HALF BAKED IDEAS

When I was freelance I worked on a fairly long but ever so small project. I produced HTML wireframes using the Blueprint CSS framework. The client was the end user so that made it fairly easy. They loved it as they could see it evolving right before there eyes. I'd build something and put it up and they would play and feedback.

I never had a conversation with them about signing stuff off they just kept asking for more functionality. Sometimes I'd say I don't think that will work, but I'll prototype it for you and we can see if you want. But they paid for the work and then we had something to talk about. Sometimes I'd be right sometimes they would be right, but It's never about who is right. I got paid because I estimated work in small chunks. They got to try out their ideas on the cheap don't forget this was a prototype. A win win.
 
When it came to the time for visual design I got the designer to work from the HTML. There was a bit of a problem here as they initially preferred the HTML wireframes and asked for the visual style to be toned down a bit. But that was it.

Then at the end of the project when we had the functionality that we all wanted in place I got the back end guy involved in tying it the back and front end together. I'd been talking to him along the way so he knew what he was getting in to but there was no documentation for him, apart from some comments in the HTML. Now this site wasn't that big and didn't have that much interaction. But there was also no formal sign off the client just took the site and owned it. Everyone was happy.

The important thing here was they came on the journey they tried things that didn't work and they tried things that did. But they knew what was happening. I didn't disappear and come back to them with a solution. I didn't start doing that until I started working in an agency environment. But that's another story.

How can I now distinguish between what really is important and all the other marketing messages that you send me? You just lost my trust. If there really is something important in this email (which I doubt) I'm missing it and to be hones I'm fine with that.

Admittedly this example is see in gmail where I can see the first line of the email but you should be checking that. It's your job.

I sketch a lot in the early stages of a project. That's not really anything to be surprised about any more most UX'ers sketch nowadays in the early stages of a project.
Sometimes a page goes through 10-20 iterations. I try not to think about structure at first and just sketch let the ideas flow it's kind of using my hand as my brain. It's done it lots of times before so it knows what to do and I trust it. I have come up with (almost by accident) an copied lots of different styles for drawing things. Boxes, headings, links, drop-downs, overlays.
At times a wireframe will just be a series of lines and I show this to the people I'm working with. I often wonder if the people I'm showing sketches to understand what they are looking at. It's very hard to talk about ideas such as "when you click this it transforms in to this" if you don't have this shared understanding. For this reason I thought I would document my visual vocabulary. There really isn't a lot it its a few elements that I use over and over again. Here they are not very sophisticated but they work for me.
I have tried slightly higher fidelity versions using color to pick out links (blue), errors (red) and success (green) but it always feel like I'm getting in to the territory of marker visuals when I do this and that's not a sketch If I want to do something like that I'll jump in to InDesign, Illustrator, Omnigraffle or whatever other app I feel like using that day.

Oh and if your keen to know how I'm getting on in my resolutions just look at the date of this post. Not exactly what I was planning but better late than never.

Here's a few to kick of the new year.

• Learn about fine Scotch Whiskey and how to differentiate the good from the bad.
• Learn about Oysters and eat more of them.
• Forage for more food including going fishing every now and then.
• Write at lease one post here every week.
• Do things that are productive and add value.
• Don't be a slave to email.
• Don’t moan about things instead frame the problem and find a solution.

I'm writing all this down so that I can look back and see how I did at the end of the year. I think it will give me impetus to do something about it. I did this when I gave up smoking and that worked. It also helps me set some constraints to write within.

Tip: I smoked for quite a long time, and giving up was really really hard. The best tactic that I found when giving up was to tell as many people as possible that I was giving up. Then you have to do it. Not following thorough would have meant letting those people down.

So back to the point… I'm going to write something here once a week. Hopefully it will be fun, informative and punchy. It will probably be about User Experience Design and sometimes about working culture and the ways that knowledge workers can be more productive. there is a possibility there will be a bit about customer service.
I'll try and limit myself to 500 words. I’m also not going to spend a lot of time composing these posts. I’ll do a couple of versions have a read through and then set it free. I tend to be a bit of a perfectionist and hide things away until they are finished; this often means that things don’t get finished at all or get left to rot.
I’ll try not to rant or moan so I’ll try to suggest a solution. I’ll try to be reflective of things that I actually have experience of. I’ll do my research first before I write something so that what I write is informed.
I’m not going to worry about if what I’m saying is completely the right thing to say at the right time. It’s about forming and articulating my opinions as I go.
So that's at least one quickly written researched 500 word post a week that is fun and informative. Yes I do like a challenge, and for the record I don’t think I’m very good at writing.

I feel like I should say a bit about what motivates me to write. It is primarily to educate myself and solidify my ideas, I always find that once you start discussing things and hear how they sound you can rationalise them. It’s also to make me a better designer, I’ve always thought that as a someone who works in the web industry I should share my thoughts.

I think a lot about this stuff so here goes.