{"rowid": 208, "title": "All That Glisters", "contents": "Tradition has it that at this time of year, families gather together, sit, eat and share stories. It\u2019s an opportunity for the wisdom of the elders to be passed down to the younger members of the tribe. Tradition also has it that we should chase cheese downhill and dunk the nice lady to prove she\u2019s a witch, so maybe let\u2019s not put too much stock in that.\nI\u2019ve been building things on the web professionally for about twenty years, and although the web has changed immeasurably, it\u2019s probably not changed as much as I have. While I can happily say I\u2019m not the young (always right, always arrogant) developer that I once was, unfortunately I\u2019m now an approaching-middle-age developer who thinks he\u2019s always right and on top of it is extremely pompous. What can you do? Nature has devised this system with the distinct advantage of allowing us to always be right, and only ever wrong in the future or in the past. So let\u2019s roll with it.\nIncreasingly, there seems to be a sense of fatigue within our industry. Just when you think you\u2019ve got a handle on whatever the latest tool or technology is, something new comes out to replace it. Suddenly you find that you\u2019ve invested precious time learning something new and it\u2019s already old hat. The pace of change is so rapid, that new developers don\u2019t know where to start, and experienced developers don\u2019t know where it ends. With that in mind, here\u2019s some fireside thoughts from a pompous old developer, that I hope might bring some Christmas comfort.\nReliable and boring beats shiny and new\nThere are so many new tools, frameworks, techniques, styles and libraries to learn. You know what? You don\u2019t have to use them. You\u2019re not a bad developer if you use Grunt even though others have switched to Gulp or Brunch or Webpack or Banana Sandwich. It\u2019s probably misguided to spend lots of project time messing around with build tool fashions when your so last year build tool is already doing what you need.\nJust a little reminder that it\u2019s about 100 times more important what you build than how you build it.\u2014 Chris Coyier (@chriscoyier) December 10, 2017\n\nI think it helps if we understand why so many new solutions exist. Most developers are predisposed to enjoy creating new things more than improving established systems. It\u2019s natural, because it\u2019s actually much easier and more exciting to create something new that works exactly how you think it should be than to improve an existing, imperfect solution. Improving and refactoring a system is hard, and it takes real chops, much more than just building something new.\nThe consequence of this is that new tools appear all the time. A developer will get a fresh new idea of how to tackle a problem \u2013 usually out of dissatisfaction with an existing solution, and figure the best way to implement that idea is to build something new around it. Often, that something new will do the same job as something old that already exists; it will just do it in a different way. Sometimes in a better way. Sometimes, just different.\nxkcd: Standards\nThat\u2019s not to say new tools are bad, and it\u2019s not bad that they exist. We shouldn\u2019t be crushing new ideas, and it\u2019s not wrong to adopt a new solution over an old one, but you know what? There\u2019s no imperative to switch right away. The next time you hit a pain point with your current solution, or have time to re-evaluate, check out what\u2019s new and see how the latest generation of tools and technologies can help. There\u2019s no prize for solving problems you don\u2019t have yet, and heading further into the desert in search of water is a survival tactic, not an aspiration.\nNew is better, but also worse\nSoftware, much like people, is born with a whole lot of potential and not much utility. Newborns \u2014 both digital and meaty \u2014 are exciting and cute but they also lead to sleepless nights and pools of vomit.\nNew technology contains lots of useful new features, but it\u2019s also more likely to contain bugs and be subject to more rapid change. Jumping on a new framework is great, right until there are API changes and you need to refactor your entire project to be able to update. More mature solutions have a higher weight of existing projects on their shoulders, and so the need to maintain backward compatibility is stronger. Things still move forward, but in a more controlled way.\nSo how do we balance the need to move technology forward with the need to provide mature and stable solutions for the projects we work on? I think there\u2019s a couple of good ways to do that.\nGet personal\nUse all the new shiny tools on your side-projects, personal projects, seasonal throw-aways and anywhere where the stakes are low. If you know you can patch around problems without much consequence, go for it. Build your personal blog on a CMS that stores data in the woven bark of a silver birch. Find where it breaks. Find where it excels. Find yourself if you like. When it comes to high-stakes projects, you\u2019ll hopefully have enough experience to know what you\u2019re getting into.\nFocus on the unique problem\nThat\u2019s not to say you should never risk using a new technology for \u2018real\u2019 work. Instead, distinguish the areas of your project where a new technology solves a specifically identified, measurable business objective, verses those where it won\u2019t. \nA brand new web application framework might be fun to use, but are you in the business of solving a web application framework problem?  That new web server made of taffeta might increase static file throughput slightly, but are you in the business of serving static assets, or would it be better to just run up nginx and never have to think about that problem again. (Clue: it\u2019s the nginx one.)\nBut when it comes to building that live sports interface for keeping fans up to date with the blow-by-blow of the big game, that\u2019s where it might make sense to take a risk on an amazing-looking new JavaScript realtime interface framework. That\u2019s the time to run up a breakthrough new message queue server that can deliver jobs to workers via extrasensory perception and keep the score updates flowing instantaneously. \nThose are the risks worth taking, as those new technologies have the potential to help you solve your core problems in a markedly improved way. Unproven technology is worth the risk if it solves a specific business objective. If it doesn\u2019t, don\u2019t make work for yourself - use something mature and stable.\nPick the right tools\nOur job as developers is to solve problems using code, and do so in an effective and responsible way. You\u2019ve been hired to use your expertise in picking the right tools for the job, and a big part of that is weighing up the risk verse the reward of each part of the system. The best tools for the job might be something cutting edge, but \u2018best\u2019 can also mean most stable, reliable or easy-to-hire-for.\nGo out and learn (and create!) new tools and experiment with them. Understand what problems they solve and what the pitfalls are. Use them in production for low-stakes projects to get real experience, and then once you really know their character, then think about using them when the stakes are higher.\nThe rest of the time? The tools you\u2019re using now are solid and proven and you know their capabilities and pitfalls well. They might not always be the fashionable candidate, but they often make for a very solid choice.", "year": "2017", "author": "Drew McLellan", "author_slug": "drewmclellan", "published": "2017-12-24T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2017/all-that-glisters/", "topic": "business"}
{"rowid": 224, "title": "Go Forth and Make Awesomeness", "contents": "We\u2019ve all dreamed of being a superhero: maybe that\u2019s why we\u2019ve ended up on the web\u2014a place where we can do good deeds and celebrate them on a daily basis. \n\nWear your dreams\n\nAt age four, I wore my Wonder Woman Underoos around my house, my grandparents\u2019 house, our neighbor\u2019s house, and even around the yard. I wanted to be a superhero when I grew up. I was crushed to learn that there is no school for superheroes\u2014no place to earn a degree in how to save the world from looming evil. Instead, I\u2014like everyone else\u2014was destined to go to ordinary school to focus on ABCs and 123s. Even still, I want to save the world.\n\nIntend your goodness\n\nRandom acts of kindness make a difference. Books, films, and advertising campaigns tout random acts of kindness and the positive influence they can have on the world. But why do acts of kindness have to be so random? Why can\u2019t we intend to be kind? A true superhero wakes each morning intending to perform selfless acts for the community. Why can\u2019t we do the same thing?\n\nAs a child, my mother taught me to plan to do at least three good deeds each day. And even now, years later, I put on my invisible cape looking for ways to do good.\n\nHere are some examples:\n\n\tslowing down to allow another driver in before me from the highway on-ramp\n\tbringing a co-worker their favorite kind of coffee or tea\n\tsharing my umbrella on a rainy day\n\tholding a door open for someone with full hands\n\tlistening intently when someone shares a story\n\tcomplimenting someone on a job well done\n\tthanking someone for a job well done\n\tleaving a constructive, or even supportive comment on someone\u2019s blog\n\n\nAs you can see, these acts are simple. Doing good and being kind is partially about being aware\u2014aware of the words we speak and the actions we take. Like superheroes, we create our own code of conduct to live by. Hopefully, we choose to put the community before ourselves (within reason) and to do our best not to damage it as we move through our lives.\n\nTake a bite out of the Apple\n\nWith some thought, we can weave this type of thinking and action into our business choices. We can take the simple acts of kindness concept and amplify it a bit. With this amplification, we can be a new kind of superhero.\n\nIn 1997, during a presentation, Steve Jobs stated Apple\u2019s core value in a simple, yet powerful, sentence:\n\n\n\tWe believe that people with passion can change the world for the better.\n\n\nApple fan or not, those are powerful words.\n\nDefine your core\n\nEvery organization must define its core values. Core values help us to frame, recognize, and understand the principles our organization embodies and practices. It doesn\u2019t matter if you\u2019re starting a new organization or you want to define values within an existing organization. Even if you\u2019re a freelancer, defining core values will help guide your decisions and actions.\n\nIf you can, work as a team to define core values. Gather the people who are your support system\u2014your business partners, your colleagues, and maybe even a trusted client\u2014this is now your core value creation team. Have a brainstorming session with your team. Let ideas flow. Give equal weight to the things people say. You may not hear everything you thought you might hear\u2014that\u2019s OK. You want the session to be free-flowing and honest. Ask yourself and your team questions like:\n\n\n\tWhat do you think my/our/your core values are?\n\tWhat do you think my/our/your priorities are?\n\tWhat do you think my/our/your core values should be?\n\tWhat do you think my/our/your priorities should be?\n\tHow do you think I/we should treat customers, clients, and each other?\n\tHow do we want others to treat us?\n\tWhat are my/our/your success stories?\n\tWhat has defined these experiences as successful?\n\n\nFrom this brainstorming session, you will craft your superhero code of conduct. You will decide what you will and will not do. You will determine how you will and will not act. You\u2019re setting the standards that you will live and work by\u2014so don\u2019t take this exercise lightly. Take your time. Use the exercise as a way to open a discussion about values. Find out what you and your team believe in. Set these values and keep them in place. Write them down and share these with your team and with the world. By sharing your core values, you hold yourself more accountable to them. You also send a strong message to the rest of the world about what type of organization you are and what you believe in. Other organizations and people may decide to align or not to align themselves with you because of your core values. This is good. Chances are, you\u2019ll be happier and more profitable if you work with other organizations and people who share similar core values.\n\n Photo: Laura Winn\n\nDuring your brainstorming session, list keywords. Don\u2019t edit. Allow things to take their course. Some examples of keywords might be:\n\nAbility \u00b7 Achievement \u00b7 Adventure \u00b7 Ambition \u00b7 Altruism \u00b7 Awareness \u00b7 Balance \u00b7 Caring \u00b7 Charity \u00b7 Citizenship \u00b7 Collaboration \u00b7 Commitment \u00b7 Community \u00b7 Compassion \u00b7 Consideration \u00b7 Cooperation \u00b7 Courage \u00b7 Courtesy \u00b7 Creativity \u00b7 Democracy \u00b7 Dignity \u00b7 Diplomacy \u00b7 Discipline \u00b7 Diversity \u00b7 Education \u00b7 Efficiency \u00b7 Energy \u00b7 Equality \u00b7 Excellence \u00b7 Excitement \u00b7 Fairness \u00b7 Family \u00b7 Freedom \u00b7 Fun \u00b7 Goodness \u00b7 Gratefulness \u00b7 Growth \u00b7 Happiness \u00b7 Harmony \u00b7 Helping \u00b7 Honor \u00b7 Hope \u00b7 Humility \u00b7 Humor \u00b7 Imagination \u00b7 Individuality \u00b7 Innovation \u00b7 Integrity \u00b7 Intelligence \u00b7 Joy \u00b7 Justice \u00b7 Kindness \u00b7 Knowledge \u00b7 Leadership \u00b7 Learning \u00b7 Loyalty \u00b7 Meaning \u00b7 Mindfulness \u00b7 Moderation \u00b7 Modesty \u00b7 Nurture \u00b7 Openness \u00b7 Organization \u00b7 Passion \u00b7 Patience \u00b7 Peace \u00b7 Planning \u00b7 Principles \u00b7 Productivity \u00b7 Purpose \u00b7 Quality \u00b7 Reliability \u00b7 Respectfulness \u00b7 Responsibility \u00b7 Security \u00b7 Sensitivity \u00b7 Service \u00b7 Sharing \u00b7 Simplicity \u00b7 Stability \u00b7 Tolerance \u00b7 Transparency \u00b7 Trust \u00b7 Truthfulness \u00b7 Understanding \u00b7 Unity \u00b7 Variety \u00b7 Vision \u00b7 Wisdom\n\nAfter you have a list of keywords, create your core values statement using the themes from your brainstorming session. There are no rules: while above, Steve Jobs summed up Apple\u2019s core values in one sentence, Zappos has ten core values:\n\n\n\tDeliver WOW Through Service\n\tEmbrace and Drive Change\n\tCreate Fun and A Little Weirdness\n\tBe Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded\n\tPursue Growth and Learning\n\tBuild Open and Honest Relationships With Communication\n\tBuild a Positive Team and Family Spirit\n\tDo More With Less\n\tBe Passionate and Determined\n\tBe Humble\n\n\nTo see how Zappos\u2019 employees embrace these core values, watch the video they created and posted on their website.