Book Club – Unmatched Style

Book Club: Aarron Walter – Designing For Emotion

info@unmatchedstyle.com (UnmatchedStyle.com) — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 15:28:59 +0000

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Technical Difficulties: I’m so sorry for the live show breaking down at the very last minute. The service we use to do our live stopped responding right at show time, even though tests 15 minutes prior to going live worked like a champ. My sincere apologies to you guys who tuned in to listen and were let down and also to Aarron for agreeing to do the show and missing out on the live experience.

Aarron Walter

Aarron (@aarron) – Lead user experience designer for MailChimp, you can follow him on his personal website aarronwalter.com too.

Designing for Emotion – #5 in the A Book Apart series

Questions for Aarron

How did you come to the subject of Emotional Design?

How did you get to write a book for A Book Apart?

Quote from the preface:

“emotional design—which uses psychology and craftsman- ship to create an experience for users that makes them feel like there’s a person, not a machine, at the other end of the connection.”

How do you get beyond the basic needs of a user (usable, reliable, functional) and get to that special place where we get some delight or pleasure out of using that website or app?

“Emotional experiences make a profound imprint on our long-term memory.”

In Chapter 2 – Designing for Humans:

You talk about CONTRAST but not in a black & white sense, you discuss the tumblr sign up page as a good example of contrast. Can you get into that a little for us? what makes it a good example, what things are they doing well with it?

What is Brand contrast?

You also talk about Aesthetics, specifically: “the aesthetic-usability effect. Attractive things actually work better.” – How so?

Chapter 3: Personality

You get into how you don’t like the term HCI Human Computer Interaction and prefer to think about a Human to Human Communication How do you get to this in how you work?

In the personas section, as far as I can remember, this is the first place I saw the words: “Engagement methods: Surprise and delight” – Mailchimp definitely goes here with it’s interface and Freddie.

Chapter 4: Emotional Engagement

How can we wield “surprise” to create a situation that makes our product or interface memorable. how does it work? Any good examples? You used photojojo in your book.

How about “anticipation” you say it’s the opposite of surprise. How so?

Twitter vs. Facebook

“Allow people to change on their own schedule, and you empower them, diffusing animosity. We’d all rather hear “You may …” instead of “You must ….”

The “primed” the users for the new interface right? Has mailchimp done this with anything in the past?

Chapter 5: Overcoming Obstacles

This chapter is about how we use “good design” or “emotional design” to help people with their “gut decisions” People use instinct or make “gut decisions” on things, like on a signup page design.

How does this work? Does this relate to the “good aesthetics in design” principal?

Jesse James Garrett: (Link to his post)

“I like “user” because it entails direct engagement with what we make.”

Replying to a comment by Square’s founder Jack Dorsey saying he preferred “customer” over “User”. How do you feel about this argument of using the term “users” vs. “customers” or “People”?

Chapter 6: Forgiveness

How do you accrue good will in an interface, app or website? How does it help you in bad times? Any examples? Flickr was a good one you wrote about.

Thanks to Aarron!

Aarron is one of the nicest human beings i’ve ever had the pleasure of talking with, he’s a class act and a true professional.

Go get his book if you haven’t already.

Book Club: Mike Monteiro – Design is a Job

info@unmatchedstyle.com (UnmatchedStyle.com) — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 13:30:30 +0000

Play or Download this Episode (Recorded live on 08/24/2012)

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Here’s the link to the event page where we did the live show.

Mike Monteiro

Mike Monteiro (@Mike_FTW) – Mule Design out of San Francisco
Design is a Job – #7 in the A Book Apart series

Questions for Mike

How did you get involved/invited to write a book for A Book Apart?
How did you figure out what you wanted to write about?/How did this title come about for you?

Let’s just go through your book piece by piece and see where the conversation leads us:

Getting Clients:
You talk about working from referrals. Is this the main way you continue to get work today?
How do you work at getting more referrals?
What do you mean by “be pleasant, don’t be nice”?

From a traditional “sales” approach, what has worked best for you? Advertising wise, conferences, blogging, the podcasts?

The Right Client(s):
What type of client will you turn down working with?
How important is it to you to work with clients that respect you?
What are some “warning signs” that a client isn’t going to be what you want?
How do you help educate a client on “the value of design”?

Ethics:
How do you balance “making money” with “ethics”.

Making Money:
Charge as much as you can. Deliver honest value. Never work for free. – what do each of those mean to you?

How do you charge for work? Value right?

Why is it important to “Mention ballpark prices early to avoid sticker shock” that seems like a pretty loaded statement.

I have this friend who is always apologising when he sends in his invoices. I’ve seen them first hand. He’ll say like:
hey i’m sorry this came out on the high end of our budget range, hopefully that’s not a big deal for you.
What advice or coaching would you have for him?

You talk about “confidence” in regards to “negotiating” what do you mean?

