Siolon

I’ve been doing UI work for almost a decade.  I’ve seen a lot and been through many fads (although I won’t claim them if asked).  For a long time I thought the most important part of designing interfaces was the way it looked, and I was caught up in the next DHTML fad that would come across my RSS reader.  Well, thankfully I’ve grown and realized what’s really important, and I’ve come to realize that an interface’s appearance is not the most important thing. Note: Please don’t think I’m saying that the way it looks is not as important, but is (read more...)

I recently gave a presentation by this title at the Dayton [Ohio] Web Standards Group Meetup. Here are the slides that I presented as well as my references for the presentation. We also have a new Google Group for all designers interested in standards-based development regardless of location. Further Reading Comparisons XHTML 2 vs HTML 5 Preview of HTML 5 (X)HTML 5 Versus XHTML 2 HTML5, XHTML2, and the Future of the Web Specifications XHTML 2 HTML 5: W3C and WHATWG (read more...)

The paradigms I’m going to contrast are how we view the entire development process. I will refer to two different paradigms: the first is the “work-down” approach which I will contrast with the “value-up” approach. I read about this in Software Engineering with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System concerning the new Microsoft approach to software development including an introduction to the Agile SDLC. However, I’m not here to promote Microsoft Team System or Agile methodology; instead, I’m here presenting a paradigm that is pertinent regardless of your chosen SDLC or technological platform.I will start by defining both (read more...)

I gave the following presentation at my day job, and I thought others might benefit. That, and I think that SlideShare is a cool app! | View | Upload your own (read more...)

Before I left college the only experience I had in software development was as a one-man team. I did all the design and back-end development. There wasn’t a conflict of interest between designer and programmer, because they were both one person! As I left college and got into the “real world” I found that it was impossible to do large-scale software development by oneself. All of the sudden there were information architects, program managers, user interface experts, database administrators, technical writers, and on and on. I came to realize the value of specializing in one field. (read more...)