Tag Archives: sxsw

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.

Launch our podcast player

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!

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.

Logging off

Posted in News on by Paul Boag

As you may have gathered if you have listened to this week’s podcast, I am intending to go offline for until the beginning of May.

Twitter, Flickr, RSS feeds, blogging, email, the forum and podcasting. They all consume a growing amount of my time and normally I am fine with that. I love being apart of the online community. It allows me to give something back, it entertains me and it generates work for Headscape.

However, recently I have become concerned at the number of half finished projects I have on the go. GetSignOff.com (our product for making design sign off easier) is tantalizingly close to beta. We have re branded Headscape and yet our website is horribly out of date. Finally, the book has been progressing at a snails pace for too long.

In addition I have just returned from sxsw, am hosting both the Highland Fling and Future of Web Design in the next few weeks as well as doing a panel for @Media at the beginning of May means it is time to prioritize for a while.

I have therefore decided to go offline until the beginning of May. No twitter (except perhaps while at conference), no flickr, no RSS, no boagworld emails, no forum and no podcast.

Don’t worry I will be back. I just want to experiment with a more focused working regime for a while and see what happens.

Speak to you at the beginning of May :)

115. sxsw

Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

On show 115: Lessons learnt at SXSW, Garett Dimon on form design and how to find usability test subjects.

Download this show.

Launch our podcast player

News and events | Lessons learnt at SXSW | Garrett Dimon on form design | Listener feedback

News and events

Microsoft launches beta of Internet Explorer 8

The big story over the last couple of weeks has been Microsoft’s release of Internet Explorer 8 as a beta. This has sparked a flurry of posts from various bloggers on the pros and cons of the new release. However the two that caught my attention were Kevin Yank at Sitepoint and Roger Johansson.

In short, IE8 looks like an impressive update with significant improvements in standards support. It would appear we can finally say good by to HasLayout, while at the same time welcoming decent CSS table support. This will open up a lot of possibilities for layout.

There are too many updates to go through here so I would encourage you to check out "what’s new in internet explorer 8" over at the MSDN blog. You might also want to look at the Internet Explorer 8 readiness toolkit that tells you all you need to know about the new browser.

Designers agnst

There seems to be a lot of designer angst flying around the tubes this week including two posts on A List Apart and one at ideas on ideas.

As designers we seem to spend too much time fretting over the creative process, always looking for inspiration and techniques to improve the quality of our work. Andy Rutledge piles on the pressure in a fascinating article about creativity where he redefines the word. A second post on A List Apart twists the knife further by arguing that as designers we need to be superhuman obsessives, willing to work late into the night to produce the truely exceptional.

It maybe the case that to be a truely outstanding designer we need to live in a world of unrealistic personal expectations. However, personally I like the down to earth reality of "Six suggestions that can make you a better designer." In this post Eric writes…

Your project doesn’t have to do everything. It doesn’t have to win awards, make you look good, or have a wry subtext. Getting something simple to work is hard enough. Concentrate on the basics, and see if your idea holds up when shown to the audience.

In my opinion there is too much written about being outstanding and not enough on just being better.

Usability challenges associated with web applications

The final story of the week is a post by Jared Spool. Jared is a truely exceptional usability expert and I can highly recommend his Podcast. He is also an excellent speaker that I had the pleasure to hear again this year at SXSW.

The reason I mention him is because of a post entitled "3 important usability challenges for designing web applications." What I find so refreshing about this post is that it focuses on the web applications we all have on our sites rather than the trendy web 2.0. apps we hear so much about.

Sites like delicious, gmail, of even the up and coming getsignoff (shamless plug!) are somewhat unusal in terms of web apps because the whole site is the app. Most web applications are a part of a greater whole. They are contact databases on corporate intranets or ticket reservation systems on airline sites.

The challenges associated with these types of web apps are different from their trendier cousins and Jared addresses these problems in his post.

It is definately worth reading if you have web applications on your site.

Back to top

Feature: Lessons learnt SXSW

Marcus shares his impressions of SXSW and the lessons we can all learn.

Back to top

Interview: Garrett Dimon on form design

Paul: So joining me today is Garrett Dimon. Good to have you on the show. How are you?

Garrett: Pretty good.

Paul: Now I have to say I’m really excited about having you on the show because I have to say I’ve become a bit of a fan. I’m sorry to admit this and I know it’s horribly embarrassing when people say things like this to you. But ever since you’ve released your website which so impressed me I’ve been kinda following your work since then, some of the stuff you’ve been doing. You’re everything I’m not. You’re minimalistic, you’re clean and considered and well thought through while I’m chaotic, over the top and brash. That’s why I’m attracted to your work I think because you’re the
opposite of me.

Garrett: Everything I do from my apartment and everything is just the less I have, the simpler things are, the better things seem to turn out for me.

Paul: If only I could live that way. I’m just not… my brain just doesn’t function in that way. But that’s really cool. So I wanted to get you on the show to talk about forms of all things. It’s something that we’ve touched upon a couple of times in the show but mainly as passing comments in news stories and things like that. In actual fact a couple of the times we have mentioned it, it’s your name that’s come up. It seems to be something that you write a lot about from time to time. You see different articles popping up in different places. Why forms? What is it about forms that seems to attract your attention?

Garret You know it’s hard to give an answer. I really don’t know. But in thinking about it probably my first bet is that I really don’t consider myself to be a designer per say in terms of the more traditional, more artistic design orientated type of visual designer. But with forms it’s more about the interaction design and the more logical aspects of design which are things that definitely work better in my head. So how do you write error messages; how do you label fields; what order do they go in; how should they be grouped; do they go on one page or two pages. Some of the more logical, more interaction issues. Then using what little design knowledge I have to supplement that and make it visually easier to digest the form and see and understand the pieces of it. Basically to me it’s basically the one thing that I feel like I can comfortably design and layout because there’s a lot more to it than just the aesthetics.

Paul: Yeah that kinda makes sense. Why do you think forms are so important in a way? It’s obviously something you consider important but there doesn’t seem to be huge amounts written on the subject. What is it that makes them worth of that kind of attention as far as you’re concerned.

Garrett: I think part of the reason is precisely because they don’t get enough attention. Any real attention you see to forms, I haven’t seen it recently but it’s how do you skin your forms to completely control how they look. Which to me is one of my huge pet peeves. It seems like such a waste of time. To worry about what the forms look like in the browser as opposed to how they actually work, I’m thinking if you’re going to invest the time worrying about how your forms looks it’s probably better to spend that time worrying about how they are going to work. Are you using the right form field for that job and some of the more critical things about forms. Really forms, especially now with web apps being what they are, forms are such a huge part of your everyday interacts. Things like efficiency, learnability, accuracy, all the vasts of usability that matter. It’s not just a matter of “Is this form efficient?”. Well it’s easy to make an efficient form but it’s not necessiarly going to be something that somebody else could learn and use or you might be able to learn it but will you remember how to use it next time you come back. Balancing all the different kind of vasts of usability that Nielsen identifies and really working them out so that you don’t dumb the form down so that it’s so simple that anyone can use it that it’s just a cumbersome process to fill out. Really kind of massaging it with all those things in mind.

Paul: You’re right when you say that in the world of web applications certainly forms are amazingly important but they pretty much appear on every site. It’s hard to thing of a site where they don’t appear.

Garrett: Well you think about a magazine site or anything like that where it’s more content orientated, it’s definitely a lower priority.

Paul: Yeah but you’ve still got contact us forms and things like that.

Garrett: Yeah, comment forms and…

Paul: Ok. So you touch there on the fact that one of your pet peeves was the fact that people worry about the design of their forms rather than how usable they are. What over common mistakes are you seeing from people about how they design and implement forms?

Garrett: I think there’s a whole slew of them and I think a lot of it is just worrying about the wrong things or not giving thought to things that matter. My main reason with the designing the form fields is that people are used to seeing form fields and what they look like in their browser, in their native rendering. Sure as a designer having pixel perfect control would be nice but I would hope that most of us who are now designing on the web would have forgone that state of mind where we have to have complete control over everything, it has to look exactly the way we want. A lot of time not only is it a waste of time but it actually hinders usability when those form fields don’t look like what someone expects a form field to look like or button for that matter. When the design becomes design for design’s sake it actually hinders usability in addition to just wasting time. When I initially started developing things it was all about consistency because consistency is easier to implement. If every form field looks the same, behaved the same, is the same size etc. it’s easier to implement because you use the same CSS and you don’t have to put as much thought into it. So while consistency is valuable there’s definitely an aspect of context that a lot of people don’t necessarily pay attention to. In some situations, I think 37 Signals have done a good job on this, they’ll make some fields larger than others relative to the size. In particular in Backpack, their headings aren’t just a form field they are actually bolder and look a little more like a header. They are a little larger font than the body of the note. It adds a little bit of context so that it’s more intuitive as to what the purpose of that field is. There’s a lot of different ways to do it. That’s just one of the more tangible ones. Basically the mistake being focusing too blindly on making everything consistent when there are appropriate situations to break the rules and use context to make some changes. Another one is just dumping a whole form onto the page without breaking it up into logical sections or groups. A lot of times people are afraid of making a form any longer visually because of scrolling. While you don’t want somebody to scroll 80 screenfuls, scrolling one versus eight screens is neligable.

Paul: So you wouldn’t suggest splitting forms across multiple pages then?

Garrett: Well there’s definitely context for that if it’s appropriate. Amazon is a great example there because you’ve got your payment screen and your address screen. It actually can be a fairly complex process but the time you’ve selected several addresses or updated an address, updated a payment method, changed the items in your cart. As you’re jumping around the different screen’s you definitely wouldn’t want all that interaction to try and be contained on one screen. It depends on the size of the form and the context of the form and how interactive it can be, how many potential branches off of that path are there to take. Another would be poor labelling. A lot of the time people label things. This goes back to just naming conventions in general. Just basic information architecture stuff. Whether it follows a corporate naming convention that may not be the right word for somebody that’s not inside the company wall or just simply flat out the wrong word for international [???]. Really anything. Just not putting enough thought into the label. The first thing that pops into your head isn’t always the right thing. Using the wrong kind of inputs so a lot of times whilst… and I have no idea in the world why people would do this… People who for instance who use checkboxes when they won’t use radio buttons and instead they write Javascript to control the radio button. Checkboxes as if they were radio buttons. Thinks like that where I just have no idea what these people were thinking in some of these situations. Just a lot of things like using a radio button or having a yes/no radio button where a checkbox could work. Multiple select lists which are an absolutely terrible interface element to use because a lot of people don’t know you can control+click. If there are small lines and you accidentally slip off that control key and click on a new one, it’ll select that new one and erase all your other selections in that list. There’s different things that kinda get abused and misused in situations where they really aren’t necessiary. A much simpler solution usually exists.

Paul: Yeah. I’ve seen the radio button, checkbox problem and it’s always very amusing.

Garrett: And vice-versa. Where it’s radio buttons and they try and make them checkboxes just because they think it looks prettier sometimes.

Paul: How bizarre.

Garrett: Which I guess is another great example – over using Javascript in forms. It’s one of those things. I don’t know where I heard it but the best description I ever heard of Javascript, Ajax or any of that stuff is that it’s really a spice. If you’re cooking you wouldn’t just dump a whole bottle into your pot. Or you wouldn’t start with a bottle of curry and dump it into a pot and say “OK, now what are we going to make?” You would decide what you are going to make and then think “You know this could really use a bit of curry here”. A lot of people just don’t use Javascript as a spice. It really starts to define the experience and in a lot of situations actually makes it worse or more confusing.

Paul: I presume you would encourage some use of Javascript for example. Things like doing some client side validation as long as it falls back on a server side validation. That kind of thing.

Garrett: Yeah absolutely.

Paul: OK so let’s turn that question around. We’ve been talking very much about the mistakes that people make, but what advice would you provide people about approaching forms? What are the things that they should be doing rather than shouldn’t be doing? I know that in some ways this is going to overlap but is there a particular approach that you take?

