Strategies For Staying Educated About Interactive Media, Front-end Development, and Web Design

A lot of professions require keeping up to date with standards and trends, but for interactive media, it is almost a weekly commitment and should be a part of the job.  With interactive media, there are trends that appear every year and it is usually a good idea to follow them.  It is almost expected that people accept these trends and throw away the old ones; if you don't, you'll quickly be called outdated.  I've been there.  Within development, there are frameworks are pop up every now and then.  If you want to stay in the business, you must learn these new frameworks.  Every couple of years, the semantics of code is changed and you must learn the new tags.  Browsers are always being updated, operating systems change, platforms are introduced.  So how do you stay up to date?  Let's explore how.

Front-end Development

I've already made a post about this, but following the key players is probably one of the best ideas.  All of the big developers are on twitter and some of them have blogs.  It's important to keep up to date with these guys because some of them are the ones making changes to the markup.  Some are developing the  platforms where your future code will rest.  Others create new libraries, like jQuery for example.  However, the best thing is that you can have a one on one interaction with these internet celebrities.  More than not they will answer your questions.  Additionally, you get access to their thought process, their random ramblings, their weird lunch thoughts.  Today is a weird world; we pretty much have access to everybody's journal through twitter and blogs.  Use it and hopefully you'll get a peak into an artist's process.  Attend conferences.  Here you will have a chance to see the most up to date technologies and trends.  Attend field-specific conferences too, like front-end development conferences.

Web Design

Staying up to date with web design is pretty much on the same level as front-end development.  In order to be the best web designer, you must know how the web works.  If you don't know how stuff is made interactive, then you definitely have a disadvantage compared to other more well-rounded designers.  To stay up to date requires observing others.  Dribbble, for instance, is a great way to see what other web designers are doing.  You can take a peak into their process because a lot of the shots are works in progress.  Dribbble is also a great way to see what is trending; the most popular page is full of trendy designs, fonts, colors, and methods.  It is worth taking a lot at some agencies as well.  These are the guys making the products for the startups.  They should be making the most up to date stuff. And it usually looks good.  Attend conferences.  These conferences will be showcasing the most up to date technologies and trends.  There are conferences all over the United States, but a must is SXSW.  Attend the web design specific conferences as well; they'll have workshops and lectures.

Overall

Create.  It's that simple.  One of the best ways to keep learning is to keep working.  Keep working on your own skills, but also explore some new methods.  Experiment.  Who knows, you might stumble upon the next trendy element in design.

UX Best Practices

UI/UX design is a new and upcoming field in the digital media world, but its concepts have been around since the creation of interactive media.  Great UI/UX, or user interface and experience, is a balance of both high convertion rates and ease of use.  These two are great together because it means more business for your company and there is a lack of frustration with the software that can immediately leave a bad taste in a customer's mouth.  Thankfully, there is a lot of research out there for what makes great UI/UX. For your next web design project, try some of these suggestions out and see how they work out for your client's business.

1. Know Your User

This is a no brainer.  You need to design for the user and not yourself.  Context plays a big part in the design.  What is the site about?  What is the purpose?  What is the end goal?  Design these things with both the user and client in mind.

Also, while you may know how to use a website because you designed it, your users might not have the same intuition to click something.  Make things more intuitive.

2.  Surprise The User

While I just said to keep things intuitive, surprise the user occasionally.  This will provide a better user experience and it will stay in the user's mind.

3.  Solve Problems

One of the many reasons you have been hired as a ui/ux designer is to solve problems.  A website or product can be a great tool for solving problems.  Solve these problems through design, but keep things intuitive and don't over-complicate.  Everything on your website is there to help the user.

4. Keep a Consistent Navigation

One of the easiest ways to confuse a user is to switch up the navigation.  You may think that your navigation gets boring if it remains the same across all pages, but really it is quite comforting to know where the navigation is, know where the links are within the menu, and where they are at within the site.

5. Rethink What You Just Designed

There are multiple ways of designing something within every aspect of your design.  There are thousands of fonts, colors, shapes, layouts, progressions, forms, etc. etc. etc.

