West Coast Bloggers

Bad Interfaces – eMusic Getting it Wrong

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 07:54 GMT

Times have just got to change. I'm a little sick of living in a world that is regionalise into sales and licencing zones for no real reason besides to restrict sales due to some arcane money grubbing corporate policy.

What makes matters worse is people building experiences that highlight this and rub our face in it time and time again!

I regularly buy music online from various places, I tend to favour non DRM music, or if I can buy directly from the artist which is even better – I don't like iTunes much at all.

Now eMusic, which I use, have recently redesigned and tweaked their user interface towards a very strongly recommendation engine based sales model. Now I have no issue with this at all, in fact I applaud it as a welcome change, as it's always good to discover new music.

It's Very Simple

After you have signed in, eMusic knows your country of residency as it's in your billing profile, they also know your likes, dislikes and previous purchases. Which is good as all this leads to a better browsing and recommendation experience.

Or so you would think.

Below is the home page of the eMusic site after I signed in. It shows you a selection of “New and Noteworthy” albums.

Now seeing as eMusic knows so much about me, I would expect the selection to be tailored towards my tastes; and yes it is, at least a few of the albums on the home page are of interest.

eMusic screen showing new music, and clearly indicating it is not available

However despite knowing so much about me, eMusic goes and destroys the entire experience by not allowing me to purchase ANY of the albums recommended. Due to licensing restrictions in Australia.

Here I am, wanting to purchase an album, but I can't. To make matters worse eMusic decides to wave a large flag in my face, screaming, “HA HA you can't buy this”…

Changing the Approach

Now what would it have taken to exclude the albums from being recommended. Emusic you already know they are “Not Available” due to my being in Australia, as we can clearly see this on the screen (above).

So just exclude the items “Not Available” from the query, really it's not that hard. Just show me the “Available” high rated or new albums.

A recommendation is a waste of time if I can't purchase it.

Maybe eMusic just wants me to move a few clicks away and download the music for free.

You know I try and support and do the right thing by the musicians, but sometimes the paper pushers just get in the way and destroy the experience.

The model and experience is broken, they need to change.

Satay-Mu Revisited

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 09:07 GMT

It is a very rare for me to eat at the same restaurant twice in the same week. However, my last visit to Satay-Mu left me wanting to investigate further and their current 20% introductory discount combined to get me to break this long standing habit.

I walked in and was recognised as a returning customer, I got seated in what was now much busier restaurant than earlier in the week and ordered Nasi Lemak with Chicken Curry.

It took only a couple of minutes for my meal to arrive, which was a surprise as it was not a simple meal, consisting of rice cooked in coconut milk with the distinctive aroma of pandan leaves, chicken curry, acar, ikan billis, peanuts, a hard boiled egg and sambal. And it looked as tasted as good as it taste. I will admit the chicken curry was not the best I had every tasted, but it was decent. The malaysian acar pickle was exceptional, spicy with out being overpowering, the ikan billis and peanuts, other than being much to my surprise separate and cold, I am so use to them being served together, straight from the wok, still crunchy, tasty and a real change in texture. The sambal lacked any chilli bite, but was very tasty, the egg almost perfectly cooked and the rice. Well that what makes a Nasi Lemak, fragrant and sweet. A very good meal that I thoroughly enjoyed, and it looks like Satay-Mu will be a regular lunch spot for me.

Going dark for SOPA & PIPA

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 06:38 GMT

I am going dark on January 18 American time, or between noon January 17 WST my time until noon January 18 WST, If you want to know why, even if I and you are am not an Americans, read Corey Doctorow’s Boing Boing will go dark on Jan 18 to fight SOPA & PIPA because he puts it so much better than me.

Satay-Mu

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 06:10 GMT

Do not judge a book by it's cover

Walking down James street returning from a team lunch last week, I noticed a menu in a window stating Malaysian Food, not knowing there was even a restaurant there, I noted nothing other than the location vowing to return later as I really enjoy good malaysian food.

On return I found a little nondescript cafe in front of a combination pool hall/karaoke space. Not deterred, I checked the menu on the window out, it was rather long and had all the usual malaysian/singaporean food I adore, so I entered and ordered a personal favourite Kway Teow.

The service was good and fast, my meal was with me was me in a few minutes, while you could not see the kitchen from the cafe, you could hear the cooking as the ingredients meet a very hot wok. The serving was generous, looked great and tasted good. I have eaten Kway Teow many times and while it did not match my personal favourites from Singapore Indian Malaysian Cuisine and Tak Chee it came close, beating everyone else.

The ingredients where fresh, not overcooked, with all the right spices and with the slightly greasy peppery aftertaste I expected. Not enough chilli for my taste, however, cut chilli was provided. I will be definitely be going back to explore more from the menu. A likely candidate for a regular lunch spot, good food, fast service and cheap at $9.60 (with current 20% off introductory offer).

Bill Gates, superhero: the infographic

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 06:01 GMT

Bill Gates is better than Batman. Ignoring the fact that Batman doesn't exist, It's true - and here's the infographic to prove it. Continue reading →

Posted from kay lives here

Bill Gates, superhero: the infographic

Glenfarclas 15 Year Old

Sat, 14 Jan 2012 09:35 GMT

“Do you just drink Bruichladdich?” was the question the cashier at 1st Choice Liquor as paid for a bottle of Port Charlotte PC7 (the bottle I planned to buy) and Bruichladdich Resurrection (I did not plan to buy, but I did not know it was there, and at $75 is was a offer to good to pass up). Was the start of a short and interesting conversation about single malt, The one bottle we where both drinking was Glenfarclas 15 Year Old.

I purchased my bottle some six months ago, based purely on stunning reviews. I was not disappointed, I have been enjoying it over the past few month as a change of pace from my regular peated island whiskies. A Speyside whiskey, matured in a mix of ex sherry and ex bourbon casks. No peat, no smoke, no iodine, just a sweet almost almost rum like nose, it has a intense sherry tainted and smooth flavour beyond your typical 15 year old whiskey, with a long lasting orange after taste.

My compatriot was also enjoying his drinking experience, he got a better deal, his bottle came with 50ml miniatures of the Glenfarclas 21 year old and 25 year old whisky for $99 from Dan Murphys it is also available from
Nicks Vintage Direct at the same price.

So will I buy another bottle of Glenfarclas 15 Year Old soon, I don’t know. It is a very good whisky and a very good deal at the moment. However, I do mainly drink peated island whisky, I do enjoy the a good unpeated whisky for a change, as I do a good dark rum. This bottle will last me a couple more months and by that time, I will probably look for a change. On the other hand it is a very very good whisky.

Return to Helvetica aka recent whisky tastings

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 07:00 GMT

The last couple of Wednesday evening, I have been catching up with friends at Helvetica. In addition to the biggest range of whisky in Perth and a great atmosphere there is another good reason to stop in on a Tuesday or Wednesday evening between 4 and 7, buy a drink and a Helvetica will feed you with bread, cheese, olives, cold meats and more. Which means, while Helvetica is fairly quiet around, 4 it is crowded and busy by 7. The crowd is very mixed, not at all you would expect for a whisky bar, actually most people are not drinking whisky, However, myself and some of my friends bucked the trend and sampled some of the fine single malts available.

In my continuing quest to sample at least a variety of products from all Islay distilleries, I have sampling a number of young cask strength whiskies.

Port Charlotte PC7, is a cask strength big peat monster, not as brutal as an Ardbeg Uigeadail, but has far smoother body and spicy aftertaste. I throughly enjoyed it and will pick myself up a bottle of this very soon (I know where a couple of bottles are), so I can do a side by side comparison with my Ardbeg Uigeadail to pick my favourite peated whisky.

Kilchoman Summer 2010, a very young whisky, also cask strength, Smoke, peat but once the alcohol burn left my mouth I was left thinking is that all, a rather one dimensional whisky, but that could be expected given its’ age, less that 4 years old and maturation in Bourbon casks. Not a whisky I am likely to be drinking in the future, but a distillery I will keep my eye on, maybe in a couple of years.

Bowmore Tempest the the oldest cask strength whisky recently tasted at 10 years, definitely more rounded than the Kilchoman, with a fuller body and aftertaste with hint of vanilla. Unfortunately, it just lacks the punch of an Ardbeg Uigeadail or a Laphoraig Quarter Cask and the depth of a Port Charlotte PC7. Of the five cask strength young whiskies tasted recently, it ranks 4th, not because it is a bad whisky, two months ago I would of been very happy drinking this. but the competition are exceptional whiskies

10 year old Glen Morangie, courtesy of a friend who has found the cheapest way to drink whisky at Helvetica is buy a bottle and keep it behind the bar. Very different from the other whiskies I have been drinking lately, a regular strength whisky from Speyside, lacking the strong peat or smokey flavour of the island whiskies I have been drinking lately. Unfortunately I like my senses to be brutally assaulted by a young strong peaty whisky or teased and treated with a refined whisky. The Glen Morangie did not overpower my senses and is not what I consider refined. As a relatively young whisky, I found it rough it around the edges with its’ sharp flavours and citrus tang. Again it is not a bad whisky, but it can not compare to the smoother and more refined 15 and 18 year old whiskies I have been drinking between peating sessions.

Helvetica has always been a favourite small bar of mine, with big whiskey range, great atmosphere and exceptional service from knowledgeable and friendly staff. Is now even better with some good food for free, as long as you buy a drink, and with all those whiskies it is so difficult to make the choice of the next to try. I will continue to frequent Helvetica on a regular basis.

XO Lounge

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 07:56 GMT

A man walks into a cognac bar and asked for a recommendation of a cognac to start learning about cognac. The barman replies “Sorry I know nothing about cognac”. Sounds more like the start of a joke than the experience you expect when you try to order a drink from a bar that that is trying to build a reputation as Perth’s premier cognac bar. Unfortunately that was my experience just prior christmas at XO.

If XO defence, they where busy preparing for a Young Lawyers event, which had staff running everywhere. From the location, decor and drink range XO was highly suited to hold a Young Lawyers event. Just off the terrace, the decor had a lot of glass, chrome and black leather upholstered booths.

As it was only a quick visit under unusual circumstances, we had 30 minutes for a drink and wait for late comers, before we changed bars as that was when the private event was starting, I can’t comment on the food or atmosphere. The service, while I liked the bar staff honesty, I expected him to call over a more experience staff member to assist me with selection of a suitable cognac. As there was over 15 cognacs on display. The rum choice was limited to Angostura, but you did have the choice of their 3 best rums 1824, 1919 and 7 year old butterfly rum. The tequila range was a couple of bottles of the upmarket name brands.

The single malt collection was a little more impressive, I had more time to enjoy it, the 21 year Highland Park would of been my choice, instead I went for the 12 year old Highland Park, which has a deserved reputation. A great island malt, with a find balance of peat, a touch of smoke and little salt, with a smooth honeyed flavour. Can definitely see me drinking a lot more of this.

Overall, I was disappointed with my experience at XO, not enough to stop me going back, but I much rather go to a bar that I have had a good experience with and with staff who know their products.

Bruichladdich 12 year old Second Edition

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 07:27 GMT

A couple of months ago, on the hunt for a bottle of 7 year Angostura butterfly rum, I visited my local 1st Choice liquor store, only 20km from my house. I picked up my 7 year Angosturag butterfly rum (well worth it’s own blog post) and in the cabinet next door was a small range of interesting single malts.

