Jun
03
2008
at 2:54pm
I published an article over the weekend on creating graphic mock-ups. This is really a tutorial meant for beginners who may not have attempted to do this before. I do think that creating a graphic mock-up is an important part of the design process. I find that it helps me to come up with a more coherent, creative design.
Today sj at 37 signals posted an interesting counterpoint to my position. They don’t create mock-ups because, in short, they feel that it slows things down too much and just doesn’t make sense. I think this really depends on the context. If you’re creating something highly interactive then, sure, maybe it doesn’t make sense to do a static proof. On the other hand, if you’re creating a static web site then maybe creating a visual proof and getting your ideas together first is a good idea.
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Posted in Design
May
23
2008
at 2:02pm
I just came across a certain article on some drupal theming techniques that called itself a tutorial. What’s the problem? It didn’t actually teach (or tutor) anything. It simply gave you some code to copy and paste and told you where to paste it. How does that help?
People aren’t going to learn if you just give them the answers. This happens all the time in the forums –people post a question and someone comes along and gives them the code to paste in. That solves the problem but the poster doesn’t learn anything in the process.
With coding questions in particular I’ll often give people most of the answer, even writing out a step-by-step tutorial, but I won’t post the full code or a link to a working page. This way the user has to put things together themselves and figure out how things work. There was a really great post at Creating Passionate Users called “Cognitive Seduction and the “peekaboo” law”:
In learning, the more you fill things in and hold the learner’s hand, the less their brain will engage. If they don’t need to fire a single neuron to walk through the tutorial, lesson, lecture, etc., they’re getting a shallow, surface-level, non-memorable exposure of “covered” material, but… what’s the point?
(I totally love that blog. So sad that she’s no longer posting. It’s a must read if you’re interested in education and/or software development or something in between).
With the tutorial in question I came out with some samples of the code I would need to do something similar to what I really want to do. It doesn’t help me understand what those variables are doing and how I can use them in different ways. Not a tutorial.
See, it’s a short post for once. Aren’t you happy?
Posted in Usability, Writing
May
11
2008
at 11:13am
The much celebrated Wordpress 2.5 upgrade was released about a month and a half ago and I’ve finally gotten around to upgrading my installation. I was really looking forward to the new Happy Cog designed admin interface. But guess what? I was disappointed.
The new design is surely nicer looking than the old (although I didn’t really have a problem with the old design). They’ve made quite a few interface changes – some good, some not so good. Read on to see some screenshots and analysis of the new interface.
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Posted in Design, Open Source, Software, Usability
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