Archive for the ‘Life’ Category
|SXSW Notes pt. 5 – Presenting Straight to the Brain
Tuesday, March 31st, 2009
- the brain has lots of distractions
- peple have different learning styles that need to be looked at
Research
- there’s no research that says using templates & bullet points are the best way to present
- Book: Multimedia Learning
- we have assumptions about communications that we can send info and someone will receive it without a problem
Types of learning
- no learning
- fragmented learning
- meaningful learning
- usually stuck in fragmented learning
Memory
- sensory memory (unlimited)
- long term memory (unlimited)
- working memory (3-4 chunks of information retained in working memory)
- sync both visual and verbal channels of communication in a presentation
- the speed the brain processes verbal and visual are different
- need effective information design
- present a story in a way that slims it down enough to where people can process it all
What turns the brain on
- meeting the brain, not just on conscious mind.
- the mind thinks something is important, but the brain disagrees
- how does the brain know what to let through it’s spam filter?
- brain cares about chemestry
- anything that sends a little chemical signal (weird things, shocking/novel things)
- talking to a person’s instincts, eliciting a reaction to toggle memory
What the brain doesn’t care about:
- boring dude with a computer
- code
- adding in a strong image to code to get a reaction
- talk to the brain, not the mind
Retention
- combining the audio and visual toggle much better memory
- showing interaction with action, sound and animation
Mistakes people make in presentations
- using speaker notes (use the screen and images for speaking queues )
- Focusing on the tool, rather than what you want to do with it
- talking over text
- having too much text
- putting text on a page forces the brain to decide between listening to you or reading the text
- bullet points are not always your best option (ask: when is it appropriate to put bullet points in a film, or put the script on the screen? — it’s not)
- listing technique doesn’t hold up against a story approach
- don’t read the bullet point
- if a bullet point is wrapping on the next line, it’s too long
- Book: evaluating training methods
How can we make actual changes to someone’s behavior? not just cheap tricks.
- how you view the audience, as a presenter is important
- don’t make a presentation of [x] better, try and make a better user of [x]
- don’t focus on the presentation, focus on the user and how they can use the information
Tips
- never use templates or themes
- use pop culture (star wars example)
- ask yourself if every slide has a pulse
- use puppies
Notes from other people
Tags: notes, presentation, sxsw
Posted in Life | 1 Comment »
SXSW Notes pt. 4 – Managing “Expert” Clients
Monday, March 23rd, 2009
Making your clients feel good
- they call this the honeymoon phase
- meeting the team
- making a good 1st impression
- spend time outside the office
- finding out how they like to work
- bonding with the client
Refining you approach
- how do you like to work
- how do the like to work?
- staying flexible
Setting the ground rules
- establish a baseline relationship
- make sure you’re clear about what’s happening with the work
- listing business & team objectives – with team member names
Kicking off the project right
- motivating your team with clear roles and responsibilities (client and team)
- Educating clients
- inform without talking down (don’t talk to them like children)
- myth busters and industry standards
- project life cycles
- setting expectations
- communicate escalation paths
- set up regular check points
- have your analytics in place to defend decisions
- urging using comments on a blog if they have a quality product
Managing the project scope
- clear up any questions
- assign duties to key stakeholders
- review project schedule
- clarify the impact of missing deadlines
- explain the purpose of each deliverable
- maintain ad consistent review of a project
Defining the process
- Key documentation
- project plan
- weekly status notes
- functional design spec documentation
- test plans
- using pictures in documentation
- the more documentation you can hand off to the client, the better
Gaining trust
- proving by performing
- putting yourself in your clients shoes
- not all your decisions should benefit you
- be honest
- differentiating between personal & professional knowledge
What if we disagree?
- handling scope creep
- a new creative brief, letting them know consequences to when work gets off track
- change of direction halfway through
- budget increase, make the client understand that actions have reactions
- team conflict
- be creative and flexible
- sometimes you have to say “enough is enough”
Compromise after a tough change on the project
- keeping your team motivated
- ending a project properly
- tie up loose ended
- fixing bugs
- stabilization period
- smoothing things over so you can work together again
- lessons learned
- check analytics after a while to see if the project was successful
- celebrate the launch with your team
- assess good and bad things in the project
Referrals will spur new business
- they’ll remember the team they worked with, not the company.
