David John Mead

Brad Colbow on how “not making the logo bigger”…

Lean Dog opened the doors to their office (which is really a boat) to the CWSA tonight, letting us hear Brad Colbow’s presentation titled “Don’t make the logo bigger! Happiness for you and your clients”.

Giving us a whirlwind tour through his early steps in web design, which included some of his first concepts, Brad then stepped us through some of the pointers he’s picked up along the way.

“Design should never say ‘Look at me’. It should always say ‘Look at this’”.
David Craib

Sharing stories that we’ve all had to stumble through from time to time, like the ever changing background color and lack of content or client direction, Brad then laid out some tips that he’s gained by confronting the problems head-on.  These have now helped his freelance career, securing work for Starbucks, NationBuilder, and working with Jeremy Keith on an upcoming project.

It was a great presentation, and gave me a chance to meet up with some familiar faces in a cool space, exactly the kind of thing that the CWSA excels at. Brad also writes and draws an online comic strip called ‘The Brads‘.

Technorati tags: bradcolbow, presentation, cwsa, web, design, freelance, cleveland, ohio, july

How do you solve a problem like IE6?

A recent article on Ajaxian.com looked at Digg’s survey about IE6 use.  I think it really just validates what we already know, which is…

• Most IE6 users are at work and cannot upgrade
• Some user just don’t care to upgrade

So how should you address this?  The one solution that I personally feel most comfortable with is Andy Clarke’s Universal IE6 stylesheet.  This lets the visitor access all the content as well as releasing the designer/developer from a spiraling descent into madness, trying to make pages look the same. I’ve recently added it to my freelance site.

One IE6 solution I cannot get behind is proposed at http://ie6update.com/.  This displays a bar designed to mimic IE’s own information bar.  When the user clicks on it they get directed to the IE download page.  This is so open to misuse and, even with the best intentions, still smacks of trickery.

As to that old chestnut of ’supporting IE6′, well I’m not Microsoft, so I don’t have to “support” anything they make. Same goes for supporting Apple, Mozilla, or Opera products.  What I do have to do however, is make sure that any visitor, using any method, can access information and perform transactions on a site I’ve built.

Should it look graphically the same for a seven year old browser as it does for the latest & greatest? No. Should it prevent the seven year old browser from entrance? Certainly not.

So here’s to IE6 slowly going away but, in the meantime, lets not make the visitors who have no choice in using it feel alienated.

Technorati tags: ie6, css, solution, support, web, design

More to mobile than cell phones

With the iPhone and other “smart” phones, access to the web is now easier than ever.  They have pretty much hijacked the term “mobile web” in the public perception, so it was great to hear a talk by Dan Young (of DXY Solutions) at NEOUPA in June covering some of the myriad of different mobile projects they are connected with.

“10 years ago no one thought of dropping their landlines”

Dan passed around his very own Apple Newton, which pretty much set the stage for where we are now with mobile.  He also outlined the differences they see with today’s devices.

He pointed out that laptops are portable and generally, if its a work one, people don’t mind sharing them to check email.  Phones are mobile, and very personal, even if its company owned.  People seem to have a reluctance to share PDA’s and phones.

A lot of the work Dan is involved in use mobile devices other than phones.  These are the units that you see UPS or Meter Maids use.  They have a lot of different considerations such as:

• Environment – Sun glare, extreme cold or heat, dust or rain
• Size – Too small could sour the experience
• Dexterity – Can they use it one-handed? Do they wear gloves?
• Connection – Support isn’t always at hand
• OS – Java/J2ME, Blackberry, WinMobile, Symbian, Android etc.

Dan stepped through a little of their process. Screen flows help a lot to build the logic that a users follows (there’s no help on a cell phone). Having focus groups and watching the users handle and interact with both the device and the software, helps them make changes on-the-fly and re-test very quickly.  These sessions have also made them aware that users will “mask their fear” of the device initially, so when working with companies to provide these type of solutions they make sure employees are comfortable.  They have to also be cognizant that every touch (calls, back light use, etc.) drains the battery.

It was an interesting look into a still developing arena, from a local company heavily involved.

Technorati tags: dxysolutions, danyoung, mobile, small, devices, design, ui, neoupa

Labels & Proximity: A real-world user fail

Being good citizens we try and recycle as much as we can. Every Saturday, and sometimes Sunday, we make the trip down to the Recycling area to drop off our collected plastic, cardboard, and paper.

