Archive for the ‘blogging’ Category
« Older EntriesCharging for your time
Wednesday, July 21st, 2010
I’ve had an interesting week, and it’s only Wednesday.
I was fully booked in for work this week when I checked my calendar last Friday. It was a well-paid week. I am not taking on any new clients, as I’m technically overbooked. I really love the projects I’m working on right now too. They’re challenging, interesting, and I like the people.
But, with the exception of regular maintenance stuff, all my booked in projects have been hit with delays. Most of them are understandable, and I’ve agreed to delay them. So, I’ve gone from a well-paid week, to making practically nothing.
Should you charge?
With clients that constantly change their schedules, I sometimes tell them that if they continue to schedule in time with me, I’ll have to charge them for that time, even if they don’t use it. My problem is, I feel guilty about this: I’m not working for them then.
But, at the same time, I want them to understand that it’s really inconvenient for me to not be able to depend on the work and be able to organize my time: I could take on other projects in those days. This week has been the first time it’s been an issue: usually I’ve got enough projects on the go that I can fill my time and offer them a little flexibility, which works well for everyone.
The question
Do you charge? How much do you charge? How do you let them know, to encourage them to be more diligent in their organization? Or, is it merely the price you pay for being a freelancer?
Practical imperfectionism
Monday, July 19th, 2010
I’ve always been pretty fast at getting things done.
My attempts at dress making have resulted in haphazardly created dresses, which got an initial 5 second sketch, and were then redesigned as I went, and changed features depending on my patience and (lack of) dressmaking skills.
I lament my quickness sometimes, especially as my career is now web design. Never have I met a bunch of perfectionists, who obsess on every detail, they look at me in horror and, I believe, can’t even comprehend how I could POSSIBLY leave something that is a few pixels out.
I learn fast, I design fast and I code up fast. I am pretty good about doing things semantically correct. But, if I know that doing it semantically correct would take me another 3 hours, and a slightly non-semantic method is perfect in seconds and I have a deadline, my choice is always clear.
BUT I miss a lot of the tiny details. I’ll do things to get them done to a standard of 90% or so, and then go back and fix them later. When I’m learning a new technology, I’m okay with not knowing the right way of doing things, as long as it doesn’t impede my ability to finish things.
Perfection is a luxury
Most projects are impeded by budgets and often times there’s money for new features, but not for polish. I know mine are, and while I’ll spend some of my own time (unpaid) to make it look a bit nicer, when you have as many projects on the go as I do, you have to stop somewhere. Close to perfect has to be “good enough”. When you’re on a small team trying to do a lot, you have to sacrifice absolute perfection for speed sometimes. That suits me just fine (it’s also the theory of shipping by Seth Godin: sometimes you’ve just got to ’ship’).
This doesn’t mean I go back and strive for perfection.
For example, during every release, I spend some time adding a few minuscule details in (a subtle border, moving things a few pixels or cleaning up some code, for example). Most people won’t notice, but occasionally I’ll hear, “It looks much better (for some reason they can’t put their finger on)”. I think you have to continually refine your front-end code. If you don’t, your code base gets completely unmanageable.
On the other hand, I know web designers who ALWAYS does it the absolutely right way the first time. Their designs are pixel perfect to their mocks. They won’t use hacks, but will spend HOURS figuring out the “proper way” to do something.
That’s okay too. Different styles work for different projects. I’m always more keen to get the user flowing through the site smoother, rather than making sure under the hood looks amazing. Surely that matters more to 99% of the people using the site (1% are the ones that view source)?
I’m not scared
I have no problem with using a hack “just for now”, or if it’s an area I don’t know much about. It also means that I’m not super scared of new technology. It’s just the way I get things done; practical imperfectionism works for me.
Saying that, I am a bit tired of too many projects at one time, and am working harder to give myself enough time to actually think about the details. Being imperfect is not a goal, just a necessary evil for the busy designer.
Turning off notifications
Thursday, April 29th, 2010
I’m one of those people that wants to know what’s going on. ”Tell me what’s happening!” is a sort of secret mantra I’ve built up unknowingly in the past year (I secretly think I have ADD… or at least as much so as these kids we’re diagnosing it with these days). When you work in web, there’s a certain amount of ‘the loop’ you want to be in, and it’s so easy to waste a whole day with it. I recently installed Growl, which would let me know when someone changed a file in my dropbox, when people logged on to skype and more.
This was the final straw: I’ve got my mailbox, tweetie, google reader, adium, skype, dropbox, facebook, linkedin… well, since I have a few contacts, and I’m subscribed to lots of newsletters, I was chronically checking emails, twitter, facebook and more. I can’t stop.
