Billings

I’m a web designer and css developer and just started freelancing full time this year. I never had much of experience with invoices, taxes payment, subcontractors and time tracking for freelance projects before. After a couple months without realizing that I needed a new software to manage my business, I end up having invoices and proposals made on illustrator, projects time tracked by another mac software and my expenses were all lost into my email in-boxes were all my online receipts would be storage, without any control of how much spending I had on each project / by month.

As mentioned by Whitney Quesenbery & Kevin Brooks  “Storytelling for User Experience”, “stories start with listening and observing”. So, that was exactly what I started to do to myself while trying to figured out what tool was going to fit my needs as a web designer freelancer.

I did some quick tests with Outright, Freshbooks and Quickbooks. But none of those softwares or online tools gave me the full solution I found with Billings.

The reasons I was so impressed by Billings:

1. First and really important – it’s a mac software
2. I could download and test the full software to see if I would like it. It didn’t take me much of time to realize that it was perfect for all my business needs.
3. I am a Designer, so a big plus was the ability to customize the look and feel of my invoices and estimates. It’s possible to upload your own logo, change colors and customize existing templates (which they have a lot of options!).
4. Clients and Projects are linked to your  Contacts – Address Book, so it’s easier to send invoices by email at the end of each month or week.
5. You can also keep track of expenses, which really helps with taxes control at each quarter of the year.
6. The time track tool can be set to fixed rate or based on 15min or less. This was really important to keep my relationship with existing customers which were used to receive invoices based on 15min rate.
7. Easy Reports based on projects, clients, categories, and dates.
8. Iphone / Ipod application. Another great feature as well, since I do travel from time to time, and being on the road it’s hard to get you the computer working at some places to send an invoice or check overdue payments, so almost essential to have this application.
9. Finally, the software also backs up all your data every time  you quit the application. Just perfect. Sweet dreams.

Two great findings:

A wonderful book about Storytelling for User Experience, which guided me to listen and observe my own actions and figured out what software, features I was looking for. And second, a very User Friendly Application, that could fit my needs in all ways possible and make my business and everyday work so much easier.

It’s amazing how much of satisfaction a great User Experience means to customers and consequently to products itself. This satisfaction is the best marketing any company wish for, is the main key to grow a successful product. Think about your User Experiences and you are thinking about great products.

Keep up the great work Billings!

Remember I told you this blog was going to be a sandbox, a playground where I was still trying to find myself, find my voice? Trying to find out what exactly I wanted to write about it. Where my inspiration would come from. What was going on inside my crazy mind.

Well… I think I found myself.

Or maybe not. But what I feel right now is that I want to just write. Write whatever comes out. I’m not teaching anyone, not really doing re-search. Not listing top ten design, best photography, fun illustrations. I’m just doing it my own. My simple learning cartoons, my family pictures, my feelings and thoughts about life, about work, about friends, about what I like, and what I don’t like. I will probably write about books I read, experiences I had, illustrations, music, photography, because all of them are part of my life.

I realized that I won’t please everyone, probably just myself and that’s fine. That’s actually what I was looking for. It’s almost like speaking to myself, some would say is therapy online, or self-coaching, or just waste of time writing. I don’t really care, because It makes me feel better. Why? Because keeping thoughts to yourself definitely doesn’t help anyone either.

So, please, don’t feel you need to finish it reading. But if you do, hope you don’t create wrong views about it. And if you do, please tell me. I promise to think about it. Discussion is something new for me. I mean if you met me before you already know I love debates, but this exercise of having other people to ask about my own thoughts, is new. Specially if I’m not teaching anything. Hmmm, interesting, what would you ask me then?

So I guess I found myself… looking for questions? or looking for answers?
I’ll keep looking… or my illustration guy will probably fire me from the blog anyways

My Little Sister

I always thought she was my little sister.
I always thought I had to teach her, make her home work, help her cross the streets.
I always thought I had to protect her, when she was sick, watch her sleep, give her medicine.
Always together. Same class, same friends, same clothes, same fights.

