Splash Web Effects

I waited a bit after writing this- 3 months to be exact. I wanted to be sure I wasn’t fueled by a slight against my ego, and that the feminist rage I was feeling wouldn’t falter after time. This is the blogger equivalent of writing an angry letter and waiting till morning to send it.

Here I present, the most feminist rant ever.

A question I am invariably, and I do mean invariably, asked when people find out that I have a child, “How do you manage a family and working?”, or alternately, “Who watches your son while you are at work?”

The audacity of this question is understated, as it has clear implications: people always want to know- not as a polite aside like “What is his name”‘ “How old is he”, etc, is how I can be so irresponsible as to have a career when I have a child to raise. There are then unfortunate implications to that statement that do not merely happen to be rather rude and presumptive, but effect my career as well. Assumptions range that I do not actually like what I do, I am merely doing this to “feed my kids”, that I would not do this if I didn’t have to, that I am disorganized, rushed or hurried in my work, or that I simply do not care.
But this is not predijudice against parents- it is prejudice against mothers, spisifically. My male collegues, many of whom have children- some of whom are single parents- are never asked this question. They might be applauded, if they are single, but it is a badge of honor, not a mark of shame.
This stereotype is absurd- the idea that I would rather be a housewife or homemaker of any sort- that I don’t do what I love or love what I do- that my ambitions for myself are extensions of the ambition to provide well for my offspring, these assertions are ridiculous.
I am much more ambitious than many of my personal acquaintances, and many of my coworkers- but the assumption is that I would give it all up were I to marry someone well off, or attain some sort of lump sum in a stroke of luck. This stereotype is not only one of the single most damaging ideas to feminism in society today, but many professional women- women who would raise intelligent, well-fed and well-adjusted offspring put it off until the end of their careers, or off entirely, due to this assumption. This leaves these incredible people out of the gene pool, and can only hurt posterity. To talk about sustainability, sustaining a population segment with a high enough IQ to maintain and use the technological wonders we use today is one of the highest priorities we can have as a species- this trend has to stop.

I was scanning documents today, now that google docs allows uploading I feel I have no excuse to turn everything digital.

I was scanning and encrypting tax returns, and the numbers really struck me for some reason. Some older returns, ones that included such places as The Black Eyed Pea and Working For My Dad, and the pitiful numbers that were the final score for the year. I was looking at later ones and how the numbers had gone up, and thinking about being handed the sum total of the years 2004-2010 and attempting to live off the total for six years.

While I probably would save a bit, not paying any late fees or finance charges, I realized that the tax forms, notices, final counts and various mailings from various companies really do add up to my entire life’s work.

Everything I’ve ever done, reduced to a payable (or in my case, refundable) amount to the IRS. I could, while looking through the many offer letters, 1040s and W2s, letters of recommendation, medical expense logs and car insurance claims, recount every major event in my life. Every marriage, divorce, childbirth, car wreck, new job, layoff, and paycheck can be accounted for. And zero-sum’d.

Everything I’ve ever done in my life, relates to a final number. A score. Eventually, the number at the end accounts for the number on your social security card- and it’s made me realize one thing.

There are too damn many people. The fact that the number takes into account my friendships- every airtime minute and round of beer, every gallon of gasoline or sympathy pie baked. The fact that the number takes into account my love life- marriages, divorces, dates, emails (internet access, electricity?) and ice-cream trips at 2 AM. The fact that the number is compared in the census, to my family’s, to my friends, to people in my zip code, and to people in my same field of work. All these collections and data-driven assumptions about who I am, reducing me to a number and the fact that the number is correct- terrifying.

My name is Liz Howard- I score in the 90th percentile for people with my level of experience, education, vocation, gender, skillset, family history, location and lifestyle.

AEH …………………… 90%

I wonder if I can beat my score.

Sometimes we get working, or we get excited about a change in our lives. Sometimes it’s for something we love, sometimes it’s for something we hate. Sometimes we go off on an adventure, and even, times come where the adventure becomes our everyday lives. These are the times when we forget.

We forget to paint, or to read, or to ski or to blog. We forget to go on dates. We forget to follow the plans we lay out because of life and love and children and layoffs.

