design

My good friend Mitch Goldstein (or @mgoldst as you may know him) has asked if I'd give a talk to his graphic design students in a class he's teaching at Rhode Island College. I sat in those very halls a few too many years ago than I care to remember - but since that's where I got my start (designing and developing the College's first web site), it seemed like a great opportunity.

I know, I know. If you listen to the Boagworld podcast or follow his incessant tweeting and audioboo-ing you'll doubtless be saying something like 'good heavens, don't give him any more reasons to inflate his overblown sense of self-worth' - but I think that he's struck upon a really important topic, and one that has an enormous impact on the future of our industry.

As a designer, I'm always thinking about inspiration. Where to find it, what to do with it, how to let it bring a solution out from the pile of ideas and pixels with which I work. I look at a lot of other designers' work - primarily in other arenas, but also on the web. But the strongest, most compelling source I've encountered is pervasive, and limitlessly renewable. I just have to remember to open my eyes and step through the door. It's something I cherish about how my brain seems to work, as it is with many creative people I imagine.

Two workshops today at the Future of Web Design conference: Real-World Accessibility for Web Designers with Derek Featherstone and Design Secrets of Digg with Daniel Burkha. It was tough to narrow down to these two - all of the sessions looked great - but I chose these for important reasons. [I'll be adding more about Daniel's talk in the next day or two - it's too much to cover now!]

Well - had to be done. I needed to get my site updated from Drupal 5 to 6 in order to implement some better features and in general keep up with what I do for clients. It was also useful to go through the upgrade process on an existing site to get used to the pitfalls.

Overall it wasn't all that bad, but I did have to reimagine how I wanted to deal with some views, and recreate some of them from scratch. I haven't had time to really dig into the design, but this had to come first and setting a deadline helped move things forward faster.

While I've been 'away' from posting here, a big change has come about for me professionally: I've decided to leave (add)ventures and start my own web strategy and design consultancy. There's been a huge amount of interest in my work, and it seemed like the right time to move. My role previously was far too focused on just implementation, and this way I'll more often get to bring my full experience to projects rather than only a small slice.

So there it is: the shingle has been hung: web strategist, designer, technologist - now for hire.

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.

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!

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.

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!