Today is my first day inside the startup bubble.

Greg Bell and I have decided to start our own company. Our primary focus for the next 3-4 months is a social community called, ScrnShots. ScrnShots is a place for people to upload, tag and share screenshots of inspirational design, usability or anything else of interest.

Everything still seems quite unrealistic at this point, but I’m sure that the long hours will bring a touch of reality with them.

Stay tuned, as I will be updating this blog regularly with interesting tidbits of acquired knowledge and grumblings.

I was at the Seattle Library this last weekend. I’ve been meaning to go for the better part of a year already, but just never got around to it. It was an absolutely amazing sight to see.

The building was designed by Joshua Prince Ramus. Check out this Youtube Video of Prince Ramus explaining his reasoning behind the design.

I have spent the last six weeks at Engine Digital. I’ve done everything from IA to development, and even some design.

Overall, it has been a good experience. Since most of my experience up until six weeks ago, consisted of working with teams of 6 people or less, I would have to say that the biggest lesson learned was communication among a bigger team.

In a group of 5 people, you can get away with verbal communication. But, when you throw an extra ten people into the mix, mistakes are easily made. Documentation becomes KEY. At Engine we use Basecamp for all our project management, todos, milestones, etc. However, even basecamp isn’t detailed enough to keep track of everything, and so for little bugs, fixes, or edits related to a project, we use Mantis.

Also just general communication among your team, is different too. With a small team, you can’t help but be involved in everyone’s projects. With a bigger team, you have to purposely ask people for feedback, make sure everything is going as planned, because time is easily wasted if you’re not aware of what everyone else is doing, and any twists that the project has taken.

Lesson Learned: Communication is good - Communication with Documentation is better

As I’m sure a lot of you know, Firefox 3 Beta is available for download. I’ve been using it for about two months now, and so far, I’ve extremely happy with it.

Firefox 2 was becoming a massive pain in the ass. It would crash on me at least 2 times per day, and it rendered anything with javascript extremely slowly. Needless to say, using Gmail was a “bad user experience”. Since using Firefox 3, It renders javascript better than Firefox2, and I have only had it crash on me 3 times (it’s only happened while I was closing the application).

The only downside to using Firefox 3 Beta has been the fact that I haven’t been able to use most of my Firefox2 extensions that I have come to rely on so heavily (ie. the developer toolbar)

Well… THERE’S A SOLUTION!!!

The boys at Lifehacker posted a blog post called, “Make Your Extensions Work with the Firefox 3 Beta“.

I admit, it’s definitely a bit sketchy, and I wouldn’t recommend it for the average user… but I’m guessing that if you’re using the latest beta version, you’re not a newby anyway, so give it a try.

I did it, and it works perfectly. I am using the developer toolbar right now; I couldn’t use it before the hack.

Try it and let me know how it goes!

Facebook is starting to annoy me. Don’t get me wrong, I love Facebook, and I spend a lot of time on it. When I compare it to other social networking sites, it’s still in first place by miles. However, Facebook applications are getting out of hand.

I’m not saying that I haven’t installed any applications on my Facebook account, and I definitely don’t think that they are ALL annoying. he only Facebook application that I actually use regularly is the twitter plugin. When I twitter, this application automatically updates my Facebook status to whatever I twittered. Simple and brilliant.

Anyway, I have decided to see how many “other requests” I can gather, just for the hell of it.

For those of you who don’t enjoy these “other requests”, check out this video:

How to Block Facebook Applications

By the way… who the hell wastes hours of their life building an application called “Human Pets”???

The last day of CanUX was by far my favorite day. We had presentations from Gene Smith, Derek Featherstone and David Armano; all of which were very interesting.

First Presentation: Gene Smith

Gene Smith is a principal with nForm, one of Canada’s leading user experience consulting firms. He also writes about information architecture, interaction design, community, the web and other such topics.

Gene’s presentation was titled: Tagging. He also recently just finished a book called Tagging avaiable on December 27.

Gene had an interesting approach to his presentation. He started off with some history about how ancient civilizations communicated, up to the invention of the tab that we now have on most of our folders. It was a great intro, because it really set the stage for the rest of what he had to say.

Gene stated the problem, that we’re constantly taking in information, but for most of us it’s hard to keep track of it all (I’m definitely in that demographic). Then he asked the question: “why tags?”

He went on to explain the history of meta data, and how similar it is to tagging. He explained the different applications that tags have, ie. geo-tagging, machine tags, rss feeds and even ’social hum’ (my favorite word of the conference).

He then explained how tagging itself has evolved, from a form of meta data, to a way to search, as well as sticky tags (automated tagging system based on criteria).

I actually learned a lot from his presentation, even if a lot of it was history. I think it gave me a much broader picture of tagging, and it also confirmed to me that tags are here to stay. I think that tagging is still in the infancy stage, and there is much improvement that has yet to be discovered.

Second Presentation: Derek Featherstone

Derek Featherstone’s talk was my favorite of the whole weekend. It was actually quite a surprise for me, because I was not really looking forward to it at all.

