Pat’s Point of View

Yesterday I was in Melbourne for a taxonomy and metadata masterclass by Joseph Busch—which was time well spent for a sometimes IA. I stayed in the Crowne Plaza, which was where we held the event too. It might be a fair bit older than the Crowne Towers but it’s still pretty swish.

The other thing that struck me was how long it is from downtown Melbourne to the airport! Although to be honest it takes about the same time in Sydney if you hit some good ol’ Sydney traffic. Whilst speeding along in my chauffeured car (taxi? ha!) the long trip did give me time to notice how pretty Melbourne is, especially at night from the Bolte Bridge.

I also remembered one of my favorite sights in Melbourne. On the way to the airport you pass the Qantas flight training centre, and through the window of one of the hangers you can see a flight simulator. This is best seen at night, because when the simulator is in use the lights are on and you can see it working. The guy flying last night must have been practicing aerobatics since the pod was moving a lot :)

One last observation. I was kind of surprised by how big a 767 is compared to a 737 (let alone a Dash 8!). I’m so used to the smaller aircraft that it was odd to be in something so much bigger. I mean the 67 and 37 look similar, unlike a 747 which has the distinctive knob on top, but when you get up close there’s a massive size difference.

Also in the current edition of Qantas’ in-flight magazine is a one page round-up of the latest in hip ski equipment. They certainly didn’t have gear like this when I started skiing (or the last time I bought ski gear, which was a pathetically long time ago). Check this out:

Burton Audex Motorola cargo jacket The ultimate in wearable technology (so far), the Audex [jacket] has full iPod and mobile phone control panels on the sleeve, works with any Bluetooth-compatible mobile phone and also features a removable MP3 player, speakers in the collars and a built-in microphone.

Niiiiiice….but if you can’t afford the $1200 or so, maybe this is for you:

Giro Omen helmet This model is audio-compatible for those with a Bluetooth-enabled MP3 player or mobile phone…It’s also lightweight and features a fitting mechanism that can be adjusted with your gloves on.

That’s neat, and a great example of user-centred design in a sport that has often been more about show than go, at least in terms of its equipment. I mean being able to work the controls with your gloves on is pretty much common sense, but anyone who has been skiing will tell you that most things aren’t made that way.

Völkl Tigershark skis These skis come with a power switch that allows skiers to decide exactly how they want their skis to react. Leave the switch off for a softer flex and more relaxed skiing. Flick it on to stiffen the ski and give a snappier response when more aggression is required.

Awesome. I think I need sponsorship for my next ski trip, because that’s about the only way I could afford any of the above ;)

See what people are blogging about: skiing, usable sports equipment

Another month, another in-flight magazine. Yet I was shocked to read about the imminent release of the next generation of Subaru’s Impreza in the June edition of Qantas’ Australian Way.

I’ve not kept up to speed with the latest in the motor industry, as this was news to me! They’re making a hatch version, as well as sedan. The last major body change to the Impreza was the deletion of the coupe—which included the epic 22B—but I don’t think a true hatch version (as opposed to the current hatch which is more like a wagon) is such a good move.

It’s fairly ugly too, especially the back of the hatch version. The sleek front end is not bad though, quite different from the brutish utilitarianism of past models. And it’s looking more inline with the current Liberty design direction.

You can find out more at Subaru USA (an interesting Flash website by the way).

See what people are blogging about: Subaru, 2008 Impreza, WRX

I’ve just launched a new website for the Redkite Yes for Kids Colour Ball:

www.redkite.org.au/colourball/

The Y4K Colour Ball is all about helping Redkite to support children and their families through cancer. Each year this fabulous fundraiser features cocktails, live music and prizes. This year’s theme is “Solid Gold”!

Redkite plays a vital role in supporting children, young people and their families across Australia through the often long and difficult journey of childhood cancer. Its essential emotional, financial and educational services provide stability and hope, as today the majority of children will be cured.

I built the site and Singleton Ogilvy & Mather designed it.

Over the weekend I found an old edition of .net Magazine (excellent UK web design mag) which contains a ‘letter of the month’ I wrote in 2003. In a way it’s what we did before blogs, we wrote letters :)

In response to Richard Brenkley’s letter, I think he’s right about the need for standards and qualifications for Web design, and he’s right that ultimately the fault often lies with clients choosing incompetent designers. However I don’t agree that there should be some sort of legislation to control web design.

Besides the fact that the legal system is having enough trouble handling its current load and adding even more litigious action would be insane, you can’t take away peoples’ right to have a go.

After all, there are dodgy builders, doctors, lawyers, magazines (not .net of course!) and any other profession you care to mention. And yes, most of these professions have organisations and governing bodies that aim to provide some assurance or guide for those looking to employ one of their members. But you inevitably come across professionals who do not meet the “minimum level of design confidence” as Richard puts it.