The problem was, although I was more connected:
1) I wasn’t getting anything done
2) I had nothing to talk about, as I wasn’t accomplishing anything
So, in embracing the Linchpin mentality, I’m focusing. I need some peace.
I need peace!
Turning off the big interruptors
Step one: Remove growl
Growl is a great way to be notified if something happens. If you get a message from someone, it’s there in the top right. It is great, but is also the biggest distraction I have. There’s no need to be interrupted every two seconds when someone changes a file (in dropbox), or when someone’s internet kicks in and out and they are signed in and out of skype. By just removing growl, my interruptions decreased by 50%.
How to remove Growl:
http://growl.info/documentation/growl-package-removal.php
Interruption level: 10 Highest
Estimated time saved: 50 minutes
Step 2: Unsubscribe to every newsletter you legitimately don’t read
I’m interested in a lot, but my time is precious. I’ll often try out a newsletter, but if they don’t offer me value every time their emailing me, they’re causing me to chronically check my emails as I see there’s something new. (If they don’t offer an automatic unsubscribe, shame on them. They also get marked as spam.)
Interruption level: 7 High
Estimated time saved: 30 min per day
Step 3: Reduce your rss reader items to only the BEST items
I feel bad when I see my rss feeder unread number increasing and increasing. I want to make sure I read some things, but I do spend a good amount of time every day going through marking blog posts as read to get this number down. I’ve also unsubscribed to those places that I haven’t read recently, and especially to those places that post 20 times a day, no matter how useful some of their items are.
Interruption level: 7 High
Estimated time saved: 20 min per day
Step 3: Turn off Mail notifications
I love getting new emails, and when I want to distract myself, it’s the first thing I check. I actually love that sound: DING! “Ooooh! Who’s written me?” I think! It’s not that I’m actually going to respond to the email right away or anything. So knowing that I have a new email is an absolute waste of time.
Interruption level: 8 High
Estimated time saved: 40 min per day
Step 4: Quit Adium, googletalk, msn messenger, aim, etc
I turned these off a while ago. Not only was I chronically checking who was online, I was making it easy for others to distract me.
Interruption level: 8 High
Estimated time saved: 50 min per day
Step 4: Turn off most of your skype notifications
Skype makes loads of really fun noises… While it’s great to know exactly when you’re being contacted. But, hearing that someone new has come online, knowing when someone has sent me a message actually drives me to distraction. When I’m on a skype call, receiving loads of skype messages makes it difficult for me to concentrate on what I’m talking about. If you need to keep skype on, train your contacts to only contact you when it’s important, and to send you a text and receive confirmation before calling you. I personally only keep the call notifications on, and put it on ‘busy’ mode when I’m on a call.
Interruption level: 7 High
Estimated time saved: 30 min per day
Step 6: Close down skype, tweetie (twitter applications) and mail whenever you can
Set up specific times to check them and respond to people, as well as specific ‘wasting’ time. This is actually my biggest time waster, even though I’ve reduced my notifications. I find when these are off
Interruption level: 8 High
Estimated time saved: 50 min per day
Step 7: Close down any tabs that you might sit there hitting refresh to see miniscule changes.
This means ebay watching lists, facebook news stream, twitter home, anything analytics. It also means obsessively browsing through Asos’s website for something I might like (but really don’t need anything), frantically trying to get my google reader count down to zero unread, and anything else you can do for hours which accomplish NOTHING. These are time wasters, and can easily cause obsession!
Interruption level: 8 High
Estimated time saved: 50 min per day
Step 8: Turn off your internet completely
Nothing gets you in the zone better than turning everything off. I start to feel desperately alone, and often reference the web for development, so this is best when you’re designing. If you’re in the right mind frame, turning off the internet can help you do your best work.
Interruption level: 10 High
Estimated time saved: depends (probably a combination of previous entries)
How much time could I save?
On a really unproductive day, I could easily spend over 5 hours (my estimate, 320 minutes) doing absolutely nothing, designing nothing, and accomplishing nothing. It’s easy, but with a bit of diligence you can reduce the amount of unproductive hours.
p.s. These days, I’ve got still got tweetie and skype open, but with their notifications minified, I find I’m not chronically checking them. By the way, what are you doing wasting your time here? Get back to work!!
Creativity in context
Monday, April 5th, 2010
Designing for web has taught me loads about context. I don’t know what the turning point was, but at a certain point I started thinking about ‘my mom’: the users for the website, who aren’t very good with computers and how to make it both enjoyable and usable. Sure, occasionally my ego still gets the best of me and I make a few decisions based solely on ‘how much I like it’, but it’s becoming rarer and rarer.
