Moving On

Leaving the comfortable, safe 9-to-5 life was a challenge. While I’m sure most in the advertising industry struggle to stay at ~40 hours a week, I was pretty damn good at it. The amount of work and the level of stress (mostly) were very manageable in my everyday life. My ideas were starting to gain some significance in larger conversations about the work we were doing, and at times, the company as a whole. Everything was going very well. Why give that up?

It turns out those conversations were not the ones I wanted to be having. Half of them were about scope and timelines rather than features and usability. The projects I was working on were short-lived campaigns that only exist in award submissions now. Half of the projects in my portfolio don’t have live links, yet I’m so proud to show off the work the team and I did.

Carson, you do know what advertising is, don’t you?

I do. It just took me a while to digest the fact I couldn’t change it.

The Now — Freelancing

Now I’m running my own projects from start to finish in my freelance life. I get to spend as much or as little time on any conversation I want, based on what the client needs at the time. At the beginning I am very focused on scope, timelines and budgets, but once that is settled it rarely comes up again. We turn our attention to making a great product at every step of the process.

My favourite part of freelancing so far is the size of the companies I work with. They are typically small enough that they listen to my suggestions throughout the process without letting inner-office politics get in the way. We are on the same mission to deliver a complete, well thought out project. Their ideas are as valuable as mine, yet they understand this is my passion and I know what I’m talking about.

The Now — Jet Cooper

In combination with freelancing I took on a contract with Jet Cooper. I wasn’t looking to jump into anything right away, but their reputation alone had me jumping at the opportunity. And damn, am I ever happy I jumped.

Their process

It is impeccable. I had one standing meeting that ended up talking about a search bar for 45 minutes. I built out some prototypes and we talked about them some more. We didn’t find a quick solution and move on, we thought about every angle of the bar itself. How might users react to it in different scenarios? What could make this approach good? Bad?

I don’t think anyone will top Jet Cooper as a better user experience any time soon. Their open atmosphere allows anyone on the team to give input during the process, not just designers or developers. They even shut the shop down every once in a while to have free creative time for employees, talk about how to better the company itself, and — my favourite — have show-and-tell Fridays.

Family atmosphere

The camaraderie among the team is the best I’ve ever seen. Whether it’s joking around during work hours or having drinks after, everyone is truly treated like a friend. The first Friday I went out with the team I was shocked with two things:

1. There was no work talk. None. How could this be? It’s a bunch of people brought together by work, after work, yet that was the last thing on their minds.
2. A few people left early, but came back. It’s not because they didn’t want to hang out, they simply had an errand to run and then came back for the night.

To top things off, I could see everyone here as the class clown at one point in their lives. Not the annoying one that you probably just thought of from your childhood, but the one that had fantastic one-liners every few days. There is no way to enjoy what you do more than having a good time while doing it.

Leadership

They really do live the lives that I was only reading about before. I honestly thought this sort of lifestyle was only prevalent in Palo Alto and the like — I was sorely wrong. The team family attends events left and right, hosts workshops and talks across the city, and is a true leader in the community in every sense of the word.

Jet Cooper doesn’t focus on showing off their finished products on the home page like almost every other company out there (including myself), they focus on the team. The team makes the company successful, and they’re incredibly proud of it.

Goodbye, advertising

The only thing I’ve discovered for sure over the last month and a half is that advertising is not the right fit for me. I’m interested in making something great that people are going to want to use, not something that they are asked to use. Focusing on making great, intuitive products is what I am most interested in now and look forward to exploring better ways to do that in the near future.

The post From Advertising to User Experience appeared first on Carson Shold.

