You know who you are. You’re probably geeking out in jQuery as you’re reading this. If you can slice up a PSD, write clean and accessible markup, and javascript my face off – We Need You Yesterday.
We’re looking for 2 front-end developers (expert in HTML/CSS/Javascript). The contract is for 3 months in the Salt Lake City area and starts immediately. If you’re good, we might just keep you.
Send me an email with your resume and some examples of your work. Now get to it!
For those of you in SLC and not heading to Austin this week, come join us this Thursday at the Stimulate SLC Hack Night. Bring your laptops and sketchbooks and collaborate with a few dozen creative hackers.
Huge disclaimer: Stimulate isn’t affiliated with NT or the LDS Church, but Chris and I organized it.
There’s limited space so get in here. All the info’s at Hulabalub.
“Do not pray for tasks equal to your abilities, but pray for abilities equal to your tasks. Then the performance of your tasks will be no miracle, but you will be the miracle.”
We’re hosting a get-together at SXSW next week on Sunday, March 14th from 6-7 PM. If you’ll be in Austin, we’d love to meet you. We’ll offer a behind-the-scenes look at several applications supporting the LDS Church’s global operations and over 13 million members. The event is invite-only, so please contact us for more information or find one of us for an invitation.
““Good” beats “Innovative” nearly every time. An obsession with innovation leads executives down the wrong path. Just trying to be good would be a smarter focus.”
Former colleague Scott Berkun in a recent Business Week article. Before objecting, read the whole article; innovation will happen, but not if that is the primary goal. The primary goal should be to produce Something Good. If innovation is required to get there—great! But if there are tried and true solutions, all the better.
“I have to admit something strange: I’m amused by poorly designed websites. The worse the better. Much like some people “love to hate” movie villains, I get a peculiar satisfaction from finding myself completely lost in an ill-conceived, over-designed, steaming pile of a website. ... I think I have to enjoy it on some level, given my role as a customer experience consultant; otherwise work would be pretty difficult (see also: doctors who can’t stand the sight of blood).”
John’s two series are simply fantastic: his cosmic knot series has a chaotic beauty and intricacy, each representing a different significance of the knot; his geometry and life series feature geometric symbolism as a reflection of life and beauty.
Local filmaker Issac Goeckertz will be premiering his latest film at the Worldfest Houston International Film Festival.
Details of the film and the trailer can be viewed on the film’s website.
“Pimp This Bum” details the life changing events of Tim Edwards, a Houston man living on the streets. After being approached by a father son marketing team about a unique charity idea, Tim agreed to participate. The Agreement: fly a cardboard sign at a busy intersection with the words, “All Major Credit Cards Accepted www.pimpthisbum.com”. What erupted from this internet experiment was a media campaign that traveled the globe in the expanse of a few days. Donations came pouring in and within three weeks, $75,000 had been raised to help Tim get off the streets. Pimp this Bum tells the inspiring story of Edward’s life in the wake of this unexpected turn of fortune and his courage to begin a new life.
The latest design for lds.org just went beta. This release represents some long hours, lots of iteration and effort by everyone on the project team and we’d love to hear your feedback.
A friend of mine hunts down dangerous fugitives for a living.
Bill is a U.S. Marshall and is very good at what he does. A few months ago, I saw him walking with a bandage on his hand. Curious, I asked him what happened. Maybe he cut it doing some yard work? “Well”, he said, ”I had to smash through a car window to pull out a fugitive who tried to escape.” “Really?” I replied, “The worst injuries I get at work are a slight cramp in my pinky from too many mouse clicks.”
Bill and I go to the range every once in a while and shoot the breeze (no pun intended). I enjoy picking his brain as I like the Chuck Norris-esque of his job and am sure he pulls out a roundhouse kick from time to time. I asked him about what helps track these guys down. Without giving detail, he explained the importance of research. Bill spends more time learning about the fugitive, their habits, family, their likes, dislikes, etc… than anything. The more information he has, the easier it is to anticipate their next move.
How many times have you had a client approach you with the need for X as soon as possible and it needs to “look good”? Only after asking them who will be using it and what the site’s objectives are do they even think about it.
The problem is, they want results and research doesn’t come in a shiny package. It is up to us as designers to persuade them to understand its importance… even if that means a roundhouse kick (Disclaimer: Don’t actually roundhouse kick a client, however, if needs be, show a picture of yourself doing a roundhouse kick so they understand).