Garrett: One of the biggest things I guess is when ever; doing consulting for custom applications or things like that a lot of times we don’t realize that a lot of the complexity from forms comes from the complexity of the business. Whether it’s somebody doing markup or somebody designing a form, a lot of times you know if a business analyst or whoever creates these form requirements and says “here you go design this form.” It has 100 fields and this is out contact form and 80 of the fields are required. A lot of times people just say “okay, it’s my job to implement this. In my experience a lot of business analysts aren’t really familiar with principles of the web and what makes sense. A lot of times the real effort to creating a good form is in educating everybody else about what would be involved. Pushing back in situations like that. Not in a bad way but in a very professional productive way. “You realize that this is going to be a really bad contact form. Nobody’s acutually going to use it. I’ve even heard response like “That’s the point. If people contact us we have to take time a respond to them.” The problem isn’t with the form there, its with underlying things. Obviously that’s a little bit of an exaggeration. The idea is that the best place to start with forms and any kind of interaction like that is with the principles that are underneath there kind of guiding it. With the issue tracker that I am developing, I started out parring back the process of what’s the lifecycle of an issue. Trimming out parts that I didn’t think would really be necessary. I was just looking at it in the context of the lifecycle. I hadn’t even thought about what are the forms going to look like? How am I going to communicate this lifecycle within the context of the application? When it came down to the point when I had to explain how that actually worked, because I had trimmed the proccess and the lifecycle down so much, and it was only 3 steps really, I was able to translate that concept directly into the interface. If I had never actually gone and trimmed the lifecycle down and it had 6 different states that were very cross dependant and this state only is an option when you are in this state… It gets so complicated that even if I could express it in an interface, the code to build it would have been so absolutely unweildly that I could have never created a natural and intuitive inteface. So, I guess really challenging the underlying things rather than just thinking about the things on the surface. And then really just look at every form on it’s own. In it’s own light. What is the goal of this form? Should it be laid out like a traditional form? With one set of “label” “field” all the way down the page and a submit button. Should there be other buttons? Another thing when, I have a fairly consistent model that I am using when I am designing forms in my new application. The main form is for submitting issues and that one form is probably going to get 80% of the useage in this whole system. That and commenting. In the context of submitting issue alot of times you will be in a meeting capturing things as people are talking, capturing issues cause it’s an issue tracker. You want to be able to capture and issue, save it, and move on and capture another one really in kind of rapid succession. So I added an extra button at the bottom that I wouldn’t put on any other page, cause it doesn’t make sense, to save and add another. So it immediately saves that one and takes you back to the data entry screen. You can just continue in a circle and just keep on adding and adding. So really looking at forms and thinking about how are people going to be interacting with this? What are they doing in the real world while they’re using this form? Are they copying data from another application into here? Are they in the middle of a meeting just capturing items in rapid succession. What are they doing? Are they just quickly jotting it down from their iPhone? Understanding that context helps illustrate ideas and different sublte variations that you can do to forms and make them very very practical without adding a whole bunch of extra overhead on the implementation.

Paul: I remember you wrote an article at one stage redesigning eBay registration form. When you wrote about that you talked about the fact that this is a registration form. It is a one off form, and all of the ways that that then informed the way that you built the form. How it affected the positioning of things, and the layout and things, simply because it wasn’t going to be a form that people were using again and again. That’s the same kind of context that you are talking about.

Garrett: Yeah exactly. There’s always a different context to a form and it matters. It is easy to overlook it but that context, and really any design for that matter, context is so important but it is something that…I think that main reason that people don’t pay as much attention to context is because it requires a lot of extra work. A lot of times it’s easier, and it makes sense for kind of a first pass, to make every form look the same. It takes a lot more work to go through and re-invent the wheel every time you look at a form even though, re-inventing the wheel is probably a little bit extreme, to really give it some custom attention. Some tender loving care, just takes a lot more effort that lot of projects don’t have time for.

Paul: You mentioned earlier 37signals that you liked some of the stuff that they were doing. Are there any other good examples out there of forms that you really think are getting it right and are worth us having a look at?

Garrett: Probably the one thing that always jumps to my mind any time anybody asks me about forms is all of the work that Luke W is doing. I hate trying to butcher his name. The stuff that he is doing and hopefully his upcoming book is just really incredible. In depth. He’s done a lot of eye tracking research about label placement and button placement and he’s talked extensively about primary and secondary action buttons. All of his stuff is really incredible.

Paul: So where can people find out about him?

Garrett: I always just google for Luke W to get to his site. Functioning form is his blog. He’s the first hit for Luke W.

Paul: I’ll add it to the show notes. People can get to it via that. That’s interesting. I must admit I hadn’t hear of him so I’ll definitely check that out.

Garrett: He’s one of the, I don’t know his exact title, but he works at Yahoo and he’s got a plethora of presentations about form design and all of the kind of stuff. Really sharp guy.

Paul: And he’s writing a book you say as well?

Garrett: Yes he is for Rosenfeld Media. It’s due out early 2008.

Paul: Excellent. So just to finish us off. A little bit of bile at the end of the interview. Is there any forms that you want to name and shame? Any site that do things really badly that we can all go and laugh at and sneer at?

Garrett: You know that’s a very tough thing to do.

Paul: (lauging) So many out there.

Garrett: Well there are so many out there. But at the same time too there are a lot that seem like they could use improvement but they’re companies that are investing a lot of money and research to improving their forms. So I’m hesitant as an outsider, somebody who isn’t exposed to some of that data, to try and call them out, when they’re probably acutually right on the money. The top two that come to mind that I know are successful are eBay and Amazon. I think Amazon succeeds on the interaction design of their buttons and the flow of their checkout is natural and intuitive but I feel like a lot of their page designs, and it could be a very intentional thing in order to, although I hate thinking that Amazon would acutually do that, to kind of trap people and confuse them almost. If you look at each page in and of itself I think there is a lot of design things that they could make adjustments to that would make the pages easier to understand and comprehend at a glance. I feel like right now their design of their checkout process, or most of their site in general, is very busy and intense. It’s difficult to focus on one element because there’s so many elements. There is very little very intuitive page hierarchy within each page. And they’ve made leaps and bounds, watching the site evolve over the years. But, it still feels like there’s a lot more room for some design consistency for them to introduce. They’re slowly getting there. eBay is another one who, I know they acutually, I forget their CEO’s name, but she declared 2008 the year of user experience at eBay. They’ve acutually invested a lot in trying to improve their forms and really their user experience period. eBay is one that I’ve only successfully purchased something on there once and everytime I try to swim through there I get lost and just give up. Too me any situation like that is just begging for help. I think any form, even the best of the best, even 37signals, everybody is still learning. This is all so new that even the best forms have so much room for improvement. Even my stuff, I come a month later and say “what was I thinking there?” There’s so much work that needs to be done. I think that Luke’s work that he’s doing is probably some of the best and most important work that we’ll see in forms in the near future. He’s starting to really put down facts about what really is good and bad and why it is good and bad. Up until now most of us have just been pontificating based on “well this form is hard to fill out because of errors.” Or you know, the form breaks, or the error message isn’t helpful. Very obvious things. He’s tracking the much more subconcious things that until now nobody’s really dug into and made claims about. It’s kind of a cop out on your question.

Paul: No No. You gave two example there and you gave constructive reasons why they should be improved or could be improved. No I don’t thinks it’s a cop out. You’re just so much nicer than I am. You didn’t go for the jugular that was the only thing. Garrett it’s been great to have you on the show. I think that you’ve given us some real good hints to get going I guess and make some imrovements. It was good to talk to you.

Garrett: Yeah likewise.

Paul: No doubt we’ll get to talk again soon before too long. Especially when you’re issue tracker comes out. We’ll have to get you on hear all about that.

Garrett: Yeah. I’m hoping it will be sooner rather than later but it’s definitely tough to balance the feelancing and paying the bills and making progress on it.

Paul: I know exactly how you feel, we’re doing the same thing at Headscape at the moment. It’s always difficult. Client work is so tempting because it pays the bills here and now.

Garrett: Yup, exactly.

Paul: Okay good to talk to you and we’ll talk again sooon.

Garrett: Sounds good.

Thanks to Lee Theobald for doing the transcription

Back to top

Listeners feedback:

Finding usability test subjects

Our audio question comes from Clare who asks…

"Where do you find your test subjects for more formal user testing"

It can be hard to find good test subjects and I am not aware of any agencies out there that source people for you (although I am sure somebody will correct me).

I think it is worth stressing that finding users who match the demographic of your target audience is not a huge concern. As Steve Krug points out in his book "Don’t make me think" most problems are encountered by any user. That said, where possible it is good to find people that roughly match the specification.

To be honest our approach it is very adhoc. It normally consists of both Headscape and the client scrambling around to see who you can find. The client often has "tame" customers they can ask and we fallback on family, friends and other clients for recommendations.

I should also say my local church has been very handy! A church seems to have a good cross section of ages and backgrounds and an advert in the church newsletter often does the trick. Equally advertising in your local newspaper can attract people, but you have to be willing to pay for their time.

Accessible tables

This week’s email is from Daniel and takes the form of a recommendation rather than a question…

"Could you cover the tips discussed in this article [about accessible tables]? I have seen a lot of tables on the web. Almost none of them uses any of these tips."

The article Daniel is refering to can be found on the Opera developers site, which is a great resource covering all aspects of web development (not just stuff relating specifically to Opera). The specific post looks at how to markup data tables in an accessible format. Since designers have stopped using tables for layout they have become largely ignored. However, if not marked up correctly they can prove a real problem for speech readers. A simple table such as this…

Day AM PM
Monday Meeting Travelling
Tuesday Free time Meeting

…can become impossible to understand when read back because it is read in a linear fashion…

Day, AM, PM, Monday, Meeting, Travelling, Tuesday, Free time, Meeting

However, if marked up correctly it suddenly makes sense…

  • Day Monday AM Meeting
  • Day Monday PM Travelling
  • Day Tuesday AM Free time
  • Day Tuesday PM Meeting

Great find Daniel. These are tips we should all be implementing.

Lessons learnt at SXSW 08

Posted in News on by Paul Boag

Marcus shares his impressions of SXSW and the lessons we can all learn.

Looking back at my
notes, I didn’t realise how much I actually took! So, I have decided to focus
things a bit and look at talks given by people from three big interactive
agencies. These presentations were fascinating to me as they gave me an insight
into how these companies run their businesses, their projects and make
decisions about their futures.

Respect!

This was a great start
to the conference, really got me in the mood. What I expected was a Zeldman criticism of the corporate world’s misunderstanding /undervaluing/general
disdain of all things ‘web’. I think this was what he was trying to do but what
we got was a run down of how Happy Cog works or more particularly how it runs
it projects – great for me!

It was quite
reassuring in that they do pretty much exactly what Headscape does:

  • Stakeholder interviews – though there was
    a wonderful description of when you really know that you’re about to get to the
    bottom of an issue with a client – that ‘close the door’ moment
  • User testing/requirements
  • IA
  • Design – they still do multiple concepts (which
    we very rarely do now) though try to avoid ‘Frankensteining’ the design
  • Build

The big thing, for
them, missing from this list is content and copywriting. They employ a
specialist copywriter who has a wide-ranging remit from kicking off the content
process to completely writing a site’s content. However, usually they
concentrate on editing ‘raw’ content into one styled voice.

Zeldman says that the
content is the most important aspect of any site. He has a point – we
don’t go to websites to enjoy the design or appreciate the usability of the
navigation.

This is, I expect, the
next big thing for Headscape.

Ten things we’ve learned at 37
Signals

Jason Fried telling
everyone 10 things they’ve learned at 37 Signals. I found his delivery a little
grating, which is why I probably don’t have too detailed notes on this talk.
But, again, this was interesting stuff from my point of view, learning about how
a small company operates particularly because we are about to go down the
product road.

The general theme of
his biggest messages were:

  • Keep it simple – otherwise you won’t ever
    release your product.
  • Don’t plan – plans tend to have a habit
    of becoming ‘sacred’. That is, people tend to stick to a particular goal
    religiously, rather than adapting to what is the best way.
  • Don’t expect your next thing to be way better
    than the last. If you’ve had a hit it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re next
    offering is going to be as well.
  • Don’t talk to each other! I really wasn’t sure
    about this, but JF basically felt interrupting people through talking was the
    key productivity killer. Methods of communication that can be ignored -
    IM, email, Basecamp etc – are fine.

10 Tips to Managing a Creative
Environment

This was the best talk
of the lot for me. With most of the ‘famous’ agencies, I feel that what we do
is not too far away from what they offer. However, these guys felt like they
were in a higher league.

The talk was given by
Bryan Mason (CEO) and Sarah B. Nelson (Design Strategist) of Adaptive Path.

They had looked at
(and interviewed) a number of other organisations that they felt there was some
similarity with a design agency. These included:

  • Theatres
  • Restaurants
  • Orchestras

They are all highly
creative places (probably more so than the design agency), they have absolute
deadlines (again, probably more so than the design agency) that mean highly
regimented processes are required while keeping creative staff focused.

