Why Developers Need to Understand Design
Posted by Thomas J. Brown at 1130 hrs
The image to the right shows 2 panels from a 10 panel graphic describing the typical development and production process. It's funny because, unfortunately, it's pretty true to form. The panel about the analyst is the only one that mentions design, but as a developer, I would suggest an extra panel between the analyst and the programmer: How the designer designed it. It would depict a lavish tree-house with multiple swings, a slide, flags, and so on. But I'm not writing this post to knock on designers. In fact, today I'm going to wag my finger at my fellow developers.
Every time I've worked where designers and developers work together, I always hear the designers say, at some point or another, something along the lines of, "why can't the developers just make the [product] look how I designed it?" I've heard nearly designer I've ever worked with say something like this, and I've even said it myself about sites that I designed but didn't develop! It's frustrating to see your art changed, especially by someone who probably doesn't understand that you thought long and hard about the design, and who probably doesn't realize that every pixel has its place. I'm talking about web design here, but this same basic argument applies anywhere designers and developers butt heads.
It's not that developers are careless. We, too, think long and hard about the best way to approach certain problems, and it's not uncommon for the designer to throw us a curve ball in their layout. While web designers should have an idea about what is and isn't possible with regard to web development, the most creative work will come from a mind not stifled by such restraints. Developers also can't simply be naysayers, striking down anything that takes more than 10 minutes to implement. After all, it's through these challenges that we grow.
Building a website is a lot like putting a puzzle together. You have colors, fonts, and pictures, all of which need to be correctly placed in relation to one another. Like the dismayed designer declares, "just make it look like the picture." While a few small changes in order to make everything "pixel perfect" are acceptable, the finished site should look (and behave) as close to the original design as possible.
It isn't just about making the site look like the picture; the day will come when you (developers) have to improvise and make a design decision. After all, the designer can only account for so much, and that deadline is looming. With basic design skills, any developer should be able to emulate the designer's color palette and come up with a workable solution (obviously, some tasks will require the designer to revisit the work).
There is also the matter of communication. Designers and developers think and speak in different terms, and understanding each other can sometimes be a chore. This dichotomy is at the heart of the tree swing graphic. I wouldn't bill myself as a graphic designer, but I have quite a bit of experience in web design, and I've turned out some pretty good stuff over the years (there has also been some crappy stuff, but like I said, I'm not a graphic designer). Every designer I've worked with has enjoyed that I know my way around Photoshop (I sometimes know more than they do!) and that they don't have to explain every little detail to me. Speaking on both designers' terms and programmers' terms has even allowed me help iron out misunderstandings between the two.
We developers are always learning new programming tricks and trying to stay on top of (if not ahead of) the current trends and technology. Adding design to your list of continuing education will make you a better developer and a more valuable asset to your company.
Friday Funday CCXLIV
Posted by Thomas J. Brown at 1100 hrs
Friday Funday brings you some fun and interesting links from my travels around the internet. Funday links will open in a new window.
Links in red are not safe for work.
Bowling Trick Shot
That didn't just happen. Oh wait, slo-mo replay. Yeah, it happened.
All 12 Astrology Songs Samples
This is so awful that I didn't make it past Taurus. Taurus is the second clip.
Mentos Commercial - Hard Target
If Van Damme made a Mentos commercial, this is pretty much how it would go down.
PG PORN: Helpful Bus
Somewhat surprisingly, this isn't the link that's NSFW.
Nina Conti
Jeff Dunham may have skills, but Nina Conti is fucking hilarious! NSFW due to some pretty strong language.
Nobody Wants Ann Coulter
Posted by Thomas J. Brown at 0630 hrs
I saw this banner ad and thought, "now they're trying to give Ann Coulter away? I guess nobody wants her."
Free, huh? I'll pass.
Friday Funday CCXLIII
Posted by Thomas J. Brown at 0817 hrs
Friday Funday brings you some fun and interesting links from my travels around the internet. Funday links will open in a new window.
Links in red are not safe for work.
Bathtub IV
This popped up on BoingBoing a couple of days after I put it in my Friday Funday queue, but I'm still going to post it for those who missed it. This cool little video tells an interesting and touching story in an unconventional style. This is very cool and has made me a tilt-shift video junkie.