With that said, Bill could spend all his time researching and never catch anyone if he never went to work. The key is to gather a comfortable amount of user research so we have a clear focus before embarking on our designs.
Just like Bill and his hopeless fugitives, the more we know about our users, the better we can anticipate their next move.
“The world needs more UX. Without the knitting that UX performs for organizations and their customers, we’ll likely end up with continued wanton proliferation of technology rather than the thoughtful, iterative progress and leaps of innovation that good UX practice nurtures.”
This one hits home for me today. From Chris Baum in the latest Boxes and Arrows email newsletter. (I looked for a specific link on their site for a specific web page to cite, but couldn’t find one.)
Lying and simplifying aren’t the same. In fact, they’re not even friends-in-law. They’re archenemies. That’s right. Think Batman and The Joker, Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan, Glenn Beck and Rahm Emanuel. As designers, it’s essential that we understand this, because our lives are spent shooting for simplification. But far too often in our quest for UI Zen, we fall into the bottomless pit of lies, lies, lies.
Ok, so it’s circa 2002 and I’m watching a new detective show on TV about a guy with OCD. As I ponder how a person can possibly function with so many issues, my mom calls.
“Hi, it’s your mom.”
“Hi Mom.”
“You busy?”
I glance earnestly toward the stream of electrons across the room. “Uh, I guess not.”
“Great, can you help me with a computer thing?”
“Oh, um, sure.”
“Well I just got ‘Word Perfect’ and used it to write a letter to your uncle Jim and now I can’t find it. I think my computer removed it.”
“Oh, well did you look in the recycle bin?”
“Where’s that?”
“It’s on your desktop.”
“On the computer?”
“Yeah. There’s an icon on the desktop called “Recycle Bin.”
“You mean the little picture of the trash can?”
“Yeah, the part of the computer that it sits on is called the ‘Desktop.’” Anyway, double click on the Recycle Bin.”
“Open it up?”
“Yeah.”
“Ok, it’s open.”
“Is anything in there?”
“Yeah, ‘The Internet’ and ‘Setup’ and two little pictures of paper.”
“Ok, does one of those pictures have the name that you gave the letter?”
“I don’t think my letter had a name. It was just a letter I was writing.”
“Mom, why aren’t you using the email I set up for you?”
“I don’t want to use it. It’s too complicated.”
“But I set up an ico… um, one of those little pictures on the desktop for you. All you have to do is open it and click ‘New Message like I showed you.’ I even set up all of your contacts for you. Uncle Jim is in there and everything.”
“I just want help finding the letter I wrote.”
Sigh “Ok, fine… Is ‘Word Perfect’ open now?”
“How do I know that?”
“Well, you know the bar at the bottom of the computer where the ‘Start’ button is?”
“Yeah.”
“Well to the right of it, is there another button on the bar with a picture of a blue circle with a pen in it?”
“No.”
“Is there a button there at all?”
“There’s a picture that looks like a speaker.”
“Huh? No, I mean on the left side of that bar, right next to the ‘Start’ button.”
“What about it?”
“Is there a big button there?”
“Yes.”
“Ok, what does it say?”
“Document one dash Microsoft dot dot dot.”
“Ok, try clicking on that.”
“Oh! There it is! Oh son, you’re so good at this stuff. Thank you!”
“You’re welcome.”
“Ok, goodb… Wait! One more thing. Could you tell me how to get a photo from my new camera into this letter?”
“Oh crap! Mom, I totally forgot I have to go pick up a friend of mine at the airport! Let’s talk later.”
“Ok, well thanks again.”
“Bye.”
Hostage Crisis
At the end of my last article, Erik commented “We’re all suffering from Stockholm Syndrome.” I thought it was a perfect way to describe our relationship with computers.
Those us us who work in tech love our tools with all their complexity. We relish in the fact that we know all the keystrokes for doing every little task in our favorite apps. We are secure in our investment of so much time and energy and effort to learn all the tricks and nuances of our computers.
We fool ourselves by thinking traditional computing is easy.
It isn’t.
Those who malign the Apple iPad for not being more like the computers they’re used to are suffering from a severe case of Stockholm Syndrome.
*Disclaimer: My mother is a smart lady. She has a bachelors from a major university, she’s a leader in her community and now uses computers every day for her job. She’s pretty typical of most non-tech folks I know. And yes, she might read this at some point.
