this subject make sure you email them to Paul before this date

Christmas special

Our final podcast of 2005 will air on the week beginning the 12th December and is our Christmas special. I hope that this will be largely based on your feedback. We are looking to cover:

  • Your top 5 favourite new sites of 2005
  • Your top 5 web developments of 2005
  • The top 5 things that annoy you about the web
  • Examples of the worst Christmas sites you can find (extra points if you built it yourself!)

Please email your votes to Paul before the 5th December.

Web Design Podcast (13) – Choosing a web design company

Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

This week we look at the selection process for choosing a web design agency. As a client, how do you pick the right company for you? Conversely, as a web design agency, how do you make yourself attractive to clients?

Play

Podcast: Download (15.1MB)

Download this show.

Okay, I admit it, the last person you want to ask about choosing a web design company is a web designer!

there are many cowboys around that damage the entire profession

He is bound to think you should choose him and that his company is the best. In addition, to be honest, there are many cowboys around that damage the entire profession. I hope that the other entries on this site prove that I am not one of those but I still encourage you to take what I say with a pinch of salt. After all, I am bound to be a little biased.

After saying all of that, here are my recommendations for those seeking a web design company to work on their site.

Are they a full time web design company?

A strange question to start with I know but it is one worth asking. There are a surprising number of students working out of their parents’ back bedroom. If you have a limited budget that might be fine, but if you are talking about a serious web development project these kinds of groups will get out of their depth very quickly.

How many people are in the company?

The size of the company is a good indication of its capabilities but also of its overheads. A large company is often unresponsive and tends to have a higher charge out rate. A one-man band can be much cheaper and keener to please but can sometimes be overwhelmed by larger more complex projects. Look for a company that is of the size that best suits your project.

What is the main revenue of the company?

Some companies offer web sites in addition to their main business. A number of graphic designers and printers have branched out into the web design business. Equally, many technical development houses have moved across into web design. In my opinion, it is better to seek out a company that specialises in web design and are experts in that area.

Do they charge for initial consultancy?

Some companies will try to charge for initial consultancy or avoid engaging in project specifications until the contract is signed and sealed. My advice is to avoid companies like this. A good web design company should be willing to meet with you free of charge to discuss the specifications of your project before drawing up a fully costed proposal.

Can they build what you want?

Make sure that they have the capabilities to deliver what it is that you require. It helps if they have produced something similar, which they can refer you to. Do they have the right resources and technology? Do they offer web hosting and diagnostics for your requirements? What kind of support do they offer?

Are you tied in to them once your site is built?

This is probably the biggest problem faced by website owners. Many web design companies build websites that neither the client nor another web design company can edit. Make sure that you aren’t going to have to go back to the web design company every time you want to make a change on the site. Also, make sure they are using industry standard tools to build the site in the first place. That way if you are unhappy with them you can go to another company for future development work.

What is their portfolio like and can you view the live sites?

You must see some published work. Starting with the design company’s own web site, and some of their clients’. Do you like them? Are they visually appealing? More importantly, are they easy to use. Also check that they are capable of tailoring their designs to fit the client and that they don’t have too strong a house style.

Do they have clients willing to talk to you?

Is their service of a standard that their clients will recommend them? If they are good and competent designers then they should have clients who are prepared to discuss their experiences.

What is their charge out rate?

Don’t be afraid to ask them what they charge per day and what the average value of their projects is. However, watch out, some design agencies will have a low daily rate but will make sure that the project lasts long enough to make a profit! A good web design agency shouldn’t have a problem telling you their rates. After all, it is a waste of everybody’s time if your budget doesn’t fit with their daily rates. However, it is also useful if you give them an indication of what your budget is because they should be able to tailor a project to fit your budget.

What is their approach to project management?

Will they give you a full proposal with timescales and milestones? Do they have dedicated project managers who will look after the running of your project?

How will they build your site?

Do they build with the latest web standards? Do they understand accessibility legislation and your obligation to make your site available to the widest possible audience?

Do they have long-term clients?

Not only does the presence of long term clients demonstrate a high level of customer satisfaction, it also shows an understanding by the web design company of the need to build sites for the long-term. All web sites have to grow and evolve over time and agencies that work with clients over the long-term know how to design a site flexible enough to change with the company’s requirements.

Conclusions

Hopefully some of the above was helpful and not too biased towards Headscape. Just to show my complete impartiality you might want to check out the independent directory of web designers at the UK web design association. This will provide you with a complete list of web designers in the UK and allows you to search by county and by skill.