The Wilson Project Blog of UX/Front-End Developer Ivan Wilson

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  • What One UI Developer Learned at the Opera

    (Originally published on CDG Interactive/Innate blog, edited by Jennifer Mayne Hoppe)

    Images of the Met production of Shostakovich’s The Nose, produced by William Kentridge –
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    A lot of people think of user interface (UI) developers as “tech guys,” but I see myself more as a designer. At its base, design is about solving problems. So I’m really a designer who solves problems through programming. Like any designer, I have to think creatively—and I often find inspiration from the wide world OUTSIDE of my cubicle. (Yes, despite appearances to the contrary, I can function away from the office from long periods of time, like a cubical lungfish…)

    Take, for example, a recent Saturday I spent at The Metropolitan Opera. I watched a performance of an opera titled The Nose. Composed by Dmitri Shostakovich, in 1930, the opera is about an official who wakes up and find his own nose missing, only to find out that it has full life of its own (as well as higher status than he does). The music and the singing were well done, but was really got my attention was the production’s design.

    The design was conceived by South African artist William Kentridge, who is well known for his work with stop animation from drawings and paper cutouts. In this production, Kentridge melds his own aesthetic with historically appropriate references from the 1930s. Specifically, the set design follows the artistic strain of Russia a movement was about breaking and re-interpreting of artistic conventions like the revolution that spawned it.

    Kentridge enhanced the on-stage elements by projecting stop animations into the production. Projected onto the back of the set, the animations looked like early abstract shape animations of the same period in which the opera took place. Then Kentridge mixed the animations with live film and archive film footage. Rather than distracting from the action on stage, these elements truly enhanced the satirical nature of the opera.

    And that’s what really good design does. It frames the content for maximum impact and engages your attention. Great design happens when someone examines a problem thoughtfully and creates a solution that fits so well, it seems like the only solution.

    So now that I’m back “home” in my cube at Innate, I’m taking inspiration from my afternoon at The Met, and striving to find the most elegant, effective, and engaging solutions to the design and technical challenges that I’m working on.

    Such is the life of a UI developer!

  • UI or UN? The Life of a Front-End Developer…The Lecture???

    No. Really.

    Basically, it originally started as an idea for me to do something close to work but outside the office.  However, there are a number of ideas that need fleshing out. Not just about work (dealing with bad HTML code) but also about ideas about Charles, TWP, front-end developement, and IxD.

    And linguistics.

    More news to come.

  • Storm and Stress

    After three weeks of work and vacation (which was almost like work), I got a free weekend.

    One in which I got to do nothing.

    Now this week, a hopefully(?) slow work will allow me to do the following:

    • Write two blogs entries for CDG – one on the book Search Patterns by Peter Morville/Jeffery Callender and the other about The Nose (The Met/MOMA)
    • Started prototyping work on Charles, which I started Sunday, first bit of work in a couple of months
    • Starting more blog entries here, including a brief one about the last three weeks

    I have a number of things to do before things speed up again at work. There is also the next two trips in May, which I need to get ready for.

    First, NYC again for another Met performance – instead the Russian satire of The Nose, it will be the dark, German expressionism of Lulu.

    Then this will be followed by my yearly pilgrimage to the Pacific Northwest again (Seattle, WA/Vancouver, Canada).

    Lots to do, lots to see. Just need to do more than one blog entry per month.

    Later.

  • Excuse me if you heard this before, but…

    I am really, really busy.

    Sorry for the month delay but new blog postings will be up in the next couple of days.

    I will also be writing two blog post for CDG again, both dealing with topics brought about during lectures at Interaction 10 in Savannah a few weeks ago.

    As for here, blog posts about Interaction 10/Savannah and the restart and final stages of Charles project.

    Later.

  • The Well-Dressed Submit Button

    (Originally published on CDG Interactive/Innate blog)

    Hello, again. This is CDG User Interface Developer Ivan Wilson with another lesson gleaned from the top of the snowy, white-capped mounds of work that keep me busy every day. As I explained in my last post, my job is about building the bridge between design and technology. I need to create things that function perfectly, look good, and are useful for users. Here’s how I tackled a recent challenge on-the-job.

    One of our clients, Mondial Assistance, is a large multinational provider of travel insurance. We’re in the midst of revising each of their national B2C sites—more than 20 sites in all, in a variety of different languages. Our core website needs to work as well for consumers in Germany as it does for consumers in Japan—and everywhere in between. And as every web pro knows, content is key.

    But what does content have to do with me, a developer who doesn’t deal (directly) with the spoken language? Allow me to explain!

    The truth is, content is inextricably tied to both design and technology. Think, for example, about the humble button on a web form, like this one. As a UI professional, I need to make sure that this button looks right from a design perspective, and also functions perfectly regardless of the browser or language.

    The simplest solution would be to just take that graphical image and turn into a submit button via HTML code. Or would it? Remember, this little button has to function across 20 sites and in multiple languages. Just imagine the following conversations…

    “Nice button. Nice style. Can you add it to the German site? Oh, don’t forget. The French site is launching next month. We need to use the same buttons there as well.”

    OK, open up Photoshop (or insert your preferred graphics program) and change the text to German. Done. Fine.

    Repeat again…this time in French.

    Repeat again…this time in [insert local language here]

    Before you know it, you’re creating 20 versions of the same button. And that’s just one button on the site. Take into account all of the other buttons that reside on the site, and it becomes an algebra problem: (# of buttons) x (# of languages) = massive headache.

    Let’s take a step back and look at the problem again.

    We need a submit button that is:

    1. Editable – It needs to be easy to translate and manage across sites
    2. Usable – We do not want to create problems or lock out the user, preventing them from finishing their task

    Graphical buttons are out. Sure, I could always use a linked image with a Javascript function to submit data upon clicking. But what if Javascript isn’t switched on? (Surely it won’t be on screen readers and mobile phones). Not good enough.

    The challenge is creating a default state for the button, which functions for everyone, and an enhanced state that looks perfect for top browsers.

    In the end, here’s what I did:

    1. Used an old fashionedHTML submit button
    2. Along with the button, I added an extra bit of code that displays the enhanced state:<span class=”startquote submit”><span>Start Quote</span></span>In this code, I’m using CSS to turn two tags (spans) and enclosed text to appear as the prior graphical button. And by adding Javascript, I can make this “button” act like a regular submit button.

    OK, but now we have two “buttons”. Here is where the magic comes in…

    If you load up the page (without CSS or Javascript), you are the “default” state and the standard HTML submit buttons shows up.

    Now, if you are using a top-of-the-line browser, you have Javascript and CSS well supported. That means that you are ready for the “options” state. When the HTML button loads up, you will get this functional stylized button. All along, the “default” button is still around, just hidden from sight.

    And as the topper, since the text is only text, it can be changed with a couple of keystrokes. Done right, it can stretch to accommodate different word lengths due to translation or editing. As seen below:

    Why only the Latin alphabet? What about Cyrillic? Japanese? Chinese?

    Everything works beautifully. (Well, actually, IE6 has problems with hover states…but it’s IE6, of course.)

    So, there it is. Highly stylized yet functional submit buttons – well dressed for any occasion. And best of all…useful.

  • Blog Entries for CDG

    This week, my second blog entry for my employer, CDG Interactive, is up. Called The Well-Dressed Submit Button, it is my story about web development and dealing with usability.

    My first one, UI or UN? The Life of a Front-End Developer, is also up. I don’t know if this is true for all UI/Front-end developers but the comparison does kinda hold up at certain times.

    I would like to write more blog posts, especially for this blog, but my schedule really gets in the way. However, doing this will be one of many different things that I will be doing in the course of 2010.

  • UI or UN? The Life of a Front-End Developer

    (Originally published on CDG Interactive/Innate blog)

    Hello.

    My name is Ivan Wilson and I am a user interface (UI) developer for CDG. I’ll be a guest author on this blog, posting every month or so.

    When I first asked about contributing to the blog (and I’m still wondering whether it was a good idea to agree), I thought it would be helpful to explain exactly what I do. After all, outside the tech industry, front-end/ui developers are a somewhat unknown breed.


    UI Developers, in Plain English

    UI developers aren’t full-time designers (though I had a three-month stint as one), but the best of us know enough to have a good conversation with the designers. And we can do more with Photoshop than just adjusting the image brightness/contrast.

    We don’t do full-time back-end programming (though I spend the great deal of my career doing PHP programming), but the best of us know enough to make things easier for the programmer and do some programming ourselves in a pinch.

    Basically, we’re like UN interpreters. We know how to speak multiple languages and if we are really good at what we do, very good things happen.
    Like other interactive agencies, CDG develops many dynamic, database-driven sites. My job is to build out the layer that you see and use every day on your computer or web-enabled mobile phone.

    That means I take all the graphics files from the designers, wireframes from the information architects, and build templates in HTML (or XHTML), Javascript, and CSS (stylesheets). I also have to create web-ready graphics from those same files. In some cases, I might even need to break out some Flash skills or work on other interactive features.


    “Well, That Doesn’t Seem Too Hard . . .”

    It sounds easy.

    Everything is easy before testing.

    And testing requires…six browsers in two platforms…or more.

    Still sound easy? (I hear a few plates dropping…)

    And it has to look good and function without a hiccup.

    Did I mention all this has to be done before passing it on back-end programmers?

    And if I move a pixel in the wrong place, the designers have pitchforks with my name engraved on ’em.

    High stakes, indeed.

    Yes, it’s definitely like being a UN interpreter.