Wresting the Front End from the Back in a JAVA shop
February 14th, 2010 § 4
Five years ago online functionality was a differentiator, the UI designer’s job was to throw paper prototypes over the wall to the backend JAVA programmers, and the end product was a happy (or not) accident of translation and pre-packaged technologies. But pre-packaged components don’t provide unique solutions and UI development requires a skill set very different from that of a classical JAVA programmer. The following is the epitome of a write-up delivered to non-technical business leaders that tries to make this case.
(A)PNG Loader
January 31st, 2010 § 1
IE6 is in the ICU. Developers are still forced to accommodate the 8-year-old browser’s maverick rendering engine but we also find ourselves on the dawn of a new era that isn’t defined by a market-leading millstone. IE7 and 8 come markedly closer than their little brother to true standards support. Firefox, long the coder’s favorite, has found larger love and the webkit rendering engine of Safari and Chrome continues to walk the line. We are, in effect, very close if not already at the IE6 tipping point whose far side promises unencumbered development to current and native browser capabilities.
Cooper, 1995
January 8th, 2010 § 0
Alan Cooper, sometimes the "Father of Visual Basic," was an interaction designer before there were interaction designers. One of the first advocates of the user-centered approach, Cooper waxed lyrical and prescient in his 1995 book About Face on the politics of admitting ‘designers’ to the software club. Our field drops you like a bad habit if you languish on skills or technology, but some struggles endure 13 years later.
Go On
December 24th, 2009 § 0
A song to someone I spent time with
Go on Go on
Go on girl now go and sing me your song
Tell me what do you know What have you seen
What strange things have happened to you in between
When I sit across from you
I’m left to wonder just what did I ever do
Go on Go on
Go on cakes tell me why you so put upon
Tell me who you are before you tell me more
Tell me why I can’t be the same like I was before
Don’t fight history, mystery, knowledge, skills and time
My dear sweet Clementine
The ROI of Non-Design: Murdoch’s $1bn MySpace Blunder
December 14th, 2009 § 0
The Financial Times on December 4 published a fascinating, sprawling account of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. acquisition of MySpace in 2005 and the reasons behind the social network’s subsequent decline and abdication to Facebook. Matthew Garrahan’s 4000-word piece delivers the type of in-depth, well-researched reading for which the newspaper industry is struggling to find an audience and revenue model in this era of 140-character text bytes. For the invested, it also contains a clear subtext: foot-dragging on design and user experience improvements drove people from the MySpace ship.
Perspective
December 4th, 2009 § 2
He whom you loved and lost is no longer where he was; he is now wherever you are. - Saint John Chrysostom
I went to a memorial service today. Jonathan Keisling was my age, a Colorado fishing guide, one of the few who choose to do what he loves over the promise of anything future. These days I’m feeling some stress at work (I am not a fishing guide). The alarm on my 18-month-old’s internal clock is stuck at 4:50am and my 3 year old has pink eye in both eyes. Right now I’m tired. But I’m ok, because I’m alive with unfulfilled dreams.
Finding Closure
November 17th, 2009 § 1
It’s sometimes a satisfying thing when textbook case studies present themselves in real life. With some breaks in the continuum, I’ve been pretty serious about JavaScript code since about the time of Boston’s miraculous comeback against the Yankees in the 2004 ALCS. Only in the last couple of years, though, have I been turning my coding style from the functional to the object-oriented, and incorporating into it some of what I’ve learned from John Resig, Aaron Newton, and others on the forefront of the recent JS boundary pushings. One of the early lessons these guys have to impart is on JS closures. So when, in production code for a large financial institution’s online banking application, I ran across the very lines of code they use to illustrate the concept, bells went off and – to quote Jonesy from ‘The Hunt for red October’ – I ended up basically running home to Mama.
Excuses
November 3rd, 2009 § 0
1. I’ve been busy.
2. Work’s been crazy.
3. Kids.
4. A side project.
5. Visitors.
These are some of the realities that have consumed my October to the point where, in just month three of its online existence, my blog has fallen behind the two-post per month standard to which I promised to hold it. Material, however, isn’t lacking.
The Ajax Experience… Delayed by a Year
October 9th, 2009 § 1
In October of 2008 I attended the Ajax Experience Conference (sponsored by ajaxian.com among others) in Boston. 2009 saw a conflict between Ben and Dion and Adaptive Path’s San Francisco UX Week, which I opted for to diversify. Here, however, near its first anniversary, I share what I took from the 2008 Boston session. We’ve made progress. There’s still a way to go. And I still think UI/X is king. The excitement and challenges of a year ago:
Adaptive Path’s UX Week 2009: Day 4
September 22nd, 2009 § 2
Presentation Recap
Jesse James Garrett: The State of User Experience
Jesse James Garrett, Adaptive Path president and coiner of the term ‘Ajax,’ closed out UX Week 2009 with what he called a “state of the union for UX.” UX, Garrett reminded us, is a field that took root on the web. But over the past 15 years the concept of User Experience has spread to other media and technologies, and has implicated itself in the product and service economies such that today it is perhaps the key informant in the design of holistic, multi-channel experiences.