This blog post by Ben Gremillion offers some practical advice on how to take a different approach to this problem we consistently face.

I have some practical advice to add in addition to that article…there is no “perfect” photo, image, illustration or otherwise.  Avoid as the article puts it, the “paralysis” of the perfect image search and follow a logical path to the selection…and, don’t forget, you can change anytime and as often as you need to if you feel the one you select isn’t achieving the desired outcome.  We’ve seen it happen often where that quest for perfection results in delays and wasted opportunities when a perfectly valid solution was available from the start.

You’d think that stance would protect us at least partially from things going bad…it rarely does when things do go down that wrong path from time to time.  The reason for this post today, was this thoroughly entertaining piece posted on the “The Oatmeal” site.  As I read this, I knew how the designers here at MARSWorks felt on many projects when their proposed designs turned from what they were proud of in the beginning, to something they wished they had never been a part of when the site or application launched.  While there really isn’t anything funny when it happens, our entire team enjoyed this creative and entertaining piece that is amazingly consistent with many of our experiences. (and to those existing clients who are reading this, you know who you are! )

I think over the years many companies like ours follow similar paths and become more and more able to diagnose “the wrong path” and can be more confident in their objections to a client’s bad choices.  However, being the diplomatic people that we are, I think that the answer is sometimes a balance between what you think is right and the client’s often more knowledgeable position on their clients and what will help them succeed.  The trick, as always, is to make sure that the true users of the website or application are the ones that all involved are primarily concerned with…hopefully that leads to better decision making on design and production in the long run.

Their photos are actually pretty impressive from the inexpensive GPS/Camera equipped cell-phone.

I find it disturbing these days that people will believe almost anything sent to their inbox from a friend or colleague.  I recently received the famous e-mail about Mars being closer to the Earth than in anytime in history in August and that this will never happen again in anyone’s lifetime who is alive today.  Exciting news to be sure!

The e-mail continued to reveal that Mars would appear almost as big and bright as the moon in the night sky…again, fascinating.  However, the truth just isn’t so.  I guess implied in the hyperlink in the previous sentence is the trust I’m putting in NASA, the source of the information debunking this hoax.  I certainly hope they are telling me the truth, and based on the source, I’m inclined to believe them over an email that arrives from a friend, after being forwarded thousands of times over nearly 6 years since it was originally sent out.  No doubt the original author of this fiction must be impressed with the longevity he or she has achieved.

The more I watch the Jon Stewart show (unfortunately one of my favourite sources of “News” and Entertainment these days), I wonder how the eroding trust I feel in the major “News” organizations that report daily on happenings around the world will impact what I believe in the future.  How can the average person be expected to determine what is fact and what is fiction with so much information passing through our television sets, inboxes, Twitter, Facebook, etc.  I hope that we figure out a way to keep determining mostly what is fact and what isn’t, because with the volume of information we hear on a daily basis, we really do need to watch what we believe…something many of us seem to have forgotten.

Really interesting that these situations seem highly unacceptable to people, but we hear this kind of stuff all the time…check it out:

This is specifically focused on people who are building E-Commerce websites, however the advice does translate pretty well to most situations.  I think at times the pricing discussion goes a bit out of bounds in terms of the upper limits (wouldn’t we love to be charging those rates!?) but the lower to mid-range pricing discussed seems to fit with my view of the web development landscape.

On thing missing in this discussion is the concept of Intellectual Property and who owns the output created by the company you’ve hired.  Always make sure that is stipulated up front in all contracts because the answer to the question is often a surprise to the individual or organization paying the bill.

So…what makes a drop down “MEGA”? According to Jacob Neilsen, a Mega Drop Downs are:

• Big, two-dimensional panels divided into groups of navigation options
• Navigation choices structured through layout, typography, and (sometimes) icons
• Everything visible at once — no scrolling
• Vertical or horizontal form factors when activated from top navigation bars; when activated from left-hand navigation, they might appear as mega fly-outs (not shown). 