For example, instead of a three column layout, try out a one column layout.  A one column layout will keep your layout more focused.  It leads to a better narrative and better attentiveness.

For more of these examples, there is a great blog called goodui.org.  I recommend reading every one of their posts.

The Problems With Modern Web Design

Just recently, I made myself research the top web designers of our age.  Having an art history past, I am used to having artists to look up to or gain influence from.  I hadn't really thought about it until the other day when I asked a visiting graphic designer who he gets the most influence from.  And then it hit me,  there's gotta be some web designers that are making most of the content or, atleast, analyzing it.  And then I came across Trent Walton.

I just finished reading Trent Walton's post on "Device-Agnostic" web design and I couldn't agree more with everything he said.  We are in a point in time where designing for the web isn't as easy as it once was.  2.4 billion people are using the web and a lot of them are from developing countries.  This means the web is being accessed by an infinite amount of screen sizes, operating systems, devices, software versions, and connection speeds.  Thus, designing for the web has definitely become a challenge, but the thing to do is focus on the harshest conditions first, and then go from there.  Walton addresses four topics:

Hostile Browsers

Hostile browsers are a real problem.  People are using all sorts of browsers to view the web.  This includes browsers that are a few updates old to browsers that aren't even supported anymore, like the recently discountinued internet explorer 6 (thank god).  Other situations can occur such as javascript timing out or a mobile phone temporarily losing service.  Walton explains that we need to design using the progressive enhancement method.

According to wikipedia,

Progressive enhancement is a strategy for web design that emphasizes accessibility, semantic HTML markup, and external stylesheet and scripting technologies. Progressive enhancement uses web technologies in a layered fashion that allows everyone to access the basic content and functionality of a web page, using any browser or Internet connection, while also providing an enhanced version of the page to those with more advanced browser software or greater bandwidth.

This makes a lot of sense to me, but I am unsure how to provide different experiences based on who interacts with my content.  But I guess advanced browser software can be considered up to date modern browsers and everything beneath that mobile quality.  If that is the case, then designing for mobile first is definitely the smartest thing to do.  I am currently designing a mobile application using the Bootstrap framework.  Bootstrap is advertised as a mobile-first framework and I think there are a lot more of these frameworks popping up. Anyway, while the framework is advertised as a mobile framework, it provides an equal experience on a desktop.  Bootstrap is pretty popular as well, which means more people are designing in this modern way.

Tiny Screens

According to The Verge, mobile and tablet sales are far exceeding desktop sales.  Again, this means that mobile should be the first consideration when designing for the web.  On top of this, the experience needs to stay the same between all screen sizes.  Pages should not act wonky on mobile, fonts should look the same, and interactivity shouldn't be affected.  Furthermore, mobile-sensitive topics like data plans should be considered.  Having large images and HD video can really eat up a data plan.

Another problem is that sometimes the mobile website doesn't have all of the features that the desktop version has.  This is really annoying if you have to visit the desktop version of the site to do something.  This brings up the question: if it doesn't fit or work for mobile, why does it fit for desktop?

Slow Load Times

Nothing kills an experience like slow load times; we don't have time for it.  As designers, we are accustomed to building websites on fast servers around the office or at school.  But in reality, most of the web doesn't have the same quality of internet speed as we do. Since 2010, the average page size has doubled.  This is becoming a big problem, especially if we are in the mindset of designing for mobile first.

The problem lies within us, the web designers.

We need to be aware that everything we add to a page is adding more weight in file size.  We need to question ourselves: is what I just added valuable to the website?  Overall, just be more aware of files sizes.  You can fix this by minifying your code, using low quality jpgs over pngs, and when applicable, using code in the place of images.

Touch Inputs

We need to design with a fat-finger approach.  On desktop, links are often really small and only the size of the text that links. For mobile, buttons need to be a big size so that fingers can accurately press them. Design should be consistent across everything, so this needs to be something to think about.

Conclusion

In 2014, simply coding a site with a responsive framework doesn't cut it anymore.  Mobile pages need to work just as well as the desktop version.  Having a responsive site doesn't eliminate every problem: images still need to be compressed, hd videos shouldn't be on mobile pages, and specific phone orientations shouldn't be required.  In the end, it might be easier to design your website as if you are designing for mobile.  It really should be the first thing you consider when designing for the web in 2014.