Once you set an element to fixed positioning it is essentially removed from the DOM and relative to the window. Let me show you what I mean in this jsFiddle.

section {
    position: relative;
    width: 500px;
    height: 200px;
    background: grey;
}
section div {
    position: relative;
    width: 50%;
    height: 50%;
    background: blue;
}

As you would expect, the div would have a width of 250px because it is relative to the section tag. But when we change the position to fixed we get a div that is 50% the height and width of the window rather than the section tag. View it live on jsFiddle.

section {
    position: relative;
    width: 500px;
    height: 200px;
    background: grey;
}
section div {
    position: fixed;
    width: 50%;        // not 250px
    height: 50%;       // not 100px
    background: blue;
}

This is relatively common knowledge so I won’t dwell on it. The problem I faced occurs when you get into fixed background positioning and sizing. One of my favourite features of CSS3 is background-size: cover. It takes all the guessing, measuring, and JavaScript out of the equation and automatically adjusts the background image to fill its container without stretching it. Here is the code I wanted to use until I discovered this issue.

section {
    position: relative;
    width: 500px;
    height: 200px;
    background-image: url(http://www.hdwallpapersarena.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/sunset.jpg);
    background-size: cover;
    background-attachment: fixed;
}

It all seems good until you actually test it out. The background size becomes relative to the window rather than its element. View this code example without background-attachment set for what it what the fixed background should behave like.

Unfortunately CSS can’t solve everything the way we want. The only options I can think of to combat this are to drastically change the markup and CSS, or get JavaScript involved. Can you think of something I didn’t? Let me know below.

The post CSS background-size:cover doesn’t like fixed positioning appeared first on Carson Shold.

Where are you heading next?

“I’m not sure, yet.”

That’s the best answer I can give everyone at this point, and that answer shocked people more than me leaving – especially my parents.

I’m talking to a number of companies inside and out of advertising to see what the best fit for my future will be. I’ve been in advertising and have a general sense of what to expect at other agencies. I’ve read a lot about life at start-ups and what it takes to be successful at one. Lots of companies want in-house designers and developers so they don’t have to rely on expensive agencies all the time.

Becoming a full-time freelancer for a few months is another option with the amount of inquiries I get in addition to current projects on the go. This could lead to short-term contract work with ad agencies, development shops, or in-house teams.

Another option is to simply take a short sabbatical. Everyone loves a vacation, but one or two weeks isn’t always enough to refresh your outlook on your creativity, personal life, and/or career. Stefan Sagmeister, a world-renowned graphic designer, gives a powerful TED talk about The power of time off. Every 7 years he closes down his studio and takes a yearlong sabbatical to refresh his creative outlook. His employees get the same perk.

While a yearlong sabbatical is not going to be offered by many companies, there are some that value time-off just as much. The creative powerhouse Carsonified uses a 4-day week to let employees have more free time while still pushing out amazing work. Airbnb provides employees with $2,000 per year to travel anywhere in the world. Countries in Europe give employees a minimum of 20 days paid vacation. Time off is more than a vacation, it’s a human necessity.

Each route has its own positives and negative that I must consider before making any decisions. I really don’t know where I’ll be next month, but I’m excited to find out.

Why are you leaving?

Seeing as I don’t have a job immediately lined up, people were a little confused as to why I decided to leave now.

Quitting your job without job prospects or the desire to go out on your own is not something I’d suggest. I have made numerous connections that may or may not lead to job opportunities, and while talks continue my freelance business is more than capable of supporting me. I am not living paycheck to paycheck so am lucky enough to have some financial freedom to make this decision and not rush it.

Continued education – There is a burning desire in me to keep learning. Taxi (and more specifically its senior developer) helped transform me from a junior front-end developer to a confident, efficient, well-rounded web developer on both the front and back ends. There is no doubt that Taxi encourages learning, but without being submersed in a new environment filled with new languages, technologies, and experiences I believe my learning has come to a bit of a plateau.

Career advancement – My tenure at Taxi lasted nearly two years, a relatively short amount of my future professional life. The traditional sense of career advancement says I’d need to stay at one company for a number of years in order to climb the corporate ladder. On the other hand, I could change jobs every few years in hopes of advancement but risk being considered a ‘job-hopper.’ That’s not my goal, but it’s always an option.