These are the tips
that they have learned:

  • Cross-train the entire team – not easy, but it does build
    understanding and therefore empathy towards other people’s jobs and the effort
    required to deliver them.
  • Rotate creative leadership - makes people value others’ decisions
    because they know that they will get their turn.
  • Actively turn the corner – meaning make a specific decision to go
    from ‘thinking’ to ‘doing’ and make sure that everyone knows which phase
    they’re in. The thinking phase being the point where there are no bad ideas or
    questions with people moving into their specific roles (see point 4) for the
    doing phase. They described this process as divergence to convergence.
  • Know your roles - once the corner is turned everyone
    needs to know what is expected of them and when.
  • Practice, practice, practice - they mean ‘practice as a group’ i.e. keep
    familiarising (and improving) processes. This ensures quality under pressure.
    Look to bring new people in at quiet times or on internal work.
  • Make you mission explicit - to the entire team so everyone knows
    where the team is supposed to be going and what they stand for (i.e. what it
    means to be a ‘Headscaper’ instead of just a ‘designer’ or ‘developer’). Cut
    out stuff that isn’t part of the mission – be ruthless.
  • Kill your darlings - but do it respectfully e.g. for the
    young chef – "we won’t use that recipe, it’s not for us. You put it on
    your menu when you get your first restaurant!" AP hiring decisions are made
    without discussion – thumbs up, they’re in, thumbs down, they’re out.
    They only discuss if it’s neither.
  • Leadership is a service - leaders should talk to everyone about
    their involvement. For example, a creative director should provide space not
    enforce their vision.
  • Generate projects around the groups’ interest - in other words, only take on work that
    you want! Easy said. However, maybe a watered down version would be to dish
    work out based on personal preferences rather than just who’s available. BM
    said "any time that AP has taken on work for the money or the kudos of a
    particular client, it has bombed. If there’s no interest internally in a pitch
    - drop it".
  • Remember your audience - what you’re doing isn’t for you, don’t forget that and don’t
    forget who your specific audience is. They used the kitchen analogy where the
    restaurant manager’s audience is their existing customers. He needs to make
    sure that the guy who loves liver and onions gets the same every time. The chef
    doesn’t care about this. His audience is the new customer.
  • Celebrate failure – creativity
    doesn’t always work. Carry out project post mortems but call them ‘after
    parties’! Discuss what worked, what didn’t and what was learned. Don’t
    apportion blame. You want your creative team to take risks and to feel that
    they can take risks. If you have a blame culture then safe and boring (and
    eventually stagnation) is where you’ll end up.

112. Jina

Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

On show 112: How to be more efficient using HTML snippets, Jina Bolton on women in web design and moving to a mac.

Play

Podcast: Download (30.4MB)

Download this show.

Launch our podcast player

News and events | Using HTML snippets | Jina Bolton on women in web design | Listener emails

News and events

Some customers are not worth caring about

My first piece of news is a post by Gerry McGovern. In his latest post he argues that some customer are not worth caring about.

The thrust of the article is that by appealing to everybody, you ultimately appeal to nobody. This is something I see repeatedly from clients who define their target audience as “the general public” or “men under 50.”

You also see it among developers who become overly concerned that people using IE4 with Javascript disabled might be unable to access the site. Even content providers suffer from this problem, dumping content on their websites “just in case somebody finds it useful.”

Ultimately building a website has to generate a return on investment and some customers don’t generate that return.

Version targeting rumbles on

Next up is two new articles on A List Apart, which once again tackle version targeting. Jeremy Keith argues against it, while Jeffrey Zeldman defends the position.

I have tried to stay fairly objective in my coverage of this issue. However, although I understand the position of people like Jeremy, I believe that Microsoft have done a good thing.

The arguments against strike me as somewhat naive and arrogant. We live in a world of compromise and yet as compromises go this isn’t a bad one. By adding a single line of code we have the ability to control how the market leader renders our sites. As Zeldman says…

Designers and developers should be popping corks, hugging each other, and weeping with joy. IE no longer sucks. No version of IE will ever again surprise us with unexpected displays or behavior.

Perhaps I am overly pragmatic, caring more about real world scenarios than purity of solution, but I am hopeful about the future.

Let users tagging your posts with delicious

The last news story is two posts from Christian Heilmann. The first is a Javascript technique that returns any delicious tags associated with the current page. This is a great way of introducing tagging to your site, without having to tag all of your own articles. The downside is that when users click on a tag, they are not taken to other articles you have written. Instead they see all delicious links associated with that tag. Good for the user, maybe not so good for retaining users.

The second post by Christian is another Javascript solution. This time he provides a mechanism for walking a user through the key features on your site. It generates an animated series of popup caption boxes beside different screen elements. It is definitely useful for showing off key features to new users. However, I have to wonder if a good screencast wouldn’t do the job better. Nevertheless, it is an interesting proof of concept. Check it out.

Back to top

Feature: Using HTML snippets

If you are part of a web design team or skip constantly between projects, then you might want to consider an alternative approach to writing your HTML. Discover how we became more efficient at Headscape by using HTML snippets.

Back to top

Expert interview: Jina Bolton on women in web design

Paul: Okay. So joining myself and Marcus today is Jina Bolton. How are you, Jina? Good to have you on the show.

Jina: I am doing well. How are you?

Paul: Yeah. Well, other than the weather that we just keep complaining about, things arenít too bad here. We are bearing up under the strain. So, for those of you that havenít come across Jina before, she is now an internationally renowned speaker

Jina: [laughs]

Paul: and author and incredible web designer. And is the kind of quality of person that is selected to appear at South by Southwest (SXSW) Marcus just for your interest that she is the kind of person they are looking for not you.

Marcus: You know, I know that because I got a magazine thing through by South by Southwest and there she was on the cover of it.

Paul: Ummm!

Jina: [laughs] Yeah. I got into a little for that too.

Paul: Why did you get into trouble for that? Who with?

Jina: The company I work or. Iím not really a speaker on behalf of that company, so

Paul: Ahhh, I see.

Jina: and they printed that company name by my name.

Paul: Right.

Jina: Anyway, different subject. [laughs]

Paul: Okay!

Marcus: [laughs]

Paul: And the company you work for will remain nameless and notorious for their strictness over things like that, so

Jina: Yeah.

Paul: There we go. But, basically yes Marcus. They want young attractive, intelligent and clever designer rather than an aging pop-star. Sorry about that.

Jina: [laughs]

Marcus: [laughs] I can live with it.

Paul: Yeah. Jina has been kind enough to let me come on her panel, so that should be fun shouldnít it? Iím looking forward to that.

Jina: Yeah, I think it will be great.

Paul: If we actually get our act together and organize it.

Marcus: But, Jina is obviously that much richer after you have paid her Paul.

Paul: Well yes. You know I did have to bribe my way on. But, it seemed to work, so that is good.

Paul: So, there are so many things we could have gotten Jina on the show to discuss. She seems to be talking a lot about CSS lately. Mainly just by putting the word sex in the title of everything she does, which seems to improve your ratings to no end.

Jina: [laughs] You found my tactic.

Paul: Yeah. It seems to work for you Jina, so thatís good. But we wanted to go for a little bit of an unusual subject. I wanted to really look at the role of women within web design because well letís face it, your kind of a rare breed in some senses Jina. There arenít as many women in web design as perhaps there should be. And I just thought that it might be an interesting subject. And Iím sure that you have some opinions on it and so maybe we can encourage I know that there are a lot of women that listen to our show that maybe havenít moved full-time into the world of web design and maybe youíve got some advice to offer. So thatís the kind of plans. Does that sound okay with you?

Jina: Sure.

Paul: Good. Okay, well letís kick off then just by asking a really kind of obvious question, but kick us off with this Do you believe that women provide something unique to the world of web design, and if so what is that? Is there actually a difference? Is there something that makes womenís role unique?

Jina: Ummm. Well I think that there is something unique being brought to the table, that personís own personal style because I think that men and women have the same skill set. Now of course there are a lot of women that have a feminine style, so they do bring that into play, but I think it is more style than it is the natural skill of designing itself.

Paul: Okay. So, do you believe that there are kind of genetic differences really? ëTheyí make all kinds of things for example that woman have better color perception than men, but men have probably got better 3D acuity and things like that. Do you think that that actually makes a difference? Or is that all so marginal, that itís not that big deal?

Jina: Well I havenít really thought about that to be honest. As for color, I donít know. I guess, you know, a woman sense of color perception is supposed to be more acute. Maybe they could bring better colors to the table, but I think the skill sets are pretty much the same. I guess, you know, a lot of men can design for men and men can design for women. I think the skill sets are the same.

Paul: Oh, okay. So you wouldnít believe say, for example, if there was a website that was primarily aimed at a female market that it should be a female designer that works on a site like that?

Jina: Ah, well. So I do think that a female designer would have an easier time knowing how to cater to a female audience because they are that audience. But I donít think that it would make the website design better. I think a man would be just as capable in creating for that female audience.

Paul: Ah, that is interesting. Marcus, what do you think about that? I kind of always naturally presumed that somebody is more capable of designing for their own gender.

Marcus: Iím surprised by Jinaís answer to be honest. But, thinking about it, it is something that you think ëYeah, it makes more sense for women to design for women.í but really itíd to do more with the content. I think it would be hard for a man to produce content for a site aimed at women. But maybe the design is something, like Jina says, is more the designers have a set bunch of skills and whether you are a man or a woman it really doesnít make any difference. So it is more of a content issue.

Jina: I do agree that it would be easier for a woman to do it, because like I said she is that audience so sheís gonna know what kind of things a woman would like. But, I donít think that would make the website design any better because a man would be able to do just the same.

Paul: Hmmm.

Jina: You know it is kind-of sort-of like to ëbring issues into ití. Like, I had a firm that was from India who was asked to design for the National Civil Rights Museum and his isnít African-American, nor was he even American, but he did a fantastic job. So, I think for gender it would kind of the same. Like, if he was African-American he probably would have had an easier time but he would still have been creative with the artistic part.

Paul: So basically, he had to work harder to achieve the good design, but he could still do it.

Jina: Right.

Paul: Hmmm. Yeah. I do see where you are coming from on that. You mentioned earlier about a kind of feminine style to design. Do you think there are differences in style? What would you class as being a particularly feminine style of design?

Jina: I think it is really color choices and font choices, as well as certain patterns like some designers I think of at the top-of my head *Vera-Ley* and *Legha Alfanterra* they both you know if you look at there websites they are very very feminine. You know my website is really feminine looking, but I think it is because of the colors theyíve chosen and the font choice weíve picked and as well as the patterns. I notice a lot of guys tend to go for the grungier things and the girls kind-of go for more of a clean look. But I think those are stylistic differences.

Paul: So when do you think that kind of where do you think that comes from? You know is that something that is trained into us? You know, blokes tend to go for grungiest stuff? Even from being a kid I guess ëboys are blueí and ëgirls are pinkí, you know, all that kind of thing.

Jina: [laughs]

Paul: But, how much of it is nature and how much of it is nurture do you think?

Jina: Ewe I have no idea. [laughs]

Paul: [laughs]

Marcus: [laughs]

Jina: But, I do think it comes from the way people are brought up like you said ëgirls are pinkí and ëboys are blueí. I think it is really what that person has come to like as they have grown up.

Paul: Hmmm.

Jina: To be honest, Iím not a real fan of pink at all

Paul: [laughs] Good for you.

Jina: but I use it in my website for some reason. [laughs]

Paul: [laughs] I mean yes. You see the trouble that you are making Jina, is that we are trying to make informed comments on this show and nothing that we ever say on this show is informed.

Jina: I think, this topic is kind of just subjective I guess.

Paul: Yeah. Basically you are saying that I picked a dumb subject. That is what you are saying isnít it?

Jina: No, no.

Paul: [laughs]

Jina: A good topic to talk about it, but it is kind of confusing.

Paul: Yeah.

Jina: You know and when I started out doing websites, I used to do websites for rock bands. And all of those sites I did were grungy so I am kind-of contradicting myself.

Paul: Ahhh. So I mean, I guess the big question is that whether you know obviously the industry that you have chosen is a male dominated industry. There are far more men out there. Certainly there are far more high profile men out there on the speaking circuits and writing articles and all of the rest of it. I mean do you perceive that as a problem?

Jina: I am not really sure if ëproblemí is the word. I do think it is getting better. I see a lot more women speaking now and even attending conferences. I see more and more women in attendance. And of course, more women writing articles in books, but I think it may have to do with that it is a fairly new field, in comparison to other design related fields. And so now that it is getting taught in schools, more and more women will start getting into it.

Paul: Hmmm. I mean that raises quite an interesting question. You know, how did you get into it then? From you know, what is your background and how did you end up being a web designer?