Derek owns a Accessibility UX company called Further Ahead.

Derek’s presentation was titled: Accessible UX Design.

He showed us how speech synthesis reads code, and how important things like alt text in images really are. He played us a clip of a speech synthesis reader, reading a page off of amazon. It was absolutely horrid!

His biggest point of his whole presentation was about clean code. If your code is clean, you’re already 80% of the way there. another main point was the importance of the order of your code. The speech synthesis readers read your code in the order that it appears in your code (not on your page).

He touched on what kinds of disabilities require different techniques, and about how knowing your audience is key.

The thing that I found the most interesting, was the use of javascript, and how it can be extremely detrimental if not used correctly. For instance, if you have some ajax-y goodness on your page that only appears when a user clicks a certain spot, that piece of ajax has to be the next thing that a user can TAB to. I don’t think I had ever really thought of that before. I did go back and look at some of my code, and I was doing it right anyway. Nonetheless, it’s something to be aware of!

He also touched on things like:

• Be aware of visual language
  • if your visual design creates a hierarchy, then you must duplicate that inside your code
• Context is extremely important
  • Context is usually shown through visual design; your code must also show it
• TAB order should be described in your wireframes

Overall, what I got out of Derek’s talk was that clean code matters - not only so that you look good when someone views your source code, but also for accessibility.

Third Presentation: David Armano

David is VP, Experience Design for Critical Mass.

The Fuzzy Tail was about being adaptable in the workplace, and in your procedures. He talked about processes (past and present) that worked and didn’t work.

He emphasized putting aside your expertise, and try to learn all over again. He likened it to his relationship with his children. When he’s around them he starts to question the world, just like them. As a result, he’s seen creative changes in himself.

David had the quote of the conference: “People will use the tools that you build the way they want, not the way you intended it.”

Overall I thought David’s presentation was quite interesting. Maybe not extremely useful in real life, but quite interesting.

First Presentation: Lou Rosenfeld

Lou Rosenfeld has quite an impressive list of accomplishments. Of those accomplishments, Information Architecture for the World Wide Web is probably the most well known. Lou’s presentation was about his newest endeavour: a company called Rosenfeld Media. Rosenfeld Media is a publishing house dedicated to developing short, practical, and useful books on user experience design.

Lou talked about trying to come up with innovative designs for ancient products: namely, books. He talked about how he used UX techniques in developing his publishing company, as well as testing his books on users, and how that contributed to the design.

He introduced a social application that is currently in beta, called UX Zeitgeist: it’s a tool for rating UX books, and voting on what kinds of UX books are needed.

He also threw out a few ideas and fielded a few questions about how he’s trying to be innovative with distributing his books in PDF format. I found this subject quite interesting, since I am currently brainstorming of new ways to promote and distribute my music. I really wish that he had gone into a little more detail on this subject.

Overall, I thought that the talk was quite well put together, but a little bit unsubstantial. I didn’t really think that his business ideas were very innovative, but maybe if he had gone into more detail about his business model and how he was planning on distributing and marketing his products, I would have found it more useful.

Second Presentation: Brad Nemer

Brad Nemer is a product portfolio manager for Motorola’s 3G efforts in Asia. He’s also got an MBA and a Masters of Design.

Brad led a workshop on constraints, and how they affect what we do.

For this workshop we broke into groups. Each group was given a sport, and were named manager of one of the teams in that league. We were given a list of new rules (different from the current game rules), and were asked to discuss how these constraints would affect the game. We discussed things like: equipment, fans, fitness/skill level, etc.

After that, he proclaimed each group as commissioners of the whole league, and presented us with a few more constraints. We were asked to come up with creative ways in which we could multiply the current profits of the league.

Overall, I thought that the talk had a lot of potential, but in the end, it didn’t really go anywhere. I would have liked to spend a little less time discussing things in our groups, and a little more time listening to some of Brad’s theories on how to overcome constraints.

Third Presentation: The Banff Leadership Arts Ensemble

The Banff Leadership Arts Ensemble performed a play for us. This wasn’t your average theatre format, though. The play was based on a book that I can’t remember the name of, but was, none-the-less, amazing.

The format of this theatre was what really intrigued me most. Since I’m not a theatre buff, I don’t know what this form of theatre is called, but I’m going to call it “Fly-on-the-wall Theater”.

Scene 1 started with everyone in the same room. We were all in a board room, along with all the actors, almost like a normal play, but almost as if we were part of the play. Scene 2 is where everything got interesting.

When the board meeting (scene 1) was over, we, the audience, had the option to follow whichever character we found the most interesting. As the character left the room they entered conversation with another character (scene 2). At that point, we, the audience had the choice to follow this new character, or continue with the character that we had originally found interesting. This continued for 8 scenes. At the end of the play, all the characters ended up in the same room. At this point we, the audience, were allowed to discuss amongst ourselves, and try to figure out the rest of the story, according to how each of us witnessed it.