Rapping Flight Attendant
Pretty clever. I wonder how long it took him to come up with this. I also wonder if this is Southwest Airlines attempting to use guerrilla marketing.
50 WTF Photos
Probably NSFW. And seriously, WTF?
Serious Cat Sending SOS Message
This had me rolling with laughter.
Forever's Not So Long
A touching story about hopelessness and the human condition.
A Sign of the Recession
Posted by Thomas J. Brown at 1452 hrs
There's a guy who parks his Porsche at a parking meter across the street from our building nearly every day, and nearly every day he gets a parking ticket. We all wonder why he doesn't just feed the meter, since doing so would save him over $10 a day. We joke that he must be doing his part to boost the economy.
This morning we saw a sure sign that everyone is being hit hard by the economic crisis in our country: Porsche guy put money in the meter. None of us had ever seen him do it before, and everyone crowded around my window when I announced it to the office. Although I haven't seen him plug the meter since then, he doesn't have a ticket on his windshield yet.
Me, Every Day
Posted by Thomas J. Brown at 1944 hrs
This is me, pretty much every day. *sigh*
And in case you've never seen it before, Savage Chickens is an often-hilarious webcomic that I've started to read.
Friday Funday CCXLII
Posted by Thomas J. Brown at 2007 hrs
Friday Funday brings you some fun and interesting links from my travels around the internet. Funday links will open in a new window.
Smack vs. The Smacked
For some inexplicable reason, Arby's has a Flash "game" where you can enter the URL of your "rival's" website, and then bash the hell out of it with a hammer. Yo Arby's, why you be hatin'?
The Official Creebobby Comics Archetype Times Table
Have you ever wondered what the product of Platypus times Lincoln is? Behold: Your answer awaits.
Classics in Lego
This is simply brilliant. This guy took a whole bunch of famous photographs, staged them in Legos, and then took pictures of the Legos. Be sure to check out the setup photos (link inside).
Saluting the Canadian Contingent
From the video's description: "The "Eyes Right" command is the biggest complement troops on parade can pay and is reserved for dignitaries in reviewing stands. A lone young Belgian boy is waiting to salute the Canadian troops passing by who had been attending a memorial service." The first minute of the video is boring, so skip ahead to the 1 minute mark (but not past, or you'll miss it). This is awesome and really shows heart on the part of the Canadian troops.
Duck Sim 2008
It's X-treme!
Social Media and Traditional Media: Not Exactly A Match Made in Heaven
Posted by Thomas J. Brown at 0621 hrs
Blogs. YouTube. MySpace. Facebook. Twitter. These are the social buzzwords of Web 2.0, that ill-defined concept that traditional media thinks will make them money.
The problem is that traditional media (by which I mean mostly newspapers and television broadcasters, with an emphasis on local media) simply don't understand how social media works. There seems to be this weird idea that if something is popular on the Internet, you can make money off of it. So when "user generated content" became the hot new thing, traditional media outlets tried to jump on board and rake in the dough. But like I said before, they just didn't understand how it works.
One of the great aspects of social media is the ability to speak your mind without being censored. On top of that, as soon as you post your thoughts, they are immediately available for the world to read and respond to. The first thing traditional media did was to take away both of those freedoms in favor of covering their own asses. I'm not saying that what they did was wrong, I'm just pointing out that the operating principles of traditional media are not in line with the fundamental ideals of social media.
Of course, that hasn't stopped them from trying.
The hot new thing right now is Twitter (although I have no idea why), and everyone is jumping on board with mixed results. Three of our four local TV stations - KREM, KHQ, and KXLY - are using Twitter to tweet their headlines and link back to their respective websites. Our local newspaper, The Spokesman, also has a feed of their headlines, although it hasn't been updated since December (they had massive layoffs recently, which could account for that). Simply tweeting your headlines seems like a pretty weak usage of the technology, although even CNN is doing the exact same thing. Interestingly, someone who works at Q6 and goes by the name KHQGirl has a feed that is rather blunt about what it's like to work at the station. I wonder if the station managers know about it.
A couple of years ago, T.V. stations embraced blogging in a big way. All of the stations started some form of blogging, but once again, they simply didn't get the point of it all. KREM had their reporters and anchors posting blogs, which had a lot of great potential. Unfortunately, they blogged their headlines and other news stories. It's pretty much the same way now, although every once in a while someone posts something a little less dry. It's kind of sad they the station managers wasted an opportunity to help the viewers better connect with the reporters.