Usabilla.com

You finish a new design, launch a new site and it always come to your mind, “I should have asked more people to test”, get more feedback. At least to me, I always feel like I would like more criticism then only “the client” who hired me as a Designer.  It’s amazing to actually be able to hear from a “real” user, what exactly he thinks about that design? How was his experience while navigating? What could be improved?

This information is invaluable and I never had much of experience with UX testing before I worked 3 years with a software company.

So, I had been researching a lot about tools that could easily help me “learn” and “test” at the same time. And I’m positive that Usabilla is one of the great ones I found.

Usabilla is an online Usability Testing Tool that combines “power with simplicity” – mentioned by Mashable Social Magazine. You can easily create tests with default or custom questions, upload a screenshot of your design or type the site url, and finally publish your test on facebook, twitter, send the link to friends or specific list of test users. Participants will be able to “click and point” and add comments to the areas they like and the ones that need improvements, based on your test questions.

The only one feature I would suggest Usabilla to offer is the option of showing one or multiple comments on the screen before saving the png file. This could be very useful for me at least, so I could send my clients the most important comments right there on the screen, since users are pointing to the screen, they are not actually writing what exactly they are talking about it, they assume we know by the “point / mark”.

Anyways, the tool is definitely powerful but not cheap. You can run the first test for free, but after that you need to sign up to one of their yearly plans ($49 for 10 pages / $950 for 250 pages).

So, I decided to test it out this new tool with one of the sites I had designed this year  – VipaSolutions.com. And here are some general results and comments:

General Results:

• 9 graphics (based on 9 different questions)
• 15 tests (different users)
• 43 comments (the best part of the results)
• 379 points (different areas pointed by users)

1)  Click on the things that draw your attention the most

Things that draw your attention

User Comments:

• Font, upper right draws attention (related to vision + passion)
• Who are these people? (related to the logo)
• This draws my attention negatively; font’s too small, hard to read. (related to “Empower your Agency button”)
• “Best practices” is, to me, a bullshit buzzword
• So is “solutions”. Don’t sell me a solution until you understand my problem.
• MarComm — why abbreviate? (Also, this note window appears UNDER item 4, which is a bug in the survey software.)
• This attracts my attention, but for no informative purpose. (related to the main image of vipasuite backend)
• Holy cow–teeny tiny fonts on a 1650×1024 screen. (related to industries text – below each image)
• What’s this doing here? (related to “Industries” title top of social media image).

2)  Click on the most appealing images

Most appealing images

User Comments:

• No images really appeal. My eye went to the Healthcare image first.

3)  Click on the elements you like on this page

Elements you like

User Comments:

• Frankly, meh. (related to the blue gradient on the background)
• Great typeface (related to font used for “Vipa = {vision + passion }”)What are these going to play?
• They are a little small (related to the main image controls – 1, 2, 3…)

4)  Click on the elements you would remove from this page

Elements you would remove

User Comments:

• Move it, right justified (related to agency login alignment)
• Maybe create some icons instead of stock photos
• Have a live stream down here (related to twitter feed)
• Who is MarComm Agencies?
• Is this not a complete sentence? Why is there an ellipse? (related to the main image text)

5)  Mark your most important features

Important Features

User Comments:

• Good, but offer them something for their address (related to the newsletter signup field value).

6)  Where do you click for contact information?

Contact Information

No User Comments.

7)  Where do you click if you want to buy this product?

Buy this product

User Comments:

• I’m not sure the question “Where do you click if you want to buy this product?” applies here. “Use this service?”

8)  Where would you click next?

Click next

User Comments:

• The back button. It’s not a service that appeals to me.

9)  Mark the things that you think we should improve?