\n\nDog food is yummy\n\nAlthough I find merit in every keyword listed, I\u2019ve distilled my core values to their simplest form:\n\nMake awesomeness. Do good.\n\nHow do you make awesomeness and do good? You need ambition, balance, collaboration, commitment, fun, and you need every keyword listed to support these actions. Again, there are no rules: your core values can be one sentence or a bulleted list. What matters is being true to yourself and creating core values that others can understand.  Before I start any project I ask myself: is there a way to make awesomeness and to do good? If the answer is \u201cyes,\u201d I embrace the endeavor because it aligns with my core values. If the answer is \u201cno,\u201d I move on to a project that supports my core values.\n\nUnleash your powers\n\nAlthough every organization will craft different core values, I imagine that you want to be a superhero and that you will define \u201cdoing good\u201d (or something similar) as one of your core values. Whether you work by yourself or with a team, you can use the web as a tool to help do good. It can be as simple as giving a free hug, or something a little more complex to help others and help your organization meet the bottom line. Some interesting initiatives that use the web to do good are:\n\n\n\tYahoo!: How Good Grows\n\tDesigual: Happy Hunters\n\tEdge Shave Gel: Anti-irritation campaign\n\n\n\n\nKnowing your underlying desire to return to your Underoos-and-cape-sporting childhood and knowing that you don\u2019t always have the opportunity to develop an entire initiative to \u201cdo good,\u201d remember that as writers, designers, and developers, we can perform superhero acts on a daily basis by making content, design, and development accessible to the greatest number of people. By considering other people\u2019s needs, we are intentionally performing acts of kindness\u2014we\u2019re doing good. There are many ways to write, design, and develop websites\u2014many of which will be discussed in other 24ways.org articles. As we make content, design, and development decisions\u2014as we develop campaigns and initiatives\u2014we need to keep our core values in mind. It\u2019s easy to make a positive difference in the world. Just be the superhero you\u2019ve always wanted to be. Go forth and make awesomeness.\n\nIf you would like to do good today, support The United Nations Children\u2019s Fund, an organization that works for children\u2019s rights, their survival, development and protection, by purchasing this year\u2019s 24 ways Annual 2010 created by Five Simple Steps. All proceeds go to UNICEF.", "year": "2010", "author": "Leslie Jensen-Inman", "author_slug": "lesliejenseninman", "published": "2010-12-04T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2010/go-forth-and-make-awesomeness/", "topic": "business"}
{"rowid": 228, "title": "The Great Unveiling", "contents": "The moment of unveiling our designs should be among our proudest, but it never seems to work out that way. Instead of a chance to show how we can bring our clients\u2019 visions to life, critique can be a tense, worrying ordeal. And yes, the stakes are high: a superb design is only superb if it goes live. Mismanage the feedback process and your research, creativity and hard work can be wasted, and your client may wonder whether you\u2019ve been worth the investment.\n\nThe great unveiling is a pivotal part of the design process, but it needn\u2019t be a negative one. Just as usability testing teaches us whether our designs meet user needs, presenting our work to clients tells us whether we\u2019ve met important business goals. So how can we turn the tide to make presenting designs a constructive experience, and to give good designs a chance to shine through?\n\nTiming is everything\n\nFirst, consider when you should seek others\u2019 opinions. Your personal style will influence whether you show early sketches or wait to demonstrate something more complete. Some designers thrive at low fidelity, sketching out ideas that, despite their rudimentary nature, easily spark debate. Other designers take time to create more fully-realised versions. Some even argue that the great unveiling should be eliminated altogether by working directly alongside the client throughout, collaborating on the design to reach its full potential. \n\nWhatever your individual preference, you\u2019ll rarely have the chance to do it entirely your own way. Contracts, clients, and deadlines will affect how early and often you share your work. However, try to avoid the trap of presenting too late and at too high fidelity. My experience has taught me that skilled designers tend to present their work earlier and allow longer for iteration than novices do. More aware of the potential flaws in their solutions, these designers cling less tightly to their initial efforts. Working roughly and seeking early feedback gives you the flexibility to respond more fully to nuances you may have missed until now.\n\nPlanning design reviews\n\nPresent design ideas face-to-face, or at least via video conference. Asynchronous methods like e-mail and Basecamp are slow, easily ignored, and deny you the opportunity to guide your colleagues through your work. In person, you profit from both the well-known benefits of non-verbal communication, and the chance to immediately respond to questions and elaborate on rationale.\n\nBe sure to watch the numbers at your design review sessions, however. Any more than a handful of attendees and the meeting could quickly spiral into fruitless debate. Ask your project sponsor to appoint a representative to speak on behalf of each business function, rather than inviting too many cooks.\n\nWhere possible, show your work in its native format. Photocopy hand-drawn sketches to reinforce their disposability (the defining quality of a sketch) and encourage others to scribble their own thoughts on top. Show digital deliverables \u2013 wireframes, design concepts, rich interactions \u2013 on screen. The experience of a design is very different on screen than on paper. A monitor has appropriate dimensions and viewport size, presenting an accurate picture of the design\u2019s visual hierarchy, and putting interactive elements in the right context. On paper, a link is merely underlined text. On screen, it is another step along the user\u2019s journey.\n\nDon\u2019t waste time presenting multiple concepts. Not only is it costly to work up multiple concepts to the level required for fair appraisal, but the practice demonstrates a sorry abdication of responsibility. Designers should be custodians of design. Asking for feedback on multiple designs turns the critique process into a beauty pageant, relinquishing a designer\u2019s authority. Instead of rational choices that meet genuine user and business needs, you may be stuck with a Frankensteinian monstrosity, assembled from incompatible parts: \u201cThis header plus the whizzy bit from Version C\u201d.\n\nThis isn\u2019t to say that you shouldn\u2019t explore lots of ideas yourself. Divergent thinking early in the design process is the only way to break free of the clich\u00e9d patterns and fads that so often litter mediocre sites. But you must act as a design curator, choosing the best of your work and explaining its rationale clearly and succinctly. Attitude, then, is central to successful critique. It can be difficult to tread the fine line between the harmful extremes of doormat passivity and prima donna arrogance. Remember that you are the professional, but be mindful that even experts make mistakes, particularly when \u2013 as with all design projects \u2013 they don\u2019t possess all the relevant information in advance. Present your case with open-minded confidence, while accepting that positive critique will make your design (and ultimately your skills) stronger.\n\nThe courage of your convictions\n\nUltimately, your success in the feedback process, and indeed in the entire design process, hinges upon the rationale you provide for your work. Ideally, you should be able to refer to your research \u2013 personas, usability test findings, analytics \u2013 to support your decisions. To keep this evidence in mind, print it out to share at the design review, or include it in your presentation. Explain the rationale behind the most important decisions before showing the design, so that you can be sure of the full attention of your audience.\n\nOnce you\u2019ve covered these points, display your design and walk through the specific features of the page. A little honesty goes a long way here: state your case as strongly as your rationale demands. Sure of your reasoning? Be strong. Speculating an approach based on a hunch? Say so, and encourage your colleagues to explore the idea with you and see where it leads.\n\nOf course, none of these approaches should be sacrosanct. A proficient designer must be able to bend his or her way of working to suit the situation at hand. So sometimes you\u2019ll want to ignore these rules of thumb and explore your own hunches as required. More power to you. As long as you think as clearly about the feedback process as you have about the design itself, you\u2019ll be able to enjoy the great unveiling as a moment to be savoured, not feared.", "year": "2010", "author": "Cennydd Bowles", "author_slug": "cennyddbowles", "published": "2010-12-12T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2010/the-great-unveiling/", "topic": "business"}
{"rowid": 229, "title": "Sketching to Communicate", "contents": "As a web designer I\u2019ve always felt that I\u2019d somehow cheated the system, having been absent on the day God handed out the ability to draw. I didn\u2019t study fine art, I don\u2019t have a natural talent to effortlessly knock out a realistic bowl of fruit beside a water jug, and yet somehow I\u2019ve still managed to blag my way this far. I\u2019m sure many of you may feel the same.\n\nI had no intention of becoming an artist, but to have enough skill to convey an idea in a drawing would be useful. Instead, my inadequate instrument would doodle drunkenly across the page leaving a web of unintelligible paths instead of the refined illustration I\u2019d seen in my mind\u2019s eye. This \u2013 and the natural scrawl of my handwriting \u2013 is fine (if somewhat frustrating) when it\u2019s for my eyes only but, when sketching to communicate a concept to a client, such amateur art would be offered with a sense of embarrassment. So when I had the opportunity to take part in some sketching classes whilst at Clearleft I jumped at the chance.\n\nWhy sketch?\n\nIn UX workshops early on in a project\u2019s life, sketching is a useful and efficient way to convey and record ideas. It\u2019s disposable and inexpensive, but needn\u2019t look amateur. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a well executed sketch of how you\u2019ll combine funny YouTube videos with elephants to make Lolephants.com could be worth millions in venture capital. Actually, that\u2019s not bad\u2026 ;-)\n\nAlthough (as you will see) the basics of sketching are easy to master, the kudos you will receive from clients for being a \u2018proper designer\u2019 makes it worthwhile!\n\nWhere to begin?\n\nStart by not buying yourself a sketch pad. If you were the type of child who ripped the first page out of a school exercise book and started again if you made even a tiny mistake (you\u2019re not alone!), Wreck This Journal may offer a helping hand. Practicing on plain A4 paper instead of any \u2018special\u2019 notepad will make the process a whole lot easier, no matter how deliciously edible those Moleskines look.\n\nDo buy yourself a black fine-liner pen and a set of grey Pro Markers for shading. These pens are unlike any you will have used before, and look like blended watercolours once the ink is dry. Although multiple strokes won\u2019t create unsightly blotches of heavy ink on the page, they will go right through your top sheet so always remember to keep a rough sheet in the second position as an ink blotter.\n\n photo by Tom Harrison\n\nDon\u2019t buy pencils to sketch with, as they lack the confidence afforded by the heavy black ink strokes of marker pens and fine-liners.\n\nIf you\u2019re going to be sketching with clients then invest in some black markers and larger sheets of paper. At the risk of sounding like a stationery brand whore, Sharpies are ideal, and these comedy-sized Post-Its do the job far better than cheaper, less sticky alternatives. Although they\u2019re thicker than most standard paper, be sure to double-layer them if you\u2019re writing on them on a wall, unless you fancy a weekend redecorating your client\u2019s swanky boardroom.\n\nThe best way to build confidence and improve your sketching technique is, obviously, to practise. Reading this article will be of no help unless you repeat the following examples several times each. Go grab a pen and some paper now, and notice how you improve within even a short period of time.\n\nSketching web UI\n\nMost elements of any website can be drawn as a combination of geometric shapes.