KAYU took a different approach; they understood that blogs are about giving their viewers a voice. Unfortunately, if you build it, they won't come. KAYU's blog page has been a complete and utter failure. At the time of this writing, most of the posts are from late 2007, and the most recent post is over a year old. At least 90% of the posts were written by staff (I would know, since I was the webmaster at the time and asked them to do it), and the community just never got on board.
Why did KAYU's blogs fail? A couple of reasons are immediately obvious. To begin with, they were too late. Many users already had blogs, which really started to get popular about 5 years earlier. Worse, users are stuck blogging about topics dictated by the station (actually, the topics are dictated by Fox Interactive Media, the company that made the website). Finally, and perhaps most importantly, was censorship. Every post goes into a queue and must be approved by an admin (me, at the time that I worked there) before it hits the site. That's not exactly vox populi, which was the entire point.
A lot of companies also decided that they needed MySpace pages. But do they? What possible reason could any business have to create and maintain a MySpace page? Or Facebook, for that matter. They already have websites that are much better suited to the information they want to disseminate; MySpace was made for bands, not businesses. Facebook started as a sort of online yearbook or annual for Ivy League college students. True, you can get a little closer to your audience, which has its benefits, but how much value are you really adding? Are you sure you want your business to be associated with any yahoo on these sites? Do the benefits really outweigh the costs?
YouTube is a great way to connect with your audience and get people hooked on your "product." I've spent countless hours watching videos on YouTube, much of it copyrighted material that I wouldn't have seen otherwise. Had they used it properly, traditional broadcasters could have taken advantage of YouTube to drive people to their own products. Unfortunately, a lot of companies decided that YouTube was a threat (or were told it was) and took action to remove their material and distance themselves from the site.
Part of the issue was copyright infringement, and in those instances they acted well within their rights. However, they never really took advantage of the medium properly, largely because of the initial negative association, but also because of the bottom line. It seems that traditional media companies have a hard time with the whole "you have to speculate to accumulate" thing. They want to see ROI numbers upfront and seem to have trouble understanding that sometimes, the return isn't monetary.
What this all boils down to is that traditional media companies missed the boat early on and never managed to catch up. Their stalwart inability to change caused a mental blockage in understanding that the point of social media was twofold: To connect with other people who have similar interests, and to allow the masses to express themselves.
Is there hope for traditional media? Honestly, I think the only way for them to succeed is to stay out of it altogether. They clearly don't get it, and if they want to succeed with their audience online, they need to let the audience dictate the rules. Stop thinking about how much money you'll make from your website and start thinking about how you can make your users happy. Satisfy the users and money will follow.
My Busy Week, An Idea for DST, and The Problem With Bananas
Posted by Thomas J. Brown at 2142 hrs
This week is going to be incredibly busy for me. Today is the only day without a meeting or appointment after work. I guess I'm just getting to be a really popular guy! I'm going to try to keep on blogging every day, but I can't make any promises.
Today I had an idea for how to make the "spring forward" with Daylight Saving Time more bearable: Instead of springing forward at 2 A.M. on Sunday morning, let's spring forward at 4 P.M. on Monday, thereby bringing 5 P.M. early!
Bananas are a fantastic fruit. I love bananas, but they have a built-in problem. When you eat a banana, you're left with the peel, which sits in your garbage can and quickly becomes... Pungent. No, pungent isn't the right word. Odoriferous. Malodorous. Stinky. And the longer they sit, the worse they smell. It's a problem, bananas. See a specialist.
Secular Sunday XX - Crossing Over
Posted by Thomas J. Brown at 2214 hrs
Anyone who claims to be psychic isn't, and although there are some people out there who genuinely believe they have "the gift," there are many others who know full well they're lying to people.
Remember how John Edward used to be really popular in the United States? Well, he fell out of popularity here (although I can't confirm it, I heard it was due to him being exposed several times) and moved to Australia where he quickly become popular again.
Edward was accused of cold reading, which is basically just guessing using vague generalities until you get a "hit." Here's a clip of some people making fun of John Edward and the cold reading technique. Obviously the video is embellishing how bad of a cold reader Edward is, right? Well, not so much, actually. In fact, most of their lines are taken directly from this episode of Crossing Over. Edward is such a bad cold reader that this is almost painful to watch.