Recently some of the bins have been replaced (were they recycled?) with newer ones. So 5 shiny new metal bins arrived - four red and one grey. Red ones replacing the ones for plastics and the grey was an additional one for cardboard etc. The reason for the long set-up is this Sunday we dutifully went and I saw the grey bin overflowing with plastic.

Now on Saturday it was virtually empty and only myself and one other put a few bits of cardboard in there (We both did a double-check).  So what made others fill it with plastic?  One idea I had is the lack of good signs.  The most dominant is the supplier of the bin.  Can you see which one tells you what to place here?  You can click through and see it larger on Flickr.  All the other new red bins have the same stickers, placed almost identically too.

Also the proximity to the other new bins.  All of them were placed together at the same time.  So people must have made the assupmtion that if all the new bins are for plastics, then this must be for plastic too, regardless of it being a vastly different color – and no one read the signs as they all look the same.

What went wrong?

Could you blame the users? Aren’t they just being lazy? Well I don’t think so.  In the 8 months or so that we’ve been recyclying here I’ve never seen bins filled with anything that shouldn’t have been there.  And as I mentioned, I had to double check too.

Could you blame the company? Could they have better signage? Sure, but they want their customers to know who supplied the bins, so they will contract them in the future.  That’s their objective.

Why am I rambling on about this and tagged the post web? Well these are the sorts of things that I think about when doing wireframes or page designs for web sites.

• Are visitors going to find the new thing on the old page?
• Have you made it different enough?
• Is the visitor going to get frustrated?
• Does the page serve all audiences?

So it’s important to not only look to see if you are labelling items on the page clearly, but that you are cognisant of what is around them on the page, especially if this is an existing page that you are adding new content to.

Twitter’s big announcement?

There’s been quite the buzz around Twitter for the past couple of weeks and apparently tomorrow (well, today as I type this very late) is going to be a “very big day“. Now that could mean anything from Oprah is now using it to they’ve sold out to Google or Facebook and its being closed down.

My hunch is going to be about funding or the unveiling of a revenue/advertising model.

One things for sure. Since the announcement the Doug Bowman was leaving Google and joining Twitter there’s been a ramp up on the look and feel of the site. Subtle changes depending on users and even where you are logging in from.

I first started noticing a small box giving tips and insights about Twitter and the culture of “tweeting”.  Is this a foreshadowing of where we can expect to see advertising go?

As I don’t visit the site much (I use tweetdeck) I’ve been making a point to login from time to time to see if anything else was being changed.

First the pagination at the bottom of the page was replaced by a “more” bottom which expand the list of tweets. Another little bit of Javascript goodness I noticed is the post notification that appears at the top of the screen.

All the other major tweaks have been happening in the right side bar.  Look at the differences between my page and @jules23’s, taken seconds apart. She has a little indicator on what section she is looking at as well as a search box and trending topics.

Today I noticed that the information in the sidebar has been condensed even further. Updates, Favorites, and Following are the only three options there.

Hopefully the announcement will clear up some of the rumors and we’ll able to see where all this current iterations will take us.

Technorati tags: twitter, announcement, changes, ui, design

Is it an Application or a Web Site?

Have you ever asked a client that? Have they been able to answer to your satisfaction? I’m sure this question is being asked and if it’s not, it should be, especially as we move more and more into the cloud we’ll come across this.

Is there a difference?

Let’s turn to our friend dictionary.com shall we?

They have web site defined as:

“a connected group of pages on the World Wide Web regarded as a single entity, usually maintained by one person or organization and devoted to a single topic or several closely related topics.”

And an application (program) defined as:

“a program used for a particular application”

So, when sketching out ideas, this difference should be forefront in your mind especially when it comes to wireframing out pages. If people arrive and are presented with a web site “design” (content, sections, and related topics), are they going to miss the fact you’ve actually built something to manage their finances?

But what if you have both, behind a login?

It is highly likely that you could have an application as part of web site, but they should be distinct. You should separate them with a different layout and design — reinforce the purpose and try not to make one fit the other for the sake of “keeping a certain look” or “limiting templates”.

Same users, different audience.

Ubiquitous 37Signals example

We all seen them mentioned a million times before but 37Signals do a great job of separating web sites from applications. I use Highrise to manage my contacts. It presents me with all the information in a way I recognize as an application. Everything from the layout to the design esthetic tells me I’m here to do a particular thing — Manage my contacts.

So next time you are presented with this, ask the question, then build accordingly. Your users will thank you for it.