I totally went into the book thinking the first couple of chapters would be a review for me, but holy cow, I learned a ton about responsive design, especially the ways to do it mobile first. Then the book moved on to the more difficult subjects of whether or not to build a separate mobile site, how to do that if you choose to do it, and the craziness that is WURFL and device capability detection. For me these chapters were the meat and potatoes of the book and I learned so much about how to go about all of this. As a front end coder, the PHP was a bit difficult for me, but the book laid things out in an easy to understand manner. Since I’ve lately been working on learning to program I found all the vanilla JavaScript concepts I’ve learned to be in the PHP so it wasn’t as hard as I would have initially thought.

The chapter where they use jQuery Mobile to build a site was also a fantastic insight into what a great framework can do to help push along the process, especially when you may not have easy access to lots of devices. Using something that is already tested thoroughly is so helpful. I am a huge fan of the mobile web and so seeing how to do that really well with clean, semantic markup and then just using the new HTML5 data attributes to add on to the look and feel is awesome. It all comes together so easily; I hope I have a future project where I get to use this.

They leave you on a high note, with the idea that doing things cleanly with the markup and moving from there towards progressive enhancement is the way to go to be future friendly and hopefully support as many devices as possible. This really translates into supporting as many users as possible, because it is the people interacting with the device that we want to support. Everyone deserves to get to the information they are after no matter the device they are using or the speed of their connection. Jason and Lyza show how to do that beautifully. I am so thankful that we live in the same town, because I get to pester them at Mobile Portland and I will be able to benefit from the device lab they are working tirelessly to build.

My next steps are to go back over the CSS for this site and set it up to be mobile first. I hope some mobile projects to come my way soon, it’s definitely where my interest lies at this point. The diversity of it all fascinates me. Thank you Jason and Lyza for feeding my fascination with a great book.

Over the weekend I finished reading Design is a Job by Mike Monteiro (click through to Mike’s twitter at your own risk, his twitter background is NSFW). Mike’s thoughts actually resonated a lot with me and the busyness I have been thinking about. Like the other books in the A Book Apart series, it was a quick, easy read and I enjoyed it for the most part. I don’t always like Mike’s writing style, but the heart of his message is a really important one and I believe it comes down to demanding respect. Through talking about money, dealing with clients who try to design the site themselves, dealing with the problems of working with others; it all boils down to demanding that clients respect you, and your abilities, and also that you respect those around you on the team, be they in your company or the client’s.

This means that you stand up for yourself, you are not working horrid hours because of demanding clients treating you with a lack of respect, you are entitled to a life outside of your work. It applies just as much to in-house talent as it does to those of use working independently or for digital agencies. I also found that much of what he wrote about clients applied just as much to working in a large company with in house folks who are your client as it applies to the digital agency with clients outside the company.

So as I strive for the balance I spoke of in the last post, I am grateful for Mike’s reminders to stand up for myself. It can be difficult at times, but I’ve been doing it a lot lately and it’s totally worth it. I was also reminded to think about what I love to do and look for the situations where I get to do that and excel. So I am heeding Mike’s advice

…I’d caution you to stay away from jobs that take you away from the things you love to do….

As I strive for this, I am finding I am swimming against the tide of my particular industry norm. I honestly think that because so many people work full time jobs and then take on freelance work for evenings and weekends, they have ruined our clients expectations and skewed the perception of what’s a normal work day. Clients expectations are that everyone works all the time in the web/design world. This is directly related to this culture of busy, people overload themselves and then when asked, they are always busy.

I also feel like the fear of missing out plays a very large role in our business. I am most certainly missing things on a daily basis, as I leave twitter alone for hours at a time or don’t read all the latest articles that come my way. But I also feel like if it is a big enough deal, I won’t miss it. There is just no way that I can keep up with everything, so I step away, even if it means missing something that I may or may not find interesting.

So what is it about our culture that makes us want to seem busy? If you are really busy does that mean you are important? Does it boost one’s ego? I haven’t figured that out yet, but I do know that I don’t care what others think, I’m more concerned with my health, both physical and emotional, and that being busy isn’t good for me. I need time to reflect and absorb the things happening to and around me. I love to code, but I also need time away from it. So as I continue down this road of independent working, I look for ways to ensure that I do not become overwhelmed, but instead am balanced with work and the rest of my life.

When I first started playing around with Codecademy it was in-between Christmas and New Year’s when I was doing an intensive week of getting better with JavaScript, something I’ve been working on for about six months now (and as an aside, it’s working, I’m getting better). The UI was inventive, with an area to code, a console to see outputs and the instructions to the left. There were some clunky bits to it, but overall it seemed to work well. But over the course of the last three  months, the team at Codecademy has improved the UI and the experience of actually working through the exercises in so many little ways I cannot even list them all here. They have improved the way the console tracks the changes you’ve made, the way you move from lesson to lesson, the global navigation at the very top of the page, and more. Each week there are changes and tweaks, the interface is continually evolving. No change has ever been so large that I am thrown off or trying to find things, but they all feel intuitive and improve the experience. This is doing iterative design the right way. The product is improving. There are times when I start a lesson and it isn’t until I am part way through that I even notice the change, but it has made it easier to complete my tasks. Plus they are mind readers as well; there are changes I thought would improve the experience and all of them have been made over the course of the last three months.

I am learning about product iteration as I also learn JavaScript. Now each week when I log in to do the latest, I am taking a moment to examine the interface to look for improvements and changes. Good job Codecademy team, you have done well with the improving your interface, which is no easy feat, and I congratulate you.

A small side note about the content. I have done every single JavaScript exercise and some have been better than others, but I do have to say I am learning and the addition of the forum a few months back improved the experience immensely because you could ask questions and get help when stuck. Codecademy is moving on to HTML next week and I’ve already gone through the first lesson to see what they are doing, I am less impressed with the content and how they are teaching it. Since this is an area I don’t really need help with, I won’t be doing this section, but I do hope they improve the lessons.

I try with each and every project to build a good foundation, whether the client actively brings up the desire for something that will work on mobile. I feel lucky that I do have a client thinking this way, so I am working hard to set up a foundation to prepare for how we will adapt the product to work on different devices. But I must admit, that I am more and more amazed when it isn’t brought up at all. Meeting people where they are is so important and as more devices come out I continue to think about this and wonder what the best way forward is. I feel fortunate to be in a community that is also thinking about it too, because they feed my need to learn and push myself.

What I have come to realize is that I really, really want to work with folks who are doing thinking about all these really complicated, tricky ideas. I am excited that I have a project where we are talking about it and I can’t wait to see where it goes in the future, but I also really hope that more projects come my way where in the initial kick off meetings how to meet people where they are is discussed, whatever form that takes is not as important as actually talking about it. Speaking of which, if you have projects like this and you need help, I would love to help you out.