Twitter Gets A Familiar New Look

If you haven't noticed yet, your Twitter profile page has received a makeover.

About a month ago, Twitter announced plans to roll out a new profile page that would make profile pages represent their owner's personality even more.  If you think about it,  the old Twitter profile page was pretty bland and generic.  However, their new page is eye-catching, but it does resemble something.  Twitter perhaps received some inspiration from Facebook because the two profile pages look pretty similar now.  They both have a profile picture nested in the top left corner along with a large cover photo that stretches across the entire top of the screen.  Below all of this rests content.

The new profile page

For Twitter, this now includes best tweets, pinned tweets, and filtered tweets.  Let's check them out!

Best Tweets

Notice the size difference.  The one on the bottom is part of the new best tweet feature

If you take a look at your new profile page, you might notice that certain tweets are larger than others.    This is because they have been labeled as a best tweet.  According to Twitter, the tweets with a lot of engagement will appear larger on your profile page, which makes it easier to find the most important or interesting content.

Pinned Tweets

They sit at the top of your profile page

Have a tweet you are super proud of?  Or perhaps a celebrity interaction?  You can now pin tweets at the top of your profile page so that others can quickly see them.  Ideally, you will want to pin a typical tweet so that new followers will know what you are all about.

Filtered Tweets

Twitter understands the importance of photos and videos.  They are visually stimulating and our eyes automatically fall on pictures over text.  If you want to just look at tweets that have pictures or video, you can now filter tweets on your timeline.  Other options include view all tweets and view tweets with replies.

All of this is a lot to take in.  If you don't want to switch right away, Twitter is not pushing the switch just yet.  You can demo these new features, but they won't stick until you tell Twitter that you are ready.  With that said, all of these new features improve an already amazing web experience.  I think I'm finished talking, so if you haven't tried out the new Twitter, visit your profile page and try it out!

Web Design Basics

I'll just begin by stating it.  Great web design is tough.  It's a delicate balance of pleasing aesthetics and usability.  You could have an extremely impressive and beautiful website, but if users struggle to navigate through the content, then you have failed as a web designer.  Like with any form of art, there are some basic principles behind the design that have existed for decades.  I really wish to say centuries here, but web design has only existed for the past two decades or so.  However, web design is pretty much art; the principles behind art have existed since the beginning of time.

Anyway, let's not get too caught up in being correct with our wording here.  There are some basic principles behind web design.  Follow these principles and you should be able to make a great interface and web experience (UI/UX).

1. KISS (Keep it simple, stupid)

Simple, flat design

Play KISS music on page load.  Actually, that is an extremely bad idea.

Simplicity is really overlooked with beginning designers.  It's easy to get caught up in adding flash and thrill to a design, but really it's just unnecessary junk that is taking away from your work's usability.  Ideally, beginning artists or designers should work with minimalism for a large portion of their learning experience.  If you are able to make an attractive design with minimal materials/shapes/lines, then you have the potential to be a great designer.  But back to web design, keeping it simple will definitely help make your site easily navigable and it will just flow so much better.

2. Don't Make Users Think

Yeah, I'm going there with the stock photography

This is a continuation of KISS.  Making users have to think about how to use your website is going to cause some negative thoughts about your site, which could potentially harm your brand.  Having a really complicated design might look great, but it could cause problems in some users.  Just because you think something works well doesn't mean everybody else will have the same opinion.  You have to remember, the web plays host to all sorts of skill levels.

3. Remember Conventions

This is like a design principle within a design principle.  Following conventions works because, well, it's a convention; it's just the way something is usually done.  For example, when first loading a page, most users' eyes will travel to the top left of the page because we have been taught to read from left to right.  Most people expect the site's logo or home link to be placed there.  It's really something we are so used to and we don't have to think about it.

Explore a handful of websites and pick up some of the conventions they are utilizing.  However, this doesn't mean you have to play by the book 100%.  Deviating from the norm is actually a good way to explore your creativity, but ignoring several design conventions in doing so could lead towards poor usability.  In other words, the sites that deviate from the norm still apply some of the basic web design conventions.