Thinking about the user first also makes working with the client easier. Because I listen to what they like and what they want to accomplish, we both have their best interests at heart. When you stop designing for how it will look in your portfolio, it makes the world a whole lot smoother.
Ellen Swallow Richards: The Queen of Clean Water
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010
Today is Ada Lovelace day. It’s a day to highlight amazing women in technology. I know some good technologists personally, but I want to focus more on the reasons we were able to go to university, to be seen as capable of doing all that we can do now.
“They are so afraid we shall break down, and you know the reputation of the college is at stake, for the question is, can girls get a college degree without injuring their health.”
-Ellen Swallow Richards
My choice for this year is Ellen Swallow Richards (1842-1911), the first woman to be accepted into MIT, a huge (financial and emotional) component to them accepting women undergraduates within the following 10 years, and a highly successful chemist, whose work in sanitation control forever changed the way we measure water quality.
“The Faculty [of Vassar] do not consider it a mere experiment any longer that girls can be educated as well as boys.”
-Ellen Swallow Richards
Ellen Swallow Richards
I love her story. From a poor family, she worked hard for years to raise enough money to enter college, where she earned her bachelor’s degree. When she managed to gain admission into MIT, it was recorded that “it being understood that her admission did not establish a precedent for the general admission of females”. While Ellen wished to earn her doctorate after earning multiple degrees, MIT wouldn’t dream of allowing her to pursue it (luckily, a few years after, her precedent allowed another woman to do so).
She became an active member of many university associations supporting women entering into universities. She helped to begin the MIT Women’s Laboratory in 1879, where she worked as a teaching assistant without pay, teaching chemical analysis, industrial chemistry, mineralogy, and applied biology. In 1883 the lab was closed as MIT began to accept women as general students. HURRAH!
While it doesn’t seem like a big thing now, but Ellen Swallow Richards was also the founder of modern home economics. She was very interested in efficient home management, basically designed to allow her to get her domestic duties finished quickly, so she could get back to the science. I like this: in essence, she was working within the confines of society to make careers a little bit more accessible for the average woman.
“I hope that I am winning a way which others will keep open.”
-Ellen Swallow Richards
Thanks to women like Ellen, if I wanted to learn engineering, mathematics, or any university degree I wanted, I could. She was lucky enough to have a husband and colleagues who supported her ambitions for an equal opportunity for women at MIT. She was all about supporting the next generation, to allow a space for them, if they deserved it. She had high expectations of women as academics when most of society treated women like second class citizens.
So, hats off to Ellen Swallow Richards!
If you want to read more about Ellen:
Wikipedia article on Ellen Swallow Richards
Why don’t I have time?
Wednesday, March 10th, 2010
I’ve recently starting working for myself. I absolutely love it– I love the projects, I love the work environment (right now I’m in my bed, with my cup of tea), the commute is tolerable (at some point I’ll have to migrate over to my desk) and I absolutely love having control over things.
But I thought I would have more time.
More time to set up my own projects, more time to spend blogging, more time to socialize, more time to learn and more time to work on my hobbies.
Except I don’t.
I don’t think I’ve ever worked such long hours. All my own projects, my pro-bono work, and even just keeping blogging (weekly blogging here sure hasn’t consistently happened) have taken the backseat. I love my clients, and I’m keeping them on good timelines, but I say I’ll have them something in a week, and I blink, and a week has gone by. Of course we all know that everything in web design takes longer than we expect, and I’m getting better at estimating and managing this, but it’s still a big thing. I must be doing something wrong, right?
This is a public display
I’ve put off the following things too long. I’ve been reading a psychology book that says people that go on weightloss programs on tv lose more weight because they are held accountable by more people. This study said that this works for lots of other things too: Tell lots of people what you’re planning on doing and you’re more likely to complete them, out of sheer will not to have to try and explain later. So here it is: a list of things I don’t get paid for, that I need to finish this month.
-A Smashing Magazine article that I researched in late January
-A pro-bono website for a non-profit learning program for kids that I started in January
-My own professional face, for more serious clients that I’ve been talking about making for months
-Design for an iphone game that my friend has developed that I’ve been toying with for months
Now, hopefully, out of sheer embarrassment, these four things will get done. Now remind me not to take on any more client work… I need to have fun one of these days too!
P.S. If you want me to berate you for anything, leave it in the comments, and I will make your life a living hell on march 30th!
Goodbye to a fashion legend
Thursday, February 11th, 2010
The dress that was the start of my fashion inspiration
I just heard the tragic news… Lee McQueen, founder of Alexander McQueen, has died.