Jina: Well actually, my Dad was playing around with making his own personal website and I was intrigued by the idea of publishing to the Internet. So he kind of showed me really-really basic-basic HTML using font tags and tables.

Paul: Yeah.

Jina: I grew up as an artist so I went to art school and I was actually going to be a print designer, but as I was learning HTML it became my hobby and it just kind of merged and became my job.

Paul: Hugh. Okay, fair enough. It is just interesting to know. Okay, so do you think we should be you know you talked about that there are female designers learning at school these days on how to become web designers. Do you think we should be doing active as a community to encourage women to come into the profession? I mean, I know for an example, that there was a lot of talk at one stage about proactively discriminating in conferences to encourage there to be more women speakers. Publications need to make a point of using female authors in order to you know setup role models almost artificially. Is that something you would encourage or do you think that is a slippery slope?

Jina: I have mixed feelings on that. As a woman, I have definitely benefited from people that were looking for more female speakers or more female authors so it has definitely helped me. But, I think discrimination is sort of a fine line and if a guy is more capable and more skilled he really should have more of that opportunity than a woman who is not as skilled. I wouldnít want her to get in, just because she is a woman. But, the fact that there are more opportunities is helpful so I am kind-of on the fence on that one. It is sort of like the same way I feel, and I know this might be considered controversial, but the whole you know like when you get a job. Are you getting hired in my case, if I get hired because I am a woman and I am half Asian versus somebody who maybe is a White male, but who are a lot more skilled than me. I donít know how I feel about that. You know, I am all for more opportunity, I think that is a really good thing. But I think that any discrimination is discrimination.

Paul: I mean it is an interesting one, as somebodyís employer, and I donít know Marcus will feel about this but there are occasions when I really think we miss out as a company. I am sorry to say, we are an all male company, all thirteen of us. And not because we have gone out to be that, in fact precisely the opposite. Weíve often offered woman jobs and they have turned us down actually.

Jina: [laughs]

Paul: And it is a very sad reflection on us. But, I mean Marcus how would you feel about actively going out and saying ëRight, okay, we want to hire a female designer because we want that female perspective.í?

Marcus: I am not too sure how I feel about that, from an employment point of view. As an employer, I think you have to look at who is the best candidate. But what I was thinking about when we were talking about earlier, and this goes back to what I am not talking at South by Southwest (SXSW) this year

Paul: [laughs]

Jina: [laughs]

Marcus: and one of the reasons of why I am not doing that.

Paul: Itís because youíre White, middle-aged and middle-class.

Marcus: No, but one of the things the people who are organizing the panel have to look at different they have to think about ëOkay we are going to have a bunch of panels talking about business, a bunch of panels talking about designí you canít have everything. All the panels cannot just talk about business, for example. So you have to think, okay we will have to split it equally between the different types of genre, if you like. Now, doing that we also want to have an equal split between men and women, I donít think there is anything wrong with that. As an employer it is a different thing. I am not sure, where the law stands on that.

Paul: Ummm!

Marcus: Iím not sure we actually would be able to say we have to have a female employee, or whatever. I think you would be discriminating against other people by doing that.

Paul: Yeah, I guess you are. But, I think we are actually (I have to be honest) I think we suffer as a business to some degree. A classic example of that was not long ago we worked on a website for a higher education institution where over 75% of the people that went there were women. And we were having to do a design. We did the first design and we put it in front of bearing in mind all of our designers are men and we put in front of some test users and the overwhelming response back was ëYouíre trying too hard. You know it is kind of overly feminine.í And it would have been so much easier in that situation if we had a female designer there just to say ëGuys. You really donít need to make it pink and you donít need the little fairies in the corner.í

Marcus: [laughs]

Jina: [laughs] Exactly, you donít want to go with crochets with pink and flowers unless that is the brand you are going for.

Paul: Yeah, I mean that is a good question actually. Do you think there is any bear in mind there is a lot of male designers out there that are listening to this show what are the absolute no-noís? How can they design for a feminine audience without kind of really going over the top? You know, is there any kind of advice you can give, or is it just kind of feel as you go along?

Jina: I think you definitely want to get critiques from women, like if you have peers letís say you are working at a design agency and there are female designers around you, get their opinions. If you donít really have that, I donít know, I guess go to Starbuckís or something

Paul: [laughs]

Jina: and get some critiques because I am just up more for just keeping it simple and clean.

Paul: Yep. That sounds like good advice. I think we are going to have to wrap it up there Jina. Not because I am bored with talking to you, but because the sound quality on Skype sucks so much today. I think weíre gonna have to get you back on the show another time to share maybe some more stuff.

Jina: Okay.

Paul: I donít know, maybe when you are over in the UK that might be possible. Iím sure that it will happen before too long.

Jina: That sounds good.

Paul: Okay.

Jina: And it might even be our Internet connection. I am sorry about that.

Paul: Thatís alright, these things happen. I blame Marcus personally. I never have problems except for when he is on.

Jina: [laughs]

Marcus: Ha ha ha.

Jina: Thatís awful.

Paul: [laughs] Okay. Thanks very much for your time and we will talk to you again soon.

Jina: Okay. Alright.

Paul: Bye.

Back to top

Listeners email:

SXSW

This week we have a couple of questions about SXSW:

Rich asks…

I am attending sxsw for the first time this year. What should I expect and how can I get the most out of it?

Last year was my first year at SXSW and to be honest it is overwhelming. Before I went I planned out all of the panels I was going to attend but to be honest I wasted my time. I don’t think it is really possible to prepare for a 10 track conference. Ultimately what you go and see will be dictated by how much energy you have left after the various parties you were attending the night before!

Talking of parties, in my in my opinion it is the social aspects of SXSW that is really the most interesting. At the end of the day, you can find out about most of the topics covered online. However, it is meeting and chatting with other web designers that is the really inspiring bit. To this end I would suggest two ideas.

First, take time to just sit in the corridors and get chatting with people. If you are in a good conversation, don’t worry too much that you are missing the panels. Its amazing who you meet just sitting around. Oh yes, and don’t be afraid to introduce yourself to anybody. Most people are friendly and if they are not… screw them!

Second, if there are people you know already attending or if there are people you want to meet add them on Twitter. That way you can see where they are and what they are up to. As a newbie last year, twitter was how I found out where all the best parties were. Definitely add me as I intend to keep twitter up to date with my comings and goings.

Talking of parties and socialising Matthew asks…

Have you considered doing a live show at SXSW?

We have considered it but have decided against it. To be honest, sxsw is manic enough without adding a live show. What is more, I don’t think live shows are that interesting to those that are not attending. This means we will not be releasing a show on the 12th March. However, we will be recording as many interviews as we can cram in, which we will be using over the coming weeks and months.

Although we are not doing a live show, that doesn’t mean we wont have opportunity to meet up. Boagworld is once again sponsoring the Great British Booze up, which is happening on Monday 10th March from 7:30pm at Shakespeare’s Pub (314 E. 6th Street). Full details at http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/403331/

Moving to the mac

Brenda asks…

You mentioned on the Christmas list that you recently converted from Windows to Mac. How did it go? Did you have to buy all new software, or were you able to convert licenses for some of it? What was the learning curve like? What do you miss most from Windows? What would you say the overall budget for this was (emptying out that duct tape wallet)?

A very timely question Brenda. With Marcus intending to buy a mac, we have been discussing the switch. I have to say that for me it went very well. Within a week I was entirely happy working on my new macbook and could do everything I did under windows and more. I have certainly never looked back and can honestly say I miss nothing.

However, I confess I was in a luxurious position. Unlike most people I had Headscape to pay for the raft of software I had to purchase. Admittedly companies such as Adobe allowed me to transfer my license from windows to the mac (after jumping through some hoops). However, that was not always the case. Fortunately most of the software I purchased was only $30-40 each. However, that can quickly mount up. The biggest waste was on Microsoft Office. To begin with I couldn’t imagine life without Outlook and Word. In hindsight, I really didn’t need it. iWorks which costs a fraction of Office does everything I need and Apple Mail is a much more pleasurable experience than Outlook. I didn’t keep track of how much I spent on software, however I would guess it was $200-300.

Overall it was a great move and I love not only the mac OS but the great software being developed by some very cool mac developers.

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

, , , , , , , , , ,

109. Rissington?

Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

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

Download this show.

Launch our podcast player

News and events | Anton Peck on imagery | Listener emails

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

News and events

Microsoft to automatically roll out IE7

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

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

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

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

IE8 divides the standards community

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HTML 5 is coming

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

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

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

Career advice for web designers

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

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

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

Advice includes…

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

The list goes on and is definitely worth reading.

Back to top

Expert interview: Anton Peck on imagery

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anton Peck: A little bit.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Paul: So do you use PNG’s very much?

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

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

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

Paul: Yes, exactly.

Anton Peck: That’s a whole other discussion.

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

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

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

Anton Peck: Definitely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anton Peck: It’s Crestock.com.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Paul: Yeah, couldn’t agree more.

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

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

Anton Peck: Certainly.

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

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

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

Anton Peck: Exactly what I was thinking, yes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anton Peck: .co.uk

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anton Peck: Absolutely.

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

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

Paul: Yeah, go for it.

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

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

Back to top

Listeners email:

Textmate reviewed

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

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

Javascript or JQuery

The second listener contribution comes from Will who writes…

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

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

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

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

Keeping your skills sharp

Posted in Web strategy on by Paul Boag

I recently received a question from Harry asking “what approach do you take to training?”. He has some budget set aside and is wondering how he should spend it.

I love working on the web because there is always some new exciting innovation. Of course the downside of this is that we are always running to keep up and there is always something new to learn.

I was extremely impressed with Harry because he has had the foresight to save some money for training. I think more web designers could do with following his lead. We need to recognise that learning new stuff is crucial to our role and if we don’t then we will quickly find ourselves unemployable.

So presuming you have had the foresight to set aside some cash to improve your skills what are your options? Well I believe you have two; spend the cash or convert it to time.

Spending money on training

There are certainly no shortage of ways to spend your hard earned cash on improving your skills.

One option is to go on a training course as Harry has been considering. I know the guys over at Clear:Left runs some excellent training sessions on front end scripting subjects like the DOM and AJAX. Also Drew McLellan and Rachel Andrews at edgeofmyseat.com have started a very popular CSS course.

Training courses are excellent for learning hands on skills in a short amount of time. However they can get pricey. A cheaper solution would be to simply buy a book. Books maybe cheaper but they do take time to read and digest. Nevertheless they are a good alternative if money is tight. I have recommended loads of books in the past so am not going to repeat myself here. However be careful, there is a lot of crap out there teaching bad practice.

If you want to be a bit more forward thinking and strategic with your training budget, then you might want to think about spending the money on attending conferences and meetups. Although these don’t normally teach you practical skills in the same way as a training course, they do advance your thinking about web design and maybe suggest new approaches.

There are some great conferences around. My personal favourites are SXSW, d.construct and the Future of Web Design. SXSW is pricey and somewhat overwhelming but is an experience if nothing else. d.construct and the Future of Web Design are smaller affairs but include a great line up of speakers.

If a conference is beyond your means then consider attending a meetup. Spend your budget on accommodation and go to a hack day or other meetup. You don’t get the great line up of speakers but you do get to interact with other designers who are facing the same challenges as you.

Time equals money

We all know time equals money. This is especially true if you are a freelancer. If you are not working on client work then you are burning cash. Another alternative then to spending your training allowance on courses or conferences is to spend it in the form of time. Use that money to buy yourself time free from project work. Time to experiment and learn online. Personally this is how I learn the most.

I try and set aside time each week to read sites like A List Apart, Think Vitamin or Digital Web. I then take the techniques I have learnt and experiment with them. If I discover a tutorial on AJAX I don’t just skim it but rather sit down and follow it through. If Smashing Magazine lists a load of flash galleries I actually check them out and look for projects I can integrate them with.

By actually physically buying your time back from yourself using your training budget you avoid feeling guilty for ‘messing around’ or ‘sitting about reading blogs’. Spending time experimenting is probably the most important type of training you will do. Take Google’s lead and make sure you set aside some time every week for personal projects.

Show 91: God Bless America

Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

On this week’s show: Paul gets to grips with the fact that the whole world isn’t British, Marcus explains how to deal with the client from hell and Julie Howell shares her expertise on accessibility

Play

Podcast: Download (32.3MB)

Download this show.

Launch our podcast player

News and events | Dealing with the client from hell | The international web | Julie Howell on Accessibility

News and events

There are tons of news stories which have sprung up since I last recorded a show. In fact I have spent all morning wading through my RSS feeds. Unfortunately as always I can only squeeze a few into the show so you will have to check out my delicious feed for the rest.