I’m sure by the end of the speech, they wish they had just asked me how business was and received the boilerplate “going well” response and moved on to the next topic.  To be really simplistic, in work that we do for clients that is project based, we need to make enough money to arrive at an hourly rate that delivers some measure of profit for us, and results in the client feeling they paid a fair price and receive what we hope is outstanding work and results.  Any less than that, and we start “chewing” through our own profit to the horrific point where work we’ve promised to complete in a given time and budget goes so over our expected time that we’re into actually paying to get this work off of our plate.  So…you win some, you lose some I guess, hopefully resulting in a profitable company overall.

Working on a fixed price presents many challenges that often lead to negative results.  What “fixing” a price means is that you’re gambling on your ability to deliver a completed project, with a vague sense of requirements, within often an arbitrary sense of time driven often by a client’s perceived need for the application.  If that sentence doesn’t drive fear into your heart, read it again recognizing that although there is a fixed number in the proposal, and a fixed time in which to deliver the work, nothing else is actually “fixed”!  Working on an open ended basis is equally scary to clients, and rightfully so.  What generally ends up happening is something somewhere in the middle where we’re fixing to a budget, but not necessarily guaranteeing the output given that it really never is truly “defined” early on in the work.

So…if you asked a builder to give you a fixed rate on a house, and to get it done in 3 months, and said that you need “3 bedrooms, maybe an open concept kitchen and family room, nice basement…yeah that’ll do it”  How do you think they’d react? Quite differently than if you presented them with detailed architectural drawings and materials specifications for all surfaces.  So certainly a web application with highly defined technical specifications presents a more likely chance that you’ll know what you’re getting into, but as we often say, building something technical like a web application isn’t like building a house.  We are often faced with technical challenges that can easily force work with a previously known timeline to bulge 50 percent or even more at times.  

In addition, the concept of Agile web development methods (popular approaches these days) suggests a more iterative and collaborative approach that emphasizes and implies minimal planning and definition.  The bottom line, is that forecasting an accurate fixed cost for even the most well defined application is a big challenge.  Even the best project managers can be challenged with resources and scope through these projects because the reality is that the initial vision and the final product are rarely identical and often are radically different.

So…How much does a web application cost? You’d think after reading this the best answer I’d be willing to give is “I don’t have a clue”!  However the best way to describe it may be that it needs to be based on the time and effort required to build the desired outcome…just that the desired outcome is harder to predict at the start than you’d like it to be.  Others are applying more innovative approaches to their work in this field which are very interesting and suggest that some creativity is required to truly meet the needs of the new consumer.

The iPhone already has some multitouch capabilities that allow you to zoom on maps and images simply by placing your fingers on the screen and spreading or closing them.  While Surface seems to extend far beyond that in its applications, it will be interesting to see if some of these abilities can make it into websites and web applications in the near future.

While there have been some very impressive enhancements in web and application development that have seen major advances in interactivity and information sharing, not to mention ease of use for users…I still believe that using computers effectively is often out of the reach of many consumers today who simply don’t have the basic skills and understanding to operate computers…or who never truly seem to learn concepts and skills and are continually frustrated or unable to perform the functions they need to perform.

I hope that this is one of those advances that can truly make the interface of common programs and applications easier to use and more powerful.

I remember watching the first 3D movies when I was a kid with those crazy glasses you picked up at the local convenience store (this was pretty weak and barely worked for me).  Then watching Jaws in 3D was also a neat experience as are the multitude of 3D videos and exhibits and theme parks and museums.

I’m really interested to see how this works on the weekend and what people think of the NFL in 3D.  In reality, TV has become slightly more interactive and picture quality has definitely taken a leap forward with the advent of High Definition Programming, but essentially I still look at the same old box (well flat-panel now) on the wall showing the same old two dimensional output.

On websites, we’ve tried for years to incorporate designs and interactivity that is more 3D…yet are always challenged by the fact that we have to make these designs and systems work on the good old 2D flat screen.  I wonder how far away we are from websites and web applications that have a bit more depth?  Will we shed the confines of the flat 2D screen anytime soon?

It looks like there are already some examples of real-world implementations of this as you can see here: