Blog

Boston Drupal Meetup Notes

5 August 2009

I finally made it to my first Boston Drupal meetup last night. It was held on the MIT campus and attracted a fairly large group (20 or so). The format is simple:

A few announcements
Organize a list of people who want to share or ask questions
Share and ask questions
Go to the student union for some beer and pizza

I took notes and following the policy of reuse, jotted down my notes on a spare napkin. (Okay, I'm not normally this disorganized).

My questions to the group were 1) What should I implementation as a rotator / slider module on my Drupal site and 2) Can the core blog module be called News, because it won't be used very often and only by one or two people initially.

Carousel was recommended, but I was also...

Book report: Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web

19 July 2009

I recently read Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web (2nd Edition) (Voices That Matter), written by Christina Wodtke and Austin Govella.

I have wanted to read this book since its release earlier this year because I'm a little bit 'jack of all (web) trades', with the majority of my Information Architecture work being done as part of a team or partnership, so I am still in education mode when it comes to IA,...

XE Trade's dashboard and Basic Trade screens redesigned

3 July 2009

Introduction

I've created a quick voluntary redesign of the XE Trade currency exchange service dashboard and Basic Trade (first screen only), out of sheer frustration when I first used their service a few months ago. When I started this post, I wasn't aware that XE Trade was in the process of updating their site. A notification on the login screen now tells me my account will be migrated to the new design at some point, but for the moment, the screenshots presented are exactly what I see. Information on how to preview the new UI is found in the P.S. below. Any new accounts will probably have the shiny new look.

Background

XE.com is well known for its online Universal Currency Converter, running since 1995. I've been using the UCC for well over...

Evaluating the User Interface presentation

21 June 2009

I recently presented Evaluating the User Interface and User Experience at the Boston Drupal 4 Design camp, held at MIT's Stata Center.

My presentation was for web designers, Drupal themers and anyone else involved in web projects, but my message is this: test and QA your own work, but don't QA your work by yourself; always get a second pair of eyes. My talk covered* the whys and hows of best practices and testing:

Screen resolutions
Foreground and background color difference and brightness (contrast)
Customized error pages
Cross-browser testing
Microcopy
Functionality (especially forms)
The 'Where Am I?' test...

Color Contrast for Usability and Accessibility

18 June 2009

In my Evaluating the User Interface and User Experience presentation at the Boston Design 4 Drupal camp, I touched on the need for designers to check the color contrast between foreground and background page elements, to ensure the color combination is usable and accessible to all. I know there are tools that can analyze colors in Photoshop and Fireworks files, but after the pages is in CSS, the best tool that I have used is Juicy Studio's Colour Contrast Analyser, a Firefox extension.

A few weeks ago, I applied a premium theme to my site, and then...

Recap of Design 4 Drupal Camp weekend

15 June 2009

UPDATE: I've added a bit more about my first proper presentation experience and photos....and thought of some other people I chatted with.
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What a ride!! Volunteering, learning, laughter, sleep deprivation... those words sum up my weekend!

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="322" caption="The tshirts had to be washed before wearing, so we did, in the hotel..."][/caption]

What started out as a desire to learn more about Drupal and to help a good friend (Susan MacPhee), has become...

Attending Boston Drupal Design Camp

2 June 2009

I'm looking forward to the first annual Boston Drupal Design Camp coming up on
June 13-14, 2009 at Massachusetts Institute of Technology: http://boston.design4drupal.org/!

I'll be hosting a session on quality assurance best practices but still working out the details...

I've also volunteered to be a member of the camp's Green Team. We will make green and sustainable product choices whenever possible. There is some discussion on the forums on how to make this possible: http://boston.design4drupal.org/forums/greening-camp

Registration Form Error Message Shenanigans

1 June 2009

In this blog post, I explain why all registration form submission error messages should be stated in plain language as a single step, not in an irritating succession.

Just now, I tried registering for BNET, after being prompted to login or register to read an article. Fine, whatever. I'll register.

The registration form is too long (while writing this, I went back and counted 18 fields. 18, really? All I want to do is read an article.)

After I filled in what I felt was an adequate amount of information, navigated through the myriad of opt in and opt out (yes, both) newsletter tickboxes, I clicked the nicely obvious 'Continue' button. That's where the trouble really started.

First, I was alerted that I hadn't filled in my city. Oops, my bad. I added...

Pottery Barn's refreshing (un)subscribe options

11 May 2009

I recently received what seemed like the billionth email from Pottery Barn. While I love their stuff, I am kinda on a budget and I don't need to be reminded how each of my sparsely furnished rooms are kinda pathetic. Here's their refreshing take on unsubscribing.
Dear Pottery Barn Subscriber,

We understand how daunting a full inbox can be. If you would like to receive fewer emails from us, simply select from the options below. To completely remove your email address from our list, please select the unsubscribe option.

Sincerely,

Pottery Barn

My Email Address: [hidden]

I would like to:

Receive up to 1 email per week
Receive up to 2 emails per month...

The value of face-to-face networking

8 May 2009

Until recently, I never realized just how valuable networking could be. In the past, shyness has prevented me from making the most of face-to-face encounters with people who could become valuable friends, colleagues, clients or mentors.

Now that I'm the new kid in town (again!), I wanted to approach things differently. Guess what? It's true that making an effort to meet people at networking events, gatherings and conferences really makes a difference. The most successful people already know this...

Why not just pursue social networking? Because social networking has its limits.

To someone else, you are an unknown quantity. You could be anyone. He could be an axe murderer.
You can interact with someone on your Twitter follow list endlessly without...