Contracts:
How did you get to the point you are at right now with your contract?
You have a great lawyer, you say, you even brought him to your “fuck you pay me” creative mornings talk.
Why do you love him so much?

What are some scenarios where you’ve had to “enforce” your contract? Ever had it “enforced” back on you?

Matt Rosno

My design work often includes a software deliverable, like a site or app. How do you respond when your client asks for a support period after the project is completed? You want to keep relations good with the client, but you also want reimbursed for your time. It’s hard because even the best software has bugs, and you want to deliver the best of your capabilities. You don’t want it to seem like you left bugs in there for your next contracted work.

How do you help/coach your client into getting you workable feedback?

Does your brain explode when a client sends you wireframes or maybe even a
“quick photoshop comp just to tell you what they were thinking?”

Prize Winner

Robin Small wins a Moo Cards business card pack.

Links to things mentioned during the discussion:

Design is a Job Book
http://muledesign.com/
http://mylawyergabe.com/
http://levinebakerlaw.com/GSL

Thank You!

THANK YOU’s for listening to the first UMS Book Club and thank you all for becoming members, we’re going to send everyone who “joined” and gives us their address a little welcome kit!

Thanks to Mike – go get his book if you haven’t already.

Book Club: Ethan Marcotte – Responsive Web Design

info@unmatchedstyle.com (UnmatchedStyle.com) — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 13:34:47 +0000

Play or Download this Episode (Recorded live on 08/24/2012)

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Here’s the link to the event page where we did the live show.

Questions Ethan Answers

You reference John Allsopp’s article A Dao of web Design from April, 2000. You quote specifically:

“The control which designers know in the print medium, and often desire in the web medium, is simply a function of the limitation of the printed page. We should embrace the fact that the web doesn’t have the same constraints, and design for this flexibility. But first, we must “accept the ebb and flow of things”.

How did you get there? How did you learn to let go and accept that web design isn’t fixed, that it’s not pixel perfect? Why do you think this is something we fight so hard against as designers?

So, you’ve coined the term “Responsive Web Design”. You say it’s made up of 3 core pieces: 1. Flexible Grid 2. Flexible Images/media 3. Media Queries

Do you feel like most websites that are noted as being RWD are actually RWD if you take a purist stance on this definition?

Let’s talk Flexible Grids!

Bringing the change from setting our sizes with pixels to ems & %’s is kind of a large shift. As designers we all really like that fixed design approach… What kind of flack did you get at first when you started talking about this? Or did you at all? Do feel like it took a while to be openly accepted?

I love the simplicity of the “relative scaling formula”: target / context = result
Did you get the vision for that while hanging a picture and banging your head on the toilet like Doc Brown and the Flux Capacitor? Where did that come from?

Sometimes when I do this math I get numbers like 0.4583333333em – how did you get at the idea that we should let the browser do the rounding for us and not round it on our own in the CSS?

Flexible Images: What would you say is the biggest challenge right now in conquering the flexible image problem? in terms of serving up device or screen specific sized images…

Tyler Walters: In light of Apple’s new MacBook Pro with Retina display and other manufacturers habits of copying Apple, I anticipate that in a few years, high resolution displays will be common on new laptops and desktop displays.

What techniques (media queries or other magic) do you recommend to send images with appropriate resolution to these high resolution displays while not burdening lower resolution machines with the high bandwidth and longer load times that go along with high-res images?

Media Queries: My mind was blown in 2010 when we had Zoe Gillenwater at our ConvergeSE conference and she dropped Media Queries on the audience. I literally jumped up and gave a “wooo eeee” because i’d not seen it before even though it’s a CSS2 thing. What made you fold in the final piece of the 3 piece suit of RWD with Media Queries?

Natalia Ventre: Can you give us some design tips for big screens? (fullscreen mode)

We talked about liquid layouts already, and mixing liquid designs and targeting screen width with media queries is a brilliant mix. “max-width” lets us kind of end it properly, giving us that control to not let the lines of copy go on forever. Ethan’s quote:

“So when and if my client decides their audience would benefit from a widescreen layout, they could easily lift the current max-width constraint, create another media query, and design a compelling experience”

Are you still a proponent for thinking this way? How have you tackled designing for “wide-screens” so far?

Context for RWD We make a lot of assumptions about what a user wants out of a website depending on what type of device they are using… How do you get to the core of the context of what the user is viewing the website on and what their intentions are?

Jessica Travieso: Hello Ethan, Don’t you think that you have ruined the life of web designers with responsive techniques that have forced us to develop for infinite devices? Do you have any other suggestion that can offer us a painless future?

