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Webmaster Jam Session Dallas - Day 2

2007-09-23T23:18:08Z

The second day of the conference started with a round-table discussion with all the speakers. I was about ten minutes late -- too late to throw in my question card, but a lot of great topics were brought up. My question, by the way, was asking their opinion of the validity of defining a "fold" on a web page. This is one of the most design-inhibiting "requirements" in designing for news stations, and it is my goal to find some way to show our site managers that what applies to newspapers doesn't apply to websites.

But back to the conference. I sat in on D. Keith Robinson's "Content Strategy and Web Design," where he talked about planning a web site based on the thought that all aspects of the site are content -- from logos and branding to navigation to what we typically think of as content -- the text. It is a great way of looking at the process of building a site, and one that many companies could benefit from.

"Unlocking Value through User Experience" was a group discussion with Chris Bernard moderating, and Nishant Kothary, Jose Jartinez Salmeron, and Nick Finck contributing. They discussed designer and developer workflow and ideas on making the design and development process smoother -- a great presentation.

Nick Finck's presentation, "The Contextual Web," was an in-depth look at the whys and hows of user-centered design, and he gave four variables to take into consideration in regard to this: 1. Who is the user (including the typical demographics and accessibility needs) 2. What task do they perform when visiting your site? 3. What is their actual physical environment? Are they usually in a company office while visiting your site or in a home office...is it bright or dim...is it loud or quiet, etc. 4. What types of technology do your visitors use? Only a pc? Audio and/or video equipment or some other specialized equipment?

Being able to answer all of these contribute greatly to a well-designed site.

My colleague went to the "Adobe CS3 Power-User" session, which sounded amazing. If you are working with that suite, there are incredible things you can do that aren't possible with other Adobe suites...just hearing about it made me start scheming on ways to convince my boss to upgrade our Adobe products. :)

The conference, as a whole, was a valuable learning tool and I'm so glad I went. The party afterward was crazy! It was a lot of fun -- there were several DJs and even a pseudo-beach with a kiddie-pool set up next to the club...it was great. Watching the cars zoom by on the highway to the sound of the music was a trip.

I'm looking forward to going again next year...hopefully going to other conferences as well.

I added some of the links mentioned by the speakers to the "Great Tools" page -- I highly recommend paying them a visit.

Webmaster Jam Session Dallas - Day 1

2007-09-22T00:25:22Z

The Webmaster Jam Session in Dallas began today, and it's the first conference of its kind that I've been to. So far, it's been a great time.

Jared Spool gave a fantastic opening presentation called "The Dawning of the Age of Experience." He talked about the need for websites to become a full user experience rather than just providing a text-based experience or a video based experience or a shopping experience. He used Apple's iPOD program as the perfect example -- they provide the cool-looking hardware, the software to go with it, and they provide the ability to purchase music made even more convenient, now, with the iPhone. By combining the entire mobile music experience, they have more than 70% of the market for mp3 players.

He also discussed the element of success that can't be so easily defined and used NetFlix as an example. They easily beat Blockbuster's similar program, but no one can really pinpoint the reason. To top it off, they do it with far less marketing than Blockbuster does. Could it be for the simple reason that they did it first? Who knows.

Rob Weychert presented "A Field Guide to Design Inspiration." His message was that inspiration can't be confused with influence -- that it doesn't come from surfing other sites for new ideas but that it's a lifestyle. Inspiration can come from anything, and there is a good chance that it will come from off-line life more than on-line life. He used examples from his own life -- the great themed birthday parties that he and his friends have and the 48 hour Films they make and other real-life experiences that influence his design. It can be a deadline or a muse or a word of the day -- anything can end up as an inspiration, if you're open to it.

Garrett Dimon gave a presentation on "Application Interface Design" by using a bug-tracker (also known as a ticket-tracker) project that he's been working on. He pointed out the fact that a lot of us are using primitive ticket tracking systems that ask for the most inane information -- you know the kind of software that asks you to designate a severity level, an impact level, and a threat level when they really define the same thing. He has a great program in the works (that possibly will be open source) that strips all of the unnecessary and burdensome information out of those kind of systems, all in a friendly interface. I look forward to seeing the final product.

Rob Jones gave a great presentation called "Measure Twice, Code Once." In it, he covered all the bases on analytics and tracking and the need for user testing and surveying. It was a lot of fun, and he passed along some great links to tracking tools, which I will add to my "Great Tools" page.

Jeff Croft gave an overview of Typography. He pointed out the basics of attaining legibility and of using CSS for that end -- it was a great introduction to a topic that I'm avidly drawn to.

Unfortunately, I missed the last two hours of today's event but am looking forward to continuing the conference tomorrow morning. It's got a great, laid back feel and tomorrow night's after party at the Lizard Lounge will be a terrific chance to mingle with fellow designers.

Will post more on tomorrow's events!