I am slowly working my way through the distilleries of Islay, so the two bottle of Bruichladdich interested me. I took the safe bet and went from the light straw 12 year old for the sum of $60, over the more expensive rose coloured 20 year old Second Edition.

I did not know what to expect from the whisky, I knew that Bruichladdich are not as heavily peated as the usual Islay whiskies Ardbeg, Laphroaig and Lagavulin I normally drink. This was obvious from the nose, almost floral with far less peat and iodine, but that did not prepare me for the taste. Green is one word I choose to describe it, almost like the sap of a young tree. It is not a bad whisky, far from it. It has also the characteristics of a find Islay whisky peat, iodine, seaweed just not as strong as other Islay whiskey and balanced against a fresh green zest.

It took a glass (ok I did top it up a couple of times ;-) for it to become my favourite sipping whisky. The bad news is that Bruichladdich have finished production of the Second Edition whiskies, which meant I went back and purchased the infamous pink 20 year Second Edition quickly. THe good news is my favourite online whiskey merchant Nicks has in the last few weeks has just got in a few bottles of 12 year old Second Edition and a couple of other discontinued Bruichladdich whiskies. I can see a order just of Bruichladdich as I had been converted.

The Venn

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 07:34 GMT

The Venn is a mixed used space an art gallery, a designer store and a small bar tucked between the two. The bar space is interesting space squeezed between the exposed back wall and the glass window of the store, with plenty of faux concrete to give it the designer industrial look.

With such narrow space, the seating limited groups to a maximum of 4 people, so you had an atmosphere that was relaxed and intimate. This was reflected in the clientele, most of the people where in pairs, with the odd small groups of three or four, enjoying a drink and/or a bite to eat. And it is a good place to eat, the tapas were excellent, the four of us went for the mixed plate and we where not disappointed. It would of been a challenge for two people, but for four, it was a nice snack, particularly the marinated fetta. As we had great conversation and a couple of drinks.

The range of rum and single malts on offer was small but decent quaility, I went for a Quarter Cask Laphroaig, I had heard some many good things about this no age statement young whisky that is matured in much smaller barrels. It did not disappoint, it packs more punch than your 10 year old Laphroaig or Ardbeg. More heavily peated, wooded and smokier than the ten year old rivals, with less medicinal iodine. A true whisky of Islay, but I still rank it below my current monster of Islay favourite Arbeg Uigeadail.

If I wanted to meet a friend after work in the CBD for a quiet drink or a bit to eat, the Venn would be the place, the atmosphere just suits great conversation over a drink with or without some good food.

Old Shanghai Food Court

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 08:01 GMT

We need a better plan B

We usually have a team lunch on Friday. Dim Sum is one of our favourites and Dragon Seafood Restaurant is the preferred place. We turned up at Dragon Seafood Restaurant at 12:30 and the queue was out the door. So we needed an alternative, one team member who lives nearby suggested Old Shanghai Food Court, we only found out later because it was nearby and not because of eating there before. This was quickly seconded by ex team member who use to eat from the Japanese food stall when he worked for us some time ago.

I had eaten at the food court a few times over the last few years, but none of the stalls ever stood out. The Malaysian stall could not come close to Tak Chee, The BBQ place is no match for Hong Kong BBQ or Golden King BBQ, the noodle stall does not compare to Phong Vinh or Saigon Cafe and when I do eat Japanese I prefer Taka’s. That only left the new Indian food stall.

I should of followed my instinct and what looked like a crowd of regulars ordering from the Malaysian stall, but instead I went for the Indian along with a couple of colleagues which was offering eggplant masala, and I am a sucker for eggplant, along with a madras chicken curry, dhal and rice for $11.

It was a big serving of over cooked rice, a curry that was more sweet curry sauce than chicken, the dhal was pretty ordinary and the eggplant masala was the pick of the meal and that was nothing special.

I was not the only one disappointed, the colleague who first suggested the food court, selected Indian and left most of it on the plate muttering about it being inedible. Also the ex colleague returning for one of his favourite Japanese meals was bitterly disappointed as the stall had changed hands and served him what he considered an inedible meal.

The big advantage of Old Shanghai Food Court is that it has a bar, the two of us who ate the whole meal did so by washing it down with a beer.

Lesson learnt, next week we will be at Dragon Seafood Restaurant by 12 and if the queue is out the door, we will have a plan b with a trusted eating establishment as an alternative.

Return to Hoka Restaurant

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 06:29 GMT

After the Singaporean Style Fish episode, I decided to return to Hoka Restaurant to see if there was something on the menu that excited my taste buds.

I ordered as I was getting seated and two minutes later, a regular Chilli Chicken and rice was on my table. Chilli Chicken consisted of chicken, capsicum, baby sweetcorn, onion, hokkien noodles and dried chilli, stir fried in what I consider a generic stir fry sauce.

The service was fast, the food was well presented and fresh, there was a beautiful crunch to the capsicum. The hokkien noodles was used as a filler, but given the cost $8 and the size of the serving, it could be forgiven. But what I love about most South East Asian food I regularly consume is the strong flavours, there were none here today.

I am likely to return to Hoka Restaurant, because the food is fresh, good value and fast. Just not on days my taste buds need exercising.

Debunking the Myth on Agile T Shaped UX Designers

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 20:30 GMT

I have been interested in agile process for a while, especial it's use with UX techniques.

The other day I ran into a myth that there aren't many User Experience Design people with skills that can work on agile teams.

It seems UX people aren't very flexible.

This I find almost laughable, in fact most UX professionals I have found are extremely flexible, often changing tack or techniques as required, at a moments notice. Maybe we are too flexible.

The core of any agile process really is to have a role less team that can specialists with generalised skills.

Having the traditional defined roles of a Architect, Business Analysis, Project Manager and Developer is really against the principles of working as a collaborative team to achieve days tasks.

In fact what you want to have is the entire team being “T” shaped in a way. With just deep specialisation in key areas, but still able to operate on other duties as required to get the team over the line. Hence like the rise of the UX Developer.

Looking at this mix, maybe a User Experience Design “T” shaped person is also required.

Well it seems that “user experience” or even “design” is still a dirty word in the agile sphere.

Sadly I see this time and time again. The UX specialist is brought in on a agile project at the end or just to correct some issues. The consistency of maintaining the user experience is often lost as they leave.

The reason given is often that they can't find UX people to met the team requirements when they are building the team. Or that the user experience or requirements aren't on the clients mind.

There is also a false belief that there aren't any designers that can code (at least on the front end) and understand User Experience and maybe get Usability too.

Looking in the Wrong Place.

I'm calling people out on this one! I know a lot of my freelance contacts (including me) who are UX or design based could fill any of these “missing skills” for an agile team.

The people exist, we the “T” shaped UX people are sitting around waiting.

It's just your recruiters or team builders that aren't looking in the right places or asking the right questions.

Mainly this comes from the way people are recruited – along old school waterfall process – go get a BA, a Project Manager, a few Developers and maybe a tester or two. Unless the BA and Testers are closet UX people, and it does happen, the project is going to face issues.

Which is a pity as these project could escape the usual last few sprints with the UX polishing consultant, and do it all properly from the start and save resources.

I guess that solution is for all UX people to just say they are a BA instead.

Will be very interesting to see the audience attending the upcoming Agile UX Conference in Sydney.

Australia forgets about Accessibility?

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 22:50 GMT

The following is an approximate transcript of the talk – “Outta time, scope, and we fixed that already – Is there a Disconnect” I gave at the 2011 OzeWAI conference in late November 2011. As usual the slide deck is on Slideshare.

I also have a collection of sketch notes from OzeWAI 2011, as I find it easier to sketch the talk than take notes.

…oΦOΦo…

I have been involved with the Australian Web Awards for three years now. Over those three years I have noticed an alarming trend in the results. An almost disconnect from the Australian Web Industry in terms of accessibility.

For those that don’t know the Australian Web Awards is a national competition based around best practices, it has been running now for 3 year nationally and 7 years over all.

The core vision for the Australian Web Awards is to promote best practice in design and development for the web in Australia. It does this by providing a competition designer and developers can benchmark themselves against.

The Australian Web Awards allows entries from anyone that works the web in Australia, from govt, corporate to the freelancer. The only people that are discouraged from entering are the judges.

It’s an interesting fact that over the years we have found that the big budget sites are in fact at a disadvantage. It seems the medium to small budget sites appear to win time and time again.

It doesn’t matter the size or complexity either. If you have a multi-million dollar site verses a $40,000 site, both with the same number of pages and complexity, the large corporate spend just doesn’t seem to have the focus on quality to get up in the Australian Web Awards.

The Report Cards

The issue comes to light when you look at the average scores for the sites judged against the 5 main judging criteria over the last 3 years. As can be seen (below) all the areas have increased in quality over the years, the only criteria that has gone backwards is Accessibility.

Judged Criteria	2009	2010	2011
Development	C+	B	A
Visual Design	B	B	B+
Accessibility	B	B-	C-
User Experience	C+	B+	A+
Content	C+	B+	B+

When I first saw this I considered if it was just a back slash against WCAG2.

But maybe it’s something a little more.

Now let’s remember that the sites that have entered the Australian Web Awards are not just the average run of the mill site. Often they will have been tweaked and improved, made the best they can be.

These sites from the owners and agencies viewpoint are as perfect as they can be.

And yet they come up wanting. Overall we, as an industry have failed in accessibility.

You know I didn’t expect this, it blindsided me. When I received the results from one accessibility judge after another, all telling me the same thing, over and over it was a bit of a shock.

For a while there it did make me question what had happened, if people really didn’t get the accessibility requirements.

Then I looked deeper into the statistics.

The Statistics

Now all the entries stated a level of WCAG compliance with their entry this year, so let’s start there.

About 30% stated they didn’t bother with WCAG2. Of those that considered WCAG 40% where focused on WCAG1 and about 30% on WCAG2. Interestingly

Now if we compared the stated level of compliance to the level that we found some interesting stats:

WCAG compliance Levels verses stated levels of compliance shown on a size basis

Interestingly if you stated you had ”No Compliance” in fact your site had a 69% chance of being compliant to WCAG2 A
anyway. Which just goes to show that WCAG2 A compliance isn’t that hard to achieve.

As to be expected WCAG 1 A had a high level compliance, as did WCAG2 A. The surprise was that very little of the sites that said they where AAA where even close to mark. Which may indicate a lack of compliance understanding.

Top Issues

Top accessibility issues represented in size of occurrence

Over the last three years the same issues have been repeated time and time again. Despite developers telling me over and over they understand these issues. It’s very clear that in Australia at least they don’t.

Top Accessibility Issue	Chance of Occurrence
No alternative text or bad description	45%
No keyboard navigation or bad implementation	45%
Lack of colour contrast	38%
No block skipping (to content) or it’s hidden	37%
No Semantic appropriate header structure	32%
Bad Semantic Links (eg Read More)	27%
Bad form label coding	24%
Javascript with no fall back (progressive enhancement)	22%

Plus there was a whole collection of five percenters that are still important. These issue I found where often completive on the same site. So they are worth keeping an eye on them.

Dyslexic text issues, justification, leading, general spacing.
Content heavy no chunking
No transcript, caption or video alternative.
Click areas that aren’t obvious.
Can’t stop constant movement – usual a carousel.