- establish a good relationship
Tags: project managment, sxsw
Posted in Life | 1 Comment »
SXSW Notes pt. 3 – CSS3
Friday, March 20th, 2009
This panel had representitives from each vendor (not apple) and they each took turns showcasing the upcoming CSS3 support in their browser.
MOZ
- nth-child selector
- color module [opacity, rbga]
- border-image
- border-radius
- box-shadow
- * word-wrap:break-word
- * font-adjust
- @font-face
- @media queries ( @media(width:22em){blah}
- -moz-transform: skewX(20deg);
- -webkit-transform: skewX(20deg);
Future from MOZ
- width calculations
- new layout systems for user interface
Microsoft – IE and CSS
- implementing 2.1
- 1st complete implementation on 2.1
In IE8
- no new CSS3 properties
Future of CSS in IE
- opacity
- backgrounds
- web fonts
- media queries
- mutil-column
Opera
- text-shadow (css2)
- webfonts (css2)
CSS3
- backgrounds and borders
- border-radius: 150px / 50px;
- box-shadows, blur, inset
- border-image
- a box css3 style
- css transitions (animations)
Tags: CSS, sxsw
Posted in Browsers, Life | 3 Comments »
SXSW Notes pt. 2 – Web Typography
Thursday, March 19th, 2009
Why do web designers complain about typography?
- web fonts are limiting
- SIFR
- Font stacks
- complexity
- consistency across platforms
Where do you find inspiration?
- print design
- thebookcoverarchive.com
- the content itself
Current implementation?
- Don’t pretend the Web is a book
- Cambria adoption is around 40%
- questionablecharacters.com
- Try to make the design work with the fonts you have
The future of Web typography?
- @font-face{ font-family:barf; src: url(barf.otf/eot); } <–need IE if statement for IE .eot font files
- font linking
- .eot as an open format for protection of font files
- loading problems with @font-face since the font has to load
- using an .htaccess file to protect the font from download.
- webfonts.info [available font with open licensing]
Closing Tips:
- webtypography.net
- pick a normal font and make it good. Don’t dwell on what you can’t do
- realize the creative potential
- use letter spacing, text decoration, etc to dress up a standard font
- CSS3 fonts module
- Look up ARC90
- Arial has cross browser weight (bolding) issues, because it’s an old forgotten font
Tags: sxsw, typography
Posted in Life | No Comments »
SXSW Notes pt. 1- Feedback & Social Architecture
Monday, March 16th, 2009
How to Respond to Feedback
step 1
Appreciation – “Thank you”
step 2
Acknowledgment
- understanding before you act. ask further questions if you don’t understand
- words matter (being blunt isn’t an excuse)
step 3
Consideration
- finding the value in feedback, how you can apply it
- strip away the negative
- isn’t always actionable
- be honest (if you can’t do it, need to think about it, etc.)
- give accurate expectations
- don’t say the word “no”, soften it up
Social Architecture by Christina Wodtke (Day Stage) – boxesandarrows.com
- slides on slideshare.net
- behavior is a function of the person + the environment
- you can only control the environments
- Gene Smith’s model
- A group is it’s own worst enemy – shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html
- need to have visitor identities
- make the default avatar ugly so people want to change it
- identity is context based
- presence (status, history, signs of life [last logged in])
- reputation system can be insulting to a small group
- it’s good for large groups like amazon
- there must be a cost to join (from registration form to monthly fee)
- building relationships (groups of some kind)
- ways to track people you’re interested in
- facilitating conversation between users
- sharing information
- segregating a social site by demographic if you’re trying to cover a wide audience
- look for a real-world equivalent and try to mimic the behavior on your site
Tags: feedback, social, sxsw
Posted in Life | No Comments »
5 Ways to Build a Better Team
Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008
I’m about to start a long day of travel back to the West coast (FLO to CLT to LAS to LAX) after visiting my family for Thanksgiving. And while I spend my last night in the Carolinas I’m thinking about how my current job compares to past jobs I’ve had, when it comes to the strength of the team. So I started thinking about what makes a team successful. Oddly enough (in my experience), it has very little to do with talent (everyone knows how to use Google at this point).
If someone gets a job, it’s usually a given that they can do the work, so that’s rarely an issue. The main thing is building trust through communication, and not just any communication, proper communication. These are 5 things I’ve found to better communication and cohesion within a team.
Have lunch together
I’ve done this both ways. I’ve worked at a place where everyone sat at their desk and ate while they worked and I’ve worked at a place where everyone goes out to lunch together every day. Ideally, think there’s a balance in the middle somewhere. Seeing people outside the confines of their cube or desk is very important in building trust on a team.
