Modernizing an Old Design

I just finished the redesign of Snowdrop Media‘s company website. Instead of designing everything from scratch, I actually took a backup design from a few years ago and modernized it a little bit.

The project was quick and not too exciting, but here are a few new tools & techniques I used along the way:

Lorem.js
Dummy text generator

Markup Mockups
Instead of mocking up the design in Photoshop, I decided to head straight to HTML.

Like most educated people, Michael Travis, principal of Executive Search for Life Sciences, a headhunting firm, knows how to conjugate a verb. That’s why he cringes when his colleagues use the word “learning” as a noun. As in: “I had a critical learning from that project,” or “We documented the team’s learnings.” Whatever happened to simply saying: “I learned a lesson from that project?” Says Travis: “Aspiring managers would do well to remember that if you can’t express your idea without buzzwords, there may not be an idea there at all.

What's your process?

Whenever I start development on a brand new website for a client, I reflect on the way I approach new projects. From the first scope discussion and requirements gathering to implementation and QA, I quickly realized that my process is possibly interesting.

Now I’m not talking about scrum or agile or waterfall here, but rather the individual work ethic put into web development. For me, it’s very much like how I studied in college. I would notoriously study for 15 minutes every few hours, seldom putting in maximum effort for an extended period. I would push this even further when I wrote essays, as I’d write a sentence or two every time I was near my computer and only worry about cohesiveness at the very last minute.

Apparently I continue with that approach even in my current work. I’m adapting a PHP AJAX framework for a client’s dictionary site and I can’t bring myself to implement more than one method every few hours. When I do sit down, the progress is real and the code flows without much pain (thank god!), which astonishingly makes the entire process work on some level.

That said, would forcing focus have any effect on my productivity? Somehow I doubt it.

New Look = More Training?

I’ve noticed that end users have a very interesting relationship with change. By that, I really mean to say that most people are very anxious about changes for which they did not specifically ask.

When any application updates its UI, no matter how drastic the change, many users will instantly believe more has changed than actually has. For web developers, this almost certainly results in many re-education sessions with clients on functionality that remains 100% unchanged.

Take the latest WordPress update as an example. Although the UI changes are almost entirely cosmetic (and outlined here), I’ve already had one client ask whether the new version will affect the processes they regularly complete. Every single process. In excruciating detail.

Enter WP Help

Don’t get me wrong, these questions are not stupid. However, they are often time-consuming to answer. Therefore, I highly recommend using a plugin such as WP Help to reassure clients and save yourself some time. As per the WordPress Plugin Directory:

Administrators can create detailed, hierarchical documentation for the site’s authors and editors, viewable in the WordPress admin. Powered by Custom Post Types, you get all the power of WordPress to create, edit, and arrange your documentation. Perfect for customized client sites. Never send another “here’s how to use your site” e-mail again!

If you establish with your clients that the WordPress Admin Help section as the preferred place for them to go for relevant update information after each new release, this will save you valuable time.

Is this really useful?

I’m beginning to notice a lot of content websites prompting visitors to sign up for free e-Books and mailing lists AS SOON AS they hit the homepage, even if it’s the first time the visitor has come to the website. Thanks to several WordPress plugins such as this one, the feature is painfully easy to implement.

Reactions to this sort of dialog are all over the board. Apparently some visitors are confused enough by this window to believe they must enter their email address to access the website. Others are so put off that they won’t even continue to see the real site. But overall, this Machiavellian call-to-action is good for business, no?

Not really. If website owners bully visitors into giving up their information instead of asking for permission, their data will simply take up space in a database and never add any real value. More is not better here; quality, however, is very lucrative.

Therefore, website owners should do both themselves and their visitors a favor and only ask for an email address after they’ve earned it.

It's a science.

It took much effort to produce a new design that I really enjoy, but here it is. Since I’ve become enamored with typography, I spent most of my time learning the intricacies of vertical rhythm and the difference between legibility and readability.

These topics led to more academic research on typeface design and the associated terminology. From x-height to kerning to leading to how each of these elements functions within HTML, CSS, & WordPress, I was intrigued.

With the help of Typekit, the text you are reading is rendered in Kepler, a humanistic serif font created by Adobe and named after the German Renaissance astronomer. I love the way it reads horizontally and it looks wonderful on-screen (especially on a Mac).

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the new look and upcoming content!

iPhone SDK

That said, I think what’s motivating about the iPhone platform is the potential audience.  Not only are the users generally “Internet-savvy”, but they’re also very loyal to the Apple brand and platform.

One thing that’s pretty unique in the way iPhone applications are delivered is that because new applications are automatically featured at the top of the ONLY distribution channel (the App Store), every new submission has a chance to become popular.

I’m not at all saying it’s easy to create a successful app; however, the initial exposure for an iPhone app is virtually unparalleled in most software markets.