Institutional Knowledge

Once again I find myself trying to put into words the experience that is South by Southwest. SXSW is not training. SXSW is not a trade show. SXSW is, in the words of Zeldman, a zeitgeist of the what direction the Internet and web industry is headed. You don’t attend SXSW to learn anything in […]

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With the ATI project about to hit full swing, I sat in on a 30 minute power session as SXSW titled Accessified! Practical Accessibility Fixes Any Web Developer Can Use. Here are some notes and thoughts I took away from the session.

Don’t be a tool. Use One

There are pleanty of free tools out there for […]

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Perhaps one of the best sessions I attended at SXSW 2007 was Web Typography Sucks by Richard Rutter and Mark Boulton. In conjunction with the Grids are Good session and the world premiere of the documentary Helvetica, the Web Typography Sucks session re-enforced the idea that we as web developers/designers must not forget the understated […]

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Grids are Good and How to Design with them was by far the best session I’ve attended so far. I was disappointed that it was only 30 minutes long as Mark Boulton and Khoi Vinh were great presenters and made grid theory very accessible. Here are some highlight points from their presentations.

Humans like to infer […]

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Here are some of my notes from Why we should ignore users

Activity vs People centered design

People adapt to technology all the time, don’t make technology adapt to people

Look for trends, not 1-off request
def. Genius design: Hire better, do less user testing

The conclusion the panel somewhat seemed to agree upon was that users vary so much […]

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Ah, the highs and lows of SXSW. The conference sessions this year have been hit and miss, and honestly it’s been a 50/50 split in that respect. This year, there are two 30 minute tracks in the afternoon in what I perceive as a way to simply have more panels. While theoretically this is a […]

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In his book Ambient Findability and SXSW session, Peter Morville, presented his user experience honeycomb that shows how user experience is shaped by a series of dynamic and interconnected qualities.

Useful — To have the courage and creativity to ask whether our products are useful and be able to develop innovation solutions to make them more […]

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Here’s a loose collection of thoughts, ideas and quotes from SXSW this year.

Demystifying the Mobile Web
When thinking about a mobile web problem, remember…

Context
Content
Component

Web 2.1: Making Web 2.0 Accessible

Don’t read WCAG 2.0, read Understanding WCAG 2.0

Whether a site works with or without Javascript is an interoperability problem, not necessarily accessibility.

Holistic Web Design

def: Importance of the whole […]

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Get them while they’re hot.

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Notes from “How to be a Web Design Superhero” presented by Andy Clarke and Andy Budd.

Powers you need to be a web design superhero

Keep pace with new trends and technologies
Be Agile
Stretch yourself
Understand your clients needs
Be able to convince your client that what they think they need, is not actually what they need
Empathy - Understand your […]

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