For a video filled with embellishments, check out this clip of Will Ferrell as John Edward.
I'd love to see one more spoof video: Crossing Over with John Edwards. Perhaps someone can convince him to do it.
A Phone Made of Human Ass
Posted by Thomas J. Brown at 1017 hrs
I'm a big proponent of usability - I've only mentioned it on the site a few times, but I've always evangelized it in the workplace. The idea that things should be easy to use extends beyond the web and into other facets of life. I shouldn't have to read the instruction manual to know how to use a toaster (although even some toasters are easier to use than others), and although some machines will be inherently more complex, that doesn't necessarily mean they have to be harder to operate or understand.
The phone I have at work is made of human ass. It's a usability nightmare. I first realized this while I was on hold the other day. When you call a company and you hear a message that says your call "may be recorded," it almost certainly is being recorded. That recording doesn't stop just because you're on hold, so anything you say while on hold gets recorded. I wanted to say something to my boss, but I didn't want it to be recorded, so I wanted to mute my phone.
The mute function (on phones that even have it to begin with) doesn't seem to have any sort of standard operating procedure. On some phones, you simply press the button and the phone is muted. On others, you have to hold the button down in order to mute the line. In my experience, these "business class" phones tend to be the kind where simply pressing the button gets the job done, so that's what I did.
No light came on. No icon appeared on the LCD screen. Was the phone muted or not? I pressed the button again to see if, perhaps, I had simply not pressed it properly. Still nothing. I assumed that if there was no visual indication, it must be auditory, so I spoke into the handset to hear if the line was muted. My reasoning was: if I can hear myself, the line has not been muted, but I can't hear myself, it has. I could hear myself. "O.K.," I thought, "this phone must require me to hold down the button," so while holding down the mute button, I talked into the receiver. I could still hear myself. Great.
By this point, I couldn't remember how many times I had pushed the button, so I didn't know if the phone was muted or not. I finally got my answer when the customer service representative picked up the line and couldn't hear me when I started talking.
The phone has other horrible features, such as a pair of buttons labeled "called" and "callers" respectively. What do these buttons do? Their functions are not inherently obvious and there's a good chance I'll never find out. There's also a button marked "flash." What the hell does that do? I assume - based solely on my experience with other phones - that this jumps you over to a clear line, dropping the call you're currently on. I've seen this function labeled as "release" on other phones, and that makes a little more sense to me, but still isn't entirely clear. Why not "end" or a big red X? In fact, why even bother to include a button that does that function, since the hook (the button in the cradle) already does the exact same thing?
In doing some quick research to make sure that hook was, in fact, the correct term, I found this Wikipedia entry that explains why "flash" is the word used. You know in old movies when the actor would tap on the hook a few times and then the operator would suddenly come on? Well it turns out that old switchboards had lights next to each line. When someone tapped on the hook like that, it caused the light next to that line to flash, letting the operator know their attention was desired. Now tell me honestly, did you know that before right this moment? I'm guessing that the majority of you, like me, did not. What we have is an example of old technology creating a term and new technology continuing to use it, even though it no longer makes any sense at all.
I have to agree with James Dyson, who said, "I just want things to work properly." Speaking of which, I hate my vacuum cleaner.
Actually, I don't have the vacuum cleaner itself. It does a pretty decent job and is reasonably easy to use. What I hate about it is that it's bagless. I like the idea of a bagless vacuum cleaner, in that it's "greener" because you aren't throwing out a bag every time, and not having to buy the bags saves money. However, in practice, cleaning out the canister is a huge pain, and dust flies everywhere. As a result, Morah and I push the capacity of the canister to its limits because neither of us wants to go outside and empty it. Changing a vacuum bag is a significantly easier, faster, and cleaner process - one for which I would be willing to pay a little extra.
I'll finish by talking about toasters. At the beginning of this post, I mentioned that I shouldn't have to read the instruction manual to know how to use a toaster. You probably thought something along the lines of, "toasters are easy to use. Who would ever need to read the instructions?" It's true that toasters are one of the easiest machines to operate, but that doesn't mean they can't be unnecessarily complex.
