Forty Years of the Internet—Maybe
No one can agree on a specific date when the Internet truly began. Some believe that its birth occurred forty years ago, but you don’t have to be an expert in the subject to know that the various aspects that make up the Internet were invented at different times to make it what it is today. Now it is a life line of communication throughout the world; many teachers use the Internet to assign homework and reading materials to their students, businesses rely on it for communications and other work-related tasks, and many people like me use it for just about everything. I can remember a time when I didn’t have a computer, or even an email address. My communications consisted of phone calls and letters exclusively. Now I have to sift through my teeming inboxes of several email accounts to find non-spam correspondence. I don’t have rose-colored glasses when I think about time before the Internet was a well-known household term, but I do know that I had less of a tendency to stay home for extended periods of time back then. Information is at our fingertips, and that is great, but we all know that too much of a good thing can have opposite effects sometimes.
This Labor Day, and just after the unofficial 40th anniversary of the Internet, I find myself respecting the technology and the people behind it (too numerous to count) who created this virtual medium that has truly contributed to the world of communication and globalization. There really is no going back, and I look forward to the future of the online communications and technology.
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Save Time & Money – Leverage the expertise by using Design Patterns
Web designers & developers are constantly searching to find the best practices for guiding the user through completing a specific action or task on a website. And as more and more complex applications come online, and there is more and more user interaction with those applications, the problem to present information in a meaningful way for the user to interact with in those applications, becomes increasingly difficult.
But designers no longer have to work in a vacuum to figure out the solutions. They can now leverage all of the expertise, user behavior analysis, and best practices of the great user interface design patterns that are available online.
What is a user interface design pattern?
A design pattern is good design that has been vetted and tested for usability by designers, User Interface (UI) experts, and even the design community that have been proven to work well for very specific user situations and user issues. It is a package of proven expertise that informs the designer of the principles behind the design and what is known to work.
Using known and researched principles in your design will save you time and money and make your applications more intuitive for the user and easy to use.
All design patterns answer the following questions:
- What is the Problem we are trying to solve?
- What is the Solution?
- When and why to use the pattern?
Where can I find design patterns?
- Yahoo Design Pattern Library
Yahoo! breaks down their design patterns into five categories: Layout, Navigation, Selection, Rich Interaction, and Social. Within each category you will find an array of design patterns that not only answer the standard questions of What, When & Why they also provide real world examples, code examples, related patterns, and similar patterns from non Yahoo! libraries. They also have a community where you can discuss the design patterns with people who are trying to solve the same design problems. - Welie.com
The patterns on this site are grouped in a very meaningful way. The main categories are broken down into:
User needs which include navigating around, searching, shopping, making choices
basic interactions, dealing with data, personalizing, making choices, giving input.
Application needs which include drawing attention, feedback, simplifying interaction.
Context of design which include site types, experiences, page types - UI-Patterns.com
This website provides a good number of design patters but what makes it different is that they offer a lot of examples of actual sites that use good design principles via their screenshot collections and their resources. - Open Source Design Pattern Library
This is a community where designers, developers, and other people interested in patterns can come to reference material, collaborate on patterns and designs, and share their knowledge with everyone.
Do you use other resources that I haven’t mentioned? Let me know if the comments!
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5 Tips to help you manage your time on the social web
I was recently interviewed by Gwen Bell for the Unconventional Guide to the Social Web and one of the questions Gwen asked me was how I manage to get all the many things done that I have on my plate!
My answer….you have to develop great time management skills and stay disciplined about them…and you have to manage technology instead of it managing you.
One of the biggest problems of the social web is the ease with which one can lose track of time. We are having so much fun connecting with friends & colleagues on Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks that we end up not getting any work done during the work hours and end up working ALL THE TIME.
Another problem is multi-tasking and interruptions. Research shows that it takes an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to get back to the task when interrupted on an unrelated topic.
Here are some tips on managing your time on the social web:
- Schedule Everything and stick to the schedule
I use the Entourage calendar to schedule EVERYTHING…meetings, responding to email, social network presence, day-to day tasks. But it’s not enough to schedule things..you have to stick to the schedule!