Roman Serebryakov: When talking responsive design or adaptive design, we can see that a lot of websites follow the similar grid layout. After awhile, as a designer, you start notice that almost every website that is responsive looks the same, logo on left, center, navigation to the right, below etc. Does if bother you that the more responsive designs get, the more similarities and common page design we will see? For designers, there is not going to be much room left for creativity, it will be mostly like designing for the magazine or even newspaper, the expected things are going to go to expected places… It is one of few reasons our company does not spend too much time offering responsive sites to the clients, mostly because our designs are so different and complex with each design that being responsive is perceived as a design limitation, not functional… Your thoughts?

Marko Ranđelovic: Can you ask Ethan what were the most challenging aspects of his latest responsive web design projects?.

Responsive Workflow:

Much is being made of this now as we all struggle with how to work RWD into our web design processes. What kind of workflow have you been a part of that’s been most successful for a RWD project?

In the November 2011 issue of .Net magazine – the one all about RWD. Elliot Jay Stocks said:

“The responsive web design movement has finally heralded a fundamental shift in the way many of us think about designing for the web….we’re designing truly interactive experiences and the days of fixed, flat photoshop mock-ups are almost over. As are the days of designers who can’t code.”

What’s your take on that quote?

What are some of your favorite things that you’ve seen people push RWD forward with?

Prize Winners

Winner of the RWD summit ticket: Ashley Callahan

Winner of your ABA choice of books: Evan Huntley

Links to things mentioned during the discussion:

http://fitvidsjs.com/
https://gridsetapp.com/
http://ejohn.org/blog/sub-pixel-problems-in-css/
https://github.com/scottjehl/picturefill
https://twitter.com/zomigi
http://www.designbyfront.com/
https://twitter.com/RWD
http://www.people.com/people/mobile/home/
http://karenmcgrane.com/
http://www.abookapart.com/products/content-strategy-for-mobile
http://incontrolconference.com/
http://shoptalkshow.com/
http://foundation.zurb.com/
https://github.com/davatron5000/Foldy960
http://styletil.es/
http://paravelinc.com/
https://twitter.com/wilto
http://www.markboulton.co.uk/
http://rogerblack.com/blog/post/the_holy_grail_part_i

Thank You!

THANK YOU’s for listening to the first UMS Book Club and thank you all for becoming members, we’re going to send everyone who “joined” and gives us their address a little welcome kit!

Thanks to Ethan – go get his book if you haven’t already.

Next up is Sept 28 – Mike Monteiro (@Mike_FTW) “Design is a Job”

UMS Book Club: Ethan Marcotte

info@unmatchedstyle.com (UnmatchedStyle.com) — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 13:00:57 +0000

Book Club Inaugural Event

Join us August 24th at 2:00 PM EST for a live discussion with the “Responsive Web Design” book’s author Ethan Marcotte (@beep).

What’s The Deal?

We will post an edited audio recording of the discussion here on UnmatchedStyle once we’re done but if you would like to join in live and possibly win prizes for asking questions, you’ll want to make sure and officially join the club. Head on over to the book club signup form here, if you’ve already been to one of our events you may already have an account. Once you’ve signed up make sure to opt-in to the Book Club so you can check-in on the day of the event and win stuff.

Prizes & Stuff

We’ll have prizes to share during and after the show to registered members of the book club. We’ll be doing give aways for your choice of any A Book Apart book and UMS Swag Packs as well as a free pass to the 2012 Responsive Web Design Summit by Environments for Humans.

Environments for Humans brings together some of the Web’s most notable experts in RWD for an all-new, one-day only online conference, the Responsive Web Design Summit 2012! Bring the experts to your desktop August 28th from 9AM to 5PM (CT).

Ask Ethan a Question (We’ll use it in the LIVE show!):

Fill out my online form.

Introducing the UMS Book Club

info@unmatchedstyle.com (UnmatchedStyle.com) — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 00:31:10 +0000

Introducing the UnmatchedStyle Book Club

Each month, starting in August (08/24 to be exact), we’re going to select a book, read it as a group then we’ll all meetup online at a set time of the day and the author of the book will take your questions, some sent in beforehand and some of you will be selected to ask them your question personally live.

We’re going to start off with 4 amazing books form the A Book Apart series then add more in as we work our way through them, staying ahead so you can all make sure and have read the books and be prepared for the Q&A sessions.

Schedule

Here is the first “rough” schedule, these may change and we’ll lock in the dates not set here as we get closer (these are very busy people after all…)

08/24/12 – Ethan Marcotte (date confirmed)
09/28/12 – Mike Monteiro
10/TBD/12 – Erin Kissane
11/16/12 – Aarron Walter (date confirmed)

We’re going to start off next month with Ethan Marcotte’s (@beep) book on Responsive Web Design then on August 24th meet up online with him live and go through all your questions.

Go ahead and signup here below if this is something you’d like to participate in, it will be a members only type of thing and we’ll let you know how you gain access as we get closer to it.

We hope to hang out with you all at the book club!

Sign up for more info

Fill out my online form.