The biggest complaint I’ve heard about this is that going out to lunch every day can get expensive (which is true). Going out to lunch doesn’t necessarily mean buying lunch every day, a lot of times I bring a sandwich with me. What’s important is the act of sitting down with people on your team outside the office, relax a little, and talk about something other than work.
Ask people how they like to be contacted
Instant messenger, phone, e–mail, a tap on the shoulder, a rubber band gun. These are all ways to communicate with someone at work. Everyone has ways they prefer to be contacted. Some like IM, some like e–mail, personally, I like the tap on the should because it gets my eyes away from the screen for a few seconds.
Finding this out can be as simple as saying to someone "Hey, how do you like to be contacted at work?" And you’d be surprised, but it makes a world of difference to someone who hates juggling IMs, when they can sort through e–mails instead.
Don’t make everyone share their feelings
I’m specifically talking about typical team building exercises here (and that awful Meyers-Briggs test). We’re all Web people, mostly introverts and let’s face it, we hate sharing our feelings with people. Don’t make us do it, it will come out naturally over a period of time as you spend time together and get to know everyone
Include everyone on everything
There’s always someone in the office who doesn’t talk much, keeps to themselves and is pretty reserved. It’s very important to include everyone in plans (lunch, after work, etc.). Even if they say no, the gesture of inviting someone tends to mean a lot and it makes someone feel like they’re part of the team and not just another employee.
Have a drink after work
Most people (higher ups) massively under value the after work drink. It doesn’t even have to be alcohol, like lunch, it’s the act of getting together. The attitude and personality of a person tends to change once they leave the office, people relax, drop their guard down and let out some real parts of themselves that they just can’t at work.
The first few times you do the after work get together, most people act the same way they do in the office. So it’s important to make sure everyone is comfortable. This is always a great place to vent some frustrations of the workday/week. You can learn a lot about someone while your doing this. The after work drink has produced some great friends for me that the workplace wouldn’t have really allowed for.
I’m sure there are hundreds of things self proclaimed professions can tell you to improve a working environment (usually those HR people everyone hates). This is just a list of things that work for me, because you’re not going to find out how to have a great working team in some text book. It’s all about the people, get to know your coworkers; in many cases, they’re the people you see the most (unless you’re married I guess). Most of all, it is possible to stay professional and also let your guard down.
Tags: team building, workplace
Posted in Life | 1 Comment »
Keeping up with the times
Friday, August 29th, 2008
Everytime you turn around there’s something new in the web to learn. Whether it be another JQuery plugin (YAJPI), a new blogging service (YABS), social networking site (YASNS) a new way to handle CSS Sprites or yet another acronym to learn (YAATL). There’s so much to do and learn about, how do we keep up?
I think most of us (the people who read this blog) keep up with the times by monitoring RSS feeds or reading books, I know that’s how I do it. But over the past few years my RSS reader has become more and more bloated. From time to time you may run through your feeds and delete the older ones, one’s that haven’t posted in a while or people who just complain about the government. But they’re all still valuable!
I try very hard to never delete an RSS feed. In fact, not too long ago I noticed that my feed menu had started to run off the page (I use Firefox to manage my RSS), so I got a bigger monitor to compensate; because you never really know where that bit of genius, that air of brilliance will come from. It could be from Eric Meyer, David Shea or from your random Swatkins blog.
I first noticed that I was neglecting my feeds when I saw 2 cycles of A List Apart and at least 10 CSS-Tricks posts/screencasts whiz past me, and that I hadn’t made a blog post in over a month (not cool with that at all). We’re all very busy at work, some more than others, but we still need to keep up with what’s happening in the industry.
Many times when I’m busy and I look at that long list of RSS feeds in front of me I just let out a :sigh: and say “I’ll just check a couple since I’m busy, and then maybe some more tomorrow when it calms down.” It had been happening a lot lately so I came to the conclusion that it’s not going to calm down, and that it’s time to get back into my old RSS groove. It’s really not that difficult to take some time out of every day for a little news reading. In fact, the ALA news days usually take the most time.
Many of us get to work, have our coffee, sit down, chat a little and before you know it, 20-30 minutes have gone by and you haven’t really “started” work yet. This is the time I use to read my news.