Job-hopping has sometimes been seen as a negative quality in the past, yet a new generation is turning that definition around. Forbes.com documents the way the today’s youth looks at the job market in Job Hopping Is the ‘New Normal’ for Millennials. The author describes this trend as something that can speed career advancement, lead to greater job fulfillment, but also lead to greater financial insecurity – the worst any generation has faced in the last half-century.

Things move faster today then ever before (sorry for the cliché). Playing the waiting game and moving up the ladder isn’t something that a passionate person does anymore. If we want something bad enough, we go take it. If we fail, we try harder next time.

To be clear, moving to a new job does not necessarily mean a promotion or raise, nor should it. Accepting a job you are not qualified for is another risk as you could end up being bad at it – a characteristic nobody wants attached to his or her name.

With that said, I am looking for more responsibilities. Moving to a new position will hopefully bring those with it in a capacity I am ready to handle at this stage of my career. So no, I’m not going to be a CTO just yet.

The Past

The time I spent with Taxi was great. The people were fantastic and I’m glad to have worked with all of them. I learnt more than I could have imagined in my time there – and I mean more than just coding. I have no regrets about working there and wish everyone the absolute best. I look forward to seeing the stream of great work continue to come out of Taxi in the future.

The future

I look at the uncertain future as a thrill rather than a treacherous hill to climb. I think it’s burned into our minds that a steady job is one thing we absolutely need, and for some people it is. The security feels good, but where is the fun in that?

I watched an episode of Boston Legal last night and a quote from the Mad Cow-infested senior partner at a law firm, Denny Crane (played by William Shatner), stuck with me. He simply said, “It’s fun being me.”

Life is all about having fun and enjoying it. Rolling the dice with my future is just the way I’ve decided to have some fun.

The post My Reason for Leaving TAXI appeared first on Carson Shold.

Why does it matter if you like your own page?

Unfortunately, math takes all the blame. Regardless of the number of Like’s and activity your brand page receives, not all of your fans are shown the same information. Facebook uses a sophisticated algorithm to determine who sees your content and by being one of the most active on your own page, you are taking up one of those valuable spaces.

Mark Cuban (NBA owner, Shark, all-around-money-man) wrote an article on the Huffington Post about what he really thinks about Facebook. In it he calls out Facebook’s money-grabbing techniques on brand pages that have spend endless amounts of time gathering fans in the form of Likes, but charging an arm and a leg to reach them all.

No matter how engaging your content is, not everyone will see it.

So what does this have to do with liking your own page?

As a fan of your own page, you likely visit and interact with the page more than most fans. That means you are more likely to see your own content because of your high level of interactivity.

So what, you see your own content in place of an actual fan. Big deal.

Then add in all of the administrators that also like the page. The developers that need access to the page. The advertising accounts that need to see insights. The agency employees that are testing posts and applications. Brand pages that have hundreds of thousands of likes will have lots of  people touching and interacting with the page, and each one of those people that likes your page will take away from real fans seeing and engaging with your content.

So go unlike your page and tell your employees, developers, administrators and others to do the same. Brand pages are not about the number of likes, but about the engagement with the content. Let more customers and real fans see the content rather than yourself after you’ve posted it.

The post Don’t Like Your Own Facebook Brand Page appeared first on Carson Shold.

Mobile users want things fast and the login process is no exception.

1. Make usernames flexible

There is no reason it has to be an email address or contain a number. Users should be able to enter their full name, email or a screen name if they wish.

2. Tell the user if the username does not exist

Show an error after an invalid username is entered with an AJAX call. This will prevent users from trying multiple passwords over and over on a username that isn’t there.

3. Show the password by default

Especially on mobile, typing the wrong letter happens all the time. Reduce the risk of password errors by showing the user what they type. If they think someone is going to look over their shoulder and read it, the can check the box to hide it or just move their phone out of view.

