Mayhem & Chaos: The Blog

Content Strategy and Web Design - Keith Robinson

Good morning Dallas. It’s day two of the Webmaster Jam Session and we’re sitting in on the second session with Keith Robinson. Here is an outline of the topics Keith went over today.

The New Web

“The Web is in many ways more a collection of contexts than a medium”

• Context: Content Everywhere!
• Context isn’t just about technology.
• The Web in 2007
• Searching vs. Browsing (People are finding you more through search engines)
• Mashup Culture
• Down with “Pages”

Content & Design

• What IS Content?
Everything is content
• Text
• Images
• Other Media
• Copy and Interface
Content means different things to different people
• Content is about communication | Design is about communication

Planning

Strategy and planning first. Don’t be tempted to skip ahead to design.

• Project Management
• Clear and define roles
• Set Expectations
• Communication (95%)
• Avoid Solutioneering
• Understand your problem, set goals, then solve.

• Working with Goals
• List, Group and Prioritize them
• Know your story. Know your audiences. Know your contexts
• Validate Goals

It’s all about communication: Think about the content you’ll need to support your goals

Markup & Design
• You should design your markup
• Semantic markup is important
• Remember: Context

Copy as a Design Element

• Choose and us your words.
• An interface is written
• Labeling begins here
• Have personality but avoid being too clever
• Use real content in mock-ups.

• The value of a good editor
Make use of a good text editor

Visual Design

• Design for better communication
• The purpose should be clear
• Don’t make them think
• Make them care (make the user feel comfortable and feel like they’re in the right spot.

Quotes:
“The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so the the necessary may speak”
“A great user experience is invisible” - Jared Spool
“Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful”

• Clarity and Meaning
• Highlight what’s important
• Employ visual hierarchy
• Eliminate distractions (The number one problem)

Psychology of Color - Doris Brown

Wow, that was such an interesting session. I really enjoyed all that Doris had to say. I’ve always had trouble when it comes picking colors for my sites, and this session gave me better insight on to why I’ve been picking certain colors and what they mean to me and what they could mean to the general public. She mentioned some really good tools and even demoed a new software from Pantone that allows you to create custom color pallets. I must admit, I was one of the few that dropped my hand when she asked who calibrated my monitor. The tool she mentioned made a dramatic changes to the monitor she used.

Resource/Tools: Huey®

Managing Web Design - Michael Lopp

Great presentation about how to properly manage your time and processes when it comes to project management. I got the opportunity to speak with Michael after the session and he gave me some really good tips about not letting multitasking hinder my work flow. No wonder this guy works for Apple, he’s very articulate and funny to boot.

Often managing the design process is harder than the design itself
• Design is making decisions, decisions based on the Pitch
• The perfect development process that never happens
• design
• develop
• deploy
• Costs of skipping design is high, too much backtracking is involved
• Design Process
• “imagination is more important than knowledge” - Albert Einstein
• Constraints are your ally (deadlines)
• details matter
• Soaking
• Active Soak
• ask dumb questions
• pitch a stranger your idea
• write it down, throw it away, write it down again
• Passive Soak
• Stop Thinking, sleep on it
• Great ideas emerge from random connections that a rational person would never conisder
• never consider
• Brainstorm guidelines
+ controlled chaos
+ discussions to find decisions
+ gathering every bright idea you can
+ no holds bared
+ the nutter, the better
+ enough time for everyone to soak
+ visible, touchable results
+ is it real?
+ directly maps back to the brainstorm
+ key: little victories
o Who to invite
+ what are you detail czars?
+ visuals
+ architectural
+ cultural
+ particle
+ who is the decision maker