\n\n photo by Nathanael Boehm\n\nCircles\n\nTo draw a circle, get in position and start by resting your hand on the page and making the circular motion a few times without putting pen to paper. As you lower your pen whilst continuing the motion, you should notice the resulting shape is more regular than it otherwise would have been.\n\nSquares and rectangles\n\nDraw one pair of parallel lines first, followed by the others to complete the shapes. Slightly overlap the ends of the lines to make corners feel more solid than if you were to leave gaps. If you\u2019re drawing a container, always draw the contents first, that way it won\u2019t be a squash to fit them in. If you\u2019re drawing a grid (of thumbnails, for instance), draw all parallel lines first as a series of long dashes to help keep line lengths and angles consistent.\n\n\n\nShadows\n\nTo lift elements from the page for emphasis, add a subtle shadow with a grey marker. For the most convincing look, assume the light source to be at the top left of the page \u2013 the shadow should simply be a thick grey line along the bottom and up the right edge of your shape. If the shape is irregular, the shadow should follow its outline. This is a good way to emphasise featured items, speech bubbles, form buttons, and so on.\n\n\n\nSketching ideas\n\nArrows\n\nUse arrows to show steps in a process or direction of movement. Giving shadows a 3-D feel, or adding a single colour, will help separate them from the rest of the sketch.\n\n\n\nFaces\n\nStart by drawing the circle. The direction of the nose (merely a point) indicates the direction of the person\u2019s gaze. The eyes and mouth show emotion: more open and curvy for happy thoughts; more closed and jagged for angry thoughts. Try out a few shapes and see what emotions they convey.\n\n\n\nPeople\n\nRemember, we\u2019re aiming for communication rather than realism here. A stick man would be fine. Give him a solid body, as shown in this example, and it becomes easier to pose him.\n\n\n\nI know you think hands are hard, but they\u2019re quite important to convey some ideas, and for our purposes we don\u2019t need to draw hands with any detail. An oval with a stick does the job of a pointing hand. Close-ups might need more fingers showing, but still don\u2019t require any degree of realism.\n\nSignage\n\nDon\u2019t be afraid to use words. We\u2019re sketching to communicate, so if the easiest way to show an office block is a building with a big \u2018office\u2019 sign on the roof, that\u2019s fine!\n\n\n\nLabels\n\nLikewise, feel free to label interactions. Use upper-case letters for legibility and slightly angle the horizontal bars upwards to create a more positive feel.\n\nClich\u00e9s\n\nClich\u00e9s are your friend! Someone\u2019s having an idea? Light bulb above the head. Computer\u2019s crashed? Cloud of smoke with \u201c$\u00a3%*!\u201d\n\n\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s good to practise regularly. Try applying these principles to still life, too. Look around you now and draw the cup on the table, or the books on the shelf. Think of it as a combination of shapes and aim for symbolism rather than realism, and it\u2019s not as hard as you\u2019d think.\n\nI hope this has given you the confidence to give it a shot, and the ability to at least not be mortified with the results!\n\nTip: If you\u2019re involving clients in design games like Leisa Reichelt\u2019s \u2018Design Consequences\u2019 it may be wise to tone down the quality of your drawings at that point so they don\u2019t feel intimidated. Remember, it\u2019s important for them to feel at ease with the idea of wireframing in front of you and their colleagues, no matter how bad their line work.\n\nFor more information see davegrayinfo.com \u2013 Dave Gray taught me everything I know :-)", "year": "2010", "author": "Paul Annett", "author_slug": "paulannett", "published": "2010-12-19T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2010/sketching-to-communicate/", "topic": "business"}
{"rowid": 250, "title": "Build up Your Leadership Toolbox", "contents": "Leadership. It can mean different things to different people and vary widely between companies. Leadership is more than just a job title. You won\u2019t wake up one day and magically be imbued with all you need to do a good job at leading. If we don\u2019t have a shared understanding of what a Good Leader looks like, how can we work on ourselves towards becoming one? How do you know if you even could be a leader? Can you be a leader without the title?\nWhat even is it?\nI got very frustrated way back in my days as a senior developer when I was given \u201cadvice\u201d about my leadership style; at the time I didn\u2019t have the words to describe the styles and ways in which I was leading to be able to push back. I heard these phrases a lot:\n\nyou need to step up\nyou need to take charge\nyou need to grab the bull by its horns\nyou need to have thicker skin\nyou need to just be more confident in your leading\nyou need to just make it happen\n\nI appreciate some people\u2019s intent was to help me, but honestly it did my head in. WAT?! What did any of this even mean. How exactly do you \u201cstep up\u201d and how are you evaluating what step I\u2019m on? I am confident, what does being even more confident help achieve with leading? Does that not lead you down the path of becoming an arrogant door knob? >___<\nWhile there is no One True Way to Lead, there is an overwhelming pattern of people in positions of leadership within tech industry being held by men. It felt a lot like what people were fundamentally telling me to do was to be more like an extroverted man. I was being asked to demonstrate more masculine associated qualities (#notallmen). I\u2019ll leave the gendered nature of leadership qualities as an exercise in googling for the reader.\nI\u2019ve never had a good manager and at the time had no one else to ask for help, so I turned to my trusted best friends. Books.\nI <3 books\nI refused to buy into that style of leadership as being the only accepted way to be. There had to be room for different kinds of people to be leaders and have different leadership styles.\nThere are three books that changed me forever in how I approach and think about leadership.\n\nPrimal leadership, by Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee\nQuiet, by Susan Cain\nDaring Greatly - How the Courage to be Vulnerable transforms the way we live, love, parent and Lead, by Bren\u00e9 Brown\n\nI recommend you read them. Ignore the slightly cheesy titles and trust me, just read them.\nPrimal leadership helped to give me the vocabulary and understanding I needed about the different styles of leadership there are, how and when to apply them.\nQuiet really helped me realise how much I was being undervalued and misunderstood in an extroverted world. If I\u2019d had managers or support from someone who valued introverts\u2019 strengths, things would\u2019ve been very different. I would\u2019ve had someone telling others to step down and shut up for a change rather than pushing on me to step up and talk louder over everyone else. It\u2019s OK to be different and needing different things like time to recharge or time to think before speaking. It also improved my ability to work alongside my more extroverted colleagues by giving me an understanding of their world so I could communicate my needs in a language they would get.\nBren\u00e9 Brown\u2019s book I am forever in debt to. Her work gave me the courage to stand up and be my own kind of leader. Even when no-one around me looked or sounded like me, I found my own voice.\nIt takes great courage to be vulnerable and open about what you can and can\u2019t do. Open about your mistakes. Vocalise what you don\u2019t know and asking for help. In some lights, these are seen as weaknesses and many have tried to use them against me, to pull me down and exclude me for talking about them. Dear reader, it did not work, they failed. The truth is, they are my greatest strengths. The privileges I have, I use for good as best and often as I can.\nJust like gender, leadership is not binary\nIf you google for what a leader is, you\u2019ll get many different answers. I personally think Bren\u00e9\u2019s version is the best as it is one that can apply to a wider range of people, irrespective of job title or function.\n\nI define a leader as anyone who takes responsibility for finding potential in people and processes, and who has the courage to develop that potential.\nBren\u00e9 Brown\n\nBeing a leader isn\u2019t about being the loudest in a room, having veto power, talking over people or ignoring everyone else\u2019s ideas. It\u2019s not about \u201ctelling people what to do\u201d. It\u2019s not about an elevated status that you\u2019re better than others. Nor is it about creating a hand wavey far away vision and forgetting to help support people in how to get there.\nBeing a Good Leader is about having a toolbox of leadership styles and skills to choose from depending on the situation. Knowing how and when to apply them is part of the challenge and difficulty in becoming good at it. It is something you will have to continuously work on, forever. There is no Done.\nLeaders are Made, they are not Born.\nBe flexible in your leadership style\n\nTypically, the best, most effective leaders act according to one or more of six distinct approaches to leadership and skillfully switch between the various styles depending on the situation.\n\nFrom the book, Primal Leadership, it gives a summary of 6 leadership styles which are:\n\nVisionary\nCoaching\nAffiliative\nDemocratic\nPacesetting\nCommanding\n\nVisionary, moves people toward a shared dream or future. When change requires a new vision or a clear direction is needed, using a visionary style of leadership helps communicate that picture. By learning how to effectively communicate a story you can help people to move in that direction and give them clarity on why they\u2019re doing what they\u2019re doing.\nCoaching, is about connecting what a person wants and helping to align that with organisation\u2019s goals. It\u2019s a balance of helping someone improve their performance to fulfil their role and their potential beyond.\nAffiliative, creates harmony by connecting people to each other and requires effective communication to aid facilitation of those connections. This style can be very impactful in healing rifts in a team or to help strengthen connections within and across teams. During stressful times having a positive and supportive connection to those around us really helps see us through those times.\nDemocratic, values people\u2019s input and gets commitment through participation. Taking this approach can help build buy-in or consensus and is a great way to get valuable input from people. The tricky part about this style, I find, is that when I gather and listen to everyone\u2019s input, that doesn\u2019t mean the end result is that I have to please everyone.\nThe next two, sadly, are the ones wielded far too often and have the greatest negative impact. It\u2019s where the \u201ctelling people what to do\u201d comes from. When used sparingly and in the right situations, they can be a force for good. However, they must not be your default style.\nPacesetting, when used well, it is about meeting challenging and exciting goals. When you need to get high-quality results from a motivated and well performing team, this can be great to help achieve real focus and drive. Sadly it is so overused and poorly executed it becomes the \u201cjust make it happen\u201d and driver of unrealistic workload which contributes to burnout.\nCommanding, when used appropriately soothes fears by giving clear direction in an emergency or crisis. When shit is on fire, you want to know that your leadership ability can help kick-start a turnaround and bring clarity. Then switch to another style. This approach is also required when dealing with problematic employees or unacceptable behaviour.\nCommanding style seems to be what a lot of people think being a leader is, taking control and commanding a situation. It should be used sparingly and only when absolutely necessary.\nBe responsible for the power you wield\nIf reading through those you find yourself feeling a bit guilty that maybe you overuse some of the styles, or overwhelmed that you haven\u2019t got all of these down and ready to use in your toolbox\u2026\nTake a breath. Take responsibility. Take action.\nNo one is perfect, and it\u2019s OK. You can start right now working on those. You can have a conversation with your team and try being open about how you\u2019re going to try some different styles. You can be vulnerable and own up to mistakes you might\u2019ve made followed with an apology. You can order those books and read them. Those books will give you more examples on those leadership styles and help you to find your own voice.\nThe impact you can have on the lives of those around you when you\u2019re a leader, is huge. You can help be that positive impact, help discover and develop potential in someone.\n\nTime spent understanding people is never wasted.\nCate Huston.\n\nI believe in you. <3 Mazz.", "year": "2018", "author": "Mazz Mosley", "author_slug": "mazzmosley", "published": "2018-12-10T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2018/build-up-your-leadership-toolbox/", "topic": "business"}