It also seems that certain states just don’t get some accessibility issues.

Accessibility Issue	Worst State	Best State
No alternative text or bad description	NSW	WA
No keyboard navigation or bad implementation	QLD	WA
Lack of colour contrast	VIC	NSW
No block skipping (to content) or it’s hidden	VIC or NT	NSW
No Semantic appropriate header structure	NT	VIC
Bad Semantic Links (eg Read More)	QLD	VIC
Bad form label coding	VIC	QLD
Javascript with no fall back (progressive enhancement)	WA or NSW	QLD

The Gatekeepers

Now Statistics like this can, but are they really telling us what is really going wrong. Why has accessibility slipped from the agenda in Australia?

Now I have worked on the web with private industry from small business to large corporate for the last 15 years. I regularly chat privately with key decision makers over accessibility and ask for the real reasons accessibility goals are not being met.

Over this time I have found it comes down to a 4 types of key personas or gatekeepers if you will, these are their response: (ed – please note I’m not going to publish here all the comments I quoted in this section during the talk)

Tran – The Web Agency Developer

Either we do the correction or the client’s inhouse team does it, at the end of the day a solution has to be found, often its remove the function or content that is the final fix.
Accessibility is just one aspect of my Job
I just code; accessibility is the clients issue now
The CMS stops me from making accessible web sites
We can’t implement the right accessibility due to our.
Why isn’t accessibility an issue at developer conferences and on developer blogs if it is important.

Joanne – The Web Agency Project Manager

Resources are an issue – getting people that really understand accessibility with other good development and design skills is hard
The National Transition Strategy is just a pain, but it’s also a good instant money maker
If it's not in the budget/scope it doesn’t happen!
The project is already underway (when commenting on inclusive design)
If the client doesn't ask, we don't tell, don't involve, let it ride. After all we can charge more later on if it becomes a requirement
WCAG 2 is just too hard to understand, at least WCAG1 had a simple checklist
Accessibility is just bullshit, all this work for less than 1% of our audience, I can understand doing this usability stuff but anything else is just not in scope.
If we don't have the inhouse skill, we often just fudge it. Like who is going to check.

Nik – The Business Owner / Director

Accessibility is just a game of he said – she said, its open to option. We trust our in house developers over the external consultants.
I'm sympathetic, but this is business, we can't afford to have any of the accessibility stuff.
We CAN afford to discount and forget out the disabled community.
On ageing population: Baby Boomers are running out of cash anyway, so they are a dead end.
Show me a real study on the return on investment for a web site with accessibility improvements alone.

Peter – Govt Directors / CEOs / IT Managers

We are only doing this WCAG/NTS stuff over sufferance; even then we know we are not going to be challenged.
All we have to do is appear to complete the paperwork.
I don’t think this accessibility applies to us, if it does it’s just public facing sites.
No one is disabled here; if they were we would just redeploy them.

So now we have all these viewpoints of the gatekeepers. Now I'm sure you have heard them before, time and time again.

Sure there are some solutions around, you can put in a policy, mentors, decentralise, do audits, train people. These are great if you have lots of resources and a big budget. Sadly that is not a world I believe we all live in.

Now the Australian Web Awards has pointed towards a degree of industry disengagement. The question is the cause just the usual issues, or is there something more.

No Solutions Here

Do I have a solution to all this.

No not really. Maybe you have one. That’s what we are here to discuss.

One thing I do have is a direction we may have missed.

Now I was talking about the issue of accessibility with an award winner at the Australian Web Awards a few weeks back. He gave me a possible solution.

Remember Web Standards

Remember years back….

When there was a push for web standards, at least every conference had 2-3 people talking on web standards. There were books and articles all over the place on web standards. There were how to do guides, bug squashing sites, code libraries, how to implement guides and so on .

It was a wonderland of knowledge,

It was this free and cheap resource based that was the core to helping evangelise web standards

This allowed developers to easily setup and take up web standards.

It even allowed those usually closeted developers, who don’t read blogs or attending conference. The ones locked away in the back rooms in cubical hell. Yes even they came on board with web standards.

It also allowed educators to understand web standards (to some degree)

Where did Accessibility Go?

But what happened to accessibility along the way.

It’s like Accessibility and Web Standards were brother and sister, happy always together.

Friends forever - until Web Standards became the popular one, the queen of the ball. After all she was the one “everyone” was talking about.

The brother “Accessibility” seemed, a little lost, unsure on what really just happened! Time after time people only wanted to speak with his sister “Web Standards”

We need to bring them back together so they are working with each other and not against one another. Working groups take note.

But still you know “’Accessibility” he doesn’t really trust his Web Standards sister after all she has all this glitz and glam with html5 and css3, very sexy!

He just has WCAG2…. Sorry it’s a little boring!

Issues Blocking the Path

But it’s not that simple, there are 4 issues that seem to be blocking the path ahead.

False Hope and Stepping Up

I have seen this cycle a few times now – every few years a leading accessibility developer will commit to helping the community – to giving it back.

This is great. I usually cheer! It’s a time of celebration. It’s always great to have someone that is very talented giving it back to the community.

However 12 months later, upon review, I usually find nothing has happened, and it was all hype.

Now I have nothing against the developers concerned.

I can understand completely what has occurred.

This is sad catch 22.

Usually we find, as an industry, we can't afford to put that new found knowledge on the improvement of accessibility out to the community. It all comes down to dollars and cents.

If you are making a living of this IP, then really you can't share it. I really get that, I have been in the same boat.

Or maybe you can share the IP. There certainly are business models that allow you to give away the baby and sell the bath water.

With this in mind we really need to get more people talking about accessibility, just like we did with web standards.

In any community there is about 5% of the population, at best, that will engage in a cause, and about 1% that who will evangelise it. Accessibility is no different.

So maybe we need to stop relying on the top experts to provide the solutions to our problems.

To be honest these experts don't have the answers to this problem that they can share anyway.

But you and your colleagues do.

We have the resources - Jacqui talked about that this morning.

There is a limit to how much we can do as well. We all have to remember that. So let's be realistic on the free time we all have.

However if we all just blogged, discussed, presented about some issue every now and again maybe we could inspire one developer to write more accessible code.

It would make a difference.

So I ask you what have you done to help accessibility along in the last 6 months, 12 months, 18 months…. Feeling guilty, good, do something about it!

The CMS Issue.

Have you even had a good look at the Content Management Systems (CMS) that and being sold by most web agencies.

They come in three flavours – Open Source, Off the shelf or the Bespoke – roll your own versions.

Now I haven't looked at all of them on the market, after all there are 100′s of them, but have worked with a good number of them. They aren’t that accessible. Now what hope does anyone have if the base application you are using to produce an accessible web site isn’t following the recommended standards.

Sure with most CMS you can tweak the front end templates and sometimes you get lucky and you can make a site more accessible.

However accessibility is more than the front end of the site.

Have you looked beyond the login prompt to the admin control panels of these CMS.

Almost none of them are WCAG compliant, let alone even looking at ATAG.

Now that’s another hobbyhorse of mine, talk to me later about that one.

We need to get the developers of these applications to understand the accessibility issues.

We need to have them make that empathic link with the disabled – to engage them.

This going to be hard – these are usually the developers that are even further away from the mainstream of the web industry.

I know that some developers, for instance in the Java community are just getting to grips with JavaScript. And have only just discovered about web standards. Now I don’t consider myself to be on the bleeding edge, but really wasn’t that 10 years back. Hello 2001 calling.

At that rate it’s going to take us another 8 years to get WCAG 2 into these peoples mindset. Think about it can we afford to wait.

I sometimes get the feeling that some of these developer are just living in the backwoods with a banjos playing. Nice people, just old habits.

When was the last time you heard of someone talking about accessibility or the hard-core accessibility fixes at a developer conference.

Not a generalist conference, but a hard-core developer conference. You don’t. Accessibility is off the agenda. Why?

Somehow we need to make a case for these CMS developers and firms to come into this century

A good deal of the issue is the code base, which can be from 10 to 15 years old.

This brings a degree of legacy for CMS compliance to WCAG or ATAG.

Mostly for these systems it’s a complete interface rewrite, not something that is undertaken likely.

Now I know there are some in house systems that are still written in Perl. I can understand the developer’s pain.

Same old issue, limited audience, limited resource, no one asks, why bother.

Vendors are not to Blame.

But it’d not all the vendors fault.

My associates in “web agency” land tell me that it’s very rarely that a client will enforce WCAG2 requirements in a contract. There is a tendency, for the sake of future relations to side step the issue.

So when was the last time you pulled up a vendor on a core CMS accessibility issue?

Do you have a checklist to help an agency understand WCAG 2 requirements?

Do you enforce them, to the level of stopping the project?

It’s amazing I have seen large projects roll forward instead of folding over accessibility issues that were clearly a vendor’s issue, and should have been fixed during implementation.

Now from a vendors view having the first to market ATAG compliance CMS must be worth something – one would hope.

Watch this space, things are afoot here. There is hope. Maybe next year I will have news I can share.

Education is a Factor

This lack of engagement also comes from the way we are training our graduates. Often when a graduate enters in to “web agency” land they have no or a very limited knowledge of accessibility

Have a look around at the courses offered by Universities and TAFE sector, how many of them offer a unit in accessibility, there is ONE. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

I know some lecturers do go out or their way to drum in accessibility, spending at least 3-4 weeks on it.

These guys are my Heroes.

Sadly the norm still seems to be one lecture, if that, on accessibility. Not a lot you can cover in 45 minutes for the entire scope of accessibility.

I wonder sometimes, do the lecturers know that WCAG exists, the University might, but do they, and if they do why are they teaching it old school and not inclusively?

It would help if students were exposed to impairment simulator kit, Zimmermans vision kit, the full ageing simulation suit (Nasco or Gert), or at least use a vision or hearing simulator (eg the one from Cambridge University).

Now I know these aren’t perfect, but they do at least give a perception of the issues at hand and can help a person start on the road to a level of empathic understanding or the disability.

One more Problem, the other Gatekeeper

But even if we get all this right, spreading the word, the perfect CMS, the right education. It just goes like clockwork.

It’s still going to fail – why?

Really it’s very simple, we are not longer in control of the web site.

Yes, that's right. We don’t

Front Row Conference 2011 — Day 1 Presentations

Thu, 20 Oct 2011 17:25 GMT

My summary of presentations from the 1st day of Front Row 2011 in Krakow - sessions from Patrick H. Lauke, Christian Heilmann and others. Continue reading →

Posted from kay lives here

Front Row Conference 2011 — Day 1 Presentations

Taking Stock of Volunteer Contributions

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 21:45 GMT

The other day I added up the time I spend on volunteer work, you know, contributing back to the community and the like.

I used to see this as just an hour here, and hour there, no big deal. I just consider it to be part of what I do.

However when I added it all up and came up with a yearly average. It was a bit of a shock.

The amount of time I spend volunteering is a little over an hour for every workday. It's around 240 hours annually.

Now that doesn't seem that bad, until I put a dollar figure on this, in terms of lost income. Now for me that's a considerable slice of my time and money.

Makes you think if this volunteering is a good thing or not.

The upside.

Volunteering has a great number of benefits, not the least of which is that you are supporting the community and providing a service that often would never happen without your effort.