The problem is when we fall asleep, and never remember again. We go to work and we come home and we think about what we are forgetting to do as something we are forgetting to do- not something we love.

It becomes something we regard as secondary to our lives. It moves into a tertiary thing, and then something for “only” when we have time. And then we have no time.

The biggest change we can make for ourselves is to audit and reclaim our time. Look at the biggest detractors in your life- Commute, Chores, Spending time with individuals that you don’t enjoy, and don’t benefit from you. Imagine the difference these hours add up to.

With commutes upwards of an hour long, imagine getting back two to four hours a day? What could you do in two to four hours? Change your life?

There is a Microsoft Knowledgebase Support Article that points out yet another flaw in IE8 or lower. This states that Microsoft Office can’t download documents when you set the page to expire immediately- so essentially you can’t have very secure pages if you want to export information to excel.

Firefox could do this since firefox .8

Chrome could do this from the get-go.

Safari and even Netscape Navigator have this capability, and most versions of AOL’s horrible browser can do this.

Why can’t Microsoft get with the program? The issue here is that MSIE will do what it damn well pleases. It always has, as it commands the majority of market share. Until we can get people on other, more stable web-standards compatible browsers we won’t be able to really open up the modern web.

When designing a website, or any user interface, we must consider context. What you are producing is a tool, not a product or an application. The better the design of the tool, the more use it will have, and the more it will be used. Designing for multiple levels of skill is something many coders lack in, mainly because they are power-users. What is apparent to them is not apparent to others, and what is contextually relevant to them is, again, obscure to the general populace.

In designing a website or other web-based application, we must consider what else the user is doing- using our application is generally not the sole focus of their task, but a tool to augment it. Whether it be a web-portal for a customer service rep, or a mobile application for tagging music- we have to consider what else is on their mind, and what else they may be interacting with. They may choose to stop using our tool very quickly, and then return to it at a later time- but how likely are they to do that? What are the ramifications of that action?

Mobile devices are short-usage only, and with short timespans the user does not have time to wait for a lot of images to load or an animation/splash screen to play. In Internet-enabled applications, a login prompt may be too much, especially if the data is not especially secure. Having a session expire daily, rather than an application-launch login event may be the way to go. Other tools, such as an intranet, may receive heavy use over a long period of time, followed by long periods of inactivity(like lunch breaks, or leaving for the day.) Where the browser is the application window. Triggering a login following a closed browser may be the best security route, since you are dealing with company data but don’t want to effect productivity.

We must also consider what the user sees when they see our icon, link or button. What are they trying to accomplish by clicking on it? What associates in the user’s mind when they think of using our tool? The human brain is very good at making connections and associations- but remembering ALL the tasks a tool can be used for is simply out of the question. What has to happen, in order to prompt it’s use, is for the user to associate the task with our tool. For instance, if our tool becomes “the button that lets me identify songs”, we have successfully marketed and designed a music-tagging application. However, if the user then wants to “find more songs like this one”, and the answer to the question “what tool should I use” is Pandora, or Last.fm- we have failed in either the placement of the “suggest more songs like these” button, or we simply do not return results relevant enough to the user. We will assume we do however, provide the best service available, being that this is an article on design and not algorithm.

When the user reaches out for related tasks, we want them to look at our tool not as a “multi-purpose” tool, but a “category” tool. If our tool is modular, we need to integrate with other, categorically-relevant tools (consider Shazam’s youtube, twitter, and iTunes integration) in order for the user to associate us as their “category” tool. In being a portal for anything associated with that category, we can ensure use despite alternatives.

Inexperienced users often flock to one-stop-shop applications because they see categories as entire tasks. When they want to “do email”- they click on outlook. This also involves calendars, task lists, contacts, even newsgroups. This is not seen as a multi-purpose program for many tasks, rather all of those tasks are part of email- and email itself is a category we might call “communication” or “business” or “productivity”. Thus creating an “Email” application must take into account things it belongs in the same category as, as well as things it might relate to. The more category-related things it can do (and the more seamless it can make them) the more polished, intuitive and “easy” your tool is.

Do try to maintain however, category apps. Mozilla has Firefox and Thunderbird for a reason- they didn’t want their “Internet” application becoming too big. By keeping the applications themselves light enough to respond quickly, and yet featured enough to encompass a category, we have successfully created a tool that is associable to a particular activity, rather than a specific function.