- Schedule your most important tasks when you feel like you are most productive
The most productive time is different for each person…some people are sharpest in the morning, some are later in the day. Figure out what your magic time slot is and schedule your most important task during that time. Sprinkle your social interactions & email management throughout the day but make sure it’s not during your most productive time. - Use a timer
Using a timer will allow you to set an alarm to notify you when your current scheduled task/activity is supposed to end. Let’s say you are alotting 20 minutes for social media interaction at 1pm…before you begin the task at 1pm, set your alarm to let you know when the 20 minutes has passed.The application that I use to achieve this is Apimac Timer (mac). You can also use Xnote StopWatch if you are on Windows (there are many more you can choose from).
- Close down the applications that you are not using
Human nature is to respond to stimuli…so if you hear a notice that you have a new email or a new response from a friend, you have to go see what it is. That is why if it’s not time to check and respond to email, I close down the email application…if it’s not time to interact on Twitter, I close down the Twitter application…the point is…only have the application that you are currently working in open. - Set and manage expectations
Managing everyone’s expectations is the key to time management. I think a lot of the time, the immediacy to respond is in our own head. Training your clients, colleagues, friends, and online connections that you are not available 24×7 will allow you to respond on your own time. And because we are all going through this information and task overload…they will more than undertand!
Did I miss anything? Share your time management tips in the comments!
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Learning French Via the World Wide Web
I just completed taking French classes in New York City, which set me back a few hundred dollars. I was happy to pay, because it motivated me to resume my plans to become bilingual. I have my text books from college, my recent French class, and copious notes that I continue to pour over. Still, I know that when my class finished, I had to keep up my studies. There is no teacher to tell me to finish homework and study all the verb tenses. I know that I will be relying on the World Wide Web, in addition to other traditional resources, when it comes to my continuing studies in French.
The infinite resources to be found on the Internet seem limitless, but I think I know which sites I can rely on for my language studies. In addition to a few online language lessons, I have found the complete French language series entitled French in Action, which came out in the late 1980s and was developed by a Yale University professor. As a child, I remember watching re-runs of the series, which was completely in French and was centered on a young French woman, her family, and friends in Paris on PBS. The language immersion technique is very effective, and I am very happy to have found it online so I can watch and absorb the lessons at my own pace.
The best sites to help me with “on the spot” language learning are the online dictionaries. I usually alternate between WordReference.com and Yahoo! Babel Fish. Not sure what the future tense of the verb savoir (which in English means “to know”) is? I usually find myself on verbe2verbe.com or Conjugationfr.com to make sure I spelled my conjugated verbs properly. I prefer the former site because it gives the most accurate definition of the verb in English. I have also found that if I spell the word wrong and there are no direct matches given, a list of other, similarly spelled verbs appears in the left-hand column. For someone who needs as much as I can get, I am very grateful for these useful additions.
If I can help it, I will not let the dust settle on my French language lessons again. With the help of my own personal resources, the library, conversations with French-speaking friends, and the World Wide Web, I may one day be able to call myself bilingual.
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The Advantages of a Virtual Workplace
While the recession runs its course around the world, it is good to know that companies are taking advantage of the virtual workplace. For many industries, it makes sense to have people work from home for at least part of the week. It saves companies money and helps retain their employee base at the same time. As a contractor myself, I wonder about some of the companies I worked for in the past. While I am glad that my assignments with them are complete, I know there are those who would have liked to continue with our past employers on some level. Instead, they call people to come in for a short period of time, let them go, and then call them back several months later, if they are still available. I understand the need for seasonal contractors, but when I have observed how much some of these companies have lost money on completely superfluous expenses, it boggles my mind at how willing they are to let go of talented people as a consequence.
Companies like IBM and Sun Microsystems seem to know how to make their virtual workplaces work for them and their productivity. What I see as the ideal virtual workplace is one in which the employer and employee have trust in one another, and have no desire to abuse that trust. It is where an employee works hard, but knows when to stop each day, and the employer gives freedom to the employee to have a personal life, without compromising the work flow. I also see a good virtual workplace as one that allows employers and employees to have face time with one another, and that doesn’t include web conferences. It is easy to feel disconnected from others you work for or work with if you never see them.
So while some people might think being in a virtual workplace lacks structure and growth for a company, I saw they are wrong. Virtual workplaces are here to stay, and will continue to grow throughout the economies around the world.
What are your thoughts on the virtual workplace?
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