4. Remove password restrictions

Let users enter the password they want. If they have to type 16 characters with an assortment of uppercase, numbers and special characters they will write it on a piece of paper and put it on their monitor. That’s a lot less secure than having a weak password.

5. User HTML5 Input fields

Most smartphones support HTML5 input types and show the user a different keypad. Use type="tel" for phone numbers and type="email" for emails. The amount of time a user saves when presented with the proper keyboard in invaluable.

6. Use input masks for patterns

Rather than having up to 3 fields for a phone number, use an input mask to define structure in a field. This works on any input field that requires formatting.

7. Mobile does not mean less

A lot of people think smaller screens mean fewer features. For example, excluding an option to recover your password on mobile devices is not only a source of frustration for the user, but a burden on your company’s help centre. Just listen to Luke Wroblewski’s example about eBay’s mobile experience issues in a great video talk, Mobile Experience Design Strategy.

5. No more forms

In Luke’s talk (linked above), he claims mobile devices are the next mass medium. We shouldn’t take elements from older media and apply it to this new one, but think of new ways to tap into its potential. Near the end of his talk about mobile login forms he showcases a few ways to let users login instead of a form. These seemingly futuristic technologies are already being explored by some big companies.

• SMS authentication
  • Similar to the confirmation emails you receive to prove ownership of an email, nearly the same thing can be done with an SMS text.
• Touch gestures
  • Android introduced a native unlock feature that used finger swipes rather than a number pad. This can be combined with photo uploading so drawing on one of your pictures is your password. In fact, Microsoft announced a touch login screen for Windows 8 with just that idea.
• Facial recognition
  • Another Android innovation, facial recognition allows you to unlock your device.
• Finger identification
  • Just like a finger scanner from any space movie, touch screens can determine which finger(s) are on the screen and where they are. Apple is currently holding patents to expand this technology across iOS.

The post Mobile Login Forms appeared first on Carson Shold.

There are two times I say no: when I am asked to be a click monkey, and when a client will not be a good fit.

Being a click monkey

I consistently want to make clients happy while developing a solid website so whatever they said would usually go. Sure, I’d offer my insight and expertise along the way but at the end of the day, it was their website and their decision.

This strategy left me as little more than a click monkey – a mindless drone doing what ever was asked of me. Over and over I would design and code a site with little resistance along the way, but then either right before launch or just after the client would begin to request some changes. Sometimes they were quite minor, but sometimes relatively major changes to design or functionality.

By complying with changes at this point of the project I was devaluing not only my services but my profession as well.

When I’m not working online, I’m learning. It is my job to know the best solutions to various web problems and pass that knowledge on to my clients in order to give them the best possible end product.

My inexperience had gotten the better of me early in my career. When clients want to explore different options it is my job to outline the pros and cons of them and come up with the right solution, and stand behind it firmly.

Being a good fit

I’ve been lucky enough to work with some amazing clients. Our ideas and philosophy on work align and it makes for a great working relationship. We become a partnership working toward a common goal.

When these ideals don’t line up you have to raise some flags. My latest experience included a client that didn’t want me to showcase the finished product in my portfolio. Regardless of their reasons, it gave me an insight into their philosophy.

Designers and developers generally agree that an open web is the best for everyone. From services that show off work, gather feedback, offer free downloads, and walk you through the development of projects, the web is an open place. I’m starting to offer some of my code demos for free so others can learn from and use them.

This client didn’t share that feeling and it raised a flag I could not ignore. While the technical aspect of project would have been a great to work on, the client relationship was in question before it even started. Being somewhat reserved early on, I decided to decline the project.

While saying no to a client or project can be hard at the time, it can make your life a lot more pleasant. Especially in a freelance world where you are your own boss, working alongside people with the same mindset is invaluable.

The post Saying No to a Client or Project appeared first on Carson Shold.

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The carousel is on an infinite loop and can support as many or few products as needed.

Feel free to download the zip file and customize to your needs.

Desktop

Tablet

Mobile

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