I, too, am a professional Web designer, but I believe the efforts of information sources like .net magazine are beneficial to the industry, not detrimental. By educating novices and clients alike, the resulting sites—and other digital communications—will be much, much better. At the very least, people will enjoy something which we take for granted; to work in the exciting and innovative Web industry!

After the dotcom debacle, Web designers have suffered a bit of a bad rap. Let’s not perpetuate the stereotype by having a whinge and keeping it ‘in the club’; let’s be open and spread useful information. By advocating the benefits of good web design and showing what a true professional can do, we’ll start to convince people that they should employ us rather than the guy next door.

This was in response to a letter a guy wrote the month before, asking if the magazine should really be telling “noobs” all our secrets and calling for some kind of licence for web designers, because too many people were over their heads and doing bad design. At that time usability was struggling to gain a foot hold and web standards were hardly mentioned, Flash was running rampant and some truly hideous websites were being designed by people with no more than the motivation to do so. So you can see his point. Incidentally, I think the profession has come a long way since then, at least as far as I have seen.

The letter was a fairly honest representation of my opinions, but I must admit my primary motivation was to have a letter published and possibly win a prize. Which I did, I scored a Logitech Z-540 4.1 surround speaker system which nows adorns my Mac Mini. The speakers (and mighty sub) are great for when the lil Mac is used as a media centre. An awesome prize for a few minutes of ranting.

Last night I presented my talk on intranets at the Sydney Web Standards Group meeting. I spoke about the topic of two of my recent posts, namely web developers have the power and intranets: the beast we love to hate. In a nutshell, I covered these points:

1. So what is an intranet anyway? Not an internal website, but rather a core business tool. A place to get things done.
2. Why do we love to hate intranets? There are downsides to intranets, but the reasons I hear from designers and developers tend to be more like they’re boring, they’re not sexy, they’re low profile.
3. What can we do about this? Two things; sharing skills between intranet people and web people, and selling the benefits of working on intranets.
4. Cross-pollination of skills: educating the web community about what a good intranet is and how to create them; learning from the intranet managers and CKOs of the world.
5. Selling the benefits of intranets: there are many upsides to intranets including the freedom to experiment, a ‘captive audience’, more functionality and most of all the greater satisfaction of empowering users in a way which effects their working day in a tangible way.
6. Showing off some of the small innovations being made in good intranets, including web 2.0 features, tailored business ‘apps’, and collaboration tools such as integrated staff directories.
7. So what does this have to do with web standards? The obvious connection is that with the increase in interactive functionality, those who are conscious of standards based web developers have a role to play to keep it all in check, but the not so obvious connection is the role developers can have in driving intranet innovation. As with web standards, accessibility and usability, building good intranets could become an enthusiast [let's be honest the word should really be 'zealot' :)] topic; pushed into focus by the sheer force of will of designers and developers who simply choose to care.

I’ve also posted the slides [PDF 2.4MB] if you’re interested.My slides are now on SlideShare.

I think it all went well and I got some really positive feedback. I was expecting a fairly underwhelmed, if not outright hostile, reception to the topic, so it was great to see that by and large the audience was interested.

Some of the discussions afterwards were also really interesting. For example:

• The challenge of exposing the good work we might do on intranets, and to a lesser extent sharing ideas. I didn’t want to turn the night into a big ad for Step Two, but the ILF, intranet peers and Intranet Innovation Awards are all ways of increasing exposure in this regard.
• How developers can achieve a lot through tinkering and getting stuck into tasks such as improving the code behind an intranet. Without the know-how which web developers bring to the party, inadequacies in the performance/appearance/functionality of the intranet are too often tackled by the ’5 year IT plan’ mentality which usually involves implementing a very expensive CMS to solve the problem (both ‘throwing the baby out with the bathwater’ and ‘cracking a peanut with a sledgehammer’). Someone who knows how to write good mark-up can improve the templates in a fraction of the time it takes for a corporate platform decision to be made.
• Another selling point for web developers regarding intranets is the transferability of their skills. Opening their eyes to the possibilities of good intranets also opens their opportunities in terms of areas they can move into, and indeed take change of. As we become more complacent about ‘just another website’ then perhaps this will be a big factor. In a market that is becoming increasingly more competitive (even commoditised) web developers and designers and devigners might look to intranets as their next horizon, especially considering much of the skills required are in common (it’s just the paradigm shift they need to worry about).

It would be wrong of me to discuss the evening without mentioning Shane‘s talk on developers and designers getting along. He posed many interesting questions which have been floating around for a while but we still don’t have answers for. What exactly does it mean to be a designer and where (if at all) does the line exist between development and design? Do you need to know how the thing will be implemented (or at least an idea of what’s possible) in order to design? Would be a good topic for a panel session.