Gerry McGovern on Intranets

The first story I wanted to mention is a couple of posts by Gerry McGovern concerning intranets. I am constantly getting emails asking for me to talk about intranets on the show but somehow have never gotten around to it. Fortunately Gerry has and if you are somebody who works on intranet sites then you should take the time to check them out.

The first, tackles the basic problem of how to get senior management engaged with the intranet. Gerry observes that generally speaking management don’t consider the intranet an important asset to the business and so the site never gets the backing it deserves and requires. In the post he suggests the solution is in how the intranet is portrayed to management and goes on to propose a better approach.

The second article Gerry has posted on intranets is a breakdown of a report on what staff really want from their intranet. Basically, staff overwhelmingly want a better organized intranet where they can quickly find people, policies and procedures, and forms.

Gerry goes on to look at the numbers behind this conclusion and links to a summary of the results in PDF form.

SXSW Panel Picker

Probably the biggest web design news since I have been away is that SXSW have launched their annual panel picker. For those of you who do not know, SXSW is the biggest web design conference of the year and takes place in Austin Texas. The massive event has democratized their selection of panels by opening it up for you to vote on.

By going to the SXSW panel picker you can browse over 680 suggested panels and vote for the ones you like the look of most. Although this sounds great in principle, as Andy Budd points out, it can turn into a popularity contest for the speakers and not necessarily an assessment of the quality of the subjects.

That said, I need you to all vote for the three panels I am associated with whether you think they are any good or not! I don’t even care if you are attending SXSW or not, just get on the site and vote. Hell, I have crafted this podcast lovingly for you every week for over two years the least you can do is vote for me :)

Seriously though, I am hoping to be on three panels (yes I know this overkill) and am really excited as it is my first year speaking at the conference.

My panels are:

Hopefully at least one of these will come off.

HTML characters lookup

My next news item that I wanted to mention is a useful little tool which has recently been launched. I love this tool because it solves a really simple problem in a very easy to use way. Basically all it does is allow you to look up the HTML code you need to include ampersands, spaces or other characters which need to be escaped.

Let me explain the problem in case you don’t know what I am talking about. In HTML certain characters are reserved for use in the code. For example if you type an & it will interpret that as code and not text. It is therefore necessary to code up these characters in a special way. This online tool will tell you exactly how to do that.

You simply type in the character you wish to use and it returns the code you have to use. The site uses AJAX so results return incredibly quickly and if you are a mac user you can even download a dashboard widget.

Very useful indeed.

Moving from Print to the web

My final new story for today is some help for you print designers out there who are struggling to make the transition to the web. It is not always an easy process not just because of learning the technical side but also the mental shift involved.

Well, if that is you I would like to make two suggestions. First up, I would like to recommend an article I came across that takes you through the process of moving from print to the web. Its extremely good and makes some excellent recommendations about where to start.

Secondly, you might want to think about getting some training on CSS and XHTML. There are a number of courses out there but if you are UK based I would like to particularly recommend a beginners CSS course being run by Rachel Andrews and Drew McLellan. These guys are both experts in their field and they have a session coming up in October. Of course this course is ideal for anybody starting out with CSS, not just print designers!

Back to top

Marcus’ bit: Dealing with the client from hell

Found this rather frustrated boagworlder (Cadore) in the forum – read on&#…;

Hello everyone, I was wondering if I could get some feedback on how to proceed with a problematic client.

I have a small business client who contacted me about a website. After talking with her she decided she wanted a basic two column layout with some navigation, she would provide language, etc. All was good, but here is the main problem: I design the header or banner, whichever you call it, and she says it looks great, she loves it. Then we move onto the navigation, she likes the navigation, but now the header seems “too busy” – take a step back. One thing that cracks me up is she said in emails she wants to have a large amount of leaves throughout the design. So, I incorporate leaves and she says she is thinking of not having any leaves at all now. It’s like she wants to do the design for me? Me designer – you client. Do you understand what I am saying, every step forward she wants to go a step back. Now she has a problem with the navigation, and the background image, that she has loved and hated 4 times already. Does anyone have any advice how to deal with a client like this. I was thinking of having her sign off on every little things, but this doesn’t make for a happy working relationship. Any advice on you have proceeded with a client like this would be appreciated.

I have talked loads about getting contracts in place, making sure everything’s agreed up front etc etc. But, agreeing on the look and feel of a site is not so easy to nail down before you start working on a project.

Certainly do all of the following before you start:

  • Find out who will be signing off the design.
  • Encourage the client to make this as small a group as possible.
  • Talk to these people. Obviously, talk to them about project specifics (see below) but try to get to know them a bit. Get an idea whether they’re conservative in their outlook, arty, whacky&#…; whatever. I remember seeing a panel at SXSW where a Swedish creative director said that he insisted on getting drunk with his clients before starting the job&#…; there is some wisdom in that!
  • As them for examples of favourite sites, particularly in their sector. Ask them why they like them.
  • Ask them for any other marketing material that they have, particularly items they like.
  • Discuss their brand (even if it’s just their logo) and the importance of continuity. Make sure that you are aware of any limitations.
  • Discuss colours.
  • Discuss imagery. Ask for imagery that you can use.
  • Discuss layout.
  • Finally, when you’re discussing these items, make sure that you provide examples, choices, potential solutions etc. Your client is almost certainly not an expert web designer therefore they need ideas from you; alternatives if you like.
  • However, you must explain why you’re recommending a particular idea. You need to communicate that you are an expert. This is actually the crux of the problem I think. Successful designers communicate their ideas before they ‘put pen to paper’ and provide solid reasoning for their choices afterwards.

Summarise all of your discussions in an email. Insist that they agree (or not) upon all of the points in the email before you start.
Ok, so that’s all done, now you have a choice:

Limited iterations

This is when you say to the client:

‘Ok, we will put together a design concept for you. You can come back to us with any modifications/comments once that will be incorporated into the design concept, anything after that is chargeable’.

I think this works well for small client, low budget work because everyone knows where they stand and possibly expectations are lower. Also, constantly going back over a design can affect the bottom line of a small project a lot more than a big technical project.

Averaging things out

The problem with this approach is that it can piss off your clients. You can end up looking petty or, even worse, you can end up making changes for free after the agreed cut off point (“it was only a 10 minute job”)&#…;

The approach that we have ended up with at Headscape takes the view that clients won’t pay time and materials for design concept work (they need a fixed price), so we have estimated what we think the average time spent on this work and charge that to all clients. This price is per concept but effectively allows unlimited mods to that concept. If a client wants multiple concepts then they pay accordingly.

Back to top

Paul’s corner: The international web

Just before I went on holiday last week I posted an entry on boagworld. On my return I was gob-smacked to see it had generated the most comments of any post I have ever added to my site.

The whole thing started with an email I received from a first time listener to the show. He was complaining about a joke I made at the expense of my american listeners. Those who listen to the show regularly will know that this is not uncommon and this listener felt the comments were inappropriate. I posted a throw away line on twitter about this and accidently started a debate on political correctness and international differences. Overnight I found myself thinking a lot about the subject and this lead to a blog post on the international web.

I started by apologizing if my humor caused any offense but the main thrust of the article was looking at the broader issues of engaging with an international audience. I found the challenges of working across multiple cultures fascinating and felt it applied to all aspects of web design (not just podcasts).

However, unfortunately the majority of comments I received focused on the apology rather than the points I was trying to raise. I really appreciated the encouragement found in the comments but would like to come back to this issue of culture and cultural differences when designing for the web. This is a challenge that we all face and I want to cover the 5 points I mentioned in my blog post again for the sake of those of you who do not read my blog.

Back to top

Ask the expert: Julie Howell on Accessibility

Paul:
Today I’ve been fortunate enough to grab a few minutes of Julie Howell’s time. Julie is the director of accessibility at a digital design agency called Fortune Cookie and is also the former digital policy development manager at the Royal National Institute for the Blind. She has also been involved, I believe if this is right Julie, that you were involved as the technical author for the PAS-78 or do you call it P.A.S 78?

Julie:
It’s pronounced PAS. Also RNIB is for Royal National Institute of Blind People if you want to…

Paul:
Oh, I missed out the People didn’t I. Oh well, there you go.

Julie:
Well it’s a recent change anyway.

Paul:
Ah, it’s to keep me guessing. Anyway good to have you on the show.

Julie:
Thank you.

Paul:
And obviously, unsurprisingly we have Julie in here to talk about accessibility [laughs]. You know, it’s kinda a no-brainer really. So I thought the best place to start is, well Julie, it strikes me, and I know a lot of the people that listen to our show, that the world of web accessibility seems to be a bit of a mess at the moment. We’ve kinda got WCAG2 that seems to be taking forever to come out. We’ve got now this thing called the WCAG Samurai, what’s all that about? They seem to be in competition with WCAG2. Then whenever you go into or if you are brave enough to venture onto an accessibility forum, they all seem to be fighting over tiny details and you are terrified to say anything incase you get jumped over. Do you think that accessibility is in trouble and if so, what can it do to dig itself out of the hole? What can the accessibility community do?

Julie:
You know, I don’t think there’s as big a problem as is being suggested. I think that what you have to keep in mind is perspective and context. There is heated debate on some areas of the web about accessibility, how accessibility will change or how the guidance might change moving forward in the great big wide world of web design. But in the much bigger world of commercial companies posting content on the web, there isn’t that concern. Everything seems quite stable. It doesn’t worry me at all that the techies or the geeks, and I mean that in the nicest possible way, are having heated debate because it’s really important. That’s how things change and improve and move forward. What is important is that we as people who are part of what I call the accessibility movement, who care about accessibility and who care about the lot of disabled people, keep presenting consistent guidance to the people who really can make the difference to disabled people. That’s businesses who are putting their services onto the web. The fact that there is heated debate about the technicalities I think is positive not negative.

Paul:
It strikes me that there is a little bit of confusion among the business community about what is actually expected of them. Things like the Disability Discrimination Act. They’re not sure how it should be interpreted in reality. Do you think there’s a case or there’s a need for more legal cases to be taken up so that the boundaries of accessibility are better defined?

Julie:
I think there’s a few things in there. I think that the greatest problem that we have, rather than it being arguments about the technicality, is actually a PR issue. We have guidance. We have the Web Content Accessibility Guidance and the other two separate guidance published by the Web Accessibility Initiative. We also have the document published by the British Standards Institution, PAS-78, and I guess we’ll talk about that a little bit more. What we lack is any consistent and well resourced drive to raise awareness of those documents among the community that needs to now about them and that is businesses. That for me is the missing part of the puzzle. Of course the guidelines will keep changing because the technology is changing at such a fast rate. So that I think is healthy. But what we really do need is more effort put into helping businesses understand the guidance that we have. Businesses should not be engaged in the technical discussions because that’s not where they fit into all of this. Businesses want clear, succinct, and that’s a huge problem I have with WCAG2, succinct guidance so that they just know what to… Businesses are saying to us, and I’m saying “us” as in the voluntary sector, the government, the Disability Rights Commission (DRC), that they care about the disabled peoples access and they want to do something about it. They just don’t know what to do. They are confused about which guidance to follow and to my mind, that is due to poor PR and not having any single government department or agency in the UK responsible for pushing the guidance. We’ve got individual organisations and voluntary organisations such as RNIB and RNID doing great work on their own but there’s no government force or business force behind it. Championing the guidance that we have and saying “Actually, there’s no confusion here. The guidance has been published, it is stable and this is all you have to do to follow it. Go forth and get on with it”.

Paul:
Let’s talk about PAS-78 a little bit in context of the business community and what they need to know. Correct me if I am wrong but my understanding of that document is that it was meant to be advice for people that run websites, website owners, to really get them up and running. Is that a fair assessment of what it was about?

Julie:
Erm… I’ve never heard it described that way.

Paul:
[Laughs]

Julie:
[Laughing] I would say that it’s there to provide clarity. We were concerned by the feedback that we were receiving that people in the business community were confused about the range of accessibility guidance that was available on the web. If you go to a search engine and type in “web accessibility”, you get all sorts of stuff back and some of it seems to be conflicting. So what we wanted to do with PAS-78 was pull all of the web accessibility guidance that’s produced by WAI, and also that’s produced by the software developers such as Adobe and others like Microsoft, all together into a single document that can be read within a couple of hours if you want to sit down and read it end to end or could easily be dipped in and out of, which was the definitive guide to the process of making a website accessible. The existing technical guidelines are not for business managers so we have written a document that is in a language that business managers can engage with, can digest, and puts everything together as a process. So it talks about guidelines and it doesn’t seek to create any new guidance. It points to guidance that’s already been published by WAI and others. But it also explains this is a process. This is what you do at this stage and it’s very important to involve disabled people at this stage; at this stage you should write an accessibility policy, later an accessibility statement. These are some of the questions you might want to ask when you are appointing a web design agency. So it puts all of that together in one document. That’s what we were seeking to do really. There’s a few words I used when I was launching it. Two of those words were harmonise and consolidate. It was nothing new. It was bringing together all of the guidance so there was absolutely no doubt. If anyone in the business says “I don’t understand what to do to make my site accessible”, PAS-78 is the only answer they need.