4. Stay Consistent

For some, a website is just another tool to represent a brand or an idea.  These brands have already made decisions for their color schemes, typography, etc.  These visuals stay consistent across all forms of media and it's comforting because we can still recognize it as the original brand.  Your website shouldn't be any different.  Using 15 different fonts, different spacing rules, different layouts, alignments,  or pages that don't look similar to the original index page can cause users to question if they are even looking at the same website.  It can cause usability issues as well. You want to stay consistent with your page design.  You are creating a set of rules within the first few seconds of a page visit.  Users will understand these rules quickly.  But if you can change the way the site works or feels, you are really causing some problems.

5. Get Inspiration/Explore!

There is no better way to learn than by learning from your peers or competitors.  Visit as many websites as you can within your site's field and see what trends are popular, what conventions the sites share, what layouts are working, and what doesn't work.

It is nearing the end of my graduate program, which means my classmates and I are working towards completing our online portfolios.  I thought I would address this topic from a web design point of view.  I haven’t made a web design post yet, but I feel like I should since front-end development and web design are so closely linked.  In fact, I have decided to change the title of my blog to: Desk Talk – Front-end Development + Web Design.  One of my passions is graphic design, so I really feel like I should be exploring both topics since this blog is meant to be a learning tool for me.  The more topics I write on both topics, the more I will learn in general about the web.  Plus, I believe most web design careers involve a little bit of coding.

Anyway, let’s get back to today’s topic: portfolios.

Portfolio sites are supposed to be platforms to show off your work.  It is recommended that you show 10 or 15 pieces.  The layout of the site is up to the creator, but generally you want to have it pretty simple.  Basically, you don’t want your really awesome interactive features taking away from the meat of the page, which is your portfolio work.

I am in the process of making my own portfolio site.  I thought I’d create a list of things to both do and don’t do when making your online portfolio.

Contact Details - Do
There is no point in making a portfolio if people can't contact you about your work.  Create a way for other people to contact you.  Make a contact form, create some social media buttons, and include a resume.  While this may seem trendy, it is really a necessity.  However, you could argue that the social media icons aren't needed.  It really depends on the career you are striving for.

Code Your Own - Do
This might not apply to all portfolio work, but if you have the necessary skills to code your own portfolio, do so.  You’ll have a more accurate representation of your skills and it will be more personalized.  Plus, you’ll save money; themes can host anywhere from $10-100.  You will also save some interview embarrassment when they ask if you have the skills to make what your portfolio portrays.

Skill Bars – Don’t

Those skill bars might look cool, but they are not that useful.  I mean, they might give a general idea of what you are better at, but they are not measurable data.  If you’re 90% in Illustrator, you might be at a 30% skill level compared to another graphic designer.  Furthermore, you're making yourself look bad by stating you are a less-skilled in some areas.  Don't speak of your weaknesses.  Plus, everybody is using them.  The number one rule in portfolios is to stick out. This rule will creep up again in more of these tips.

Be Generic - Don't

The generic portfolio that is taking over the web

Don't follow trends when designing your portfolio website.  Just because everybody else is doing, doesn't mean you should be doing it.  And sometimes, the trend isn't exactly a good thing (looking back at skill bars).  Design your own logo, layout, and color palette.  Reach for the stars.  Inspire others.

Write About Yourself Using Way Too Many Adjectives - Don't
You say you're a 23 year old web designer who likes taking long walks on the beach, taking national geographic quality images of the birds at the park, drinking awesome beer, and making it known that you're a creative individual. Great! But who cares? Nobody.  You come off somebody that is really into themselves.  Let your portfolio and resume do the talking.  You'll have plenty of time to talk about yourself in an interview.

Blog - Do/Don't
If you are going to keep up with your blog and post at least once a week, then definitely keep the blog.  It will be a great addition to your resume and it will show that you are knowledgable about certain subjects. It will also give your portfolio a personal voice.

Don't display a blog if it is something you haven't updated in weeks.  It makes your site look like it has cobwebs on it and that you are inactive in your field.

And finally, a humorous example of what not to do:

The Worst Portfolio Ever