On a mobile device, this idea is very different. People use an application to perform one or two specific functions, and have a multitude of other applications to choose from. Consolidating here is not recommended as it will slow your application down when time is of the essence. Adding additional functions to an app based around a leisure activity is fine, but any application that has to be used quickly (song tagging, flashlight, 911 dialers) is suicide.

If your service is modular and we are simply concerned with network penetration instead of forward-facing usage, you can consider creating a web service, or API to interact with other websites. Modularization is a characteristic of the web and most people don’t want to receive all of their content from one provider- even if they do want it all in one place. Consider letting others plug into you, rather than attempting to be a full show when you’re a sideliner at best. It’s OK to be a sideliner, this is the web.

We’re all sideliners here. Even Google.

In an intranet however, things are different. Launching of different websites or “systems” as users often refer to them hurts productivity. When a user has to click back and forth or even manually migrate data from one “system” to another, we have failed in the basic mission of computers: make data easier to organize, and less work to manage. If you have data entry staff that don’t interact with handwritten items, there is something seriously wrong with your system.

Humans are not technological stopgaps- they are the reason technology exists. Taking one system, modularizing it and creating an interface that allows for quick access to other parts of the system is no small feat, but it is worth every second of effort. An (overly) simple rule of thumb is that for every hour a programmer spends optimizing a program, or a designer spends optimizing a design, 1000 man hours are saved each year. This goes for big operations as well as small- even small businesses need to save precious hours in a day not processing data- that is the computer’s job.

Smooth navigation is key here- try to make the “drilling down” process easier to manage, by ensuring a map of the site is available on each page. Keeping this map navigable by utilizing dropdowns and expanding trees rather than having the user “back out” of what they were doing and having to “go back in”. We aren’t walking down tunnels, we are on an open plane- point to point navigation needs to be simple.

Human thought processes have a momentum about them- they have to get going before they can stay on one track- such is the case with work. Focusing on a task involves minimizing distractions and freeing your mind of nagging tasks- this is why getting “re-engaged” after interruption(phone call, lunch, or just getting there in the morning) is a huge productivity drain. By minimizing the “set up” process and keeping “re-engagement” to a minimum using efficiently designed user interfaces, auto-completion, user-specific frequent links, bookmark-friendly URLs and a logon page that directs you to the last used page, rather than starting you at the “top”- these practices and others will create a seamless flow into work, allowing users to flow in and out of using your tool, instead of making the tool the task in and of itself.

Love is a fickle, transient creature whose whims and motives are unknown to the most studious of pupil, and are blindingly apparent in every schoolchild crush. Impossible to predict, and similarly to live without.

I have a love for design.

But, like with most loves, there is an element of childish behavior that goes along with it. I am speaking of scorn, and the post-apocalyptic effect upon your creative genius that is unmitigated by your strongest of efforts.

When I was laid off from my last job, I felt the scorn that web design had lain upon me. Even though it was a faultless occurrence, feelings- ones necessary to do my job- were bruised. I had lost touch with “the flow”- the name I have for the creative energy that sustains me.

The thing that appears in my head when an idea is mentioned or a thought is provoked by a business owner, a friend with an idea, or by someone with a really bad website- flow. The site comes together quickly in my head, and I struggle to quickly bring it together in Photoshop(I know, I’m supposed to use Illustrator…) and I am eager to deliver. The code appears before me in a dreamlike trance as I contemplate the great balance between form and function- neat effects and search engine optimization. I can hardly sleep, eat or anything that does not engage my brain to the fullest- I am agitated until the creative energy can burst forth in some form or another- be it a comp, a demo or an update- and I would be finally fulfilled.

The scorn I felt, much like the scorn of a lover, was paralyzing. I could not open Dreamweaver without feeling a great weight settle down on my shoulders- “You will never feel that love again”, it seemed to whisper.

A man who loves his job does not work a day in his life, a wise man(Ben Franklin?) said. I never feel like I am at work when I do have a job- merely settling down in the arms of someone I cherish deeply. While I can get frustrated, disillusioned, and wish to be alone sometimes, the love that keeps us together is a lasting one.