{"rowid": 254, "title": "What I Learned in Six Years at GDS", "contents": "When I joined the Government Digital Service in April 2012, GOV.UK was just going into public beta. GDS was a completely new organisation, part of the Cabinet Office, with a mission to stop wasting government money on over-complicated and underperforming big IT projects and instead deliver simple, useful services for the public.\nLots of people who were experts in their fields were drawn in by this inspiring mission, and I learned loads from working with some true leaders. Here are three of the main things I learned.\n1. What is the user need?\n\u2028The main discipline I learned from my time at GDS was to always ask \u2018what is the user need?\u2019 It\u2019s very easy to build something that seems like a good idea, but until you\u2019ve identified what problem you are solving for the user, you can\u2019t be sure that you are building something that is going to help solve an actual problem.\nA really good example of this is GOV.UK Notify. This service was originally conceived of as a status tracker; a \u201cwhere\u2019s my stuff\u201d for government services. For example, if you apply for a passport online, it can take up to six weeks to arrive. After a few weeks, you might feel anxious and phone the Home Office to ask what\u2019s happening. The idea of the status tracker was to allow you to get this information online, saving your time and saving government money on call centres.\nThe project started, as all GDS projects do, with a discovery. The main purpose of a discovery is to identify the users\u2019 needs. At the end of this discovery, the team realised that a status tracker wasn\u2019t the way to address the problem. As they wrote in this blog post: \n\nStatus tracking tools are often just \u2018channel shift\u2019 for anxiety. They solve the symptom and not the problem. They do make it more convenient for people to reduce their anxiety, but they still require them to get anxious enough to request an update in the first place.\n\nWhat would actually address the user need would be to give you the information before you get anxious about where your passport is. For example, when your application is received, email you to let you know when to expect it, and perhaps text you at various points in the process to let you know how it\u2019s going. So instead of a status tracker, the team built GOV.UK Notify, to make it easy for government services to incorporate text, email and even letter notifications into their processes.\nMaking sure you know your user\nAt GDS user needs were taken very seriously. We had a user research lab on site and everyone was required to spend two hours observing user research every six weeks. Ideally you\u2019d observe users working with things you\u2019d built, but even if they weren\u2019t, it was an incredibly valuable experience, and something you should seek out if you are able to.\nEven if we think we understand our users very well, it is very enlightening to see how users actually use your stuff. Partly because in technology we tend to be power users and the average user doesn\u2019t use technology the same way we do. But even if you are building things for other developers, someone who is unfamiliar with it will interact with it in a way that may be very different to what you have envisaged.\nUser needs is not just about building things\nAsking the question \u201cwhat is the user need?\u201d really helps focus on why you are doing what you are doing. It keeps things on track, and helps the team think about what the actual desired end goal is (and should be). \nThinking about user needs has helped me with lots of things, not just building services. For example, you are raising a pull request. What\u2019s the user need? The reviewer needs to be able to easily understand what the change you are proposing is, why you are proposing that change and any areas you need particular help on with the review. \nOr you are writing an email to a colleague. What\u2019s the user need? What are you hoping the reader will learn, understand or do as a result of your email?\n2. Make things open: it makes things better\nThe second important thing I learned at GDS was \u2018make things open: it makes things better\u2019. This works on many levels: being open about your strategy, blogging about what you are doing and what you\u2019ve learned (including mistakes), and \u2013 the part that I got most involved in \u2013 coding in the open.\nTalking about your work helps clarify it\nOne thing we did really well at GDS was blogging \u2013 a lot \u2013 about what we were working on. Blogging about what you are working on is is really valuable for the writer because it forces you to think logically about what you are doing in order to tell a good story. If you are blogging about upcoming work, it makes you think clearly about why you\u2019re doing it; and it also means that people can comment on the blog post. Often people had really useful suggestions or clarifying questions.\nIt\u2019s also really valuable to blog about what you\u2019ve learned, especially if you\u2019ve made a mistake. It makes sure you\u2019ve learned the lesson and helps others avoid making the same mistakes. As well as blogging about lessons learned, GOV.UK also publishes incident reports when there is an outage or service degradation. Being open about things like this really engenders an atmosphere of trust and safe learning; which helps make things better.\nCoding in the open has a lot of benefits\nIn my last year at GDS I was the Open Source Lead, and one of the things I focused on was the requirement that all new government source code should be open. From the start, GDS coded in the open (the GitHub organisation still has the non-intuitive name alphagov, because it was created by the team doing the original Alpha of GOV.UK, before GDS was even formed).\nWhen I first joined GDS I was a little nervous about the fact that anyone could see my code. I worried about people seeing my mistakes, or receiving critical code reviews. (Setting people\u2019s mind at rest about these things is why it\u2019s crucial to have good standards around communication and positive behaviour - even a critical code review should be considerately given). \nBut I quickly realised there were huge advantages to coding in the open. In the same way as blogging your decisions makes you think carefully about whether they are good ones and what evidence you have, the fact that anyone in the world could see your code (even if, in practice, they probably won\u2019t be looking) makes everyone raise their game slightly. The very fact that you know it\u2019s open, makes you make it a bit better.\nIt helps with lots of other things as well, for example it makes it easier to collaborate with people and share your work. And now that I\u2019ve left GDS, it\u2019s so useful to be able to look back at code I worked on to remember how things worked.\nShare what you learn\nIt\u2019s sometimes hard to know where to start with being open about things, but it gets easier and becomes more natural as you practice. It helps you clarify your thoughts and follow through on what you\u2019ve decided to do. Working at GDS when this was a very important principle really helped me learn how to do this well.\n3. Do the hard work to make it simple (tech edition)\n\u2018Start with user needs\u2019 and \u2018Make things open: it makes things better\u2019 are two of the excellent government design principles. They are all good, but the third thing that I want to talk about is number 4: \u2018Do the hard work to make it simple\u2019, and specifically, how this manifests itself in the way we build technology.\nAt GDS, we worked very hard to do the hard work to make the code, systems and technology we built simple for those who came after us. For example, writing good commit messages is taken very seriously. There is commit message guidance, and it was not unusual for a pull request review to ask for a commit message to be rewritten to make a commit message clearer.\nWe worked very hard on making pull requests good, keeping the reviewer in mind and making it clear to the user how best to review it.\nReviewing others\u2019 pull requests is the highest priority so that no-one is blocked, and teams have screens showing the status of open pull requests (using fourth wall) and we even had a \u2018pull request seal\u2019, a bot that publishes pull requests to Slack and gets angry if they are uncommented on for more than two days.\nMaking it easier for developers to support the site\nAnother example of doing the hard work to make it simple was the opsmanual. I spent two years on the web operations team on GOV.UK, and one of the things I loved about that team was the huge efforts everyone went to to be open and inclusive to developers.\nThe team had some people who were really expert in web ops, but they were all incredibly helpful when bringing me on board as a developer with no previous experience of web ops, and also patiently explaining things whenever other devs in similar positions came with questions. \nThe main artefact of this was the opsmanual, which contained write-ups of how to do lots of things. One of the best things was that every alert that might lead to someone being woken up in the middle of the night had a link to documentation on the opsmanual which detailed what the alert meant and some suggested actions that could be taken to address it.\nThis was important because most of the devs on GOV.UK were on the on-call rota, so if they were woken at 3am by an alert they\u2019d never seen before, the opsmanual information might give them everything they needed to solve it, without the years of web ops training and the deep familiarity with the GOV.UK infrastructure that came with working on it every day.\nDevelopers are users too\nDoing the hard work to make it simple means that users can do what they need to do, and this applies even when the users are your developer peers. At GDS I really learned how to focus on simplicity for the user, and how much better this makes things work.\nThese three principles help us make great things\nI learned so much more in my six years at GDS. For example, the civil service has a very fair way of interviewing. I learned about the importance of good comms, working late, responsibly and the value of content design.\nAnd the real heart of what I learned, the guiding principles that help us deliver great products, is encapsulated by the three things I\u2019ve talked about here: think about the user need, make things open, and do the hard work to make it simple.", "year": "2018", "author": "Anna Shipman", "author_slug": "annashipman", "published": "2018-12-08T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2018/what-i-learned-in-six-years-at-gds/", "topic": "business"}
{"rowid": 266, "title": "Collaborative Development for a Responsively Designed Web", "contents": "In responsive web design we\u2019ve found a technique that allows us to design for the web as a medium in its own right: one that presents a fluid, adaptable and ever changing canvas.\n\nUntil this point, we gave little thought to the environment in which users will experience our work, caring more about the aggregate than the individual. The applications we use encourage rigid layouts, whilst linear processes focus on clients signing off paintings of websites that have little regard for behaviour and interactions. The handover of pristine, pixel-perfect creations to developers isn\u2019t dissimilar to farting before exiting a crowded lift, leaving front-end developers scratching their heads as they fill in the inevitable gaps. If you haven\u2019t already, I recommend reading Drew\u2019s checklist of things to consider before handing over a design.\n\nSomehow, this broken methodology has survived for the last fifteen years or so. Even the advent of web standards has had little impact. Now, as we face an onslaught of different devices, the true universality of the web can no longer be ignored.\n\nResponsive web design is just the thin end of the wedge. Largely concerned with layout, its underlying philosophy could ignite a trend towards interfaces that adapt to any number of different variables: input methods, bandwidth availability, user preference \u2013 you name it!\n\nWith such adaptability, a collaborative and iterative process is required. Ethan Marcotte, who worked with the team behind the responsive redesign of the Boston Globe website, talked about such an approach in his book:\n\n\n\tThe responsive projects I\u2019ve worked on have had a lot of success combining design and development into one hybrid phase, bringing the two teams into one highly collaborative group.\n\n\nWhilst their process still involved the creation of desktop-centric mock-ups, these were presented to the entire team early on, where questions about how pages might adapt and behave at different sizes were asked. Mock-ups were quickly converted into HTML prototypes, meaning further decisions could be based on usage rather than guesswork (and endless hours spent in Photoshop).\n\nRegardless of the exact process, it\u2019s clear that the relationship between our two disciplines is more crucial than ever. Yet, historically, it seems a wedge has been driven between us \u2013 perhaps a result of segregation and waterfall-style processes \u2013 resulting in animosity.\n\nSo how can we improve this relationship? Ultimately, we\u2019ll need to adapt, but even within existing workflows we can start to overlap. Simply adjusting our attitude can effect change, and bring design and development teams closer together.\n\n\n\tGood design is constant contact.\n\n\tMark Otto\n\n\nThe way we work needs to be more open and inclusive. For example, ensuring members of the development team attend initial kick-off meetings and design workshops will not only ensure technical concerns are raised, but mean that those implementing our designs better understand the problems we\u2019re trying to solve.\n\nIt can also be useful at this stage to explain how you work and the sort of deliverables you expect to produce. This will give developers a chance to make recommendations on how these can be optimized for their own needs.\n\nYou may even find opportunities to share the load. On a recent project I worked on, our development partners offered to produce the interactive prototypes needed for user testing. This allowed us to concentrate on refining the experience, whilst they were able to get a head start on building the product.