think in pencil - it's easier to change your mind

a web professional's bookshelf (a top-10-plus list)

I've traded a few tweets over the past day or two on the subject of good books for web professionals. I use that term to avoid 'designer' - as that seemed limiting or possibly a bit arbitrary. I think that information architecture, understanding business requirements and translating them into web site features and functionality, usability/user exerience, interaction design and visual design are all distinct enough that they can be a specialization unto themselves.

untangling the web of a site project

I've been working full-time at (add)ventures since late 2007, but thought it would be worth it to share my thoughts on the process of interactive projects. When I was interviewing at (add)ventures I was asked the question 'how do I tackle interactive projects,' and this got me thinking about not just the steps, but the philosophy behind them. While I think this might have been more than was anticipated, I thoroughly enjoyed the process!

who should 'own' the company website?

Marketing? Corporate Communications? Or is it IT?

It's been a common discussion lately on some of the web design boards and podcasts I listen to. Unfortunately I think there are some significant limitations to all of those choices: Marketing has a primary function of communicating to consumers/end users; Corporate Communications is generally focused on communicating to the media and investors, and IT simply wants to get something done that fills a need but doesn't cause problems with the 'real' concerns of their department.

innovation, air and another reason to love coffee

I was invited to a book talk given by Steven Johnson about his latest work, The Invention of Air. This is the story of Joseph Priestly and the contributions he made in 'natural philosophy', religion and politics during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. I picked up the book and was pretty intrigued with the first chapter and went to the talk. I have to say it was one of the best events I've attended recently.

maybe i'm on to something with this name...

My friend Steve Cross sent this along yesterday - a post from lifehacker that talks about how for some people doodling can actually increase focus on another task, such as listening. I don't pretend to have gone that deeply into all the other reasons why I sketch, but I got a good chuckle out of the positive reinforcement. Thanks Steve!

drupal's admin interface: making nice for client access

Drupal is a quite capable platform, and I've used it quite a lot, both for work and for personal projects. Its Achilles heel though is the admin interface - with ultimate flexibility comes a lot of configuration choices. While the simple solution is to tell the client 'just don't look at that stuff' - it's not ideal, and can be intimidating. Enter some key modules: jstools, form_store and formfilter.

drupal, cck content fields and the nodewords module for meta tags and SEO

I was a bit annoyed with Drupal when I started working with it about a year ago. Much of the annoyance stemmed from my own inexperience with the platform, but a lingering issue is regarding META tags and Drupal's lack of native support for creating them dynamically. Eventually I found the 'nodewords' module, which does a nice job.

Hillman Curtis' MTIV, Designing with Web Standards book club discussion

I've been trying to keep up a good habit: reading more about not just what I do, but about other creative disciplines. Having heard Hillman Curtis speak at the FOWD conference on election day, I'd put his MTIV book on my 'wish list' on Amazon. I hadn't worked my way down to it but got a prompt from someone in the office, saying it was an absolute must. So I picked it up and couldn't put it down. I read through it over a weekend and it has made a huge impression on me, and given me a huge refresh in the inspiration department.

drupal, the image module and the alt tag.

After seeing how much attention my last post on Drupal and accessibility got, and how much time we've been spending with it I realized that we've developed something really worth sharing: a lot of experience with Drupal and accessibility, and a bag of tricks and good practices to go along with it. So I've decided to write more on the topic and hopefully develop a resource for others struggling with the same issues.

FOWD: Hillman Curtis presentation

At the Future of Web Design conference last month in NYC, one of the presenters was Hillman Curtis. There were a number of amazing presentations (Carsonified) does an amazing job - there really were no 'throw-aways'), but his stood out for a really important reason: inspiration.