Mark McAulay

"Big kids did it" 
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January 18, 2010
 

UX - what the hell is it and who's responsible?

For quite some time now, the phrase "User Experience" has been bandied about in web design and development discussions and to be honest, I've not personally understood exactly what was meant or indeed, seen it be challenged. To start with, what is it? what does user experience or "UX" actually mean to designer, developer or client? This is actually an integral part of any design and development process. It deals with the way in which a user interacts with your design, be that a product, a printed piece or a website. Of course my eyes, interest and focus of this post are on the latter of these.

A recent question on twitter highlighted some interesting responses, all of which are correct in their own way and all have given me a much better understanding of what exactly we're talking about here. As far as I can see, this goes deep into the process of web design and definitely involves a post I've not finished writing yet but I think i'm just going to publish this now and let the other post fill in any gaps i see a little later.

My initial question on twitter was "Ok, I need to say this. What you call "user experience" or "UX"...you mean "web design" in old money, don't you?" and what I was getting at was the way a website looks and functions is as important as its visual appearance and as integral to its success. As far as I can see, a website built on aesthetics alone is pretty yes, but (barring a bit of luck) not exactly the model of usability for its end user and may lead to a poor experience whether through unintuitive navigation, unstructured content, confusing calls to action and so on and so forth. The discussion sparked into life and a few genuinely good points came out in the course of this. The one thing I wanted to clarify is still open though. who's job is it? designer, developer or "UX designer" which is one of the reasons I started asking questions because in my 10+ years of web design, I'd never heard of a "UX designer" until recently. Forgive my questioning nature but if something is involved in the industry I love, I want to know all about it, who's involved and what makes it breathe.

The responses given put the field of user experience somewhere between a design thats not been thought of outside an aesthetic concern and an unexpected bit of work a developer has to deal with because nobody else has paid any attention to it. Fair points as far as I can see. Again, my concern is with who's really responsible for this and in my own opinion, this responsibility lies with both designer and developer and more importantly, where the two merge. Functionality and ease of functionality exists within both disciplines at the same time. I believe the reason that UX has become the upstart issue that it is, is through designers not knowing which functionality is possible and through developers not knowing if certain functionality actually makes sense in a design. Both parties are responsible for its direction and execution.

Would love to hear your thoughts on this as it's an issue that needs much more exploration IMHO

Filed under  //   general   ux  

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January 7, 2010
 

more wireframing

drawing little boxes and arrows on little notepads is all well and good but...

Filed under  //   wireframing  

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January 4, 2010
 

ok 2010, lets do this

After a particularly heavy going 2009, I've taken stock of my professional and personal life and have made some aims and ambitions for the year ahead. 2009 held some  big challenges and some fairly heavy duty decisions had to be made, the fruits of those decisions will start to come this year I hope. Like every year for the past 4, I've made a decision to learn a new programing language but unlike other years, this time around I'll be sticking with my choice beyond the year in question. I've learned a hell of a lot over the past few years and now is the time to consolidate that learning and push on. I've also made a fairly big decision about returning some focus to design which may surprise some people but I hope to expand on this a bit in this post. I set out to become a generalist and that's what I now call myself. Personally, there are a few new things I'll be doing to improve my health.

A new language

2006 was PHP, 2007 was CFML, 2008 was jQuery/CFML and last year I set about Ruby on Rails. In 2010, I'm taking everything I've learned and moving to Python/Django. There are no solid reasons for this, I wish I was experienced enough to write some kind of "here are 10 reasons why" post but truth be told, I'm not that knowledgeable yet and what I've discovered is that regardless of language, certain fundamentals and similarities exist across the board. I now feel that the time is right to settle down and focus on one language to really learn my stuff and start building some of the ideas I've come up with over the years. I love the way that I've taken to Django and although I've only done a few tutorials on it so far, I really have a feel for it and I get that buzz about using it that I've only really had with CFML up until now. Of course, learning Django without learning Python would be a bit short sighted so a Python book has already been dispatched from amazon and is on its way to me as I type.

A return to my roots

Between 1998 and 2005, I was a designer with only a little interest in code outside of html/css, I made a big decision to move away from design and concentrate on development. This decision was made largely because of the rift i'd experienced between designer and developer in my career. I still see this going on and I have some pretty strong opinions on why there's no need for it (This is a topic for another post I think as it will be lengthy!). Anyway, I am now returning to the design field and will be starting off by brushing up on my basic graphic design, typography and colour theory. It's not as if I actually moved away entirely, I handle much of the web design at work but in terms of my personal development and what I spend my own time doing, I'd not done much to keep up to speed with things. I'm sure most of it will come back to me quite easily but being the thorough person I am, this will get all the time it needs to be done properly and I'm particularly interested in doing some collaboration work with the designers I know. Truth be told, I'm really looking forward to it. Expect to see some (collaborative?)print work from me this year too (yeah...on paper and stuff!)

Personal goals

The first thing I have to do is to lose weight (i'm sure you've heard this before at this particular time of year). My weight has gone up significantly to just over 15stone (213lbs) and I need to be back down at 12.5stone (175lbs) before I slip into obesity, so I have a lot of work to do. This weight gain I attribute directly to stopping smoking nearly 8 months ago (one less resolution I need to make this year). As of the 1st Jan, I've started my diet of sticking to a max calorie intake of 1690 calories a day and will be much more careful about the types of food I'm stuffing into my face. Careful eating without doing some exercise is pretty pointless so I'm embarking on the c25k program as well as doing a bit more swimming. I hope to do some kind of proper run later in the year so this post will act as a kick up the arse in case my eagerness fades in any form. On top of these things I've made a decision to stop drinking alcohol for a little while at least. I'm not sure how long for but as of the 1st Jan, I'm "aff it" for at the very least, the month of January. This will be a huge factor in losing weight and it'll also let me save some money and get my pension on track which is another must do for this year.