Paul:
OK. So where would they find and get hold of that?

Julie:
Well PAS-78 is free. Now it’s freely available because of the Disability Rights Commission. If you go to the DRC, the DRC have a licensing agreement with the British Standards Institution. So if you go to the Disability Rights Commission website you can download a PAS-78. It’s available in a variety of formats including accessible PDF. After all the medium is the message. The website address for that is http://www.drc-gb.org/pas.

Paul:
Well that brings us nicely onto WCAG then doesn’t it. What are your impressions are of WCAG2, how the WCAG Samurai stuff fits into that and what your current thinking is on all of this?

Julie:
Yeah, we live in interesting times as they say. I’ve been involved with WAI to a lesser and greater degree since 1995. A long time. I’m very conversant in the processes that are there. Now I’m a policy person and a disability rights campaigner. I’m not a coder. I’m not a geek, meant in the nicest possible way, and I’ve got no interest in become one either. I used to design websites but that was back in the day and it’s all very different now. What I care about is disabled people getting access to the web. I care that businesses are enable to make that happen. So as your listeners know WCAG2 has been in development for a really long time. That in itself troubles me because that makes it seem like disabled people are a huge nuisance and very, very difficult to cater for because an organisation catering in specialising to disabled peoples needs on the web takes many, many years to come up with guidance. I don’t like the message that puts out and I think that fuels some of that kind of confusion and misunderstanding and hence that’s why we did the PAS. It was so much quicker and it puts out, I feel, the right messages. People joke about it now don’t they. How long it’s taken WCAG2 to appear and that is because it’s subject to a very rigorous process of course but taking a long time. Now it’s in its latest drafting stages and I have to say… I’m sure you’ve read it or at least looked at it. I haven’t read it because I don’t have the time to read a document of that size. However, it’s not for me. It really is a technical manual now and as a technical manual, what is important is that those of you who are developing code and need to read the technical stuff are engaged by it, will read it and use it effectively. So that’s where the checking needs to be done. I think in the past where we’re getting some of these struggles at the moment, is because WCAG1 was a document for all. So you could read it if you were a developer and you could also have a good read of it if you weren’t and get something out of it. Looking at it now, it looks like a technical manual. Then, for me, it comes back down to PR. If it’s a technical manual then they to call it such and make it clear. If you put that on the desk of any business director general / CEO and well you can imagine the reception that you’ll get, who wants to read that? That said WAI always produce very comprehensive guides to their guidelines and curricular to help the various groups to apply the guidance correctly. They will do so in this case and again for me it’s down to PR. It needs to be made very clear to each individual group, developers, business owners, advocates as well, which guidance is for which group so that we don’t get people belly aching “Oh this is too long”, “I don’t have time to read a document of 100+ pages”.

Paul:
What hadn’t occurred to me there until you just said it, the fact that this applies not just to people like Adobe and Microsoft but also applies to me potentially. If I’m developing a web application that enables users to contribute and upload content then in effect I’m being an equivalent of a Facebook or a Myspace and I need to be aware of those kinds of accessibility issues there are well. It’s quite interesting.

Julie:
It is and then it gets more interesting when you look at it in the context of the law in this country. We have the Disability Discrimination Act and that puts, and I choose these words very carefully, a legal duty on “service providers”. Now software developers are not covered by the DDA. However, the line is blurring. If a website is inaccessible, say a blind person goes to a site to do some shopping and it’s inaccessible, who’s responsibility is it? Whose legal duty is it that the site is accessible? Well it’s the owner of the business because it’s their service. But there’s an argument that the developer who coded the site has aided and abetted the discrimination. But we don’t have any case laws so this is all theoretical until we do get some case laws to back up what were saying. However software developers are not subject to the DDA. There’s a blurry of the lines, in my opinion, between a service provider and a software developer. But if I was to take an educated guess, if a disabled person experienced an instance of discrimination as defined under the Disability Discrimination Act and that happened because they tried to utilise a server via somebody’s page on a social networking site, who would be responsible? That would be very interesting. We also have the DDA, the Disability Discrimination Act. I have Multiple sclerosis. Everybody knows this. I’m very open about it and it really informs my work. Being somebody who stands to benefit, stands to live my life as I choose to and prosper because of the DDA, I can tell you from this side of the fence that the DDA is a very weak piece of legislation as it is. We don’t to date have any case law regarding websites but even if there was a case, it would take quite a number of cases to have any useful body of guidance other than what we already have and know as is published in PAS-78. Really that is your best guide. So yeah, interesting times that we live in. What I would say is that would hope that anybody who is responsible for social networking has a social conscience and cares very much about the ability of every member of society to be able to use the content, to both access it and create it. Unfortunately, disabled people don’t always figure in the planning process when people are putting together solutions and this is again where the web accessibility needs to keep on ramping up that awareness effort to get everybody to understand and to be thinking about disabled people at the earliest part of the conceptual process for new technology. It’s an issue we’ve always had that with web accessibility we’re always running to catch up because new ideas that come to market on the web really, really quickly and the trick to it, in my opinion, is getting close to the innovators, throwing in their face and keep on reminding them. Today we’re talking about accessibility of social networks, tomorrow it will be something else but I’ve got no idea what it’ll be.

Paul:
OK. So just before we wrap up let’s bring it back down to the more mundane day to day level. There will be a lot of people that are listening to this podcast and listening to our conversation thinking “Wow! This seems really overwhelming. It all seems very complicated. There seems to be talking about us having to get disabled people in to do testing, that sounds very expensive. There are legal obligations here and that sounds very scary. There are these various technical guidelines and they all seem very confusing.” Just to those people that are web sites owners that have perhaps buried their head in the sand so far about accessibility. What little step would you suggest to them? Just to get them going. Just to make the first tentative steps into the world of making their site more accessible.

Julie:
The first document to read is PAS-78 which is free of charge. It’s only about 60 pages and that’s in large print. It really is quite an easy read. We made sure of that when we wrote it. PAS-78 sets it all out in plain language. It’s very much written with the business audience in mind. I’d also offer some encouragement. Have a look at some of the case studies, you can easily find them on the web, of big companies that have applied accessibility and are profiting from it. An example being Legal & General, the one that I talk about a lot at the moment. Legal & General had a 300% increase in the take-up of one of their financial products via their website after they made the site more accessible.

Paul:
Wow!

Julie:
300% in a matter of months. You wouldn’t dare set that as a business target. It astonished me and I’ve long believed in this stuff. 300% is amazing. There’s also been a lot written about Tesco. Tesco take millions more in extra business away from their competitors because they’ve made their site more accessible. Accessibility is a good news story. There is money to be had through accessibility. If you make your website content available to the biggest possible audience that you’re tapping into a much bigger pot of money. Disabled people as a group in the UK alone are estimated to have an annual spending power in the region of £85 billion! An incredible amount of money that someone needs to exploit, to capitalise one. Disable people are very happy to be marketed to. Perhaps more so than other groups because disabled people, in particular blind people, are not exposed to advertising and therefore not exposed to a lot of choice that those of us that can see take for granted. Accessible sites are also interoperable sites. They work well on different platforms. If you make your site accessible for a PC you’re making it accessible for many other technologies including a mobile phone which people are using increasingly more now in the UK. Yes, there is a legal imperative as well. I wouldn’t be afraid of that though. There’s a long process involved in that. The DDA to safeguard disabled people’s rights to participate in society. Now indeed when a disabled people feels and finds that they have been discriminated against because of the way a web service is presented to them, of course they are going to feel angry and upset. I have long said I have never understood why I should be able to use a product or service to buy some tickets online because I can see but my blind friend can’t. To me that’s completely unacceptable and unnecessary discrimination. However it’s not a case of “Oh I’m not happy” and we’re all in court. There’s a process there of conciliation. The DRC is involved in that process or it can be, as well as a number of disability organisations because what we want is not to take anybody to the cleaners. It’s to make the web more accessible. The key to that is my mind is dialog. When I used to work at RNIB, if a blind person contacted me having found a website they couldn’t use and it was one of the bigger ones. This is what happened with Tesco. 40 blind people got onto us saying they couldn’t use Tesco and they wanted a legal case to be taken. This was tremendous because it’s alerted Tesco to this issue and it meant that we were able to start a dialogue, the result of which is hundreds if not thousands of blind people are now able to do online shopping for their groceries and delivered to their home which is wonderful. Tesco is not unhappy because it’s bringing in a lot more money through that channel where it wasn’t bringing in any previously from disabled people because it was inaccessible. What we are trying to achieve here is sustained change that will see disabled people included in society to the degree that it would seem outrageous and ridiculous not to do so. Big changes happen. I never thought I’d see smoking banned in public places. I can’t believe it. My goodness if we can do that as a society we can change the way we behave towards disabled people, stop belly aching about the issues and talk to each other about working towards solutions. I’m optimistic that in 20 years we’ll see disabled people much more included in everything that we are all doing now to keep the debate about disabled people and accessibility alive, contributing to a brighter future for disabled people. We should just keep on doing what we are all doing.

Paul:
Excellent. Thank you so much Julie for taking time to come in and talk about that. It was really interesting. I hope to get you back in again in the future before too long.

Back to top

Show 79: Despise the listener

Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

A great line up this week with Paul, Marcus and Andy Clarke.

Play

Podcast: Download (21.4MB)

We have a great lineup this week: Paul talks about getting things done in web design and an alternative approach to your reading list. Marcus explains the exciting area of insurance for web designers and we have Andy Clarke on the show to give us an update on CSS 3.

Download this show.

Launch our podcast player

News and events

Google Analytics gets interface upgrade

Like so many who join Google, Jeff Veen has been forced to be somewhat tight lipped about what he has been working on. However in the last week we have finally been able to see the fruits of his labors with the relaunch of a new and improved Google Analytics. You would be forgiven for thinking that a load of new functionality has been added to the service. In fact that is not the case. The only changes have been to the user interface. The difference is that you can now find everything quickly and easily.

If like me you found the old Analytics service confusing and difficult to use then you might want to take a look at the new revised version. It is a definite improvement.

Great new articles on A List Apart

For a while I have been a little disappointed with the articles coming out of A List Apart. Perhaps they were simply too “high brow” for the likes of me but they lacked any practical application. However this issue is different. It has two great articles about handling clients.

The first entitled “Stand and Deliver” provides some superb advice on presenting your designs to a client. The second called “Educate Your Stakeholders!” talks (unsurprisingly) about educating the decision makers in a web project so they make more informed choices.

Both are really superb articles and I would definitely recommend you check them out.

Teaching the traditional web

We are all acutely aware that the web is changing at a rapid rate. At the moment the focus is very much on web applications however we cannot afford to ignore the massive number of page based sites that still need to adapt to the changing way people are interacting online. In a post called Teaching the traditional web, Keith Robinson discusses how we need to alter our approach to page based websites based on deep linking, RSS feeds and mobile access. A very enlightening read.

Baselines and vertical rhythm

Having Richard Rutter on the show a few weeks back made me acutely aware of my shortcomings when it came to web typography. Although I promised myself I would look into the subject in more depth I was a bit vague as to where I should start. Fortunately Richard has given me a starting point with a list of resources on his site that look at the subject of baselines.

I know that many people find web typography an uninspiring subject but good typography can have such a profound impact on how people perceive design that it really is worth your attention.

Client corner: Getting things done in web design

I have just finished reading “Getting Things Done” by David Allen. Not only has it seriously helped me to get control of my workload but its also made me rethink how I approach web design projects with clients. In this week’s client corner I suggest some techniques that designers and clients should use when a new project is starting.

As seems to be the default approach these days I blogged on this earlier in the week so if you want more information on what I said in the show then be sure to check out that post.

Ask the expert: Andy Clarke on CSS 3

Following Andy Budd’s recent criticism of the W3C CSS Working group it seemed appropriate to have Andy Clarke on the show to talk about the progress of CSS 3. Andy is an invited expert on the CSS working group so has the inside track on what is really happening. In the show Andy talks about…

  • Some of the cool layout features available in CSS 3.
  • The modular nature of CSS3.
  • The slow progress made by the group.
  • And the need for the web design community to contribute in the process.