The story was about corporate life in an organization. There were a lot of politics and personal issues. The interesting part was how the personal issues affected the politics, and vice versa.

The moral of the story was: there’s always more to a story than what you can see.

Fourth Presentation: Jess McMullin

Jess McMullin is one of the owners of nForm, a UX consultancy firm in Edmonton, Alberta. He also co-founded the Information Architecture Institute and is the founder of the CanUX conference.

Jess’ presentation was called The Business Side of UX. It discussed ways to increase our influence on clients and co-workers.

A few things that I got out of his presentation were:

1. Always be aware of new opportunities.
2. Identify the decision-maker.
   • Who is the person that can actually take your suggestions, and make them happen?
3. Understand where people/clients/co-workers are coming from.
   • People react according to what is going on in their life. If you can find out what is happening behind the scenes, you have a better chance of relating to them.
4. Identify the CORRECT opportunities.
   • Choose your battles carefully
5. Be willing to innovate.
   • How can you mold what you do, to meet your clients needs?
   • Things will change; be willing to change with them.

I enjoyed Jess’ talk quite a bit. I thought that he could have gone a little bit further with some of his ideas, but I definitely took a few things away.

An interesting point to mention, is that Jess was also a very nice guy, and extremely approachable. I subscribe to his blog, and I would strongly recommend others to do the same.

Unlimited Microsoft Bar Tab

The second evening of CanUX was extremely interesting also. at around 10:00 we headed down to the pub. David Crow, who calls himself an instigator and an entrepreneur, but is also a UX advisor/evangelist for Microsoft, had an open bar tab for everyone at the conference.

I ended up having a great conversation with David about some of his past ventures, and experiences with start up companies. He had some great suggestions about career direction, and improvement. He is an amazing source of information. and I would consider his blog a must read to anyone who is at all interested in the Canadian UX community.

I’ll be posting Part III of CanUX 2007 tomorrow.

This past weekend I attended CanUX 2007 at The Banff Center in Banff, Alberta. Much thanks to Karyn Zuidinga at Analytic Design Group! CanUX is the annual Canadian User Experience Workshop that brings together UX professionals/seekers from all over the country.

The atmostphere of the Banff Center was not what I expected at all. I thought that it would feel quite corporate, and even cold, but to my surprise, it actually felt more like college life, or when I attended summer camp as a child. Most of the buildings have a rough wood finish (I guess I should have known, it is Banff after all), and there is couches everywhere to just sit around and talk. The fact that there is a dining hall, conference area, and a hotel - all within walking distance also contributed to the campus feel. The major difference between CanUX and my summer camp experience was the pub… we didn’t have one at summer camp.

For me, personally, the weekend started off a little slow and sluggish: My Winnipeg Blue Bombers lost the Grey Cup to the Saskatchewan Rough Riders. However, the next day I tried to put it behind me and move on with life.

By the end of the weekend I was fully engaged and enjoying myself. I learned a lot of things, and met a lot of great people.

This post is going to be the first part of three separate posts about CanUX 2007.

Stay tuned for all the lessons that I learned!!!

I am currently working on an online application, that is geared toward helping musicians and their managers manage their band more efficiently and affectively. I have code-named this project “Murray”.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Flight of the Conchords, they are a folk-comedy duo from New Zealand. The great thing about these guys, is that HBO decided to make a fictitious self-titled sitcom about their band. My co-worker Greg Bell and I accidentally discovered the show this summer while on a business trip to Seattle. Needless to say, we completely fell in love with them, and haven’t missed a show yet.

Anyway, to get on with my story: in the HBO series, they have a band manager named Murray. Murray is extremely organized. He takes attendance at meetings, he organizes all of their gigs for them, and even takes them on sight-seeing tours.

And so, I decided to name (or rather, code-name) my online band management application after the best band manager in the world!

The thought of Murray came to fruition when I was in a band, and we were struggling to get ourselves organized. We tried many different methods and software, but nothing fit very well. That’s when I realized that there was a real need for this kind of thing. We weren’t the only band that couldn’t get our shit together.

When I came up with the idea for Murray, I really wanted to do it right - from the ground up. So, I started with a competitive analysis, just to see what was out there for band management software. The results were actually quite stunning: there is absolutely nothing good!! I spent a few weeks just playing around with some of the software that is currently out there, and found myself ever-more excited to get started on Murray.

My problem is that I like to rush into things, and I really didn’t want to do that on this project. So, I decided to put together a survey, to ask musicians how they keep track of all their shows, sessions, rehearsals, etc., their current methods, and what they would need in a piece of software. I sent it out to every music contact that I have, and got some great feedback.

I tried to take everything to heart, and come up with the best possible solution.

I’m currently working on the sitemap, trying to develop the basic structure of the site. I might also throw a card sort in there just to make sure I’m on the right track.

After that comes wireframes, and then design. Then, I’m going to be developing Murray using Ruby on Rails.

You can expect to see Murray in beta at the end of March.