March 28
Today, I officially join the Twitter design team. To say the least, I’m excited to get started. In fact, I think I took a bit too much time off before starting.
I can’t think of a single product that has changed the way I communicate and connect with people more. It’s safe to say that I don’t think I’d even be in California if it wasn’t for Twitter. In short, it’s going to be awesome to help make the product better.
This will be quite the shift for me. I’ve spent the last 6 years or so working with clients but I’m really looking forward to being able to focus on a single product. Especially one as awesome as Twitter.
So, enough wasting time. Let’s get rockin!
March 4
Today is my last day as a ZURBian. I can’t believe it’s almost been two years since I hopped in a car and drove 36 hours from Kentucky to California for the awesome opportunity to work at ZURB. I had no clue what I was getting into but I can say that I’m glad I took the leap of faith.
There aren’t many companies with leadership that’s so passionate about what they do and I’m thankful to have had the experience to work side by side with one of the best design teams around.
The amount of intense learning was overwhelming at times but I look back and start to realize just how much I’ve grown. It’s staggering to think that I thought I knew things before coming to ZURB.
So what’s next? I have something awesome coming up but, in the meantime, I’m headed to Austin, TX for SXSWi next week. Say hi if you’re going to be there! I’m looking forward to seeing friends, old and new.
Also, expect more blog posts from me over the coming weeks. I have some good stuff planned!
January 30
At ZURB, we’re huge believers in sketching. We write about it a lot. Sketching is fantastic for ideation, opportunity brainstorming, and low-fi wireframes, but I’ve grown especially fond of sketching tiny(2″ x 2″) sketches for just about anything I do.
At ZURB, I’ve become known for accumulating a ton of these little thumbnail(2″ x 2″) sketches.
They’re versatile
Whether you are working on wireframes or hifi visual designs, these sketches help get you moving in the right direction extremely fast. For wireframes I usually just stick to basic shapes that help me think through where the main bits of content will live. By sketching out 5 or 10 screens in an app, you can quickly formulate simple layout patterns that help the site feel cohesive.
When it comes to visual design, I tend to explore more specific shapes and elements in the sketches. They aren’t too detailed but many times I arrive at visual solutions by sketching that I’d never reach otherwise.
They’re disposable
Depending on your goals, a sketch can be as rough or as detailed as you’d like. The point isn’t making them look good, but rather to crank ideas out quickly.
In fact, the most important aspect of sketching is not so much making marks on paper, but rather being able to run through ideas quickly, with little cost. - Khoi Vinh
Don’t like the direction? Good you only spent 20 seconds on it and you can move on to the next one. If you’re not working through at least 10, 20, 30 ideas before reaching your final solution, you’re probably leaving a lot of opportunity on the table.
They’re just enough
These sketches are wonderful for quickly giving your gut just enough to know if an idea is worth exploring or not. While they might not be detailed, they give you a quick read on the balance of the layout and the very simplistic grid.
I’ve also found these to be great tools for helping another team members jump start their process. I can’t remember how many times these little sketches have helped give another team member multiple directions in mere minutes. The direction might not be fully realized, but the sketches are just enough to get them going.
If you’re not sketching regularly, you’re doing yourself a great injustice. Try to keep a pen and paper around you at all times! You never know when you need to test out a new idea.
January 22
I just wrote a fun little post over on the ZURB Blog about visual style getting in the way of good design.
Here’s an excerpt:
“Voice Memo” for the iPhone is a cool little app that allows people to record short audio clips using the on-device microphone. While the visual elements themselves look quite good, they create a bad user experience.
Real world visual metaphors can be useful in helping users understand an interface. Buttons are a perfect example of this. The problem is when designers over use visual metaphors that don’t relate to any functionality. When that happens, the metaphor confuses users.
Check It Out →
January 18
Luke Wroblewski recently launched a new site called Bagcheck. It’s a site that lets you put together collections of products into “bags” and share them with your friends. The concept is simple and it turns out to be down right addicting.
Get to know people
Maybe it’s shallow, but the truth is you can learn a lot about someone by looking at the stuff they have around them. That’s why Facebook profiles are filled with information about your favorite movies, books and music right? Bagcheck takes that concept and runs with it.
Say you’re a designer and you want to see what gear others are using to get the job done. There are plenty of other designers who have put together bags for you to browse. This is just one simple example but there are already a ton of interesting bags to check out.
Only see the good stuff
Most of the time, people will only take the time to make a bag with items they enjoy. This really helps when browsing say…photography equipment because it, essentially, filters out gear that isn’t any good.
It’s sort of like every item has inherently been approved by a specific person. To me, that’s much more powerful than a simple review.
Check out these cool bags:
Wanna get in on the craziness?
Bagcheck is in beta right now but you can get in if one of your Facebook friends is a member. If you’re not friends with the right people yet, check out the site to learn more.
January 17
Last week, the ZURB team had a nice lunch with the Facebook team in Palo Alto. While I can’t post photos of all the stuff we saw, I did think this was worth sharing.
January 14
A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to put together a ZURB Playground piece based on CSS box-shadows. Thought I’d re-post it here:
We started out having to create our shadows in Photoshop and attaching them as background images. Now our lives are made easier with CSS. But really, all we can do is add gratuitous amounts of box shadows to our elements, right? Or, we can only really add unnecessary shadows to our text, right? Wrong.
Using a little HTML and some CSS we can take a trip to the dark side of the moon, create a periodic table and make a radioactive love concoction. We can even throw some CSS animations in there to add to the party.
Check It Out →
Also, check Mark Otto’s 3D Text demo. He expands on these same principles to create a killer effect.
January 13
About two years ago, I put together a little website for myself. The idea, of course, was to write daily and keep my portfolio up-to-date. That isn’t exactly how it turned out. Somewhere around early 2009 I dropped the ball. The site was never updated again. Quite embarrassing in fact.
So here we are again, starting over. This time around, I plan on updating the site regularly with little posts, photos and links.
I don’t have any of my design work posted on here yet, but it will come in due time. Thanks for visiting and I hope you’ll drop by again soon.
-Connor