One of the major benefits is the connections and people you meet. Often this networking opportunity would take a lot longer to achieve, but volunteering will often shortcut the process. However you have to be willing to take advantage of the opportunity or the new contacts will be lost over time.

When times are good volunteering your time isn't really an issue, it seems freely available.

For me this good time is when I don't have to spend a lot of time looking for the next contract or slice of work to fill the next week or so. Things just seem to flow, there is nearly no stress and everything just appears to just happen. Most of this comes from constantly networking.

You just don't even think about your time volunteering. The time is not seen as being wasted or lost, volunteering just becomes just part of the work/life process.

The downside.

However this can all fall apart. When the times aren't so good you need to focus on other aspects of your life from family, to business. Those extra hours that you try and find for volunteering often just aren't there. So you end up stealing time, usually from your family, this is not good.

I speak from experience here. Over the last year, sadly I have personally dropped the ball several times with volunteering.

Mostly it came down to doing volunteer work or putting bread on the table. You can guess the latter won. Still one does feel guilty over this. I can't but thank the fellow volunteers who picked up my slack.

Still with many work prospects not as perfect as they used to be, one does consider if it isn't time to focus on my core personal needs.

Just think and say thanks.

So next time you are at an event or organisation run by volunteers.

Just stop for a moment, think if they were not here. This all would not have existed and you are in fact piggy backing on the charitable work of these volunteers. It's no good taking the attitude of “oh well someone else well do it” – because you know they wouldn't have.

Just stop, say thanks to the volunteers let them know that you appreciate what they are doing for you and the community.

Also don't assume they are getting any real benefits from their work, as more often than not they are loosing out on the time front.

Where does the money come from?

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 10:57 GMT

Inquiring minds demand to know: how exactly does one semi-retire at 34? Here's how I manage to keep myself in geek toys and piña coladas without selling my soul to the man. Continue reading →

Posted from kay lives here

Where does the money come from?

The Rise of the UX Developer

Sat, 15 Oct 2011 23:24 GMT

As with any young industry we tend to endlessly debate the labels we should be placing on the User Experience based roles that we are conducting.

Along with this debate on the labels, we seem to be now in a blame game on who really is responsible as an industry (which I had no idea we where) for the on going career development of junior, mid level and senior UX people. Maybe better to just fix it folks.

As these elements of navel gazing have been going on quietly in the background the game has been changing. Maybe For the better.

With any new discipline, well new to the main stream, it will influence other roles as elements of its workflow and techniques become widely known.

Over the last three or so years I have been noticing that there has been a dramatic tendency to move away from the UX professional to favouring o role more like that of a senior developer or BA with UX skills.

Let's call them a UX developer.

It's not all that bad.

Now I know a lot of you will be a gast at this. But just think for a moment.

To often as UX professionals we are asked to do the impossible, to be the super UX hero and save the day.

You know the scenario well. You get a phone call asking for help with a project that is in its final stages. All they need is a little UX magic to make the project shine. Familiar?

Now you know it's way to late in the project for you to have any major influence on any of the underlying flaws in the UX. But you take the gig anyway.

You do it in the vain hope that you can at least make a little difference and hopefully the project management will learn that the time to get the UX professional involved is at day one, not before launch.

You do the best you can, but you know it's not going to be good enough.

The watching, learning, mentoring.

Now the senior developer or BA watches and learns from you, maybe you inspire them to go and do a little professional development on UX. Overall they pick up a few core UX skills. Which is good.

On the next project these forward thinking devs or BA start to apply these learnt skills early in the process, so at least in part there is some element of UCD with a UX component considered. Which again is good.

After all they are already a part of team framework – project manager, BA, dev. With someone in this team championing the UX component there is no need to inject a UX consultant into the mix, who is just going to disrupt things anyway.

Now from a project management view the injection of the UX professional just didn't work out that well anyway. At least now the team internally now has the UX skills to move forward.

Dev's control the game anyway.

Yes the UX developer does have at Cooper puts it “skin in the game”. Yes they are concerned with optionisation of the system, to focus on the best business outcome.

However the UX consultant isn't the only one that can deliver a non biased view that supports the user cases. A good BA or UX developer can wear this hat as well. They can be objective they can change hats mid stream.

I have seen this more and more with recent projects.

Afterall we as UX professionals don't control the projects, the devs do. Now maybe we should be training and mentoring developers in the UX cause not designers. Which is opposed somewhat to what Nat Boehm has to say.

So overtime maybe the UX consultant will be as dead as the webmaster, a thing of the past.

In the future maybe consideration of the UX will be just a mainstream inclusive activity of the development team.

Unveiling Kay Lives Here v3

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 18:23 GMT

After far too long, I've migrated this blog to a WordPress-friendly hosting account, with a new HTML5-powered responsive design. Continue reading →

Posted from kay lives here

Unveiling Kay Lives Here v3

Things are not Dead Here

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 23:08 GMT

You may have noticed that the output from this blog has slowed over the last ten or so months from at least a post a week to if you're lucky one post a month. Sorry about that.

I can't really put my finger on why my blogging output has decreased.

I still like writing, I mayn't be any good at it, but I do enjoy the process. Writing in this type of format is liberating and can be very creative. Very different from corporate report speak of business .

Still there must be some reasons for this decrease in output:

Increased Workload

Yes it does sometimes get busy, especially on the home (non business) front. Still even business wise I have crazy periods and slow ones. Sometimes for the first time in ages it's been at a complete dead stop. So I don't think it's an overload of work. I always seem to have the capacity for more.

Less Quiet Time to Reflect

The lack of time to stop reflect, to have that down time or moments between, may be a contributing factor. Often during these times I will mentally formulate and draft design ideas and posts. So this reduction of this time would be a factor.

Volunteer Work

The other day I worked out how much time I dedicate to general volunteer work. From organisating two meetups, mentoring people, the occasional presentation and organising the Australian Web Awards. This does take up a lot of time. Often leaving me will little personal time. It's this personal time I used for blogging.

Lack of Ideas for Articles

Well not really. I have at least three to four ideas for posts every day, most I forget to document, especially when I haven't had the time to act on them.

Twitter

Well my twitter and other social media output has dropped as well. So that's not it.

Overall

So it comes down to time and lack of it – doesn't it always. Seems I'm filling my life too much with volunteer work for others and not enough for me.

Now to do something about that.

Managing multiple WordPress installs

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 02:00 GMT

Once you move beyond one or two WordPress-powered sites, keeping them up to date becomes a pain. 5-10 minutes per week quickly escalates into time that's better spent elsewhere. Fortunately, there are options to make your life easier. Continue reading →

Posted from kay lives here

Managing multiple WordPress installs

Do you feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 15:02 GMT

We sold our house and business and moved to another country and now I don't have to work anymore. But if one more person calls me "lucky" I'm gonna go postal. Continue reading →

Posted from kay lives here

Do you feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?

Geek lust: 10″ Samsung Galaxy Tablet

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 15:51 GMT

Not many things make me happier than new toys. My newest acquisition: a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 - the current "Rolls Royce" of Android tablets. Continue reading →

Posted from kay lives here

Geek lust: 10″ Samsung Galaxy Tablet

Endings and beginnings

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 15:02 GMT

This blog has an identity crisis. In the beginning, way back in 2003, it was started as a ColdFusion-focused web development blog. But now - well, now it's something quite different entirely. Continue reading →

Posted from kay lives here

Endings and beginnings

Bad Interfaces – Technology Leading the Way

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 00:28 GMT

I don't mind completing surveys, I even do those phone surveys. Having working with several different marketing teams and conducted countless UX information gathering surveys over the years. I can understand the difficulties of getting a good response from people. So I don't mind taking the time to complete the odd survey.

Still I have to wonder sometimes if the teams behind the surveys are really understanding their audience that is completing the survey in the first place.

A few weeks back our fence was blown over in a storm. We put in an insurance claim, it was processed, and we got the fence repaired. No issue, good service all round.

Then I get an email request to complete a customer satisfaction survey from my insurance company.

What is Dissatisfied

The survey seems very standard. Besides being inaccessible in parts if you only use a keyboard.

All was good until we (partner and I) complete a question that asked us to rate the service from 1-10 (10 being outstanding). We gave them a 7. The survey responds asking why we were dissatisfied. We weren't. We just rated 7/10. Not perfect, but not dissatisfied by our ranking. But the survey consider the rating of 7/10 as dissatisfied as it changed the questioning to suit.

This assumption, that if it's not a 9 or 10 then the customer must be displeased, doesn't in anyway take into account the personalised rating scale of the customer. We may never give a score of 10 or 1. We could be very happy with a score of 7/10, as we were.

Lesson to be learnt here is that you can't assume that a 7/10 or even 6/1o indicates a negative emotion or dissatisfaction from the customer. This type of survey gleans towards a negative bias or an over inflated towards the extreme positive.

Now that was a minor issue compared to the next one.

Doing the Likert Scale

The presentation of a Likert scale question is never easy. A UX professionals we are always looking for a new way to present a question or interface without promoting any bias.

However when we were presented with the following question. We both starred at the screen for a good minute before we could jointly work out what was required.

Alternative likert question layout in feedback survey

What you are meant to do, and it took us a few goes to work this out, is drag the card (on the left) to the response boxes (on the right) and drop them there. They then appear as a box with text in within the response area.

There are a number of issue with this interaction:

It's very different to the traditional layout, it was completely outside what we were expecting.
Initially you can read the page question as “How would you rate your experience in terms of:” Answer – “Extremely, Very, Reasonably…”
You may ignore the small help text “Please drag each item to a category”
You may ignore that card completely
There is no indication as to what an “item is” or what a ”category is”, they mean the card or questions and the possible answers (on the right).
The process of reviewing or moving categories isn't as smooth as it could be.
There is bias to dragging the cards (items) to the responses (categories) at the top of the page.
It's only usable with a pointing device.
I just don't even want to think about the accessibility of this.
I still don't know what the “+” buttons on the responses do.

Yes it's fine when you workout what to do. But most people aren't they concerned about the survey and are likely to leave if the question layout breaks a mental model.

Overall it just seems to be a fancy “cool” javascript insert, that frankly should have been killed off or tweaked to make it usable.

This is a classic example of a new interaction technique not being the best delivery method. Sometimes the cool tech is just not the best way.

Now the concept is still valid, but it just needs a little more refinement, and maybe a little proper user testing and it would be an innovative interface.

Still sometimes I do wonder if these insurance firms employ anyone to consider the user experience of their customers.

Alfred As an Application Switcher

Thu, 18 Aug 2011 17:00 GMT

Ever since OS X Lion, the number of spaces that I spawn has skyrocketed. As a result, I've found myself using Alfred more and more as an application switcher. I could be coding in a full-screened Vim session and need to refer to an email. Vim is in space #4 while Sparrow, my email client, is in space #1. I just need to invoke Alfred (cmd-space), type “sp”, and hit enter. I'm instantly teleported to the right space and Sparrow is made the foremost window. A keyboard driven workflow full of win. It doesn't matter if I forget what space Sparrow is in, or whether the application window is minimised. Alfred the butler will serve me Sparrow on a platter.

How about the built in application switcher, the good old cmd-tab? I find that I only tend to use cmd-tab when I want to switch back to the previous application. Anything beyond that feels like too much work. It's cmd-tab, tab, tab, tab – damn I overshot. Backtick. OK, finally there. Cmd-tab is serial access. Alfred is random access. With Alfred, MacVim is “vi”, Xcode is “xc”.