Agony uncle: Insurance for web designers

We received the following question from Brian last week:

As an avid listener to your podcast – and having spent the day catching up on them while travelling! – I was very interested in a particular segment where your good self and that Lillington chap mentioned your Terms and Conditions and having, ‘…all the right insurances in place…’, with regard to setting up a business.

I’ve recently done some work with a mate – a few hopefully not-too-shabby websites – and although we think we are getting the hang of sorting out contracts now, we have never been able to settle on what to put in our Terms and Conditions. Every time I start to do it I either glaze over or start putting stupid things in due basically to boredom!

As for insurance we never assumed that we would need any for web design. Its not like we’re making nitroglycerine or heart bypass machines… so we assumed the basic rules of common sense prevailed.

To this end, if you have any advice on what insurances might apply or what sort of thing should be covering in T&C’s?

Firstly I’ll cover the terms and conditions issue, much as I don’t want to appear protective over our ts & cs, we have reached the conclusion that by providing them we are in effect providing legal advice.

This is not what we do and it’s not a path we wish to tread!

We suggest speaking to your lawyer or maybe a local chamber of commerce who could provide a standard terms and conditions contract template. I also droned on about the different aspects of terms and conditions in episode 65.

Insurance, however, is another matter. Though, again, I am concerned about making stuff up here (as is often the case!) so the majority of the following content is from Business Link. This is what we currently pay good money for:

Professional Indemnity

If you are in the business of selling your knowledge or skills, you may want to consider taking out professional indemnity insurance.

This protects your business against compensation sought by a client if you have made mistakes or are found to have been negligent in some or all of the services that you provide for them. Professional indemnity insurance will also cover any legal costs.

Public Liability

If members of the public or customers come to your premises or you go to theirs, you should think about taking out public liability insurance. This type of insurance covers any awards of damages given to a member of the public because of an injury or damage to their property caused by you or your business.

Product Liability

In product liability insurance (PLI) terms, a product is any physical item that is sold or given away.

Products must be “fit for purpose”. Under the Consumer Protection Act 1987, you’re legally responsible for any damage or injury that a product you supply may cause. PLI covers you against compensation awarded as a result of damage to property or personal injury caused by your product.

Employers Liability

Employers’ liability compulsory insurance (ELCI) enables businesses to meet the costs of compensation and legal fees for employees who are injured or made ill at work through the fault of the employer.

Key Man Insurance

Key man insurance is designed to cover you for the financial costs of losing key personnel. We still have this for Paul….goodness knows why! ;-)

Review: Looking beyond web design books

This weeks review section isn’t so much a review as a recommendation. At SXSW you are really spoilt for choice as to what to attend. In fact there is so much choice it is overwhelming. After much consideration I decided to take an interesting approach. I decided to mainly attend panels on subjects I knew nothing, or little about. Instead of going to panels on CSS or design I went to sessions on marketing and strategy. The result was an incredibly enjoyable and enlightening week.

On my return to the UK I decided to take a similar approach in my reading. Prior to this the majority of books I read where either on CSS or Javascript. However I am now trying to broaden out the range of books I read to encompass other subjects like productivity, business process, and even some sociology. As with SXSW it has been an incredibly rewarding experience and something I would encourage others to do. I have been amazed at just how much of what I have read has related in someway to my job and I believe it has genuinely improved the quality of my work.

I would really encourage others to try the same thing and would like to suggest three books to break you in gradually. Although none of these books are directly to do with web design they all include valuable lessons that you can apply to your work on a daily basis…

Show 77: A dream?

Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

On this week’s show: Paul talks about how a client’s work is never done, Marcus looks at dealing with scope creep and we review Dreamweaver CS3 (is it really worth upgrading?).

Play

Podcast: Download (20.5MB)

Download this show.

Launch our podcast player

News and events

The web design survey

A List Apart are trying to build up a picture of the web design community by launching their web design survey. In my opinion this is an incredibly valuable project because there is so little statistical data on our profession. We have next to no information on salary levels, job titles, location, type of work done or even educational background. Its a strange situation for what is now a mature industry. Perhaps, as Jeffrey Zeldman suggests, it is largely due to the fact that we work in a hidden profession where the practitioners have meaningless job titles that bear little resemblance to the work we do.

Coding for content

If you listened to the SXSW special we did a while back you may remember me interviewing Garrett Dimon about the recent redesign of his blog. In that interview he talked a lot about his desire to focus on content and that the design should exist only to support that. The results of this effort are truly phenomenal and he has produced one of the most refreshing sites I have seen in ages. It is clean, easy to use and really succeeds in bringing the content to the fore. Well, this week he wrote an article that follows up on previous comments he made about his design approach by talking about how he coded the site. Its a great article and really shows off the fact that an attention to detail and methodical thought process can really generate some amazing results.

Don’t be a hero: Giving up is good

How often have you heard me drone on about return on investment? Well, now you can hear the guys at 37 Signals talk about the same thing but from a slightly different angle. In their post “Don’t be a hero: Giving up is good” they talk about the fact that developers don’t like to be beaten and will continue grappling with a problem long after it ceased to be profitable. The article argues that it is important to know when you cut your loses and drop functionality if it is simply taking too long to implement.

Working with tables and CSS

It’s amazing how many problems you have with tables even after you have moved across to CSS based design. One common problem I see a lot is the data in tables pushing out the tables width which in turn often breaks the design (see an example). Fortunately this week I found a post that seemed to solve the problem. It uses the table-layout property in CSS along with overflow:hidden. Its a useful little technique that is definitely work checking out.

Client corner: A client’s work is never done

In last week’s client corner section I talked about the role of the client and how in many cases it is very poorly defined. This started me thinking in more depth about how clients perceive web projects and how they often fail to grasp the enormity of the undertaking. In this weeks show I explore the ongoing commitment that clients have to make to their websites and look at what exactly they will find themselves doing on a day-to-day basis. As with last week’s client corner, this is a subject I have recently blogged about and so if you want to refresh your memory on what I said in the show check out my blog post on the subject.

Agony uncle: Dealing with scope creep

This week we will be reviewing a question from Bob in Iceland – “How should I deal with clients that keep changing the spec throughout a project?”

I guess the first thing to say is that the spec will change, they always do. Often it is perfectly understandable because people see a new design or piece of functionality and think ‘hey, we could do X or Y as well’.

But… and I have been as guilty of this as anyone… often the scope will creep as the client learns about the web development process as the project goes along. This is avoidable. It can often be seen as pedantic, or possibly even negative, to spell out exactly what a client is getting. For example, design iterations or template styles. Ask yourself when writing the spec – would a layman understand this? If not, then add notes to explain.

So, what to do when the first request outside scope comes in? As with most things, use your brain regarding how to respond!

If it is a 5 minute job then just do it, but make sure that client is aware that it is outside scope so a) you can earn some points with them and b) let them know that you are keeping a tight eye on the scope of the project.

Anything over that, you need to respond in writing (email is fine) stating that the work is outside scope and you estimate it will take X hours to complete… please confirm that you wish us to go ahead with the work. This puts the onus back on the client and makes them think about whether they really do want the work done.

It is good practice to have a change control procedure written into any statement of work. These can sometimes be over the top, demanding contract extensions in writing and the like (which probably is appropriate for a large new piece of work) but usually something like –

As and when issues arise, it is the project manager’s responsibility to raise these with the client and agree any actions to be taken.

If any rescheduling is required, the project manager will be responsible for ensuring that acceptable changes to the schedule are agreed with the client and documented.
The project manager will maintain an issue log and ensure that issues are either closed following discussion with the client or result in an agreed change to the project plan, with associated change documentation including price change where required.

Basically, this is saying ‘use your head’ and make sure you write down whatever is agreed.

Sometimes, however, it is wise to carry out additional work as a gesture of good will. This is usually appropriate if you ‘owe’ the client a ‘favour’ of some sort, for example if you had charged 5 days to produce a design and it took 1 because they signed it off immediately. You don’t necessarily actually owe them anything (assuming a fixed price contract) but they will be aware that you didn’t put in as much effort and probably won’t take a kind view to your charging them for an extra half an hour’s work at the end of the project.

Review: Dreamweaver CS3

I finally got my hands on a copy of Dreamweaver CS3 this week and although I am still taking it all in I thought I would share some of initial thoughts.

I guess the question you want answer is whether it is worth upgrading or not. As normal the answer isn’t black and white. If you are a a strong standards based designer who has worked with things like DOM Scripting or AJAX then this upgrade probably isn’t for you. However if you are still finding your feet with CSS and don’t want to learn Javascript then this upgrade is definitely worth considering.

Obviously Adobe is trying to pursued us that Dreamweaver offers a huge range of reasons to upgrades such as better Photoshop integration and improved browser testing. However, when it comes down to it, I believe it only offers two killer features.

CSS Layout made easy

If you are new to CSS this feature might be useful. It basically allows you to select from a series of CSS layout templates to get you started. Now, this never replaces hand coding it from scratch, however if you are anything like me you find it easier to learn from example and this certainly helps with that.

Spry framework

If you have tried and failed to get your head around DOM Scripting and AJAX then I would suggest you start off by buying “DOM Scripting: Web Design with JavaScript and the Document Object Model” (J. Keith) or “Bulletproof Ajax (Voices That Matter)” (Jeremy Keith). However, if even that fails then you might want to take a look at the Javascript framework now built into Dreamweaver CS3. As with CSS layout I should stress this isn’t as good as hand coding because:

  • you are stuffed if you want to add or amend functionality not offered from within the framework.
  • the code is bloated in places meaning it will make the page take longer to download.

However, that said, the functionality offered in Dreamweaver is very impressive. You can achieve all of the following without touching a line of code:

  • Work with XML datasets (like RSS feeds)
  • Expand and collapse content areas
  • Make accordion menus
  • Validate forms

The code isn’t great but at least from what I have seen it degrades reasonably and isn’t too intrusive.

If you are a confident CSS and DOM Scripting coder then the upgrade offers considerably less. Personally the best thing I saw was the ability to sort my CSS files in a drag and drop approach. Beyond that and copy and paste straight from Photoshop, there really isn’t much to get excited about.

The question is; has Adobe done enough with Dreamweaver CS3 to keep themselves ahead of Microsoft’s Expression Web which reports say is very impressive. Personally the lack of mac support in Expression Web could well be the deciding factor in what otherwise are very equally matched products.

“Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 (PC)” on Amazon

“Microsoft Expression Web (PC)” on Amazon

Show 73: Drone

Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

Marcus makes sweet love to our clients. I fiddle with my captions and our lead developer drones on about setting up a development server.

Play

Podcast: Download (28.3MB)

Download this show.

To subscribe directly within itunes click here

News and events

This year saw some of the best April fool technology jokes around and so I do my best to convince Marcus that they are real news. Spot the real from the fakes:

Dutch to revert to table based layouts

According to quirksmode.org, the Dutch government has been forced to revise its accessibility guidelines due to an estimated € 20 million it would cost for government sites to make the move from table based design to web standards.

WCAG 2.0 finally here

Accessify has announced that WCAG 2.0 has finally been released. This extremely controversial revision to the WAI gudelines has been pushed through despite strong objections by the web design community.

Amazon to become accessible

Amazon has always been held up as an example of quite how hard the web can be for those using assistive technologies such as screen readers. Nevertheless a press release on the National Federation of the Blind site seems to indicate that Amazon maybe willing to change its ways as they announce a partnership with the NFB to clean up their act.

Google TiSP

Google are finally releasing their much-anticipated free wi-fi network (Google TiSP) that will span much for the USA. Rumours of this network have been circulating for some time, however nobody anticipated the innovative way the network would be laid.

@media 2007: Antarctica

Following the failure of @Media Hong Kong, which was cancelled due to lack of demand, the guys at Vivabit have decided to launch @Media Antarctica. Like Web Directions North, this conference will combine web design talks with outdoor sports in probably the most ambitious project of its kind.

Get Naked Day

Dustin Diaz is once again encouraging all website owners to get naked on the 5th April by exposing your HTML to the world. This superb publicity stunt is a great way of demonstrating the flexibility of web standards. Good on you Dustin!

Making love to your clients

Marcus continues his series on selling web design services by looking at the process of managing your clients:

You may build the best websites in the world but if you do not know how to sell your services then nobody will hire you. Web design, like nearly everything, is a competitive marketplace and simply being a good designer/developer is not enough. You also need a sales and marketing hat.

That said, it does seem that there is more work out there than agencies to do it.