Women in Technology

2007-09-15T16:20:12Z

I just found the O'Reilly Women in Technology article series, which will be going on through September. It features articles from women working in a variety of tech arenas -- and in glancing at them it looks like the voices and opinions on working as a women in tech are as varied as the fields, themselves. I've read "I Don't Like Articles about Women in Technology," by Amy Hoy, and "Advice on Careers in Technology for Geeky (and not-so-Geeky) Women," by Dawn Foster, and so far am impressed by the tone and attitude. It's not so much about "what's being done to keep us away" as much as it asks why we seem to choose to stay away from tech fields. Of course there are several more articles to read, and more to come within the month...looking forward to reading them all, for sure.

A couple of months ago, I got curious about what kind of stats there were regarding women specifically in web design. The first link I found was to this Jeffrey Zeldman article, which was interesting in the findings that the number of women working in the general IT category (he couldn't find any specifically for web design) seems to be dropping. The most interesting thing about this article, though, was the discussion that took place afterward, in the comments.

Many commenters brought up the fact that in their work places, women are well-represented in the web design field. They also mentioned that a good percentage of their customers are women, which brought on more who didn't really notice it until it was mentioned but thought, yeah, there are a lot of women on both sides of the web design coin. If you do a Google search for web designers, chances are that you'll come across a huge number of freelancers who are women and, in fact, it seems from the searches I've done that there is a greater percentage of women doing web design freelance than there are men. Maybe that's where a lot of the misconception of fewer women in the field lies.

As some of the commenters on Zeldman's article pointed out, more men speak at conferences and write books -- and the theories behind that varied from the fact that a lot of female designers are freelance and thus not making the money to be able to travel and speak, to the theory that a lot of women have a better ability to separate their work life from the rest of their life, and making time for that takes away from being able to write and speak. Some blame it on a man's inherent need to promote himself matched by the theory that there are no female "rock stars." Most of the comments had very valid points to them, though, and it made me think more into why it could be that although there is a possibility of a great number of women working in the field, more men are getting the glory.

I do think that it makes sense that freelancers are probably not making the kind of money that they would be making if they were designing for an established firm, and I'm sure that a lot of the female freelancers with children are doing it to balance the desire for work with the desire to stay home with their kids. I also think that a lot of it has to do with the rate of change in our field (and all tech fields, really) -- the opinions on what good design is or what usability means etc. are all valid but that for every one, there are a hundred more. Most of us -- men and women -- don't have the time to take note of the prevailing opinions on a subject before throwing out our own expert voice...and by the time we find the time, the thoughts on our favorite subject have shifted to another plane.

Also, the web isn't the small place it used to be, with just a few people leading the way -- it's now full of people who want to design and to become more hands on, who have great ideas but whose voices have much farther to carry than those who came before us. I think that in many cases, a lot of the better-known (and thus we think more successful) people in web design were able to attain that after reaching a certain level professionally, when they were afforded more time for writing and speaking. With that, naturally, comes the money to be able to do that.

It's no secret that men were represented more heavily than women in technology at an earlier time, and so considering that those who speak and write more are the designers who have been involved in the web pretty much from the beginning, it's no surprise that the majority are men.

It does seem to be changing though. I can form a more educated personal opinion after attending my first conference -- the Webmaster Jam Session in Dallas. The lineup of speakers is definitely male-oriented...there are three female speakers out of twenty four. It will be interesting to see who attends though. I'm looking forward to it...mostly to meet other designers from other parts of the city, female or male.

The Perfect News Blog Design

2007-09-09T23:03:14Z

As I mentioned in my last post, my company is planning to upgrade to Movable Type 4.0. Although at first I thought of it as an impossible and daunting task, now I can see now what a great opportunity for improvement it will be -- not only because it's usually a good idea to keep up with the latest version of all software, but also in the opportunity we will have in re-thinking the design.

What we have right now is what a lot of blogs out there have...a basic, (usually) functional interface with some color thrown in. Most are table based and very bland. The graphics leave much to be desired, and they just don't scream out professionalism. Some are reasonably popular in their demographic area, but few are stars, by any stretch of the imagination.

Whereas designing a news site has a special difficulty in that you have to design for as much up-to-date content as possible, the news blog shouldn't have a problem with design. It should look professional, but I'm a big believer in the blog staying conversational and therefore not looking like a news site.

Some of the news blogs I think are well designed are those over at MSNBC, like Test Pattern and First Read. They fit in well with the MSNBC.com website, but are different enough to not look like just another page on the site. They are informal enough to still appear as well as read as conversational, and yet professional enough to look reliable.

The New York Times' blogs, on the other hand, are built in the same template style as their stories, so that they seem like just another article. The writing has a more conversational tone, but the visual, physical tone is the same as the rest of the site. ABC news blogs, such as Political Punch, are number one hard to find, and number two in the same category as the blogs of the Times. They are placed in story level templates and made only slightly less cluttered. The same can be said about CBS and Reuters blogs.