Things to improve

User Comments:

• Blah blah blah. It reads like something from the Dilbert Mission Statement Generator. (related to the main image text)
• font and size (related to the main navigation)
• Icons, not pictures (related to industries pictures)
• Font (related to the content body text)
• Offer this option before entering the site then delivers a customized site. (related to the two main butons)
• These pictures are all too cliché. (related to industries pictures)
• Drop out the background on the logo…it looks awkward. (related to the logo)
• This area looks a little congested. (related to the right top area)
• The flash menu seems out of place.
• The first place I looked for a contact link was at the bottom of the page, and I just guessed how to purchase this product. Perhaps a “purchase” here instead?
• I know this was just for improvements, but what the hay, the colors are pleasant. (related to the blue gradient background)
• I like this menu. (related to the main navigation)
• I don’t get what this word is for. (related to the industries title on top of social media image)
• I didn’t even know the page went down here….the edge of the top section looked finished and didn’t make me suspect there was more. (middle of the page below industries pictures)
• This bottom section seems disjointed…remember the color balance rule? 60% of a dominant color 30% of a secondary color 10% of an accent color
• Who is MarComm Agencies?
• Remove the ellipse. Make it a complete sentence.
• Make this fit on one line (social icons)
• Redesign to fit on one line (sign up newsletter button)
• I hope this isn’t important, because I wouldn’t expect content like this in the footer. (latest news)
• Why is this here in the header? (vipasuite login)
• I can (sort of) guess that Vipa Suite is a product of Vipa Solutions. So i clicked on this link to find out more information about the product. But it is just a login screen. I couldn’t find anything out about the product so i left.

Conclusions:

This was a great and simple usability test. As a designer I can learn and improve the design on several sections of the site based on the feedback of only 15 people. Developers, copywriters and content strategists can also improve their work after analyzing results like this.

Improving your website based on usability tests can benefit the most valuable part of the website process – the user experience!

If you know of any other great usability tool out there, please leave your comment and share it! Thanks!

Hundreds!!!!!

I’m in a bad mood Dude. Why? I had this talk with a client today about @font-face implementation.

They couldn’t pick a free font from a list of hundreds at www.fontsquirrel.com. So they kept bugging me with links of other fonts with different licenses:

Client: Are you sure we can’t use this one?
Designer: No, the license says “You may not post this font for distribution on the internet”.

Client: So, that means we can use it right?
Designer: You could contact the author and ask for permission or pay him a donation.

Client: Well, but the title of his website says “Free Fonts”.
Designer: You, know what? I have the perfect font you can use on your site:
GoToHell SemiBold

Client: What do you mean? You are joking right?
Designer: No, it’s very easy to implement on your site, you just need to attach the stylesheet “GetALife.css”, and it will work like magic.

Client: Ok. Now you are being rude. Maybe we should just look for another font.
Designer: Wait a minute, I found another one that is perfect:
FKYou Condensed

Regards!

Do you think this is funny? Then you should read the real funny guys:

http://www.27bslash6.com/
http://www.dontevenreply.com/

After - Illustrator Color 6 effect

Original - Before Effect

Well, so I found this inspiring picture from www.istockphoto.com and decided to play a little with Trace Effects.

Illustrator CS4 has some different options you can trace an image. The illustration of this post was created with Color6 effect which I found very useful when you are in a hurry for something simple, or just playing around and converting your pictures into vector.

How to apply the effect with Illustrator:

1. Create a new file on illustrator.
2. Place the image
3. Select the image and click on the arrow by “Live Trace” button (on top of your screen).
4. Select Color 6 Live Trace option
5. That’s it!

Depending on picture resolution and number of colors, you can get a very different result from each photo.

Here’s another example with nice color results:

Nice Color result

Original - Before Effect

Hey try it out, it’s easy and let me know what results you got!

Yeah, I know… I left that sentence and the title right there, because I just love WordPress, how user friendly is, how simple is to install it, and how nice those people are to even let me know of a great title I need and oops! yeah, this was suppose to be my first post!

Ok. let me think some more and I’ll came back soon. Just be aware that I don’t have a good name for the blog yet, all the sidebar fake links are still there, no logo in place, no graphics on the header, just being lazy here and using an existing wp template (which I really like the simplicity by the way).

But the main reason I’m starting this journal is actually to figure out what I want to write about it. So, it’s more like an exercise or sandbox playground, so don’t expect to much. No hope, no fears Yeah, I’ll throw some philosophy in the middle of the sentences sometimes, just to make sure you are reading the entire post