\n\nWhile developers should be involved at the beginning of projects, it\u2019s also important that designers are able to review and contribute to a product as it\u2019s being built. Any handover should be done in person, and ideally you\u2019ll have a day set aside to do so. Having additional budget available for follow-up design reviews is also recommended. Learning how to use version control tools like Subversion or Git will allow you to work within the same environment as developers, and allow you to contribute code or graphic assets directly to a project if needed.\n\nDon\u2019t underestimate the benefits of designer and developer sitting next to each other. Subtle nuances can be explored far more easily than if they were conducted over email or phone. As Ethan writes, \u201c\u2018Design\u2019 is the means, not merely the end; the path we walk over the course of a project, the choices we make\u201d.\n\nIt\u2019s from collaboration like this that I\u2019ve become fond of producing visual style guides. These demonstrate typographic treatments for common markup and patterns (blockquotes, lists, pagination, basic form controls and so on). Thinking in terms of components rather than individual pages not only fits in better with how a developer will implement a site, but can also ensure your design works as a coherent whole.\n\nDespite the amount of research and design produced, when it comes to the crunch, there will always be a need for compromise. As the old saying goes, \u2018fast, cheap and good \u2013 pick two.\u2019 It\u2019s important that you know which pieces are crucial to a design and which areas can allow for movement. Pick your battles wisely. Having an agreed set of design principles can be useful when making such decisions, as they help everyone focus on the goals of the project.\n\n\n\tThe best compromises are reached when both sides understand the issues of the other.\n\n\tRichard Rutter\n\n\nUltimately, better collaboration comes through a shared understanding of the different competencies required to build a website. Instead of viewing ourselves in terms of discrete roles, we should instead look to emphasize our range of abilities, and work with others whose skills are complementary.\n\nPerhaps somebody who actively seeks to broaden their knowledge is the mark of a professional. Seek these people out.\n\nThe best developers I\u2019ve worked with have a respect for design, probably having attempted to do some themselves! Having wrangled with a few MySQL databases myself, I certainly believe the obverse is true. While knowing HTML won\u2019t necessarily make you a better designer, it will help you understand the issues being faced by a front-end developer and, more importantly, allow you to offer solutions or alternative approaches.\n\nSo take a moment to think about how you work with developers and how you could improve your relationship with them. What are you doing to ease the path towards our collaborative future?", "year": "2011", "author": "Paul Lloyd", "author_slug": "paulrobertlloyd", "published": "2011-12-05T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2011/collaborative-development-for-a-responsively-designed-web/", "topic": "business"}
{"rowid": 268, "title": "Getting the Most Out of Google Analytics", "contents": "Something a bit different for today\u2019s 24 ways article. For starters, I\u2019m not a designer or a developer. I\u2019m an evil man who sells things to people on the internet. Second, this article will likely be a little more nebulous than you\u2019re used to, since it covers quite a number of points in a relatively short space. \n\nThis isn\u2019t going to be the complete Google Analytics Conversion University IQ course compressed into a single article, obviously. What it will be, however, is a primer on setting up and using Google Analytics in real life, and a great deal of what I\u2019ve learned using Google Analytics nearly every working day for the past six (crikey!) years.\n\nAlso, to be clear, I\u2019ll be referencing new Google Analytics here; old Google Analytics is for loooosers (and those who want reliable e-commerce conversion data per site search term, natch).\n\nYou may have been running your Analytics account for several years now, dipping in and out, checking traffic levels, seeing what\u2019s popular\u2026 and that\u2019s about it. Google Analytics provides so much more than that, but the number of reports available can often intimidate users, and documentation and case studies on their use are minimal at best. \n\nLet\u2019s start! Setting up your Analytics profile\n\nBefore we plough on, I just want to run through a quick checklist that some basic settings have been enabled for your profile. If you haven\u2019t clicked it, click the big cog on the top-right of Google Analytics and we\u2019ll have a poke about.\n\n\n\tIf you have an e-commerce site, e-commerce tracking has been enabled\u2028\n\tIf your site has a search function, site search tracking has been enabled.\n\tQuery string parameters that you do not want tracked as separate pages have been excluded (for example, any parameters needed for your platform to function, otherwise you\u2019ll get multiple entries for the same page appearing in your reports)\n\tFilters have been enabled on your main profile to exclude your office IP address and any IPs of people who frequently access the site for work purposes. In decent numbers they tend to throw data off a tad.\u2028\n\tYou may also find the need to set up multiple profiles prefiltered for specific audience segments. For example, at Lovehoney we have seventeen separate profiles that allow me quick access to certain countries, devices and traffic sources without having to segment first. You\u2019ll also find load time for any complex reports much improved. Use the same filter screen as above to set up a series of profiles that only include, say, mobile visits, or UK visitors, so you can quickly analyse important segments.\n\n\nMatt, what\u2019s a segment?\n\nA segment is a subsection of your visitor base, which you define and then call on in reports to see specific data for that subsection. For example, in this report I\u2019ve defined two segments, the first for IE6 users and the second for IE7.\n\n\n\nSegments are easily created by clicking the Advanced Segments tabs at the top of any report and clicking +New Custom Segment.\n\n\n\nWhat does your site do?\n\nUnderstanding the goals of your site is an oft-covered topic, but it\u2019s necessary not just to form a better understand of your business and prioritize your time. Understanding what you wish visitors to do on your site translates well into a goal-driven analytics package like Google Analytics.  \n\nEvery site exists essentially to sell something, either financially through e-commerce, or to sell an idea or impart information, get people to download a CV or enquire about service, or to sell space on that website to advertisers. If the site did not provide a positive benefit to its owners, it would not have a reason for being. \n\nOnce you have understood the reason why you have a site, you can map that reason on to one of the three goal types Google Analytics provides. \n\nE-commerce \n\nThis conversion type registers transactions as part of a sales process which requires a monetary value, what products have been bought, an SKU (stock keeping unit), affiliation (if you\u2019re then attributing the sale to a third party or franchise) and so on.\n\nThe benefit of e-commerce tracking is not only assigning non-arbitrary monetary value to behaviour of visitors on your site, as well as being able to see ancillary costs such as shipping, but seeing product-level information, like which products are preferred from various channels, popular categories, and so on.\n\n\n\nHowever, I find the e-commerce tracking options also useful for non-e-commerce sites. For example, if you\u2019re offering downloads or subscriptions and having an email address or user\u2019s details is worth something to you, you can set up e-commerce tracking to understand how much value your site is bringing. For example, an email address might be worth 20p to you, but if it also includes a name it\u2019s worth 50p. A contact telephone number is worth \u00a32, and so on.\n\nPage goals\n\nPage goals, unsurprisingly, track a visit to a page (often with a sequence of pages leading up to that page). This is what\u2019s referred to as a goal funnel, and is generally used to track how visitors behave in a multistep checkout. \n\n\n\nInterestingly, the page doesn\u2019t have to actually exist. For example, if you have a single page checkout, you can register virtual page views using trackPageview() when a visitor clicks into a particular section of the checkout or other form. If your site is geared towards getting someone to a particular page, but where there isn\u2019t a transaction (for example, a subscription page) this is for you.\n\nThere are also behavioural goals, such as time on site and number of pages viewed, which are geared towards sites that make money from advertising.\n\nBut, going back to the page goals, these can be abstracted using regular expressions, meaning that you can define a funnel based on page type rather than having to set individual folders.\n\n\n\nIn this example, I\u2019ve created regexes for the main page types on my site, so I can create a wide funnel that captures visitors from where they enter through to checkout.\n\nEvents\n\nEvent tracking registers a predefined event, such as playing a video, or some interaction that can trigger JavaScript, such as a Tweet This button. Events can then be triggered using the trackEvent() call. If you want someone to complete watching a video, you would code your player to fire trackEvent() upon completion. \n\nWhile I don\u2019t use events as goals, I use events elsewhere to see how well a video play aids to conversion. This not only helps me justify the additional spend on creating video content, but also quickly highlights which videos are underperforming as sales tools.\n\n\n\nWhat a visitor can tell you\n\n\u2028Now you have some proper goals set up, we can start to see how changes in content (on-site and external) affect those goals. \n\nUltimately, when a visitor comes to your site, they bring information with them:\n\n\n\twhere they came from (a search engine \u2013 including: keyword searched for; a referral; direct; affiliate; or ad campaign)\n\tdemographics (country; whether they\u2019re new or returning, within thirty days)\n\ttechnical information (browser; screen size; device; bandwidth)\n\tsite-specific information (landing page; next click; previous values assigned to them as custom variables*)\n\n\n * A note about custom variables. There\u2019s no hope in hell that I can cover custom variables in this article. Go research them. Custom variables are the single best way to hack Google Analytics and bend it to your will. Custom variables allow you to record anything you want about a visitor, which that visitor will then carry around with them between visits. It\u2019s also great for plugging other services into Google Analytics (as shown by the marvelous way Visual Website Optimizer allows you to track and segment tests within the GA interface). Just make sure not to breach the terms of service, eh?\n\nCSI your website\n\nPolice procedural TV shows are all the same: the investigators are called to a crime and come across a clue; there\u2019s then an autopsy; new evidence leads them to a new location; they find a new clue; they put two and two together; they solve the mystery.\n\nThis is your life now. Exciting!\n\nSo, now you\u2019re gathering a wealth of information about what sort of people visit your site, what they do when they\u2019re there, and what eventually gets them to drive value to you. It\u2019s now your job to investigate all these little clues to see which types of people drive the most value, and what you can change to improve it.\n\nMaybe not that exciting.\n\nHowever, Google Analytics comes pre-armed with extensive reports for you to delve into. As an e-commerce guy (as opposed to a page goal guy) my day pretty much follows the pattern below.\n\n\n\tLook at e-commerce conversion rate by traffic source compared to the same day in the previous week and previous month. As ours is an e-commerce site, we have weekly and monthly trends. A big spike on Sundays and Mondays, and payday towards the end of the month is always good; on the third week of a month there tends to be a lull. Spend time letting your Google Analytics data brew, understand your own trends and patterns, and you\u2019ll start to get a feel for when something isn\u2019t quite right.\n\t\n\t\tTraffic Sources \u2192 Sources \u2192 All Traffic\n\t\n\tLook at the conversion rate by landing page for any traffic source that feels significantly different to what\u2019s expected. Check bounce rates, drill down to likely landing pages and check search keyword or referral site to see if it\u2019s a particular subset of visitor. You can do this by clicking Secondary Dimension and choosing Keyword or Source. If it\u2019s direct, choose Visitor Type to break down by new or returning visitor.\n\t\n\t\tContent \u2192 Site Content \u2192 Landing Pages\n\t\n\tI then tend to flip into Content Drilldown to see what the next clicks were from those landing pages, and whether they changed significantly to the date I\u2019m comparing with. If they have, that\u2019s usually an indicator of changed content (or its relevancy). Remember, if a bunch of people have found their way to your page via a method you\u2019re not expecting (such as a mention on a Spanish radio station \u2013 this actually happened to me once), while the content hasn\u2019t changed, the relevancy of it to the audience may have.\n\t\n\t\tContent \u2192 Site Content \u2192 Content Drilldown\n\t\n\tOnce I have an idea of what content was consumed, and whether it was relevant to the user, I then look at the visitor specifics, such as browser or demographic data, to see again whether the change was limited to a specific subset. Site speed, for example, is normally a good factor towards bounce rate, so compare that with previous data as well.\n\n\nNow, to be investigating at this level you still need a serious amount of data, in order to tell what\u2019s a significant change or not. If you\u2019re struggling with a small number of visitors, you might find reporting on a weekly or fortnightly basis more appropriate. \n\nHowever, once you\u2019ve looked into the basics of why changes happen to the value of your site, you\u2019ll soon find yourself limited by the reports offered in Standard Reporting. So, it\u2019s time to build your own. Hooray!\n\nCustom reporting\n\nGoogle Analytics provides the tools to build reports specific to the types of investigations you frequently perform. \n\n\n\nWelcome to my world.\n\nCustom reports are quite simple to build: first, you determine the metric you want the report to cover (number of visitors, bounce rate, conversion rate, and so on), then choose a set of dimensions that you\u2019d like to segment the report by (say, the source of the traffic, and whether they were new or returning users). You can filter the report, including or excluding particular dimension values, and you can assign the report to any of the profiles you created earlier. \n\nIn the example below, I\u2019ve created a report that shows me visits and conversion rate for any Google traffic that landed directly only on a product page. I can then drill down on each product page to see the complete phrases use to search. I can use this information in two ways:\n\n\n\tI can see which products aren\u2019t converting, which shows me where I need to work harder on merchandising.\n\tI can give this information to my content team, showing them the actual phrases visitors used to reach our product content, helping them write better targeted product descriptions.\n\n\n\n\nThe possibilities here are nearly endless, but here are a few examples of reports I find useful:\n\n\n\tNon-brand inbound search\nBy creating a report that shows inbound search traffic which doesn\u2019t include your brand, you can see more clearly the behaviour of visitors most likely to be unfamiliar with your site and brand values, without having to rely on the clumsy new or returning demographic date.\n\tTraffic/conversion/sales by hour\nThis is pure stats porn, but actually more useful than real-time data. By seeing this data broken down at an hourly level, you can not only compare the current day to previous days, but also see the best performing times for email broadcasts and tweets.\n\tVisits, load time, conversion and sales by page and browser\nPage speed can often kill conversion rates, but it\u2019s difficult to prove the value of focusing on speed in monetary terms. Having this report to hand helps me drive Operation Greenbelt, our effort to get into the sub-1.5 second band in Google Webmaster Tools.\n\n\nUseful things you can\u2019t do in custom reporting\n\nIf you have a search function on your website, then Conversion Rate and Products Bought by Site Search Term is an incredibly useful report that allows you to measure the effectiveness of your site\u2019s search engine at returning products and content related to the search term used. By including the products actually bought by visitors who searched for each term, you can use this information to better searchandise these results, escalating high propensity and high value products to the top of the results.\n\nHowever, it\u2019s not possible to get this information out of new Google Analytics. \n\nTry it, select the following in the report builder:\n\n\n\tMetrics: total unique searches; e-commerce or goal conversion rate\n\tDimensions: search term; product\n\n\nYou\u2019ll see that the data returned is a little nonsensical, though a 2,000% conversion rate would be nice. However, you can get more accurate information using advanced segments. By creating individual segments to define users who have searched for a particular term, you can run the sales performance and product performance reports as normal. It\u2019s laborious, but it teaches a good lesson: data that seems inaccessible can normally be found another way!\n\nReporting infrastructure\n\nNow that you have a series of reports that you can refer to on a daily or weekly basis, it\u2019s time to put together a regular reporting infrastructure. \n\nEven if you\u2019re not reporting to someone, having a set of key performance indicators that you can use to see how your performance is improving over time allows you to set yourself business goals on a monthly and annual basis.\n\nFor my own reporting, I take some high-level metrics (such as visitors, conversion rate and average order value), and segment them by traffic source and, separately, landing page. These statistics I record weekly and report:\n\n\n\tcurrent week compared with previous week\n\tsame week previous year (if available)\n\t4 week average\n\t13 week average\n\t52 week average (if available)\n\n\nThis takes into account weekly, monthly, seasonal and annual trends, and gives you a much clearer view of your performance.\n\nGetting data in other ways\n\nIf you\u2019re using Google Analytics frequently, with any large site you\u2019ll come to a couple of conclusions:\n\n\n\tDoing any kind of practical comparative analysis is unwieldy.\n\tBoy, Google Analytics is slow!\n\n\nAs you work with bigger datasets and put together more complex queries, you\u2019ll see the loading graphic more than you\u2019ll see actual data. So when you reach that level, there are ways to completely bypass the Google Analytics interface altogether, and get data into your own spreadsheet application for manipulation.\n\nData Feed Query Explorer\n\nIf you just want to pull down some quick statistics but still use complex filters and exotic metric and dimension combinations, the Data Feed Query Explorer is the quickest way of doing so. Authenticate with your Google Analytics account, select a profile, and you can start selecting metrics and dimensions to be generated in a handy, selectable tabulated format.\n\nGoogle Analytics API\n\nIf you\u2019re feeling clever, you can bypass having to copy and paste data by pulling in directly into Excel, Google Docs or your own application using the Google Analytics API. There are several scripts and plugins available to do this. I use Automate Analytics Google Docs code (there\u2019s also a paid version that simplifies setup and creates some handy reports for you).\n\nNew shiny things\n\nWell, now that that\u2019s over, I can show you some cool stuff. Well, at least it\u2019s cool to me. Google Analytics is being constantly improved and new functionality is introduced nearly every month. Here are a couple of my favourites.\n\nMultichannel attribution\n\nNot every visitor converts on your site on the first visit. They may not even do so on the second visit, or third. If they convert on the fourth visit, but each time they visit they do so via a different channel (for example, Search PPC, Search Organic, Direct, Email), which channel do you attribute the conversion to? The last channel, or the first? Dilemma!  \n\nGoogle now has a Multichannel Attribution report, available in the Conversion category, which shows how each channel assists in converting, the overlap between channels, and where in the process that channel was important. \n\n\n\nFor example, you may have analysed your blog traffic from Twitter and become disheartened that not many people were subscribing after visiting from Twitter links, but instead your high-value subscribers were coming from natural search. On the face of it, you\u2019d spend less time tweeting, but a multichannel report may tell you that visitors first arrived via a Twitter link and didn\u2019t subscribe, but then came back later after searching for your blog name on Google, after which they did. Don\u2019t pack Twitter in yet!\n\nVisitor and goal flow\n\nVisitor and goal flow are amazing reports that help you visualize the flow of traffic through your site and, ultimately, into your checkout funnel or similar goal path. Flow reports are perfect for understanding drop-off points in your process, as well as what the big draws are on each page. \n\n\n\nPreviously, if you wanted to visualize this data you had to set up several abstracted microgoals and chain them together in custom reports. Frankly, it was a pain in the arse and burned through your precious and limited goal allocation.\n\nVisitor flow bypasses all that and produces the report in an interactive flow diagram. While it doesn\u2019t show you the holy grail of conversion likelihood by each path, you can segment visitor flow so that you can see very specifically how different segments of your visitor base behave.\n\nGo play with it now!", "year": "2011", "author": "Matt Curry", "author_slug": "mattcurry", "published": "2011-12-18T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2011/getting-the-most-out-of-google-analytics/", "topic": "business"}
{"rowid": 270, "title": "From Side Project to Not So Side Project", "contents": "In the last article I wrote for 24 ways, back in 2009, I enthused about the benefits of having a pet project, suggesting that we should all have at least one so that we could collaborate with our friends, escape our day jobs, fulfil our own needs, help others out, raise our profiles, make money, and \u2014 most importantly \u2014 have fun. I don\u2019t think I need to offer any further persuasions: it seems that designers and developers are launching their own pet projects left, right and centre. This makes me very happy.\n\nHowever, there still seems to be something of a disconnect between having a side project and turning it into something that is moderately successful; in particular, the challenge of making enough money to sustain the project and perhaps even elevating it from the sidelines so that it becomes something not so on the side at all.\n\nBefore we even begin this, let\u2019s spend a moment talking about money, also known as\u2026\n\nEvil, nasty, filthy money\n\nOver the last couple of years, I\u2019ve started referring to myself as an accidental businessman. I say accidental because my view of the typical businessman is someone who is driven by money, and I usually can\u2019t stand such people. Those who are motivated by profit, obsessed with growth, and take an active interest in the world\u2019s financial systems don\u2019t tend to be folks with whom I share a beer, unless it\u2019s to pour it over them. Especially if they\u2019re wearing pinstriped suits.\n\nThat said, we all want to make money, don\u2019t we? And most of us want to make a relatively decent amount, too. I don\u2019t think there\u2019s any harm in admitting that, is there? Hello, I\u2019m Elliot and I\u2019m a capitalist.\n\nThe key is making money from doing what we love. For most people I know in our community, we\u2019ve already achieved that \u2014 I\u2019m hard-pressed to think of anyone who isn\u2019t extremely passionate about working in our industry and I think it\u2019s one of the most positive, unifying benefits we enjoy as a group of like-minded people \u2014 but side projects usually arise from another kind of passion: a passion for something other than what we do as our day jobs. Perhaps it\u2019s because your clients are driving you mental and you need a break; perhaps it\u2019s because you want to create something that is truly your own; perhaps it\u2019s because you\u2019re sick of seeing your online work disappear so fast and you want to try your hand at print in order to make a more permanent mark.\n\nThe three factors I listed there led me to create 8 Faces, a printed magazine about typography that started as a side project and is now a very significant part of my yearly output and income.\n\nLike many things that prove fruitful, 8 Faces\u2019 success was something of an accident, too. For a start, the magazine was never meant to be profitable; its only purpose at all was to scratch my own itch. Then, after the first issue took off and I realized how much time I needed to spend in order to make the next one decent, it became clear that I would have to cover more than just the production costs: I\u2019d have to take time out from client work as well. Doing this meant I\u2019d have to earn some money. Probably not enough to equate to the exact amount of time lost when I could be doing client work (not that you could ever describe time as being lost when you work on something you love), but enough to survive; for me to feel that I was getting paid while doing all of the work that 8 Faces entailed. The answer was to raise money through partnerships with some cool companies who were happy to be associated with my little project.\n\nA sustainable business model\n\nBusiness model! I can\u2019t believe I just wrote those words! But a business model is really just a loose plan for how not to screw up. And all that stuff I wrote in the paragraph above about partnering with companies so I could get some money in while I put the magazine together? Well, that\u2019s my business model. \n\nIf you\u2019re making any product that has some sort of production cost, whether that\u2019s physical print run expenses or up-front dev work to get an app built, covering those costs before you even release your product means that you\u2019ll be in profit from the first copy you sell. This is no small point: production expenses are pretty much the only cost you\u2019ll ever need to recoup, so having them covered before you launch anything is pretty much the best possible position in which you could place yourself. Happy days, as Jamie Oliver would say.\n\nObtaining these initial funds through partnerships has another benefit. Sure, it\u2019s a form of advertising but, done right, your partners can potentially provide you with great content, too. In the case of 8 Faces, the ads look as nice as the rest of the magazine, and a couple of our partners also provide proper articles: genuinely meaningful, relevant, reader-pleasing articles at that. You\u2019d be amazed at how many companies are willing to become partners and, as the old adage goes, if you don\u2019t ask, you don\u2019t get.