But time heals all wounds, and the trauma of unemployment is waning, which is to say- I’m back baby.

Many people are now using craigslist as a viable means of recruiting for their positions, or to post their resumes. Because of this influx of traffic over the last few months, scammers are beginning to target craigslist more and more.
So you get an e-mail, from a human being no less, with the heading “Thank you for your application” or “I found your resume on craigslist”.
You get all excited and reply that you would be very interested in the position, hunger pangs or desire to pay your rent blinding your good judgment. This is the trap they want you to fall into, and now they have a coveted piece of information: your reply-to address.
What you failed to recognize were these signs and symptoms.
1. Failure to mention anything personal about you or your resume.
When someone writes an e-mail to a lot of people, they try to sound as personal as possible while not targeting an individual with any kind of identifying information, such as the industry they are in, the job they are looking for, or their name.

If the e-mail starts with the greeting “Hi” or your e-mail’s prefix (rockstarlubr92 isn’t your name is it?) then you can be sure the e-mail wasn’t written with you personally in mind. If it also fails to mention anything about your field, qualifications or the job’s minimum requirements, you can count on it being a shotgun blasted spam-o-splat all over your inbox.

2. A job offer that didn’t accompany an interview, discussion over the phone or anything else.

If you are offered a job, chances are you have given that person some reason to think you are a capable, sane, stable individual that could reasonably be expected to perform the work asked of you. People don’t start out offering a job or even touting how much money you could make. If they have to “sell” you the job, then there’s a reason- no one else has taken it. It’s either a profoundly crappy job(cold calling people or selling cutco knives) or it’s a scam to use  you/steal from you in some way.

3. A company that claims its major and international, but you’ve never heard about it before.

A company that has to tell you that it’s major and recognized is generally not major and/or recognized. Think about it. Does General Mills introduce itself to you when you apply for a job? Does AT&T? How about Bell Helecopter? While this is not entirely telling it is an element to consider, a lot of recruiting agencies start out this way- but direct-to-hire firms don’t.

4. Jobs that have a high earnings-to-hours worked ratio.

Any job that only needs you two days a week for maybe an hour or two a day isn’t an international fulfillment company. What they are doing is laundering money, and they want to use you to do it. What they will ask you to do is open an account(or use your existing account) at a bank, then they will transfer money into it, asking you to then take the money out and send it by some means(western union, etc) to Russia, Nigeria, China or another country far away from you. You might get 5-15% commission on these “deals” and then your account will be investigated for fraud, and the FBI will knock on your door. If this has already happened to you or is in the middle of happening, don’t panic. Simply explain what happened, give them the e-mails and as long as you were lied to(as in, you didn’t knowingly cooperate), the authorities will recognize the scam and you likely* won’t be charged. Just don’t expect to be able to open any accounts anytime soon.

5. Jobs that require you use your family and friends to accomplish tasks.

Sales jobs that require you to generate your own leads or “buy” leads from the company are not generally sales jobs that are going to go somewhere. What you might pay for is an exclusive territory- what you should not pay for are sales materials, product samples and qualified leads or lead lists (unless they are for an industry, not a company’s product.).

Think about this: A company WANTS to sell it’s product, it wants it so bad that is willing to spend 1/3 of it’s net expenditures in advertising on average. Hiring you as a salesperson should be a move that’s an investment that they are willing to make, and they should be willing to give you the tools to be as successful as possible. If they aren’t willing to make the investment, or hire qualified individuals to make sales, then you have run into a product that either does not exist, isn’t worth the ticket price or you, the salesperson are going to be buying more of the product than anyone else is.

So those are the largest share of craigslist fakes, but it goes with the territory. Free resume search isn’t without it’s problems, but its got the most exposure so it’s (in my opinion) worth the risk.

*I offer no guarantees that you won’t be charged, but you are a bystander in this situation, not the culprit. Please be sure to retain the services of a good lawyer!

I am officially unemployed as of 5:00 Friday- oddly liberating and yet, terrifying.

As many designers and developers alike know, while quitting your job is a terrifying prospect- being laid off is far worse.

The idea of being laid off is not frightening in and of itself, if you are a qualified individual working in a market that has many available jobs. Being that I am that individual, I was not scared at first. However, being in the midst of  a recession that has hit the IT sector hard, my myriad skills are not paying off the way they normally do.