Alfred appeals to the Vim user in me. In Vim, I routinely hit / to invoke search to jump around code. Alfred is the / of my window management.

Our CalorieKing App Was Released Today

Mon, 15 Aug 2011 07:19 GMT

Our CalorieKing iPhone app went live today. It's the first iOS project that I've been involved in. After spending the last few months in Xcode, I'm pretty happy to see it on the app store :)

The Art of Experiential Scoping

Mon, 15 Aug 2011 07:17 GMT

1. Relies on extensive knowledge of
a. issues,
b. successes,
c. potential improvements,
d. known failures,
e. needs of stakeholders (business and users)
f. business process and
g. business goals.

2. Is not a formal process, but happens organically over extended periods.
3. allows for best-guess but not necessarily bullet-proof solutions to be developed.
4. is agile, and ongoing.
5. Requires the ability to ask
a. Why?
b. What are we aiming for
c. What did we achieve?
d. How or why did we fail?
e. How can we improve?
6. Probably happens way more often than you are aware of
7. Needs you to pay attention to (and document!) the sign posts along the way." class="alignleft" />I've had much to reflect on since the Edge of the Web a couple of weeks ago. One thing I've been reflecting on a lot is my professional practise and how I go about “wearing so many hats”, most of which are not implied in my role title of “website officer”. When you're actually doing your job every day, sometimes it's hard to step away and see things from outside. EOTW was a great chance for me to talk through some professional challenges, and see if I could find ways to improve on what I did.

As I was discussing about the process we'd just been through at work, I began to realise that what had occurred was not exactly common (short version: we had to re-build from the ground up our website, content and all, in a little over a month; more on that another time). While I wouldn't ever advocate for that compressed development process, in some situations (or organisations) it's difficult to avoid. This is where the practise of experiential scoping becomes an incredibly useful tool.

Experiential scoping is an organic ongoing information-gathering process which supports continuous improvement. It requires the professional to

be pro-active in engaging with people who are, can or should be involved with a site.
be willing to educate others, but also to listen and learn from those involved.
take time to reflect on these conversations and lessons learned from stakeholders,
be able to analyse and provide potential resolution for deeper issues.
ensure that the feedback is documented regardless of outcome (ie whether the feedback results in a change).

I can already hear the question: “but isn’t this what you do in a website development process anyway?” Well, the short answer is “Yes”. The difference lies in how and when you go about the scoping process.

My theory is that experiential scoping is most likely to be used by in-house staff, or by those on extended contracts, or who regularly contract to particular industries. There are exceptions, but for most freelancers and consultants, their involvement begins after a formal decision has been made to (re)develop a site, then the information gathering process begins, and there are formal project timelines to be met. There's not usually a whole lot of leeway for organic knowledge gathering and information exchange.

In experiential scoping, it’s done over an extended period, most likely by someone(s) in-house, and is a much less formal process. Instead, it’s focussed on information gathering and analysis when there is no pressure to meet a deadline, and is unlikely to ever actually be referred to (and probably not even thought of) as “scoping”. By doing information gathering over a longer period, the professional gains a more solid understanding of the business objectives and user needs they’re trying to support. In addition, the opportunity to have several conversations over several weeks or months minimises the risks of things being overlooked because they weren’t mentioned at a particular meeting. It also has the benefit that information is able to be transferred both ways: the client educates the practitioner, and the practitioner is able to educate the client. The relationships and trust that can be built up over this period is also often of mutual benefit: the practitioner gains an insight into the strengths of particular teams or individuals, and can also identify who may struggle to translate their “real-world” objectives to web media.

For this to work, a couple of things need to happen: Firstly, the professional needs to actively be reaching out to others who have (or should have) an interest in the site. Talk with them about what works, and what doesn’t and ask for suggestions for improvement. There’s no need to assess the merits of these suggestions, or to promise to implement them. As the feedback comes in, flag it in your email, add it to your notebook, photograph the whiteboard on your phone, or however else you're capturing that information.

The second part is to make sure all of this information is collated, and then do some analysis. Ideally, take a couple of days each month (not necessarily all at once!) and *document* the sites you’re looking after. (I like the old fashioned pen and paper or whiteboard, but I will probably end up using the intranet blog or wiki to keep it in one place so that others can contribute or at least keep up with where the sites are at.)

The process I use is to document, analyse, and identify:

current status
major changes
minor changes that make things better
things that are about to be implemented (are in development)
things that don't quite work
things that work well
things that fail dismally
any business need that is currently unaddressed
any user needs which are currently not addressed
easy wins
med-long term goals

and how all of these things contribute to the over-all business objectives, user needs and the aim of providing continuous improvement.

As part of this ongoing process, collate the feedback received, and identify whether the comments and suggestions are on the to-do, done, or unlikely lists for the foreseeable future.

A nice side effect of this process is that you get to see progress on a site that is in production but in maintenance rather than actively being developed, and identify areas for improvement.

This approach has worked well for me in the context of my organisation. In the next post, I’ll write about my experiences with experiential scoping, and how it can be an invaluable tool in the web practitioner’s tool box.

The Core UX Reading List

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 08:13 GMT

I get asked this a lot. “What are the best UX books to read?”

In true UX tradition my answer is depends.

It depends on your experience as a UX practitioner, your experience with scientific research methods, psychology, interaction design, user interface design, product or visual design and your level of communication skills.

Still having a list of starter books would be handy.

Yeah sure others have their lists from the likes of Will Evans, Paul Seys and Nick Finck however some of the books on these are either too complex (for someone new to UX) or take way to long to get to the point. Bit like this post.

So here is a list of books I would pick as the must read UX books.

So what are your killer must have UX books, I'm sure they are few that are different to the list above.

Ethics in the Web Industry

Sun, 31 Jul 2011 06:19 GMT

Services, Sites & Snakeoil

Last Friday, I had the honour to speak at Western Australia's premier web conference, Edge of the Web.

My talk, titled ‘Services, SItes & Snakeoil' was a 45 minute run down on the state of the web industry, examples of possibly unsavory behavior amongst the industry, and suggested actions to put into place to encourage better ethical decisions in the future.

I also handed out paper, and requested people jot down some of their own thoughts, which I'll be sharing here in the near future. Right near the end of the talk, I dropped mention of the wiki environment that a bunch of us have started, in order to work through the concept of a ‘Code of Conduct' or some-such. I'd love to see you join us there, at www.webindustrycode.org

Please enjoy the presentation above, and if you like it, share it with your colleagues. Thanks to Matt Didcoe, Ashul Shah, Helen Burgess and the tram at Partner and Prosper for the great conference – it really was a fantastic event.

Feedback on my talk, or the slides above? Hit me up in the comments.

The Mobile Web is Not Going Away

Sat, 09 Jul 2011 21:54 GMT

I was killing time waiting, doing the Dad's Taxi thing. While I waited, I was catching up on Twitter, on my phone, plus reading the various articles from my stream.

You know what is becoming a real pain point. Non responsive designed web sites. The ones that don't scale well on mobile devices, sadly they are still the norm.

Especially news and information sites.

Why is it the information on these sites being the major selling point and yet it seems to be very hard to access on a mobile device. it's not like mobile is new.

It's got to the point when I follow a link to one of these sites and it becomes to hard to read I just abandon the article.

Change is Required

Now in the early days of the mobile web, a few years back, I would put up with this.

Sure I could get reasonable rendering of a page. But you know its just too small to read effectively.

So you zoom in and play the silly game of rescale the page just right so you can see the content area filling the screen. Being careful not to touch those damn banner ads.

Well I'm sick of this!

I just want to get on the site read the information and go. Not spend half my time realigning the page so I can start reading the site. How hard can it be, we have the technology.

After all I'm the one in control here. If your site is just making to too hard to read on a mobile then why should I bothered staying.

Interconnectivity is the Key, not the app

The key here is being able to interconnect and link information sources in a way than I can browse a stream of information, conversation and the like that I am interested in and can read with ease.

Not articles that has been selected by some marketing focused editor on some mobile app.

Just like the social network is about me. So the information sources on the web need to be about me.

Yet people are in love with apps. They are the savior of the universe, or so we are being told. This has refocused media outlets to the mobile app space, instead of first looking at their web sites.

Present the only way to truly interconnect information is via the humble hyper link, the backbone of the web, with a little RSS thrown in for good measure. Not a handful of mobile apps.

Mobile Apps just fail in this area as you can't really, at present, link information sources between them. Unless they act as an aggregator like FlipBoard.

Given this wouldn't the web be a better delivery medium for information sites than the silo of an app.

I Want My Web, My Way, Now.

There you go media, news and information sites you are on notice.

Your apps are a waste of time, they are just dead silos of information. They are not an excuse to not format your web sites for the mobile web.

You need to go back and stop playing in the app sandbox and get into the wilds and fix your web sites, make them usable, readable on my mobile device.

Or I'm just going to look elsewhere.

I do wonder how the mainstream deals with this issue.

Why Use PDF over HTML

Mon, 30 May 2011 04:03 GMT

As a web professional and an avocate for inclusive design (web accessibility) I have often wondered why organisations are so obsessed with using PDF documents on web sites as opposed to HTML based documents.

After all PDF documents don't do accessibility as well as HTML pages do.

Given the ease of use of most modern CMS you would consider web page creation and editing would be as easy as authoring a word document.

Now I have a good idea why my clients use PDFs over HTML, especially government agencies, but I don't have the community wide picture.

So I asked Twitter – “Why do you use PDF over HTML?”

I got a bit of a response. Now this survey and its (200) responses aren't that scientific, they are multiple tiered and are as expected, full of statistical analysis holes. Still the results do give us a glimpse as to why people use PDFs.

Now there is no primary reason as to why, but more a mesh of several supporting rationals. They are in order of preference:

Preserving the Print Format

The requirement to have the onscreen visuals appear the same as the print version was clearly the leading reason. Out stripping others by two to one.

This is really understandable when you are dealing with documents having a complex print layout. It seems CSS print styles just don't cut it. To the point that sometimes having a different style layout for print, for a web page, can be a bit of negative user experience (however that's another topic).

Documents that have been through a visual design process of a print production team seem prone to this requirement. Yes the content is the primary focus here, but sometimes the way it's presented can be just as important in communicating the message.
Encapsulated Format

Being able to save and transfer a document across platforms was important as well.

People are looking for a medium that doesn't require complex software, that will maintain the layout, images, typeface and all the content as one encapsulated package.

Try saving a web page for use later, it just fails in so many ways, and a MS-Word document – well that needs MS-Office for the most part.

PDF is the only one left standing as an encapsulated package, it's also cheap to read and produce as well. Issue is it's not that portable in reality – take the issues displaying or saving a PDF viewed on the web using a mobile device.
Easier to Publish

Easy of publication is another core reason. To creative a PDF is often just a simple process of saving a document.

This is easy and within an existing business workflow. So it's understandable that it appeals to the vast majority of people.

To publish it to a web site you just create the link in the CMS, and upload the document. Set and forget, no need to worry about the layout working or not.

Contrast this with the list of issues using a CMS editor to create a web page.