Not every blog/site you follow will update content on the same day. If you run through them every morning before you start your “heads-down” development/design you’ll find 1, maybe 2 sites that have made updates.
Keeping up with your RSS is really important, especially if your one of those psycho/learn everything about everything Web designer (like me 
P). I find that at least checking your feeds once a day, or even every other day can save you tons of time, energy and frustration in the long run.
But that’s just me hoping that I haven’t lost too many readers because of my month off ).
How do YOU keep up with your news?
Tags: firefox, rss, time
Posted in Life, Web Development | 2 Comments »
Finding Inspiration
Wednesday, July 9th, 2008
From time to time we all hit design funks when inspiration is hard to find and everything we make seems to look like crap (at least I do). Having some solid sources you can fall back on while in a slump can be a great asset.
Most people I ask about inspiration will say something like "Inspiration is everywhere!" Which is true (like telling a sprinter to run faster… thanks coach), but not very helpful when you sitting in a cubical or office and you need to build a comp. And I know, when I’m sitting in a coffee shop relaxing, that last thing I want to do is look around for inspiration or wait for it to hit me.
For many years I’ve taken inspiration and creativity for granted, but when you go through a time where the ideas aren’t firing at you as fast as you’d like, you have to seek them out. Recently I’ve have to do that; so I thought I’d share my sources.
- EDU Style
- EDU Style is a new source I found. University sites usually have a pretty distinct style, as they convey a different message than most blogs or corporate sites. This is a great source for ideas.
- Design Meltdown
- Design Meltdown is a neat gallery run by Patrick McNeil. Thousands of sites to look through. Patrick McNeil gave a real good talk at FOWD08 about finding inspiration, you can view his presentation slides on SlideShare.
- Daily Design Workout
- Daily Design Workout is a very interesting project. Jonas Buntenbruch posts a new design every day, mostly images, but a very good source of daily inspiration.
- Flickr 7days
- Flickr 7days shows a random assortment of images that have been uploaded to Flickr in the last 7 days. It’s neat to look through, and every once in a while you’ll run into a cool picture you can grab some ideas from.
- Twitter public timeline
- Millions of people all over the world use Twitter every day, and a lot of them post links. Just go through the public timeline and click some of the links people post, check out the design; you never know what’ll be there.
- OpenID site directory
- The OpenID site directory is a fairly comprehensive list of all sites that integrate OpenID. It’s a massive list of web sites, why not click around?
Doing a Google search for "CSS Gallery" will turn up some good sites too (like cssmania and css beauty), but I think most us know about those, so I opted to leave most of them out of my list.
A neat source for typography inspiration is any magazine you can get your hands on. Magazines use so many different typographical styles that by just looking through a few different ones you can a ton of ideas to apply to your site(s).
Those are just a few things I’ve done to try and get out of a design slump, hopefully they’ll be helpful for you.
Where do you get YOUR inspiration?
Tags: design, inspiration, links
Posted in Life, Web Development | 8 Comments »
My Time at NC State
Monday, June 30th, 2008
About 3 years ago a fairly young department at NC State hired a 23 year old kid from Massachusetts who constantly made claims that CSS was the future of web development. I was that kid; And I condemned them all for their table-based web sites, then promptly converted them to CSS.
NC State provided me with great professional development opportunities, conferences, training materials, R&D time, and an environment where there is a ton a room for personal growth. While I’m sure that the casual demeanor of the office will go unmatched, sometimes you have to look at yourself, where you are and realize that it’s time to move on. It’s certainly no reflection on the University, the department, or the people. I love them all and will have plenty of fond memories of my time there. It’s all great stuff.
Working on countless projects just because I felt like learning something new was a great experience. And a fantastic way to built a skill set.
I’m sure that for years to come I’ll be telling stories about the office antics, arguments, banter and hoisting a brew every Thursday after work just to vent about the week. Those nights at Sammy’s were something great.
But, as sad as it is to end an epic era, when it’s time to move on, it’s time to move on. Over the next few weeks I’ll be making the move out to Los Angeles to start work at USC Web Services. I just felt that the opportunity was too good to pass up. While I’m there, I’m sure my thoughts will stray every once in a while back to that office I first stepped into back in 2005 and I might even crack a smile ).
So long everyone, it’s been great and I appreciate everything you’ve done. I can honestly say that I don’t know where I would be if it wasn’t for the folks at NC State DELTA
-Tim
Tags: employment, ncstate, usc
Posted in Life | 8 Comments »