Play to your strengths
Don’t bite off more than you can chew when pitching for work. Do not pitch for contracts that are too big for you and avoid relying too heavily on outsourcing, as many clients are uncomfortable with this. Also, from personal experience, contracting or partnering can end up being very expensive – don’t make everything you do a loss leader! In particular don’t promise something unless you are 100% sure that you can deliver on it. Failure to deliver can seriously undermine your company’s reputation.

In summary, be honest with the client. If you can’t deliver by a particular deadline or you don’t have the skills in-house, tell the client. Try and find a workaround e.g. splitting the work between you and another agency. In the end, you will gain more respect from the client.

Love your clients – old and new
With existing clients, if you pay attention to them and care for them, you will have a very small cost of sale for a significant proportion of your work going forward.
This gets harder and harder the longer you are around and the bigger you get. I haven’t really needed to chase work for a long time now (because we’ve been so busy!) so I try to make sure that when an existing client contacts us to discuss further work we are responsive and helpful. For most clients I would recommend carrying out annual review meetings – both parties are encouraged to think about new features for the site and the meeting is used to discuss the merits of the ideas, likely budgets, timescales etc.

From listening at SXSW… with new clients you should try to befriend them (get drunk with them one Swedish guy said) before working with them. This is great if they want to be friends and I expect quite a lot do. However, we work with a lot of public sector clients who get nervous if we offer to buy them an ice-cream, let alone lunch.
I guess the message was ‘put the effort in, not only will it be appreciated, it will make your life easier going forward’.

Question the client
Don’t be afraid to ask questions about a brief supplied by a client. You may even be in a position to help the client write their brief. Asking questions and making suggestions is a great way to build a relationship with your clients and make you stand out from the crowd. Of course, ultimately it will allow you to put together a better proposal that meets the client’s needs even when they are not fully expressed in the brief.

Also, stand up for yourself! If you think your idea is just what they should be doing instead of the daft stuff in their brief – tell them. Again, this will probably bring a lot of respect your way.

Ask an expert: Rob on setting up a development environment

Rob Borley the lead developer at Headscape talks about how to go about setting up a development environment to allow you to work on dynamic websites. He talks about some of the potential dangers, recommends some great resources to get you started and reviews some different development tools.

Easy styling of images

Here is an interesting problem that keeps cropping up. How do you balance the need for easy update by web editors with the desire to make a site as visually appealing as possible? Take for example the images that website owners inevitably want to add to their site via a content management system. They don’t have the skill to add captions or add styling so how do you make the process simple for them.

A while ago I wrote a post suggesting one solution to the issue. Recently it got dugg and has since proved very popular. In this week’s show I talk through the process and explain some of the benefits.

Review: Oxygen XML editor

In last week’s show I suggested it would be great to receive some reviews from you the boagworld listener. This week I received the first one from Tom and so we have included it on the show.

He reviews Oxygen an XML editor with some quite remarkable features. If you work regularly with XML you will definitely want to check this out.

Show 72: Neverending Beta

Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

On this week’s show: web stats meet usability testing, Apollo and why it is important, working with corporate colour palettes and how to sell your web design services.

Play

Podcast: Download (24.1MB)

Download this show.

To subscribe directly within itunes click here

News and events

This week appears to be the week of never-ending betas however I have managed to squeeze in some pointless fun and an article about accessible content management systems:

Click2Map

There seems to be a growing number of tools out there that make the management of Google Maps easier. One that I have just discovered this week is Click2Map. You can easily and quickly add custom markers by entering an address (even if you are outside of the US). It is still in beta and needs a lot of work (for example you cannot integrate the maps directly into your site) but it is still great for a quick and easy way of linking to locations.

Popuri.us

Another “beta” service I spotted this week is Popuri.us. This site provides SEO reports on your site including rankings on Google, Yahoo, Alexa, Delicious and Technorati. Currently it seems to be suffering from some performance issues; nevertheless it gives a good indication of your online visibility. Of course if you are a Firefox user you may find the SEO add-on more convenient.

Finding an accessible CMS

One of the biggest complaints against content management systems is that they are often not very accessible. Gez Lemon has been kind enough to do an analysis of a whole bunch of them for us and provides a great article on the pros and cons of each from an accessibility point of view. If you are considering implementing a CMS and care about accessibility (which you should do) then check this out.

Arial vs Helvetica

So you think you know your typefaces? Maybe you are even a bit of a typography snob? But, can you tell the difference between Arial and Helvetica? Of course you can, at least that was what I thought until I actually tried.

Selling your web design services

So this week’s client corner is seriously lacking advice for clients (sorry about that). Instead Marcus takes a look at the subject of selling your web design services. Surprisingly for Marcus, he has written fairly comprehensive notes on what we covered so here you go…
You may build the best websites in the world but if you do not know how to sell your services then nobody will hire you. Web design, like nearly everything, is a competitive marketplace and simply being a good designer/developer is not enough. You also need a sales and marketing hat.
That said, it does seem that there is more work out there than agencies to do it.

Cold call?

Don’t buy databases of ‘quality’ contacts in a particular sector. I may be cynical but I reckon the vast majority of these ‘leads’ were tricked into supplying their details. You’re trying to sell solutions to your potential clients’ online problems not pallets of dog food. I my experience, cold calling is a waste of time and effort – the only way you’ll win work is if you’re lucky enough to call someone when they’re about to release a tender.
The only exception to this rule are local businesses where picking up the phone and saying ‘hi, we’re just over the road from you and we’re really good at what we do. If you ever need the services that we provide please do include us in any suppler selection process you intend to go through’. If they’re friendly why not meet up for a beer (see Love Your Clients)…

Focus on a specific market sector

If your only case study is a sewage works site then go after other sewage works sites first. This is common sense: you have a proven ability to produce a website with probably very similar features to the one the other sewage site wants. You have a real, live working example to show them and a client who will (hopefully) say nice things about you.

Tender sites

I get asked about these a lot. They are (I think) better than straight cold calling but not much. Golden rule – don’t do any speculative design work as some may be a scam. I think most of these are simply there because a lot of tenders are required to be competitive but the client already has a preferred agency.  I have generated a ‘nose’ for when we are making up numbers so, if you get that feeling, be brave, walk away…
Of course, try to talk (and I mean talk not email) to the client. Be bold, ask questions about how many others are going for the project, what is the budget (we need to know to be able to provide the most appropriate solution), are the deadlines set in stone etc etc etc… If you’re getting negative feelings… guess what… walk away…
If you do decide to go for something off one of these sites, I recommend the following as a response:

  1. boiler plate ‘Why Us’. You should already have this in another proposal. Up to 10 pages of skills, experience, examples of design work and above all USP.
  2. No more than 2 sides of A4 of ‘your solution’ i.e. a summary.
  3. Tasks by task breakdown of price (inc. payment terms with at least a third up front (‘on delivery’ if you’re really worried about the client!)

The trick here is to start at the bottom. Do the task breakdown first (it may put you way over budget if you know it – if so, walk away) which will lead to an obvious solution summary then tack the ‘aren’t we great’ on the front.
The idea is to put as little effort in as possible without making it look that way.
Much better idea to…

Market, market, market!

There are so many ways to market yourself. For example, you can drive round your local neighbourhood shouting through a loud hailer if you like! Headscape’s marketing effort is focussed virtually solely on Boagworld now. The point is, try to find something that you can do that you feel passionate about and will get people either ringing you directly or, just as good, recommending you to others.

Know when to walk away

It is the hardest thing in the world to do, but it is important that you know when to turn down work. There are times when the clients requirements are unrealistic or the job is simply too big. On other occasions, the chance of winning a job does not justify the investment involved in pitching for it. There is a natural tendency to want to run after every piece of work, but sometimes you just have to say no.
I got the impression listening at SXSW that the agencies I most admire (e.g. Happy Cog) simply wait around for projects that they are interested in and the clients should be damn grateful! Or maybe that was the impression that Mr Z wanted to convey.

Ask an expert: Aral on Apollo

Aral Balkan is one of my favourite speakers and this week in the “ask an expert” section he puts his enthusiasm and humour into an insightful introduction of Apollo. Apollo is a new development platform from Adobe that allows web designers to start developing desktop applications.

Working with corporate colours

This week’s agony uncle question is based on something I found in the boagworld forum. Pecko asked whether we should use Photoshop to convert corporate colours for the web or whether we should do it by hand. A lot of the people on the forum argued that you should allow Photoshop to take the strain but in the show I argue that we should do it by hand. My argument was based on something I had read before and yet I couldn’t for the life of me remember where I had read it. I eventually found it was from a brilliant article by Jason Santa Maria on 24 Ways. I hope he will forgive me for not crediting him on the show.

Review: ClickTale

I was recently asked to beta test ClickTale, a new statistics-tracking tool. Not only does it provide you with all of the basic web stats you would expect, it also allows you to watch recordings of how users interact with your site. You can see their cursor move around the screen, watch them scroll and even move between pages. The product is currently in closed beta but it is definitely worth keeping an eye on because it is extremely powerful and acts as a passable alternative when usability testing is just not an option.

Show 71: macBoag

Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

On this week’s show Paul talks about user login and registration, Patrick Haney shares his opinions on good design and Marcus covers picking the right web design agency.

Play

Podcast: Download (30.5MB)

Download this show.

To subscribe directly within itunes click here

News and events

The world of web design seems to be bristling with news this week. Nevertheless I have managed to pick a mere five stories worthy of sharing with you:

The WASP Street Teams

The importance of web standards is a message that has now largely reached the majority of professional web designers. If you read blogs, attend conferences or indeed listen to podcasts then you probably know and work with standards. However WASP recognises that there are still a lot of web designers who are not so aware. They are therefore setting up Street Teams, which are local groups who share the “good news” of standards with their local community of designers.

Admittedly there is little in the way of details at the moment, but in principle this sounds like an interesting concept.

Elitism within web design

The Brit Pack has come under attack since SXSW for being an elitist group. Similar bizarre claims are often levelled at conference speakers, however this is the first time it has been directed at a group like the Brit Pack. Exactly why they are considered elitist is beyond me but it does raise an interesting question about what role more prominent members of the web design community should be playing.

Why semantic URLs matter

Robert Nyman has published a nice little post on the value of semantic URLs. In other words why:

domainName.com/page/foo.html

is better than:

domainName.com/page.html?query=foo

He talks about usability and search engine optimisation as well as looking at the development benefits it provides. If you aren’t already using semantic URLs then this post is definitely worth reading.

Buying and selling websites

There is an interesting article this week on Sitepoint. It looks at the idea of buying up failing websites, revamping them and then selling them on. This is definitely worth reading if you are a web design company like us looking for alternative incoming streams beyond pure development projects.

The future of Open ID

I was gutted to miss the Future of Web Apps conference in London. I was therefore understandably excited to see that the podcasts are already online. I was even more excited to see that Simon Willson had taken the time to match up his slides with the podcast to create a screencast on Open ID. Open ID is an area I see huge potential in and can’t wait to see how it develops in the future.

Client corner: Selecting an agency

We have an interesting discussion this week about the pros and cons of different types of agencies. For example should you look for a small specialist agency that focuses on one area of web design or turn too a massive ad agency that handles everything from web design to print and TV. Specialist agencies offer more experience and expertise in their particular field but often require more management, as you need to work with multiple agencies to get the different elements of a project done. Conversely, larger agencies tend to be slower moving and so lack the cutting edge experience in specific areas but allow you to get everything done “under one roof”.  

Ask an expert: Patrick Haney on what makes good design

Patrick Haney is a designer for Harvard University but is probably best known for his flickr photoset. It started as a personal project to keep track of websites that inspired him. He would see a site he liked, grab a screenshot and add it to flickr. However over time more and more people subscribed to the feed until today Patrick is known for his good eye for design. He therefore seemed the logical person to ask: “what makes great design?”

Agony uncle: user Login

Creating a secure area on a website can be a tricky business. Not only are there technical challenges but also usability issues as well. How do you handle usernames and passwords, what if the user loses their password and how do you streamline the registration process? In this week’s agony uncle section we look at setting up a secure area, the technology and the downsides of locking content behind a password. 

Review: Moving to the mac

So while I was away in the states I bought a macbook. I know, I have been rude about macs in the past but the exchange rate was so good and it just sat there looking all black and sexy. Since returning to the UK I have been undergoing the process of moving across. This has proved an interesting experience and so I thought I would share some of it on the show. I cover things like:

  • Apples attention to detail in their hardware
  • The intuitive interface of OSX
  • Why good user interface design is about leaving stuff out
  • Why I am missing Office 2007 (Entourage sucks!)
  • The rose tinted glasses of most mac users
  • Why I believe that Vista is a viable alternative for some users.