You usually create the document in MS-Word and have to cut and paste it into the CMS editor, this causes layout issues. Or you have to use some weird keyboard/process gymnastics to get the layout reproduced right or worse have all the formatting disappear and have to reapply the lot.

Then you have to put the images in separately, scaled down for the web, and allow for those accessibility tags. After all this there still maybe layout issues with the page design. It's just a nightmare.

Clearly the web publishing process has a long way to go. Maybe this is an area some of my fellow UX colleagues could look into?
Existing Hardcopy Documents

Duplication of existing hardcopy documents is also another core reason.

When you have an existing hardcopy document, you really are only duplicating the distribution and availability of the document to a web medium. You are just presenting the document to a wider audience that those that can collect it from your offices.

The use of PDF with its layout preservation and encapsulated package is the perfect solution for hardcopy duplication.

In this case people also stated that they tended to only used PDF for duplication exisiting hardcopy documents.
Other Reasons

The following are minor reasons people stated for use of PDF documents over web pages.
- Duplicate HTML Content
  
  A low percentage of people indicated they presented everything as web pages, but also allowed for user driven server side generation of PDF documents as required. Or they just duplicated all the static PDF information available as web pages. Use of both formats was equally weighted in this case.
- Providing More Detail
  
  Others, using the semantic structure of the web, presented summary information on topics at the high level of a site as web pages moving down to specific summaries on mid level web pages and PDFs as the final low level detailed pages. This is a very typical government model of information communication.
  
  I suspect while this may not be prefect, it harks back to having a secondary reasoning for the ease of publication of the detailed information.
- Interactive Forms
  
  Despite Adobe pushing PDF forms only a very small number of people even referenced using PDF forms. Sure normal hardcopy form duplication was mentioned. But the use of interactive PDF forms was left to a minority.
- Low Usage Document
  
  Just like the use of PDFs for detail pages, documents with a low usage also where seen as more cost effective delivered as PDFs.
- Web pages not a formal document
  
  This was a very interesting comment.
  
  It seems that the very volatile nature of the web page doesn't make it a highly considered paper replacement.
  
  Where as PDF's, which are just as volatile, maybe because they come from a process close to the formal document are seen as more formal, stable.
  
  Interesting perception.
- DRM / Security
  
  Contray to what publishers and the legal department may tell you; the use of PDFs to enforce DRM or any type of security is very low on the reasons to use PDFs. In fact I would presume the usage of security features of PDF documents is generally low . Which in a way is a good thing – accessibility wise.

This rounds off the reasons to use PDFs over web pages for content delivery. Still I hope that this continued PDF madness does ease up a little.

However I fear we will not be seeing this real soon, until web publication and print styles become as easy and effective as PDFs.

Control that Inbox!

Wed, 04 May 2011 23:43 GMT

Does it feel like email is controlling your life? Find yourself checking your email every 10 minutes during your waking hours? We all lead busy lives, and with increased pressure on productivity, we're all looking at ways to save time. If you're like me, you probably receive more than your fair share of email — I receive more than 100 emails a day on average — so how do you cope with increasing email loads?

I have a simple system that has worked for some time, and I'd like to share it. Basically, I tend to use my inbox as an email task list, with the majority of my day-to-day activities found here. I check my email every hour or so, depending on my schedule. I read new emails, then sort through older ones that still remain in my inbox.

“The five Ds” is what I call my approach. As I traverse my inbox, I complete one of five actions with every email:

Do
If the email requires a response or an action, and it will take me less than a minute or two, I'll do it straight away. Otherwise, I leave it in the inbox for a second perusal.

Delegate
Many of the emails I receive are related to tasks that my business is undertaking. If the email can be handled by a team member closer to the project or topic at hand, I'll delegate the response to that person.

Defer
If the action or response is going to take longer than the time I have right now, I'll defer processing it and leave it in my inbox for later. Typically I set aside at least 20-30 minutes per day for those larger responses or tasks.

Drop
If I've dealt with the email or there's no further action required other than me reading it, I'll drop it into the appropriate subfolder. I typically keep my folder structure minimalist, with just about all email ending up in my “year” folder — for example, “2009″ for this year's emails. That way, your inbox is compact and tidy.

Delete
If the email is spam or holds no future value for archiving, I'll delete it. I do hoard emails though; the many gigabytes of email I've sent and received over the last decade — and still have — proves this. I tend to keep all emails relating to projects or clients indefinitely.

If you're nodding your head and thinking, “That sounds a lot like Dave Allen's Getting Things Done system,” you'd be correct. I haven't read the book personally, and the approach is my own, but if you're interested in learning getting, I've heard it's a worthwhile read.

If you find that you treat your inbox like a task list, I'd encourage you to trial this method. Let me know what you think.

This post first appeared as part of Issue 450 of the SitePoint Tribune, a very popular email newsletter that I am co-editor of. Thanks to SitePoint for allowing me to reproduce the work here.

Do You Have Five Minutes?

Fri, 29 Apr 2011 21:41 GMT

You've started tracking your time, and are increasingly aware of the amount of five minute freebies you are currently giving away in support requests and tiny content fixes.

What you need is a way to keep the administration of invoicing those small blocks of time to a minimum — for you, and the person receiving the invoice at your client's end.

A few years ago, we embraced the idea of prepaid block hours. These have been a savior for us, and we've managed to claw back many of the minutes and hours we previously wiped off.

To make things even sweeter for our clients, we offer a discount rate to those who prepay their time, and then we charge those 10 minute fixes to these blocks. At the end of the prepaid block, we send a detailed time sheet for the work we did.

We offer a small discount on our five-hour block, then increase it according to the size of the block; we also have 10-hour, 20-hour, and 50-hour plans. We've allowed clients to choose which plan they want and then pay for it up-front, saving everyone the pain of multiple invoices for tiny amounts.

Now, when we're asked by a client to spend 15 minutes tweaking some content, we simply charge it to this block and then send a report at the end.

Try it out; your clients and, importantly, your bank balance will appreciate the move!

This post first appeared as part of Issue 446 of the SitePoint Tribune, a very popular email newsletter that I am co-editor of. Thanks to SitePoint for allowing me to reproduce the work here.

The Best Kept Secret

Wed, 27 Apr 2011 06:39 GMT

A common complaint when speaking to managers of web teams, is the often large disconnect between being busy, and the goal of all business, being profitable.

I had the same dilemma years ago. We'd start on projects, feel like we're doing the hours expected and a few small jobs in between — but we never seemed to make the money we'd calculated.

Where was the profit going? The answer — and one of the best kept secrets — is time. Without an indication of how long it actually took to complete a job, you'll be unaware if you charged enough for the current job. And when a similar job comes long, you risk underquoting the work, if that's what has happened.

The first golden rule here is track time on large projects.

Secondly, we're all bombarded every week with those small “it should only take 15 minutes” jobs. Five of those, and we're talking about an hour and a quarter a week, perhaps more. How are you tracking those? Gut feel? Stop it!

So you can see why I say that the second golden rule here is track time on the smaller tasks as well.

Ideally, every member of your team (or you, if you're a freelancer) should clock every minute of the day into a system which allows you to quickly grab some useful details:

How many hours spent on this project this week?
How many hours available for this project before reaching budget?
How many interruptions this week, and what did they cost in time?
How long do those frequently repeated tasks actually take to do?
Once you've recorded weeks and months worth of this data, it allows you to accurately predict how similar tasks and projects will take in the future. You may now know that it takes four hours to build a widget. Instead of quoting that “gut feel” of two hours like you've done previously, you'll be able to quote the right amount and win back those losses.

Say you charge $100 an hour, and build five of these widgets every month. That's 60 a year, and if you're short-changing yourself two hours every time, that's a whopping $12,000 a year in losses. Find other repetitive tasks that you've been under-quoting (and if you're only now starting to instigate time tracking, I guarantee you will!) — you'll start kicking yourself you didn't do this before now.

You can use any number of methods to record the time: paper time sheets, local computer-based software, or web-based tools. There's a plethora of different tools available to you, and I'll list a few of them below for your perusal.

Best of luck, and enjoy the challenges of increasing your billable hours per week!

This post first appeared as part of Issue 446 of the SitePoint Tribune, a very popular email newsletter that I am co-editor of. Thanks to SitePoint for allowing me to reproduce the work here.

Manage Your Money

Thu, 21 Apr 2011 15:34 GMT

I've received a few reader emails recently, asking me what I think of different online and offline accounting packages, and which one I use.

Well, I'm an old-fashioned type, so I use an offline accounting package. This is primarily because there's more than one business entity I'm involved with that uses the same software.

However, if you're starting out, or still deciding on the right accounting package for you, here are some thoughts.

There are plenty of accounting system choices available to you, both traditional offline packages and web-based.

Features and costs vary widely among the options on the market. Any accounting package you consider should allow you to track items such as:

accounts receivable
accounts payable
general ledger
billing
stock or inventory
purchase orders
sales orders

Most systems allow you to send an invoice or receipt as a PDF by email, as well as the old-fashioned “print out and mail” method. Some of the newer versions also feature handy functions, such as time sheets (so you can input your hours directly into the system), mail merge (to enable a basic mailing list), and automated debt collections or reminders.

Speak to other colleagues to find out what they use, and search for reviews and tutorials for these packages online before making any commitment.

It's also very important to ask your bookkeeper or accountant for their advice prior to making a commitment; they'll probably be very useful also when it comes time to set up your initial accounts.

In my book, The Principles of Successful Freelancing, I cover some of the popular packages available. Here are six that I look at:

Traditional Software

Quicken
Quicken have at least five versions of their product, ranging from the ultra-light starter edition, to the premier edition, which integrates with banks, tracks investments, and more.

QuickBooks
With 15 different suites, QuickBooks have everything from home finance tracking through to Retail, Accountant, and Payroll editions.

MYOB
With their four products — FirstEdge through to Premier — MYOB have payroll, time billing, inventory, and even a simple contact database included.

Web-based Software

FreshBooks
FreshBooks is both an invoicing and time tracking system, with widgets available for desktop integration, sophisticated reports, and integration with the big-name payment gateways.

Less Accounting
The individuals at Less Accounting make a point of saying that, instead of “some bloated accounting package,” they offer simple small business accounting software.

Saasu
The most mature of the web-based finance offerings, Saasu rolls out new features regularly and has tight integration with social networks, search engines, and CRM systems. They have all the regular software features as well.

Whichever system you end up choosing, it's vital that you become familiar with how it works. That way, you're able to gain a quick snapshot about your business profitability and current standing at any time.

This post first appeared as part of Issue 442 of the SitePoint Tribune, a very popular email newsletter that I am co-editor of. Thanks to SitePoint for allowing me to reproduce the work here.

Keeping Life and Work Apart

Tue, 19 Apr 2011 01:34 GMT

Many of us recently had a short holiday to celebrate Easter. Regardless of how you feel about the religious significance, it's important to embrace a well-deserved break once in a while.

I've written before about managing the tricky balance between work and life. It seems, however, from what I've been reading on Twitter and hearing from people, there were still plenty who worked over the Easter weekend.

Sure — some of us may have had strict deadlines to meet; still, it seems that many others enjoy playing the martyr, working the weekend because we're possibly just badly organized.

A trick I learned a while ago is to have an occasional “time audit.” You may already use a sophisticated time-tracking system for your professional output; however, this is more an audit of how you spend your day every day. The idea here is to write up a table, with the columns denoting the next seven days, and the rows representing various broadly defined activities.

