Archive for the 'Design' Category

A Move to Open Source Software

Published by Brian Wesolowski on June 15, 2010 in Design, Digital Content, Technology and Web Strategy. 3 Comments Tags: , , , .

Thanks to the kindness of my boss, I am soon going to become very educated in Open Source Software. I just received approval to go to OSCON 2010, the leading open source software event. So what is open source software? It’s essentially computer software where the source code is made available to the public (most importantly the community of developers) to be altered, revised or tweaked to improve the software. Unlike a lot of software products where the source code is copyrighted, open source software is available with flexible licenses, such as a Creative Commons license.

So why is Open Source Software so interesting to me? Besides the high-level thoughts about how it can spur innovation and all that, it’s mostly because I hate feeling locked in – locked into a room because of the weather, locked into a service agreement on my mobile phone, or locked into a vendor because they created the software. For a long-term web development project, my company was locked into a proprietary Content Management System (CMS). When it was developed many years back, it was innovative and served us well, but like many proprietary software it became outdated. There were updates to it, but it wasn’t keeping pace with new products hitting the market. Whenever we wanted something new not in the original CMS, we had to pay for development of it.  We stuck with the product because of the time, work and cost it would take to move to a new CMS.

Well all that is changing. We have decided that the long term cost of sticking with a propriety CMS will be more than switching to a new, more sophisticated CMS – and we are switching to an Open Source Software solution. So why Open Source? We believe it will allow us greater flexibility for the future. Open Source Software – especially if you choose a mainstream one with a large community of developers behind it – can generally be easily updated, is constantly being revamped and innovative plug-ins are regularly developed. And more than one vendor/developer will know how to work with it. This means you aren’t locked into a vendor, you can add-in new features fairly easily, and you also aren’t paying licensing fees.

There are certainly potential concerns about a move to Open Source for management of our website. Many people raise security concerns, especially in terms of hacking. Also there is the question of the type of guaranteed support and service you can get compared to a licensed software.  But at the same time, many prominent organizations have shifted to Open Source Software for their websites such as the White House and Sony Music.

I’m not sure Open Source Software is right in every circumstance, but it is certainly something I believe should be considered when making software decisions. I’m excited about our upcoming migration to an open source software for our corporate website and I look forward to hearing the latest thinking and developments in it open source at OSCON.  I will certainly be posting multiple times from there. Let me know if you have any experiences with Open Source Software!

Critiquing Web Design

Published by Brian Wesolowski on March 10, 2010 in Design. 3 Comments Tags: , .

Design

We might not all understand sitemaps, search engine optimization or accessibility functions, but all of us are experts on website design – or so we think. Without question, web design is the first piece of a website that is critiqued by both professional web designers and amateurs alike. As someone that falls into the second category, I tend to say what I like and don’t like, but too often I’m not sure why – I go with my gut. Unfortunately for web designers, this feedback is often shallow and hard to address.

D. Keith Robinson recently wrote an article for Smashing Magazine that helped me think better about how to provide a valuable web design critique and also critique other graphic designs. While written more for designers, the article definitely provides insight for managers, content specialists, social media experts and anyone else who may be part of a web team.

His basic guidelines for constructive web design criticism were:

  1. Note your gut reaction, but take time to explore it
  2. Learn to articulate your observations and invite being questioned
  3. Be specific and offer suggestions
  4. Always consider context and audience appropriateness
  5. The most important measure of success is how well it meets expectations
  6. Subjectivity is fine, as long as it is labeled as such
  7. Don’t neglect the content
  8. Study the principles used to judge design

As a novice web design critic I would also recommend letting the designer present the concept before offering feedback. Your impression may change greatly if you know the logic behind each design element – there is often a lot of thought put into each detail. And designers, be patient with us novices, but also recognize that we are often a good representation of how your target audience will initially react.

Take a look at the full article and start being smarter about critiquing web design!

Yes, I want an iPad… I think

Published by Brian Wesolowski on February 3, 2010 in Design and Technology. 8 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .
Apple's new iPad

Apple's new iPad

Like most products Apple introduces these days, I had an initial strong desire to own an iPad. I hate the name (like most of the rest of the world), but love the way it looks and the way Apple talks about it. As a fairly avid reader, I am excited to try Apple’s take on the e-book front (I have never been a huge fan of the Kindle – especially since you can’t download books here in Qatar). And of course I am looking forward to the huge range of web applications that are likely to be developed for it.

The positive aspects and numerous shortcoming of the iPad have been chronicled to death at this point. The most useful, quick recap for me was on the Huffington Post. The lack of multi-tasking seems to be the biggest failure to me, but people should keep in mind Apple is not trying to make this your new PC. I am not that stressed about it not having a camera (it would be a bit awkward to snap a photo with something that size, no?) and we are all pretty used to the battery issues of Apple products.

I’m am not sure the iPad will be a truly life changing device and frankly I expect version 2 to be better (so yes, I may wait to buy one), but with the touch screen interface growing, web designers and developers true need to think about how their site will work and function in this format – it may very well become the preferred format for people. Things like easy navigation will become increasingly important and designers should keep in mind that the iPad doesn’t work with flash (the New York Times did a nice article on how HTML5 may replace flash as the preferred choice). This also has the potential to make the need for an “app” more fundamental. The website simply may not be enough anymore.

End of day, the iPad seems like a cool tool for the consumption of digital content – books, newspapers, magazines, movies, etc – and I could certainly see it catching on. It has the potential to connect more people in a simple way. Web developers and designers take note!

Web Accessibility as a Government Mandate?

Published by Brian Wesolowski on January 28, 2010 in Design, User Experience and Web Strategy. 6 Comments Tags: , , , .

Most web developers know that they should make their websites accessible to persons with disabilities, such as including captions for videos to assist the hearing impaired, designing navigation so it can be done through a keypad as opposed to a mouse and including descriptive captions for the blind. But too often developers choose fancy design over accessibility.  In some countries though, accessibility is no longer an option!

In a recent white paper published by my friends at G3ict (thank you again for taking me to see the Center for the Visually Impaired when I was in Atlanta last June – inspiring!), web accessibility is examined from a policy perspective. The white paper’s editor, Nimita Narasimhan from The Center for Internet and Society in Bangalore, India, examines web accessibility policies in 15 countries and the EU in terms of scope of policies and the type of policy. Scope refers to how comprehensive a policy. Type refers to the level of enforcement in place for the policy, ranging from being only suggested guidelines to legislative mandates.

Not surprisingly, few countries currently have a high scope and high policy enforcement level (see chart below), but more and more countries are adopting guidelines and are trending towards real enforcement. The white paper notes that W3C has already developed comprehensive guidelines for countries to use, but that in countries that do not use a Latin-based language, such as here in the Gulf, the guidelines often need to be customized to fit specific online language needs. Continue reading ‘Web Accessibility as a Government Mandate?’