Rating Stuff in Norway
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Dice, according to the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, are "small cubes of plastic, ivory, bone, or wood, marked on each side with one to six spots, usually used in pairs in games of chance or in gambling."
They also form the basis of online reviews in Norway. Some context:
"...the newspapers next morning, both locals and national seemed to give a careful "thumb's up," most of them landed the dice on four out of six eyes, I guess I was around that too?"
- from a Bob Dylan fan site
"JABULANI receives 5 and 6 on the dice from main newspaper"
I'd never encountered dice as a rating system before, but I have it straight from a good source that it is quite common in Norway, and I've found examples on several sites.
Using Twitter as a Tool
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Last month while attending the Web 2.0 Expo in New York City, Twitter was in full effect throughout the conference (as to be expected), however the most interesting use for me was that attendees were encouraged to tag their tweets within each track of the conference to help facilitate Q&A at the end of each session. Attendees also often "seconded" others’ tweets on a topic they found an important one, which helped the most relevant topics bubble to the top. Speakers could keep an eye on the Twitter backchannel and answer audience members’ questions as the session went on or at the end.
Similarly, I recently read this great article from academHacK on ways Twitter is being used in Academia to help students stay active and involved in class discussions. Some of the benefits he noted include continuing "class chatter" inside and outside of the classroom, developing a sense of community among classmates, and allowing professors to instantly reach and gather feedback from their students.
Hello, World!
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As Viget Labs’ newest Project Manager, I’ve been learning the ropes here for the past couple of weeks. I spent my first week at HQ in Falls Church, Va., discussing Viget’s constantly evolving project processes and learning the finer points of Viget culture from my new team members. (It’s perfectly acceptable to make peanut butter sandwiches at your desk. I’m going to fit right in!)
After that initial week of guided training, I returned to Viget South in Durham, N.C., and continued learning on my own, reviewing successful web projects my colleagues have managed, asking questions about their experiences with different types of client engagements, and taking notes about techniques I admire or helpful tips they’ve given me. One of the things that impressed me was just how easy it was to go back and review those completed projects, even without the guidance of the project managers who saw them through to completion. Each past engagement was clearly documented with a set of deliverables, making it simple to follow the decisions the project team made at each stage of a web site’s life cycle.
One of the required reads for all Viget project managers is Dan M. Brown’s Communicating Design, which I’ve begun to read this week. Brown’s book encourages communication about web site planning and development using effective documentation. Since I’ve worked in user experience design for several years, none of the deliverables he describes are unfamiliar to me; but, it’s been interesting to compare some of his document creation and presentation techniques with Viget’s real-life examples.
Although Viget’s documentation varies based on the requirements, scope, and timeline for each web site, it’s always created for the same purpose: keeping all project team members focused on the same goal. By clearly expressing user needs, site design, and strategy decisions made over the course of a project, good web site documentation also allows even uninvolved observers to understand the motivations for designing a site in a particular way, including or excluding features, or writing copy with a certain audience in mind.
What Google Chrome Already Means to the Web
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Nearly everyone was surprised (not shocked, but surprised) over the weekend to find out that Google had been building its own browser for months now, named Chrome, slated for release today. The goal was ostensibly to rethink the typical web browser and build a new one from scratch designed to cater to the current and future generation of the web. When Google moves into an established space with a completely new product offering, you know they're not messing around, and Chrome definitely deserves to be taken seriously. Even its announcement has already started to change the way we think about the web. Read on to find out how.
Continue reading "What Google Chrome Already Means to the Web"
The Sketching Process: Learning From a Cartoonist
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When we design user interfaces, we go through a process of whiteboarding and wireframing before we design a full, visual composition. Essentially, we sketch out our work just like a painter or cartoonist or any other artist would. We get the basic ideas down on paper and then refine over and over again. With interface design though, it’s hard to clearly see the process in action because it happens over weeks or months. That’s why I thought it was really cool to watch these videos from Pete Emslie sketching out a cartoon in real-time. I took away a few important lessons from watching this that I’ll be applying to my own UI planning process.
Lesson #1: Sketch the outlines first in the lowest possible fidelity. Getting started is always the hardest part (at least it is for me). So right away, create a really high-level flow for the site. Group together a handful of sections or sub-flows (try not to have specific pages). This allows you to get going really quickly and ensures you’re thinking first about how the whole application will come together - not specific features.
Lesson #2: Refine the important stuff next, save the unimportant stuff for last. As soon as the outline was done, Pete moved right into refining the facial features. These are the most important part of his sketch - they’re the first thing someone will look at. If her eyes are messed up, people will notice. If her pinky is crooked, it’s not a huge deal. That’s just like your website. If your core features are great, people won’t care if your About Us page isn’t complete (or even if you have one).
Lesson #3: Never stop moving the pencil. Each time Pete goes back to his paper to refine the drawing, he makes only a slight refinement. He doesn’t try to jump straight from a rough outline to a really detailed, full-color drawing. If you find yourself stuck when designing your interface, it’s probably because you’re trying to get too detailed, too quickly. Take a step back and think higher-level. Abstract a page if you need to - you can come back later to refine it .
Lesson #4: It’s easier to erase thin, light lines than it is dark, heavy ones. Pete only commits to darker lines after he’s confident that all of his sketch lines are ok. The relation to web design here is obvious. Changing something on a wireframe is easy. Changing something in your code - hard.
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