\n\nWith profit comes responsibility\n\nDon\u2019t forget about the responsibility you have to your audience if you engage in a relationship with a partner or any type of advertiser: although I may have freely admitted my capitalist leanings, I\u2019m still essentially a hairy hippy, and I feel that any partnership should be good for me as a publisher, good for the partner and \u2014 most importantly \u2014 good for the reader. Really, the key word here is relevance, and that\u2019s where 99.9% of advertising fails abysmally. \n\n(99.9% is not a scientific figure, but you know what I\u2019m on about.)\n\nThe main grey area when a side project becomes profitable is how you share that profit, partly because \u2014 in my opinion, at least \u2014 the transition from non-profitable side project to relatively successful source of income can be a little blurred. Asking for help for nothing when there\u2019s no money to be had is pretty normal, but sometimes it\u2019s easy to get used to that free help even once you start making money. I believe the best approach is to ask for help with the promise that it will always be rewarded as soon as there\u2019s money available. (Oh, god: this sounds like one of those nightmarish client proposals. It\u2019s not, honest.) If you\u2019re making something cool, people won\u2019t mind helping out while you find your feet.\n\nEvents often think that they\u2019re exempt from sharing profit. Perhaps that\u2019s because many event organizers think they\u2019re doing the speakers a favour rather than the other way around (that\u2019s a whole separate article), but it\u2019s shocking to see how many people seem to think they can profit from content-makers \u2014 speakers, for example \u2014 and yet not pay for that content. It was for this reason that Keir and I paid all of our speakers for our Insites: The Tour side project, which we ran back in July. We probably could\u2019ve got away without paying them, especially as the gig was so informal, but it was the right thing to do.\n\nIn conclusion: money as a by-product\n\nLet\u2019s conclude by returning to the slightly problematic nature of money, because it\u2019s the pivot on which your side project\u2019s success can swing, regardless of whether you measure success by monetary gain. I would argue that success has nothing to do with profit \u2014 it\u2019s about you being able to spend the time you want on the project. Unfortunately, that is almost always linked to money: money to pay yourself while you work on your dream idea; money to pay for more servers when your web app hits the big time; money to pay for efforts to get the word out there. The key, then, is to judge success on your own terms, and seek to generate as much money as you see fit, whether it\u2019s purely to cover your running costs, or enough to buy a small country. There\u2019s nothing wrong with profit, as long as you\u2019re ethical about it. (Pro tip: if you\u2019ve earned enough to buy a small country, you\u2019ve probably been unethical along the way.)\n\nThe point at which individuals and companies fail \u2014 in the moral sense, for sure, but often in the competitive sense, too \u2014 is when money is the primary motivation. It should never be the primary motivation. If you\u2019re not passionate enough about something to do it as an unprofitable side project, you shouldn\u2019t be doing it all. \n\nEarning money should be a by-product of doing what you love. And who doesn\u2019t want to spend their life doing what they love?", "year": "2011", "author": "Elliot Jay Stocks", "author_slug": "elliotjaystocks", "published": "2011-12-22T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2011/from-side-project-to-not-so-side-project/", "topic": "business"}
{"rowid": 281, "title": "Nine Things I've Learned", "contents": "I\u2019ve been a professional graphic designer for fourteen years and for just under four of those a professional web designer. Like most designers I\u2019ve learned a lot in my time, both from a design point of view and in business as freelance designer. A few of the things I\u2019ve learned stick out in my mind, so I thought I\u2019d share them with you. They\u2019re pretty random and in no particular order.\n\n1. Becoming the designer you want to be\n\nWhen I started out as a young graphic designer, I wanted to design posters and record sleeves, pretty much like every other young graphic designer. The problem is that the reality of the world means that when you get your first job you\u2019re designing the back of a paracetamol packet or something equally weird. I recently saw a tweet that went something like this: \u201cYou\u2019ll never become the designer you always dreamt of being by doing the work you never wanted to do\u201d. This is so true; to become the designer you want to be, you need to be designing the things you\u2019re passionate about designing. This probably this means working in the evenings and weekends for little or no money, but it\u2019s time well spent. Doing this will build up your portfolio with the work that really shows what you can do! Soon, someone will ask you to design something based on having seen this work. From this point, you\u2019re carving your own path in the direction of becoming the designer you always wanted to be.\n\n2. Compete on your own terms\n\nAs well as all being friends, we are also competitors. In order to win new work we need a selling point, preferably a unique selling point. Web design is a combination of design disciplines \u2013 user experience design, user interface Design, visual design, development, and so on. Some companies will sell themselves as UX specialists, which is fine, but everyone who designs a website from scratch does some sort of UX, so it\u2019s not really a unique selling point. Of course, some people do it better than others.\n\nOne area of web design that clients have a strong opinion on, and will judge you by, is visual design. It\u2019s an area in which it\u2019s definitely possible to have a unique selling point. Designing the visual aesthetic for a website is a combination of logical decision making and a certain amount of personal style. If you can create a unique visual style to your work, it can become a selling point that\u2019s unique to you.\n\n3. How much to charge and staying motivated\n\nWhen you\u2019re a freelance designer one of the hardest things to do is put a price on your work and skills. Finding the right amount to charge is a fine balance between supplying value to your customer and also charging enough to stay motivated to do a great job. It\u2019s always tempting to offer a low price to win work, but it\u2019s often not the best approach: not just for yourself but for the client as well.\n\nA client once asked me if I could reduce my fee by \u00a31,000 and still be motivated enough to do a good job. In this case the answer was yes, but it was the question that resonated with me. I realized I could use this as a gauge to help me price projects. Before I send out a quote I now always ask myself the question \u201cIs the amount I\u2019ve quoted enough to make me feel motivated to do my best on this project?\u201d I never send out a quote unless the answer is yes. In my mind there\u2019s no point in doing any project half-heartedly, as every project is an opportunity to build your reputation and expand your portfolio to show potential clients what you can do. Offering a client a good price but not being prepared to put everything you have into it, isn\u2019t value for money.  \n\n4. Supplying the right design\n\nWhen I started out as a graphic designer it seemed to be the done thing to supply clients with a ton of options for their logo or brochure designs. In a talk given by Dan Rubin, he mentioned that this was a legacy of agencies competing with each other in a bid to create the illusion of offering more value for money. Over the years, I\u2019ve realized that offering more than one solution makes no sense. The reason a client comes to you as a designer is because you\u2019re the person than can get it right. If I  were to supply three options, I\u2019d be knowingly offering my client at least two options that I didn\u2019t think worked.\n\nTo this day I still get asked how many homepage design options I\u2019ll supply for the quoted amount. The answer is one. Of course, I\u2019m more than happy to iterate upon the design to fine-tune it and, on the odd occasion, I do revisit a design concept if I just didn\u2019t nail the design first time around. Your time is much better spent refining the right design option than rushing out three substandard designs in the same amount of time.\n\n5. Colour is key\n\nThere are many contributing factors that go into making a good visual design, but one of the simplest ways to do this is through the use of colour. The colour palette used in a design can have such a profound effect on a visual design that it almost feels like you\u2019re cheating. It\u2019s easy to add more and more subtle shades of colour to add a sense of sophistication and complexity to a design, but it dilutes the overall visual impact. When I design, I almost have a rule that only allows me to use a very limited colour palette. I don\u2019t always stick to it, but it\u2019s always in mind and something I\u2019m constantly reviewing through my design process.\n\n6. Creative thinking is central to good or boundary-pushing web design\n\nWhen we think of creativity in web design we often link this to the visual design, as there is an obvious opportunity to be creative in this area if the brief allows it. Something that I\u2019ve learnt in my time as a web designer is that there\u2019s a massive need for creative thinking in the more technical aspects of web design. The tools we use for building websites are there to be manipulated and used in creative ways to design exciting and engaging user experiences. Great developers are constantly using their creativity to push the boundaries of what can be done with CSS, jQuery and JavaScript. \n\nBeing creative and creative thinking are things we should embrace as an industry and they are qualities that can be found in anyone, whether they be a visual designer or Rails developer.\n\n7. Creative block: don\u2019t be afraid to get things wrong\n\nCreative block can be a killer when designing. It\u2019s often applied to visual design, which is more subjective. I suffer from creative block on a regular basis. It\u2019s hugely frustrating and can screw up your schedule. Having thought about what creative block actually is, I\u2019ve come to the conclusion that it\u2019s actually more of a lack of direction than a lack of ideas. You have ideas and solutions in mind but don\u2019t feel committed to any of them. You\u2019re scared that whatever direction you take, it\u2019ll turn out to be wrong. I\u2019ve found that the best remedy for this is to work through this barrier. It\u2019s a bit like designing with a blindfold on \u2013 you don\u2019t really know where you\u2019re going. If you stick to your guns and keep pressing forward I find that, nine times out of ten, this process leads to a solution. As the page begins to fill, the direction you\u2019re looking for slowly begins to take shape.\n\n8. You get better at designing by designing\n\nI often get emails asking me what books someone can read to help them become a better designer. There are a lot of good books on subjects like HTML5, CSS, responsive web design and the like, that will really help improve anyone\u2019s web design skills. But, when it comes to visual design, the best way to get better is to design as much as possible. You can\u2019t follow instructions for these things because design isn\u2019t following instructions. A large part of web design is definitely applying a set of widely held conventions, but there\u2019s another part to it that is invention and the only way to get better at this is to do it as much as possible.\n\n9. Self-belief is overrated\n\nThroughout our lives we\u2019re told to have self-belief. Self-belief and confidence in what we do, whatever that may be. The problem is that some people find it easier than others to believe in themselves. I\u2019ve spent years trying to convince myself to believe in what I do but have always found it difficult to have complete confidence in my design skills. Self-doubt always creeps in.\n\nI\u2019ve realized that it\u2019s ok to doubt myself and I think it might even be a good thing!  I\u2019ve realized that it\u2019s my self-doubt that propels me forward and makes me work harder to achieve the best results. The reason I\u2019m sharing this is because I know I\u2019m not the only designer that feels this way. You can spend a lot of time fighting self-doubt only to discover that it\u2019s your body\u2019s natural mechanism to help you do the best job possible.", "year": "2011", "author": "Mike Kus", "author_slug": "mikekus", "published": "2011-12-11T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2011/nine-things-ive-learned/", "topic": "business"}