For an example, you may use activity headings such as:

sleeping
travel to/from office
client meetings
project work
family dinner
web surfing

What I tend to do is write the activity headings in once I've actually done them — and remember to keep them broad.

At the end of a week-long trial (and remember, maintain your habits as you usually would spend them), add the rows up, and see where those 168 hours of your life went. Typically, most people still manage to shock themselves — with plenty thinking they work far less than they actually do.

Now, look at your activities, and see which ones really are less important to you, and see how you can change your weeks to incorporate more of the high payoff activities. These would include high profit work, exercise, family time, AND sleeping (very much a high priority).

Make this audit a habit to undertake every six or so months, and you'll soon tame the time beast!

This post first appeared as part of Issue 442 of the SitePoint Tribune, a very popular email newsletter that I am co-editor of. Thanks to SitePoint for allowing me to reproduce the work here.

Grow your own Sales

Wed, 13 Apr 2011 19:30 GMT

Many people I've spoken to recently have repeated the same words: new enquiries are down, because people are wary of starting new projects in the current climate. This is an excellent opportunity for you to increase your focus on sales, and there's no better customer to sell to than an existing one.

Ask any successful salesperson and she'll tell you — it's cheaper and often easier to sell to an existing consumer, than to sell to a new one.

Think about it. With a new prospect, you need to build a relationship, gain their trust, explain the merits of your product or service, prove to them you have the skills and reputation, and that they stand to benefit from what you can offer. Then, you still need to procure that sale — a lengthy process indeed.

With an existing client, you've already achieved the above (I hope!). You can skip most of that, and jump straight to offering solutions to their requirements.

“But we only built their web site a year ago,” I hear you say. Start by looking at your current offerings, and see if there's a service or product that you've developed since you last spoke to them that they may be interested in.

Then, consider what else they may need.

Perhaps they've created dozens of pages of bad content in the content management system (CMS) you installed for them. You could approach them and suggest you edit their copy. Maybe they've lost their way with search engine optimization, and you need to help tune their web site back to perfection.

Does the client have an email newsletter? You can design and develop a system for them to be able to send regular newsletters out. Maybe they started small on the Web, but now could be a time to speak to them about adding ecommerce or installing a CMS, so they can take care of maintenance themselves.

These may often seem small compared to your standard projects, however a handful of these jobs can easily fill gaps in your schedule, and help you touch base with a rejuvenated customer.

Let me know how you go. I’d be interested to see what products or services you create as additional extras.

This post first appeared as part of Issue 438 of the SitePoint Tribune, a very popular email newsletter that I am co-editor of. Thanks to SitePoint for allowing me to reproduce the work here.

Interview with Chris Winchester

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 20:29 GMT

Two weeks ago, I made the journey to New Zealand to attend the well-known web conference, Webstock. On my first day there, I spotted a man wearing a bright yellow T-shirt which read: Remember me? I met you at Webstock looking for a job.

What a great idea! Here he is, wearing a T-shirt promoting himself in a fun way, looking for a web industry job in the perfect environment — a web conference. Little did I realize, until speaking with Chris, that there was more to the story.

You see, Chris heard about the conference only two weeks beforehand, and traveled from the other end of the globe — the UK — to spend a few days in Wellington looking for a job.

Here's the story in Chris's own words:

Hi Chris, thanks for speaking with me. Tell us some background as to your decision to quit your job and travel over 11,000 miles across the world to NZ.

My great-grandfather's brother, Tom Garratt, who like me was from Liverpool, jumped ship in Wellington and set up a printing business in the 1930s — a business that, I believe, is still run by the Garratt family today. In his way he was a facilitator of mass communication and, I guess, so am I but in a 21st century context; so it feels like there's a resonance there.

I've had family and friends in NZ all my life, and spent a year in Christchurch as a little kid, but I rediscovered the country for myself when my wife and I came over a few years ago on our honeymoon. It might sound a bit cheesy to say we fell in love with the place and the people — but we did, so I will!

Then a couple of years ago, after our daughter was born, we were looking at what we could do if we sold our two-bedroom flat in London. We considered buying a small three-bedroom house a bit further out of London, but then we realized we might be able to come over to NZ and have some real space.

It's a long way to move — about as far as you can go (the moon's yet to open for business) — but we thought if we let the opportunity slip by, we'd always wonder about what we missed.

So, you told me that you only heard about the conference two weeks ago — how did you prepare?

We'd been waiting in a queue with the NZ immigration service for quite a while, and knew that if one of us got a job offer over here that should speed things up. So we were just starting to research potential opportunities. My wife, Nikky was surfing around and said, “Ah, it's a shame you missed that.” She'd found the Webstock site. I realized there were still two weeks to go and therefore it was possible to come over and meet everyone. So I threw together a bit of a personal marketing campaign.

I went straight online and ordered a bunch of T-shirts from spreadshirt.net that read, Remember me? I met you at Webstock looking for a job. As soon as they arrived a couple of days later, I went into my parent's back garden (as we'd sold our flat!) to take photos of me in the shirts. I was balancing a camera on top of a snowman as I didn't have a tripod; wish I had a picture of the snowman taking the picture of me! Ah well …

So, once I'd taken the pictures I fired up Photoshop and put together a set of business cards saying, Web monkey seeks job with my T-shirt photos and web address. Then I ordered a big pile of them through moo.com by special delivery. It was getting a bit tight for time by this stage, as I needed to be on a plane a couple of days later. I even had to order myself a new laptop bag and suitcase, as the ones I had were unsuitable for the flight. Fortunately everything arrived just in time.

I had to retrieve my passport from NZ House in London as it was with the immigration authorities and I was up in Liverpool. So I had a mate pick it up and I met him at Euston Station for a Cold War-style handover, on the way to Heathrow on the Friday morning before Webstock. I spent Valentine's Day in the air and arrived in Wellington looking (and feeling) a bit bemused on Sunday afternoon.

Fantastic! So what inspired your T-shirt and business cards campaign?

I have absolutely no idea! It just popped into my head. The four colors of the cards were chosen because they were the only colors that Spreadshirt had in organic cotton for the T-shirts, and I was trying to be vaguely green.

Although, how I can say that and justify the carbon hit of flying halfway round the world I'm unsure — I'll have to think that one over. I really wanted bamboo shirts as they're so comfy, but the European Spreadshirt site has yet to produce them, which is a bit of a shame.

Come to think of it, icebreaker shirts would be the ultimate … maybe one day!

Once I knew I had four different colors I had a quick think about what I could do to tie the card set together. I had a copy of the Beatles' Help! album with them doing semaphore flag signalling in the snow, and I thought maybe I could do that. I tried to copy their poses, but a friend tells me the cards actually spell “NUJD”, not “HELP” at all!

You've been in Wellington for a few days now — how do you feel you've been received?

Everyone's been great! They are really welcoming and encouraging, apart from one lady who said, “I don't think people are really doing business cards any more.” But hey, fair enough, each to their own. I've had a really warm reception, including the weather!

I'd like to say a really big thank-you to the local web community — it's been a real pleasure to meet you all, and I hope we'll be working together soon!

Thanks for your time, Chris, and I hope you'll keep us up to date in your adventures towards landing that job.

This post first appeared as part of Issue 436 of the SitePoint Tribune, a very popular email newsletter that I am co-editor of. Thanks to SitePoint for allowing me to reproduce the work here.

Reply to Your Emails!

Wed, 30 Mar 2011 06:27 GMT

I recently sent an email to about eight different companies looking for accommodation for a holiday I plan to take in a few months. They all have web sites, they all published email addresses, and you know how many replied within 24 hours? Two.

Using this very simple market research, 75% of these companies took longer than 24 hours to respond. Two more replied within the following 48 hours, and it took nearly a week for another to reply.

Three of the original eight still have yet to reply three weeks later. Maybe they're full during the time I was enquiring about, but I seriously doubt if they'll ever reply, even if I were to change the dates.

Look at your own habits; when you're busy or in the ideal situation of having a full schedule of projects, do you reply to enquiries or ignore them? Have you wondered whether the enquiry about a few hours work this week could be the catalyst for your largest project yet?

I'm continually amazed at businesses who advertise email as a way of making contact, only to fall short of reciprocating. We do our best in my business to always respond within 24 hours during the working week — and we've been known to reply on weekends. Even a polite “I'm sorry I'm unable to take this project on at the moment” is far nicer than just ignoring the enquirer. I know I'd book elsewhere before approaching again those who failed to return my enquiry the first time around.

Measure your own business email replies — do you respond in a timely manner?

This post first appeared as part of Issue 442 of the SitePoint Tribune, a very popular email newsletter that I am co-editor of. Thanks to SitePoint for allowing me to reproduce the work here.

Time to learn Ruby on Rails!

Thu, 24 Mar 2011 06:46 GMT

I like Rails. A lot. And you should too - it makes build web stuff fun, and faster. It's poetry when compared to PHP. Not to mention there is some smart nerds doing work on it, and it has one of the most vibrant and passionate communities around. Unfortunately, the learning curve can be significant, especially if you are learning Ruby at the same time. Me to the rescue!

The guys behind Sitepoint have just launched a new site: Learnable, which is an online training centre, where people not only go to learn stuff, but they can teach stuff too! They ask me to create a Ruby on Rails 3 course for their launch, and it just went live today!

The course is 12 lessons, and covers enough stuff to build a real app - a code snippet library (A bit like pastie or github gists). I'll be maning the course forums and answering any questions you have, and will appear online via video link up for some live Q&A sessions in the next couple of weeks.

If you are still using PHP, or have been meaning to learn Rails for a while, then go and sign up - it's only $19.95 (Bargin!).

The only real pre-requisite is a basic grasp of programming - if you understand if statements, for loops and variables, you should be fine. Serious. Go now. It's awesome. But don't just believe me, listen to this talking headshot video of me:

https://learnable.com/courses/learning-rails-3-212

Seven Tips to Make Debtors Pay

Tue, 08 Feb 2011 06:28 GMT

Recently, we've been talking about increasing sales, reinforcing branding, reducing costs, and other ways to survive a rough economic year. Another very important strategy to keep the cash flowing is debt collection.

Debt collection can literally make or break your business. Failing to follow up with debtors regularly could make you end up with zero in the bank. It's a fact that the older a debt becomes, the harder it is to collect.

It's vital that you create a process for dealing with debtors and stick with it. The more you enforce this, the quicker clients learn to stay within your terms of trade.

Here are seven tips to avoid the debtor drama:

Tip 1: Accept plenty of payment methods
Five years ago, just about all of my clients paid by cheque. Now, cheques would account for just 5% of our receivables. The majority of our clients pay by direct bank transfer, which is better for us: the money is available quicker, and there's less risk of a bounced cheque.

We also have some clients who pay by credit card. Sure, we take a small hit on the fees, yet we find many clients are keen to pay by credit cards to solve their own short-term cashflow issues. Speak to your bank or find a payment gateway for safe credit card transactions.

The more payment methods you offer debtors, the less excuses they have to neglect paying.

Tip 2: Ask for a deposit up-front
I've always asked for a minimum 40% of the project total as a deposit before starting work on a project, and rarely does a client complain. Asking for a deposit up-front means that you're establishing the client is serious and can pay their bills. If they're unable to pay the deposit, how will they pay for the rest of the project?