I am shocked. He is one of my favourite fashion designers, and his dress design, shown here, was actually what prompted me to create my own fashions, back when I started sewing 3 years ago.
I remember finding this dress (displayed with a soft sweater in a winter wonderland in the magazine spread), with its a-symmetrical wrapping that was neither traditionally tartan, nor over the top, and I thought, “wow, I would love to make something like that.” While my efforts to distill his piece of art were not entirely successful, I was hooked, and I often spent hours routing through his collections, in awe of his ability to create such uniqueness.
Fashion week is coming up, and he was supposed to be unveiling his latest collection. What a shame that this is the last time we will see new creations from him.
Mr. McQueen, your creativity has inspired me, and you will be sorely missed.
Visualizing hate love for Air Canada
Tuesday, January 5th, 2010
No carry-ons, extra security measures and an interesting customs experience. These are the things we have to look forward to on our flight tomorrow to England through the US from Canada.
We combined two tickets, by changing the date of one, so we’re not spending more on flights as we’ve already bought them. But when it comes to common sense, Air Canada has really thrown it out the window.
Here is our flight itinerary:
Here is how our trip will look like
Ottawa and Toronto are a 5 hour drive apart, so we thought, “Let’s just drive to Toronto and pick up the flight to the UK from there.” Sounds simple: it benefits Air Canada as now they can sell our seats on the San Francisco leg. It benefits us as we save about 14 hours of air time, don’t have to fly through the states with the increased security (I can just imagine explaining this to the customs guy in the states), and I can see my friend who’s living in Toronto.
Our proposed trip
But Air Canada said ‘NO’.
We’re not asking for a refund for the unused portion and we’ll make our own way to Toronto, so it’s not a route change. But APPARENTLY it IS a route change. Their rules state that if you miss any portion of your flight, the whole ticket is void. I’m not sure when common sense went out the window, but it seems a bit crazy to send us all the way there and back, when they could sell that seat. Of course, the flight TO San Francisco is with American Airlines. If we don’t make our connection in San Francisco, do you think Air Canada would void our tickets?
Update! Good news!
Well, the counter staff at Air Canada have saved us! She said, “That’s ridiculous!” and told us that we were lucky we got her to serve us. She said, “I’ll take your money for a change though” and now we’re just flying from toronto tomorrow morning! YAY!
Writing more this year… project52
Monday, January 4th, 2010
I recently came upon Sam Brown’s blog post on project52. As much as I want to berate people that take on these challenges, I’m a sucker for them. While I’m going to take it semi-seriously, I think it’s a great thing to post more consistently.
Anyway, here’s the first week’s post. Sorry it’s so boring. The plan is also to make them progressively more interesting.
Ada Lovelace day: Featuring Susan Kare
Tuesday, March 24th, 2009
Ada Lovelace day is today. It’s a day to highlight women who’ve had some influence in technology and science. Ada is believed to be the first computer programmer, at a time when there wasn’t really even any electricity. A math wizard herself, she saw the potential of her colleagues invention for doing almost everything when everyone else saw it just for solving math problems. Ada Lovelace is a day for others to choose a woman who has been an inspiration to them.
There’s a few fantastic women in technology I’d love to highlight, including two of my best friends here in London (Meg and Magz, both fantastic, passsionate developers). I had a few more people I was considering writing about including my math teacher in high school, who taught finite, and made statistics so fun, or the goth girl from NCIS, who is so cool but also knows everything about science, but my choice was so easy at the end of the day.
I’m a web designer. Code is important, but what makes a truly fantastic website or program, is how usable it is.
“Move the spotlight over. Here she is, Susan Kare!” (crowd errupts in cheers).
Don’t know who she is? Oh, sorry.
Well, you know her work, and you probably love it.
Susan Kare's website
Susan Kare worked at Apple back in the day. She was the screen graphics and digital font designer for the original Macintosh computer. She’s the original designer of all the cute little icons used by the macs for so long, and basically revolutionalized computer displays. Remember the original trash can? The happy mac? Or the bomb when things went wrong? Think about it: apple was the first one to use icons in their graphical “window-style” display, and the rest of the big boys followed suit. She did this all in 1983, when I was just over a year old. Susan Kare, in a big way, changed computer usability, made it accessible to the masses, and continues to do so now.
These days, everyone is harping on about usability in computer software, but Susan Kare was a pioneer in this field. She didn’t use gradients or drop shadows to add emphasis to her work. She cared about every pixel being in place, the fonts being perfect and the whole thing working seemlessly. No gimmics, just solid information design.
Beat that!
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