Fairweather Zealot

On Tuesday, I had the good fortune to go to a seminar by Edward Tufte. I was interested becasue of his reputation and the amount of design I’ve been doing. Even though my designs are mostly IA-related (wireframes, user flows), I thought the conference would be a good experience. I underestimated it’s impact.

I’ve had Tufte’s book, Visual Experiences and thought that while useful, it seemed to be from a little authoritative and arrogant. After seeing him speak, however, I had to reevaluate my impressions.

Tufte is a good speaker, animated and active. But more than that, his knowledge delivered in a clear, concise way. Suddenly, his books made sense in a way that showed not arrogance but experience through frustrating experiences. From the poor design of Power Point) to his advocacy of good design in all forms of information design, he gave compelling and vibrant examples that supported what I’d often thought about when I had read his books.

The seminar was relatively short (10 – 4:30, with an hour-long lunch), but packed with a lot of good information. The seminar included all four of Tufte’s books, which are beautiful tomes to look through and learn. But coupled with Tufte’s speaking, they were even better – full of great examples, insight and, of course, great design. Tufte is an expert for good reason, and most of his ideas are solid principles that formed the basis for a good number of information designers’ ways of doing things. I didn’t always agree with some of his statements, but there was no denying that he’s probably forgotten more than I ever knew about design.

The seminar would have been worth much more than its $360 cost, and that was made even better by all of the books being included. Additionally, the trip to D.C. to see him gave me the opportunity to have dinner with Blair at Union Station – always a good bonus. I just have to transfer his notes into a presentation for the group now, but it can only help me better understand and use those principles.

related »
Edward Tufte.com
Upcoming Tufte seminars

IjAD – Information (Inside joke) Architecture Document

Recently, much of my design work has been involving tools work and CMS, back-end systems, etc. I like the challenge of solving design problems and throwing in U/A standards where I can, but there’s not a whole lot of room for creativity. So, to add a small bit of humor to my designs, I started adding small ‘easter eggs’ (for a lack of a better term).

It’s always subtle things that avoid being overtly ridiculous or NSFW. Must of it has been relegated to finding better usernames: instead of J. User or John Doe, I’ve taken to A. Lien, B. Cirius and D. Lishus. Sometimes it’s a subtle joke word or phrase in the Lorem ipsum… text:

“Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Nulla ligula ligula, tincidunt vel, insert nifty web twopointoh phrase here gravida ut, gravida consequat, justo. Curabitur sit amet quam ac enim viverra interdum…”

So, aside from amusing myself and the rare notice by anyone else, it’s harmless. But is it professional? I understand that it does have a childish element to it, and that it might be considered so by others, but the outlet after 8 hours of staring at Visio, Dreamweaver and Photoshop is something that I’ve enjoyed.

So, I’m wondering if there are any thoughts out there among the 4 or 5 readers I have about this? Anyone else put in hidden/secret things within their designs? Many artists have done things like this for ages, such as Shepard Fairey and his “Andre the Giant has a posse” graphic which found it’s way into other pieces of art, or the old Iron Maiden album covers by Derek Riggs, who hid his personal Riggs Logo in the drawings of Eddie, Maiden’s mascot. Programmers are notorious for their Easter Eggs, although they are usually hidden; IADs – being a visual medium – aren’t that complex.

I’m just curious how normal this is among IA’s and related design fields.

Last night, GSI Commerce hosted a seminar for AIGA Philadelphia and Phi Chi (the Philadelphia branch of the ACM SigCHI) members, along with Avenue A/Razorfish. The topic was The Visual vs. The Usable, and we were presenting two cases of how we managed to mesh top-notch creative with functional, usable design. Avenue A/Razorfish did the same, talking about how the two groups – often at odds – collaborated on projects to create a better end result. Continue reading

Jazz Coding jăz • cod’-ing(v) -

1. Interpretive and often highly improvisational code development that doesn’t match spec or supplied codebase, and usually doesn’t work.
2. Rewriting functional or base code with non-standard and/or irregular code that is better understood, regardless of its validity.