{"rowid": 312, "title": "Preparing to Be Badass Next Year", "contents": "Once we\u2019ve eaten our way through the holiday season, people will start to think about new year\u2019s resolutions. We tend to focus on things that we want to change\u2026 and often things that we don\u2019t like about ourselves to \u201cfix\u201d. We set rules for ourselves, or try to start new habits or stop bad ones. We focus in on things we will or won\u2019t do. \nFor many of us the list of things we \u201cought\u201d to be spending time on is just plain overwhelming \u2013 family, charity/community, career, money, health, relationships, personal development. \nIt\u2019s kinda scary even just listing it out, isn\u2019t it? I want to encourage you to think differently about next year.\nThe ever-brilliant Kathy Sierra articulates a better approach really well when talking about the attitude we should have to building great products. She tells us to think not about what the user will do with our product, but about what they are trying to achieve in the real world and how our product helps them to be badass1.\nWhen we help the user be badass, then we are really making a difference. \nI suppose this is one way of saying: focus not on what you will do, focus on what it will help you achieve. How will it help you be awesome?\nIn what ways do you want to be more badass next year?\nA professional lens\nThough of course you might want to focus in on health or family or charity or community or another area next year, many people will want to become more badass in their chosen career. \nSo let\u2019s talk about a scaffold to help you figure out your professional / career development next year. \nFirst up, an assumption: everyone wants to be awesome. Nobody gets up in the morning aiming to be crap at their job. Nobody thinks to themselves \u201cToday I am aiming for just south of mediocre, and if I can mess up everybody else\u2019s ability to do good work then that will be just perfect2\u201d. \nErgo, you want to be awesome. So what does awesome look like? \nDanger!\nThe big trap that people fall into when think about their professional development is to immediately focus on the things that they aren\u2019t good at. When you ask people \u201cwhat do you want to work on getting better at next year?\u201d they frequently gravitate to the things that they believe they are bad at. \nWhy is this a trap? Because if you focus all your time and energy on improving the areas that you suck at, you are going to end up middling at everything. Going from bad \u2192 mediocre at a given skill / behaviour takes a bunch of time and energy. So if you spend all your time going from bad \u2192 mediocre at things, what do you think you end up? That\u2019s right, mediocre. \nMediocrity is not a great career goal, kids. \nWhat do you already rock at?\nThe much better investment of time and energy is to go from good \u2192 awesome. It often takes the same amount of relative time and energy, but wow the end result is better! So first, ask yourself and those who know you well what you are already pretty damn good at. Combat imposter syndrome by asking others. \nThen figure out how to double down on those things. What does brilliant look like for a given skill? What\u2019s the knowledge or practice that you need to level yourself up even further in that thing?\nBut what if I really really suck?\nAdmittedly, sometimes something you suck at really is holding you back. But it\u2019s important to separate out weaknesses (just something you suck at) from controlling weaknesses (something you suck at that actually matters for your chosen career). \nIf skill x is just not an important thing for you to be good at, you may never need to care that you aren\u2019t good at it. If your current role or the one you aspire to next really really requires you to be great at x, then it\u2019s worth investing your time and energy (and possibly money too) getting better at it.\nSo when you look at the things that you aren\u2019t good at, which of those are actually essential for success?\nThe right ratio\nA good rule of thumb is to pick three things you are already good at to work on becoming awesome at and limit yourself to one weakness that you are trying to improve on. That way you are making sure that you get to awesome in areas where you already have an advantage, and limit the amount of time you are spending on going from bad \u2192 mediocre. \nLevelling up learning\nSo once you\u2019ve figured out your areas you want to focus on next year, what do you actually decide to do? \nMost of all, you should try to design your day-to-day work in a way that it is also an effective learning experience. This means making sure you have a good feedback loop \u2013 you get to try something, see if it works, learn from it, rinse and repeat. \nIt\u2019s also about balance: you want to be challenged enough for work to be interesting, without it being so hard it\u2019s frustrating. You want to do similar / the same things often enough that you get to learn and improve, without it being so repetitive that it\u2019s boring. \nContinuously getting better at things you are already good at is actually both easier and harder than it sounds. The advantage is that it\u2019s pretty easy to add the feedback loop to make sure that you are improving; the disadvantage is that you\u2019re already good at these skills so you could easily just \u201cdo\u201d without ever stopping to reflect and improve. Build in time for personal retrospectives (\u201cWhat went well? What didn\u2019t? What one thing will I choose to change next time?\u201d) and find a way of getting feedback from outside sources as well. \nAs for the new skills, it\u2019s worth knowing that skill development follows a particular pattern:\n\nWe all start out unconsciously incompetent (we don\u2019t know what to do and if we tried we\u2019d unwittingly get it wrong), progress on to conscious incompetence (we now know we\u2019re doing it wrong) then conscious competence (we\u2019re doing it right but wow it takes effort and attention) and eventually get to unconscious competence (automatically getting it right). \nYour past experiences and knowledge might let you move faster through these stages, but no one gets to skip them. Invest the time and remember you need the feedback loop to really improve. \nWhat about keeping up?\nEverything changes very fast in our industry. We need to invest in not falling behind, in keeping on top of what great looks like. There are a bunch of ways to do this, from reading blog posts, following links on Twitter, reading books to attending conferences or workshops, or just finding time to build things in new ways or with new technologies. \nWhich will work best for you depends on how you best learn. Do you prefer to swallow a book? Do you learn most by building or experimenting? \nWhatever your learning style though, remember that there are three real needs:\n\nScan the landscape (what\u2019s changing, does it matter)\nGain the knowledge or skills (get the detail)\nApply the knowledge or skills (use it in reality)\n\nWhen you remember that you need all three of these things it can help you get more of what you do. \nFor me personally, I use a combination of conferences and blogs / Twitter to scan the landscape. Half of what I want out of a conference is just a list of things to have on my radar that might become important. I then pick a couple of things to go read up on more (I personally learn most effectively by swallowing a book or spec or similar). And then I pick one thing at a time to actually apply in real life, to embed the skill / knowledge. \nIn summary\n\nAim to be awesome (mediocrity is not a career goal).\nFigure out what you already rock at.\nOnly care about stuff you suck at that matters for your career.\nPick three things to go from good \u2192 awesome and one thing to go from bad \u2192 mediocre (or mediocre \u2192 good) this year.\nDesign learning into your daily work.\nScan the landscape, learn new stuff, apply it for real. \nBe badass!\n\n\n\n\n\nShe wrote a whole book about it. You should read it: Badass: Making Users Awesome\u00a0\u21a9\n\n\nBefore you argue too vehemently: I suppose some antisocial sociopathic bastards do exist. Identify them, and then RUN AWAY FAST AS YOU CAN #realtalk\u00a0\u21a9", "year": "2016", "author": "Meri Williams", "author_slug": "meriwilliams", "published": "2016-12-22T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2016/preparing-to-be-badass-next-year/", "topic": "business"}
{"rowid": 328, "title": "Swooshy Curly Quotes Without Images", "contents": "The problem\n\nTake a quote and render it within blockquote tags, applying big, funky and stylish curly quotes both at the beginning and the end without using any images \u2013 at all.\n\nThe traditional way\n\nFeint background images under the text, or an image in the markup housed in a little float. Often designers only use the opening curly quote as it\u2019s just too difficult to float a closing one.\n\nWhy is the traditional way bad?\n\nWell, for a start there are no actual curly quotes in the text (unless you\u2019re doing some nifty image replacement). Thus with CSS disabled you\u2019ll only have default blockquote styling to fall back on. Secondly, images don\u2019t resize, so scaling text will have no affect on your graphic curlies.\n\nThe solution\n\nUse really big text. Then it can be resized by the browser, resized using CSS, and even be restyled with a new font style if you fancy it. It\u2019ll also make sense when CSS is unavailable.\n\nThe problem\n\nCreating \u201cDrop Caps\u201d with CSS has been around for a while (Big Dan Cederholm discusses a neat solution in that first book of his), but drop caps are normal characters \u2013 the A to Z or 1 to 10 \u2013 and these can all be pulled into a set space and do not serve up a ton of whitespace, unlike punctuation characters.\n\nCurly quotes aren\u2019t like traditional characters. Like full stops, commas and hashes they float within the character space and leave lots of dead white space, making it bloody difficult to manipulate them with CSS. Styles generally fit around text, so cutting into that character is tricky indeed. Also, all that extra white space is going to push into the quote text and make it look pretty uneven. This grab highlights the actual character space:\n\n\n\nSee how this is emphasized when we add a normal alphabetical character within the span. This is what we\u2019re dealing with here:\n\n\n\nThen, there\u2019s size. Call in a curly quote at less than 300% font-size and it ain\u2019t gonna look very big. The white space it creates will be big enough, but the curlies will be way too small. We need more like 700% (as in this example) to make an impression, but that sure makes for a big character space.\n\nPrepare the curlies\n\nFirstly, remove the opening \u201c from the quote. Replace it with the opening curly quote character entity \u201c. Then replace the closing \u201c with the entity reference for that, which is \u201d. Now at least the curlies will look nice and swooshy.\n\nAdd the hooks\n\nTwo reasons why we aren\u2019t using :first-letter pseudo class to manipulate the curlies. Firstly, only CSS2-friendly browsers would get what we\u2019re doing, and secondly we need to affect the last \u201cletter\u201d of our text also \u2013 the closing curly quote.\n\nSo, add a span around the opening curly, and a second span around the closing curly, giving complete control of the characters:\n\n<blockquote><span class=\"bqstart\">\u201c</span>Speech marks. Curly quotes. That annoying thing cool people do with their fingers to emphasize a buzzword, shortly before you hit them.<span class=\"bqend\">\u201d</span></blockquote>\n\nSo far nothing will look any different, aside form the curlies looking a bit nicer. I know we\u2019ve just added extra markup, but the benefits as far as accessibility are concerned are good enough for me, and of course there are no images to download.\n\nThe CSS\n\nOK, easy stuff first. Our first rule .bqstart floats the span left, changes the color, and whacks the font-size up to an exuberant 700%. Our second rule .bqend does the same tricks aside from floating the curly to the right.\n\n.bqstart {\n     float: left;\n     font-size: 700%;\n     color: #FF0000;\n }\n\n .bqend {\n     float: right;\n     font-size: 700%;\n     color: #FF0000;\n }\n\nThat gives us this, which is rubbish. I\u2019ve highlighted the actual span area with outlines:\n\n\n\nNote that the curlies don\u2019t even fit inside the span! At this stage on IE 6 PC you won\u2019t even see the quotes, as it only places focus on what it thinks is in the div. Also, the quote text is getting all spangled.\n\nFiddle with margin and padding\n\nThink of that span outline box as a window, and that you need to position the curlies within that window in order to see them. By adding some small adjustments to the margin and padding it\u2019s possible to position the curlies exactly where you want them, and remove the excess white space by defining a height:\n\n.bqstart {\n     float: left;\n     height: 45px;\n     margin-top: -20px;\n     padding-top: 45px;\n     margin-bottom: -50px;\n     font-size: 700%;\n     color: #FF0000;\n }\n\n .bqend {\n     float: right;\n     height: 25px;\n     margin-top: 0px;\n     padding-top: 45px;\n     font-size: 700%;\n     color: #FF0000;\n }\n\nI wanted the blocks of my curlies to align with the quote text, whereas you may want them to dig in or stick out more. Be aware however that my positioning works for IE PC and Mac, Firefox and Safari. Too much tweaking seems to break the magic in various browsers at various times. Now things are fitting beautifully:\n\nI must admit that the heights, margins and spacing don\u2019t make a lot of sense if you analyze them. This was a real trial and error job. Get it working on Safari, and IE would fail. Sort IE, and Firefox would go weird.\n\nFinished\n\nThe final thing looks ace, can be resized, looks cool without styles, and can be edited with CSS at any time. Here\u2019s a real example (note that I\u2019m specifying Lucida Grande and then Verdana for my curlies):\n\n \u201cSpeech marks. Curly quotes. That annoying thing cool people do with their fingers to emphasize a buzzword, shortly before you hit them.\u201d\n\nBrowsers happy\n\nAs I said, too much tweaking of margins and padding can break the effect in some browsers. Even now, Firefox insists on dropping the closing curly by approximately 6 or 7 pixels, and if I adjust the padding for that, it\u2019ll crush it into the text on Safari or IE. Weird. Still, as I close now it seems solid through resizing tests on Safari, Firefox, Camino, Opera and IE PC and Mac. Lovely.\n\nIt\u2019s probably not perfect, but together we can beat the evil typographic limitations of the web and walk together towards a brighter, more aligned world. Merry Christmas.", "year": "2005", "author": "Simon Collison", "author_slug": "simoncollison", "published": "2005-12-21T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2005/swooshy-curly-quotes-without-images/", "topic": "business"}