I am a multi-language, multi-skilled developer with design skills, copywriting ability, support experience and the ability to generally fix most electronic devices. This allows me to really spread my CV across the craigslist “resumes” section, it hurts me when competing for jobs as managers believe I will somehow be less skilled in one area because I am multi-talented.

This leaves one option while looking for a manager not afraid of extra skills: Freelancing.

Freelancing has its upsides and it’s downsides- I fully intend the bulk of my career to be in the freelance industry, but not while I am starting out. The meager, 250-dollar for a whole website jobs that I have to chase down, hunting the manager on his lunch breaks to beg him for a design approval, please read this copy, please sign this, etc. It’s maddening. I don’t already command the respect of a huge portfolio necessary to drop problem clients- their dollars are as good as any.

Most of my work is in-house, intranet based or outdated from my last bout of freelancing, so my portfolio currently contains one entry.

I’m in the process of rewriting a site, I’ll post before and after soonish. This should help me get some credibility behind my outlandish claims.

Were you recently laid off, or have you received the notice that you will be soon?

Take the extra few minutes required and sanitize your computer.

Most of us are lazy, lazy people and we don’t exercise good security measures when it comes to our personal information, but we are especially lax at work. After all, you didn’t intend on leaving obviously, so why not store all of your passwords, account information and personal logins in the computer’s cache?

Clicking “remember me” has it’s benefits, but what if you get laid off?

In larger corporations, the IT staff will be in along behind you to re-image your hard drive(that’s reinstall windows, those of you who are non-techs) and in smaller ones you might get your user profile deleted at best. But what’s to stop your co-workers from coming along before IT gets there? What about unscrupulous IT workers, bosses or co-workers?

Upon leaving, the trend is to sever almost all ties with whoever did not leave unless you were especially close. You might keep their IM screenname but that’s about the long and short of it. Do you really trust these guys with your Gmail password? How about your bank password? Your social security number?

Do this: open up your browser and go to “tools”, and make sure you delete all browsing history, saved passwords, your cache and any authenticated sessions. Next, make sure you aren’t using any desktop applications like TweetDeck or Filezilla that might give people access to your social networks or personal servers. Also, remove your e-mail from the default mail program if it’s personal mail, and back up your contact book to a cloud-based program like linkedin or just save the contacts files. Then delete them off the hard drive.

Lastly, uninstall any applications you installed that weren’t directly related to at least 60% of your day, if you have time. This includes any custom development environments, browser add-ons you like, instant messenger programs and the like.

This all ensures that they don’t hand your computer off to someone who might use the information incorrectly, make judgements about your work based on the contents of your computer(after all, who doesn’t check their home e-mail once in awhile or jam out to iTunes while working?) and minimizes the risk to your security.

This is all pending on the fact that you got laid off, not fired for gross incompetence or embezzlement- in that case your computer is probably property of the federal government at the moment, and your embarrassing music collection is the least of your worries ;)

I want to redesign all of the local government websites.

Seriously, who writes these? A lot of time they don’t work or validate in anything but IE7 and when they do, they are still the most hideous things you have ever laid eyes on. Regardless- some of them get awards.

I genuinely want to redesign these, and I will take a significantly lower sum than I would normally charge, in the name of patriotism. I do not want our nation’s children subjected to bureaucracy, but when they do have to endure it, it can at least be pretty.

Not to mention the functionality. Most government websites have some sort of registration you can perform on them, be it for jobs or to pay your water bill- but the instructions are convoluted and obviously to make up for a developer’s bad user interface or a database designer’s bad practices.

What happened to intuitive, useful and accessible with these people? There are many documents people would love to submit online that don’t require actual paper anyway- stuff that could be submitted directly to the correct database and would only require you to mail in a signature form to satisfy their archaic standards. This would cut overhead by such a significant amount that they might be able to pay someone to, I don’t know, update their website? Scroll down to the bottom of the Tarrant County website, and you will see that it has not been touched since May of 2005!

Governments are slow to adapt to new standards, but the days of putting a website on the Internet and then being “done” are over. You are never “done” with a website. People expect more and more functionality every day, and you need to keep them updated with events and pertinent information.