While highly entertaining if viewed correctly, unappreciated by most. Doesn’t follow standard conventions, often putting completely disparate elements into the expected structure, causing unexpected results.

WIKI addendum: Jazz Coding is often performed by less-informed developers who are unable to understand or modified newer and more compliant code structures. Rather than adhere to the level of code requested/supplied, they rewrite code to include more basic constructs that are better understood, such as <font> tags, incorrect/unmatched tags or structurally invalid code.

See Also jazz code (n); jazz coded (v, adj.), What the hell is this crap? (phrase)

While working on a website we are redesigning, I was seeing some minor usability/accessibility issues that I was concerned about. I brought up those issues, mentioning that the site would be significantly less functional in some cases to those with disabilities, such as the vision-impaired and physically handicapped persons for whom using a mouse is difficult. That was when someone asked, “Do blind people actually buy sporting goods?”.

In their defense, the speaker asked the question in good faith, and they were thinking of snowboards, golf clubs and footballs when they said it. It took me only a second to respond perhaps not, and to ask if they had considered sweatpants, baseball caps, knee braces and more. Suddenly, it was more pertinent, and I decided to look into the question – do the disabled really buy sporting goods, or more specifically, do they buy them online? Continue reading

We were doing a usability test recently on a site that I’ve been working on for a major sports retailer. In the tests, we were testing a hover functionality which would prompt the user to click for more information about that product. Continue reading

I started a new job this week, and it’s been a LOT of work – but good work. I’m working more on the Information Architecture side of things which I haven’t had much of a chance to do lately when I was working with my old contract company. Better yet, this position could hopefully lead to full-time employment, something that I could get into since this seems like a pretty cool company. I’ll miss the flexibility of my other position, and driving up the Schuykill daily is a bit of a drag, but I like what I’m working on, the people are good and the whole “…into full-time employment” portion is something that I could get into.

Unfortunately, it also means that I don’t have as much time to tool around as I once did. Big difference between getting home at 4:30 and 7:30 each night – but there’s always a trade-off for good work, and the potential benefits it brings. Even if I can’t play hooky as often.

Other links – some relevent, others … well, not so much »

• Mike Davidson: Camino: Supermodel of a Browser? - not that it matters, being I don’t have a Mac, but first impressions of it … meh.
• Wired News: Spinning Suspicious Searches – brilliant
• “Pit Bull” vs. Porcupine – here’s the truth behind it: Pit Bull vs. Porcupine – Netlore Archive.
• Jim Crow and the Indians (News at Salon.com) – interesting read
• CBS 47 Jacksonville – Study: Elephants Might Seek Revenge

Microsoft iPod

So true but still funny.

I have to ask, who the heck still uses HTML 3.2? For those of you who left it all behind years ago (with good reason), here’s a short list of things you can’t use in 3.2:

• Stylesheets – none. zero. Ditto for inline styles – HTML 3.2 hates ‘em.
• font face – Technically, there is no way to dictate what font you want to use – it’s just that browsers of that time period started accepting them, even if they were out of standard. You can, however, use that damned font tag until your hearts content.
• font-size – only in 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 … or in +1/-1, +2/-2, etc.
• background – none of the variables work, but you can use the old bgcolor, but only in certain elements (body, div). Not much help if you have to design using tables (because what would HTML 3.2 be without tables, right?).
• target – although, since this was an email, that’s not that big a deal. Plus, it’s deprecated for HTML 4.01 STRICT anyway.
• BR and HR – I don’t know how many times I had to go back and switch my < br /> tags.
• cellmargin, cellpadding, cellspacing, height (of a table or div) and margin - Oh, and IDs? They're not around yet (hence, no stylesheets).

Creating this email would have been great and even easy had it not been for the HTML 3.2 portion of it. As it was, I was faced with creating yet another drab experience based on the old, boring template or trying to jerry-rig my design into HTML 3.2. In the end, what worked was a wholly image-based email or a sure-to-break-if-they-increase-the-font-size-too-much design.

God, I hope they upgrade to a new system soon.

Okay, after a few days of using Microsoft’s new IE7 Beta, I’ve gotten a handle on the changes, as well as what I like and don’t like about it. Continue reading