Most toasters have 2 basic user controls: a start/stop switch (usually in the form of a sliding element that you press down to start and lift up to stop) and a knob of some sort to determine how toasted the bread should be. This level of toasting is colloquially referred to as the toast's "darkness," and it's for this reason that I prefer toasters with pictures on the knob rather than numbers. The picture is pretty self-explanatory: light toast on one end, dark toast on the other. How dark do you want your toast? Just turn the knob that far and you're off to the races. The number slider is somewhat more ambiguous. Are the numbers a measure of time? Surely your toast wouldn't be in for 1 to 7 seconds, so is this minutes? Wait, perhaps it's a standard amount of time and this is a temperature setting. But it's not 1 to 7 degrees on any scale. It's equally unlikely that those numbers are multipliers for some base time or temperature setting.
And why can't a toaster just be a toaster? Seriously, what's up with this thing? And a croissant toasting rack? Give me a classic toaster any day of the week. It may be boring, but at least I'll know how to use it.
Friday Funday CCXLI
Posted by Thomas J. Brown at 1028 hrs
Friday Funday brings you some fun and interesting links from my travels around the internet. Funday links will open in a new window.
Links in red are not safe for work.
Typewriter Erotica
From the site: "Secretaries have fed the imagination since the first one entered the office in the 1880s. Secretaries appeared in different stages of nudity in pictures ranging from innocent leg-shots to total nudes and beyond. (If you find naked typewriters offensive, stay away from this page.)" Via Kris.
Bill Gate's wife Melinda has a dirty little secret
You know Melinda Gates recently told Vogue magazine that Apple products are "banned" from their home? Well, it turns out she has a dirty little secret.
Bad Paintings of Barack Obama
For the most part, yeah. My favorites are this one and this one.
Patrick Duffy Compilation
As it turns out, Patrick Duffy's disembodied, lasers-shooting-from-his-eyes, flying head is responsible for every Internet meme.
Famous Sketches Retold
Some of comedy's most famous sketches as told by various famous directors.
Flickr Pro Account Expired? Say Good-Bye to Your Pics!
Posted by Thomas J. Brown at 1535 hrs
Flickr is a pretty great service, and one that I've always been happy with. About a year and a half ago, I was so happy with Flickr that I decided to upgrade to a Pro account. Recently - without warning - my Pro account expired, taking most of my pictures with it. Needless to say, I was upset (see the picture to the right).
This was problematic for several reasons:
- I use Flickr to host the photos at ThomasandMorah.com, so when important sets like, say, my wedding ceremony mysteriously disappeared, I was somewhat nonplussed.
- Even though ThomasandMorah.com is desperately out of date, I do plan on making updates to it in the future, and for that I'll need a Pro account. Not to mention, that existing content should still work.
- I almost never log into my Flickr account, which seems to be the only place that notified me that my account had expired. Why didn't I receive an e-mail notification?
As troubling as this all was, the images hadn't been deleted. When your pro account expires, Flickr once again limits you to the terms of the free account (all of this is helpfully explained on
a page on Flickr's site that I didn't know existed until today). I restored my Pro account with Flickr and all of my photos and sets are once again active. I bought a 2 year subscription, which means I'll be covered for a while. Hopefully the next time my account expires, Flickr will tell me before hand so I don't experience any downtime.
US Airways 1549 Animation and David Malki ! Phone Greeting
Posted by Thomas J. Brown at 0630 hrs
I just have a couple of links to share with you today. First, this neat animation of US Airways 1549 with the audio between the cockpit and ground control. It really helps give you a sense of not only what happened, but how calm Sully stayed during the whole thing. That's one of the things I love about pilots - they always seem to have a calm, laid back voice.
David Malki !, author of the always funny webcomic Wondermark, will be calling people for free during the month of March. I know I'd certainly appreciate a call. Are there any other David Malki ! fans out there? We could schedule calls for each other. Just sayin'.
Solicitation Section
Be my boss!
If you visit my Amazon.com PayPage, you can pay me as little as $1. I could be your underpaid employee!
The image to the right shows 2 panels from a 10 panel graphic describing the typical development and production process. It's funny because, unfortunately, it's pretty true to form. The panel about the analyst is the only one that mentions design, but as a developer, I would suggest an extra panel between the analyst and the programmer: How the designer designed it. It would depict a lavish tree-house with multiple swings, a slide, flags, and so on. But I'm not writing this post to knock on designers. In fact, today I'm going to wag my finger at my fellow developers.