The "If I have time" goals

I think I said this last year too but I really want to get into Processing. If I can find the opportunity to do so this year, I will.
Getting back into video and motion graphics remains an ambition but may have to wait a little while yet as I plow yet further on with my web design/development.

So these are my goals for 2010 which I hope will be a fantastic year all round. I would love to hear your thoughts/recommendations etc for any of my undertakings and if you fancy doing some collaborative work, leave me a comment here or find me on twitter. Happy new year to you all.

Comments [3]

December 18, 2009
 

New to development? you wont go wrong with CFML

I struggled a bit with writing this post, maybe it's because I think I'm not really qualified to do so. One thing's for sure, I grow tired of seeing CFML being bashed about with the same old tired and increasingly silly points so I thought I'd throw in my experience with the language and what I found to be a huge benefit and something that people, particularly "front end" guys looking to get into a bit of development may find interesting.

Disclaimer. I am a designer. That's right, I'm a wax crayon throwing, glitter gun wielding, stickyback plastic lovin, front end guy. That's my background and what I still largely love to get my hands dirty on. I design stuff, what of it? But before you pigeon hole me, you need to understand that I am also proud to be called a generalist...you know...someone who likes to do a bit of everything.

Several years back I had to get involved with server side stuff which meant the inevitable walk down the road to buy a PHP/MySql book and get stuck in best I could. This was fine, I learned a fair bit about what is, in my experience anyway, the most abundant server side solution out there and a great solution for "getting shit done". I found that I started to enjoy it. There was a whole new world of possibility knowing a bit about the backend and my optimism was high. What happened next was that I got exposed to a fairly large scale application built with Adobe ColdFusion (version 7 at the time). My task was to build front ends for it in all its various guises (cryptic, I know). As I worked more and more with this application, I got more and more interested in CFML and so I spent the next year of my life's spare time doing little tutorials, building little test apps and all the other little things I had previously done with PHP. One day in June 2008, I went to Scotch on the Rocks which, for those that dont know, is a conference dealing with all things CFML and a wider bunch of related tech to boot. SOTR had a profound effect on me. Almost a month after, a job came in requiring a basic CMS, data driven Flash widgets and an HTML front end. Armed with my new CFML enthusiasm, I volunteered to do the job with Adobe ColdFusion as I'd been banging on about how great it was to the guys at work. We had a dedicated CF8 server to play with and a comfortable deadline so it seemed the perfect opportunity to put my money where my mouth was and get cracking for real with CFML.

I quickly found my feet and wrote a bespoke CMS for the project, yes, you read that correctly..."BESPOKE", not an "I'll just use WordPress" or EE solution that I would look to do while using PHP, I actually wrote the CMS with my own bare hands. Not bad for a designer huh? I'm not saying it's the greatest piece of development that the world's ever seen, or that's its a feature rich masterpiece. It does only what it needs to do and not a thing more (which some may argue should always be the case). The client feedback was superb and to this day it continues to serve it's purpose out there in the wild. I was able, in the time allocated to build the whole thing in PHP(as normal), to build a more tailored and lightweight solution from scratch using a language which had been a hobby to me until SOTR. Could I have built a bespoke PHP solution? probably...could I have built it in the allocated time?...nope!

I suppose I'd better get to the point. It is my experience that when starting down the road of server side tech (and yes, I know I had a little bit of PHP and general understanding) I dont think you can go far wrong using CFML to get you going. I'm not saying that CFML is for noobs, If you spend more than 10 minutes in the CFML community you'll discover some fantastically clever developers who will make your brain bleed. What I am saying is that the barrier to entry is suitably low for a front end guy versed in html/css/js to jump right in and get stuff done. There is a lot of anti-CF sentiment spouted by people with little or no server side experience at all which I find bizarre, it's like a developer with no design experience saying PhotoShop is shit because you have to pay for it when you could just use the gimp for free. Any designer using both will tell you what they'd rather have at their disposal. Of course, if you want a free solution, you can have that with Railo and OpenBD. I havent personally used OpenBD but I have used Railo in anger and its superb. Perhaps the biggest un-sung bonus of CFML though is the community. I like to jump around from technology to technology and try my best to get a general understanding of as much of it as I can. One thing that I note is the CFML community, in my experience, is the friendliest, most helpful and most giving of their time that I've discovered yet. If you've ever tried to learn something on your feet, you'll know how hugely important this factor is.

Anyway...just felt like having a wee rant about it so there you go.

Filed under  //   cfml  

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October 17, 2009
 

google wave invite bribery

Having thought that I'd sent all my available googlewave invites out, I was surprised to find I still have one left so instead of handing it out in the same manner as the rest of them (first come first served), I've decided to be a little more creative with this one and use it for bribery.

To get your hands on the invite, here's what you need to do.

As you may know, OKN05 will be held on Friday 23rd October 2009 at Peacock Visual Arts. We are still a bit light on speakers for the event so it's simple...the first person to get in touch and tell me they will do a short informal 15 minute presentation on something digital at OKN on Friday gets my final googlewave invite. I will transfer it to the winner on Friday 23rd ;)

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