In fact, MSNBC is really the only major news outlet to design their blogs to have a different, more conversational tone than their main news site. While consistency has its place, and I do believe there should be some semblance between the blogs and the main site, the fact is that blogs aren't just opinion pieces. They are places where people go online for a conversation.

Reading a blog is kind of like going to happy hour with the guys from work -- you can discuss work, but it's in a much more relaxed and personal tone.

So, I am looking forward to the challenge and opportunity to gain enough consistency in the blog design where it looks like it belongs to the same news outlet, but where it doesn't feel like reading just another story on the site. It is a design like that that will make a news blog stand out and be more approachable and therefore more readable.

Now, if I can just find the time to figure out the new archive system...

Movable Type 4.0

2007-09-04T04:06:32Z

I'm not sure I really like it, after finally getting around to customizing my templates. Didn't they say that the template system is supposed to be easier with the new release?

For those of you who don't know, the default templates that come with this new release are divided into modules, which can be great for lists and other items that appear on more than one page. The problem here is that every single thing is controlled by a module, which contains more modules, and the result is a highly confusing and virtually indecipherable set of code.

So, trying to learn the new template system by looking at the default templates is a task that would require days of reading and re-reading and, well, time that I just don't happen to have.

I tried moving my 3.2 template code into this new version, but it didn't work. The archive templates work much differently in MT 4.0, and I'm beginning to think it's to the detriment of the system. The Category and Date archive templates have been melded into one -- and that is a major issue as I can't figure out how it's possible to have both. In fact, even on the default template I started with, the categories list didn't link anywhere...it just listed the categories. What's the point of that?

Tags could take the place of categories, but again, I haven't figured out how I can place the code I managed to find in the default templates onto a separate page so that they work properly.

I know there is a solution, but the code is strung over several templates and modules and the documentation for this release is of course worse than with previous releases, as no one has had the time yet to create documentation for them.

My company is considering the upgrade from 3.2 to 4.0, but I think the upgrade will more than likely not happen just because of the template problems. We have over 100 blogs, and none of them will be able to just be moved over to the new version...they will all have to be re-coded. That's something I wish Six Apart would have taken into consideration with this upgrade -- surely we aren't the only company with that many active blogs that use their software. The ability to move the blogs over with as little re-coding and trouble as possible should have been a major consideration.

I give up for the night. My blog is at least re-skinned.

My Web Design Blog

2007-09-01T14:10:56Z

I know there are a million blogs on web design, and still I've decided to create another. Much of this has to do with trying to figure out MT 4.0, but most of it has to do with me keeping my links, thoughts, etc. in order.

I'm new to this field. I became interested in building web pages several years ago with Front Page, but didn't venture into coding until I started a Blogger blog, about three years ago. I would play around with the design -- with some comically bad results -- but didn't really take it seriously until about a year ago. My husband and I were living in Prague, where I taught pre-school English, and we were thinking about the fact that our time was almost up and we would be returning to the states soon. I couldn't stand the thought of trying to find work in telecom, where I worked before our year-long excursion overseas, and so I spent a few weeks trying to decide what career path I wanted to follow once we were back in Dallas.

In previous incarnations, I worked in tech support, customer service, and as a travel agent, none of which sounded any more appealing than telecom. As for teaching pre-school -- let's just say that while I loved the kids, I've developed a great appreciation of the special talents required for managing large groups of children and for the fact that I don't possess those talents.

Then I realized that when I wasn't at the school or at the local Pivnice drinking good Czech beer with my husband, I was constantly (and happily) re-building my blog -- that's when I had a clue as to what I wanted to do.

I read up on classes, got books, read other blogs about design and development, and started building little blog templates for Blogger as a learning experience. I put them up for free here, and kept trying to teach myself more complicated work. I learned the difference between coding a web site and a blog, studied and worked and managed to talk a few people into letting me design their blogs.

Back in Dallas, the job hunt was on and in between sending out resumes for what I already had experience in, I sent them out to a few web design groups as well -- wouldn't hurt, I thought. A couple of months later, I got a call from a local media company in response to my resume, and was given the great opportunity to work for them, even with my limited experience.

I've been with that company for seven months, now, and feel more than ever that this is the right path for me. It's rewarding, challenging, and the right combination of technical and creative that I love. In light of all of this, I've decided to create this blog mostly for my own personal needs -- to keep better track of blogs and journals I like to read, online tools, etc. and also just to follow my own progress. It's nice to look back at what I was doing a year ago and compare it with what I'm doing now, and I'm sure I'll be doing even better work in the future.

Dallas is a great place to be for this kind of work, as well...I'm excited that we are living here. With the downtown renovation and arts activity, here, there will be tons of local inspiration and I look forward, every day, to seeing more...and maybe eventually setting up a web design meetup, to see if all the notices I get in my email about the others who would like a meetup group really mean it. Might be fun!