Tip 3: Spell out terms clearly and regularly
Be sure to include your payment terms within your proposals, and that the due date is clearly marked on all invoices. I know a person who even sends meeting requests as calendar reminders to their clients when they send the invoices.

Be very clear with due dates — make the date as large and as bold as the total on your invoice.

Tip 4: Follow up immediately
The day after your invoice was due is the best time to send a polite, yet firm, email enquiring when they expect to pay, and if there's any issue. Include a copy of the invoice as an attachment, and let them know you'll call in a few days time if you don't hear from them.

Set the tone carefully though; you want to sound helpful and genuinely concerned they may have misplaced the invoice, rather than threatening or angry.

A week later, if the payment is still yet to be received, call and ask them when they expect to pay. This way, you're forcing the client to declare a date, which they'll be less likely to break. Follow up with an email, confirming the date you expect to receive the payment.

Tip 5: Increase the pressure
Close the cycle. As the debt becomes older, follow up more frequently. Become firmer with each communication, but never become angry or personal. If you host the web site, consider turning their site off until payment is made, or hold back on code or any deliverables that you still have.

Tip 6: Offer repayment schedules
If the client is having genuine trouble paying you, call and discuss a workable payment plan. Of course, it's preferable to have the entire balance in your bank instead, but it's still better than receiving none of it. Be sure to put the schedule in writing, and follow up on every payment to ensure it's adhered to.

Tip 7: Find a good debt collector
If the worst happens, and two months later you're still without payment, you may want to hand the matter to a debt collection agency. These agencies often take a small percentage of the overall debt if they can collect it, so at least you'll receive the majority of the debt.

Good luck, and here's hoping it'll be unnecessary to resort to any of these tactics!

This post first appeared as part of Issue 440 of the SitePoint Tribune, a very popular email newsletter that I am co-editor of. Thanks to SitePoint for allowing me to reproduce the work here.

Syncing Safari Bookmarks Using Dropbox

Wed, 22 Dec 2010 22:42 GMT

Update: Unfortunately this does not work. I find that Safari will overwrite my symlink with a new Bookmarks.plist file in ~/Library/Safari/. There's a thread about this issue on the Dropbox forums.

If you have multiple Macs and use Dropbox, there's an easy way to keep your Safari bookmarks in sync on your different machines.

Safari stores your bookmarks in a file called Bookmarks.plist in ~/Library/Safari/. Just move the file to your Dropbox, and create a symlink to it. I keep mine in ~/Dropbox/Sync/OSX/Safari:

mkdir -p ~/Dropbox/Sync/OSX/Safari
cd ~/Library/Safari
mv Bookmarks.plist ~/Dropbox/Sync/OSX/Safari
ln -s ~/Dropbox/Sync/OSX/Safari/Bookmarks.plist Bookmarks.plist

Then, on your other Macs, just delete the bookmarks file and create a symlink to your Dropbox.

Career Development Interview – Design/Multimedia Slant

Mon, 06 Dec 2010 16:00 GMT

I was recently interviewed by a design/multimedia student for his career development class in university. This is how it went.

Q What is your name?

A Vy-Shane Sin Fat
Q What is your title?

A Development Lead
Q How long have you been in this career?

A Six years
Q What duties do you perform?

A In addition to programming, responsibilities are: managing the activities of the development team, project management, scheduling, implementing development and deployment processes for the team, staff mentoring, requirements analysis, functional specifications, and some server administration.

What a mouthful. In a nutshell, I create stuff, and I facilitate the creation of stuff.
Q What tools, hardware and software do you use?

A Hardware: MacBook Pro, iPad, iPhone, few servers.

Software: OS X, FreeBSD, Linux, VMWare ESXi, VMWare Fusion, Vim, Subversion, CVS, Mercurial, JIRA, Confluence, PostgreSQL, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Fireworks, Omnigraffle, Omniplan, Xcode, Interface Builder, MS Office.
Q What education did you receive and did it help you on this job?

A I studied a Bachelor of Communication, majoring in Computer Science and Interactive Multimedia Technologies. The university course helped me learn how to learn and helped me identify what I needed to learn. Most practical things that I do day to day in my work, I learnt by myself.
Q If you went to school specifically for this position, what did you not learn at school that you had to learn on the job? In other words what do you know now you wish you had learned before you started your career?

A I wish that I'd taken some management courses. I received technical training in uni, but had to learn the soft skills on my own.
Q Do you think that your employer was looking for someone with your specific degree? For instance, I have seen a lot of openings for web designers, but they all require work experience and a degree. If your position required experience, how did you get the experience. In other words, how did you get your foot in the door in your career?

A My employer was looking for someone with my specific degree. As a general hiring rule, I also tend to look for someone who has a degree. This is only a general rule and I'm willing to make exceptions. University courses provide some theoretical grounding that self taught individuals often lack. A very simplistic example would be a self taught designer who knows Photoshop inside out, but who is weak in Typography. It takes a dedicated individual to seek out the less tangible, deeper and less immediately accessible topics. These individuals do exist, and I'm willing to make exceptions.

It's hard to land the first job. Most companies prefer to hire people with experience. In order to get around this, work on your portfolio while in uni. Build up a body of work that demonstrates your skills. This is especially important for designers. I would hire the designer with the better portfolio over a designer who's got better grades. Start some personal projects. Start a blog where you showcase knowledge that you can't list on your resume. A resume can only fit so many words. A prospective employer will look at your blog.

Be hungry. I was working at Subway in my final year in uni. I was getting paid $8.50 and hour, before tax. I wasn't too fussed about raking in the money when I applied for my first “real” job. I just wanted to get my foot in the door and I said as much. The money will come soon enough. Be confident that once you're in you'll be able to show your worth. In this industry you can easily double your pay within a few years of starting out.
Q How important is a portfolio versus a degree? If a portfolio is the most important aspect, how do you put together a professional portfolio? For instance I probably had the best portfolio in my class, and I received all A’s for my work, but I still am not confident that it’s at a professional level.

A I personally think that a portfolio is more important than a degree, especially for designers. The best way to put together a portfolio is to get involved in side projects that try to solve real problems. For example, design a logo for your uncle's restaurant. Design a poster for a local charity. Get to work on real stuff rather than just concepts. Design doesn't happen in a vacuum. You don't want your interviewer to go “That looks nice”. You want her to go “That's a clever solution. You've convinced me.”

Confidence is very important. You don't just show a portfolio. You talk through it. When showing off a project, you're describing the context. You're stating the goals that you set out to achieve. You're describing the different options that you considered. You're describing your ultimate solution. You're saying how the goals were met. Maybe you have some data (Sales increased by 20% during the campaign). You're defending your choices. You're selling your work. If you feel that your portfolio is not to a “professional” level of polish, concentrate on showing that you understood the problem, and sell your solution.
Q What are the fun and difficult parts of your job?

A The fun part is all about building things. Anything that involves creativity is heaps of fun. The most difficult part is estimation and project management. Software/Web projects are pure thought works. It's is very hard to estimate how long a big project will take to build, and it is very hard to keep it on track once a timeframe and budget have been set.
Q Do any of the companies or company you worked for offer future training once you’re hired, and possible advancement within the company? How do you view your career and industry? Are there any major problems with it?

A One of the companies sent me to a conference and offered to send me to a management course. Conferences are great. You come back with new enthusiasm, new ideas, and new contacts.

Advancement is really very much up to you. The easiest way to advance within a company is to give your boss peace of mind. It's a simple concept and there are two parts to it. The first part is to be dependable. If you're given a task, you do it within the deadline and you do it well. Your boss shouldn't have to check your work or micromanage you. The second part is to be willing to take on more responsibility. Your boss will only be too happy to delegate some of her responsibilities to you. She's got enough on her mind. If you're dependable and willing, you can have it. More responsibility equals more value equals better role equals more pay. When she leaves or moves up, she will recommend you as next in line.

The IT/Web industry is very young. We wear jeans and t-shirts to work. We value meritocracy over seniority. If you're good, it is easy to increase your salary very quickly. However, you need a big and constant time investment in order to stay relevant. It's easy to do when you're single and fresh out of uni. However, you're still expected to find the time to do it even after you get married and have kids. I'm not married yet and I don't have kids. However, even girlfriends get grumpy when you're in front of your computer for four hours after diner, reading about the silver bullet du jour.
Q Do you think it has a healthy future? What skills or programs would you recommend learning if you do foresee a change?

A The creative industry has a healthy future. In the grand scheme of things, IT/Web is really just starting out. Even then, for many of the problems that we set out to solve, we've already moved from trying to make things possible to trying to make things better. We've moved from trying to allow people to manage their calendars on their computers to trying to come up with more intuitive interfaces for those calendars. Check out the competition between RSS readers for the iPad. Most of them have nailed the basic features like feed management, article download, sync and offline reading. They are now competing on UX and there's an explosion of innovation in that space. It's a great time to be a designer. I would recommend learning UX. Interactive design is the next logical progression in design. This is what differentiated the iPhone from the other phones in 2007. This is already how software is competing with each other. We're moving beyond feature sets.

Get an iPad if you don't already have one. You may have read everything there is to read about tablets and multitouch, but until you immerse yourself into a new medium, you won't get it. You need to get it at a subconscious level. Only then will you suddenly think of a novel way to design user interaction while you're in the shower. As a designer, get an iPad. Not because you need it for X software or for Y use case. Get it because you need to understand the medium thoroughly. The latest medium is multitouch. This is where all the interesting stuff is happening. This is where people are still experimenting and discovering new things. This is also where you're likely to get paid more. Be ahead of the curve. Now, why an iPad and not an Android device? Well, the iPad has a head start, and the software is already moving from trying to make things possible to trying to make things better. If you're looking for inspiration and innovation, you're more likely to find it there.

Learn the soft skills. Become a good salesperson. As a designer, you're constantly selling. You're selling yourself to a prospective client. You win the project and you're then selling your design to the client. Your client accepts your design and you're now selling their products.

Keyboard Mod: Forceful Caps Lock Remapping on a Macally MK-96

Mon, 29 Nov 2010 16:00 GMT

A few years ago I went on a mechanical keyboard buying spree. Among the keyboards that I purchased were two Macally MK-96s. I got them from an eBay seller for around $15 USD apiece. I gave one of them away to a friend and the other one remained unused in its box until a few months ago.

The MK-96 is an old Macintosh keyboard that is no longer made. I like that is is fairly compact. The small footprint is achieved by omitting the Insert/Delete, Home/End, Page Up/Page Down cluster, and by moving the arrow keys to the main section of the board. It's a different philosophy from the tenkeyless design. The latter foregoes the numeric keypad while keeping the rest of the board standard. As a programmer, I rarely use the numeric keypad. So I prefer the tenkeyless design. If you want a compact keyboard and use the numeric keypad a lot, you might like the MK-96 approach better.

The keyboard uses the old Mac ADB connector and you need an ADB to USB adapter to use it with modern computers. I only got around to purchasing an iMate adapter a few months ago, which is why the keyboard remained unused until then.

Simplified White ALPS

So, what's so special about this keyboard? In a word – ALPS. Pop a few keycaps off and this is what we see.

The MK-96 uses simplified white ALPS switches, which are tactile and clicky. They are quite loud, but provide a very crisp tactile feedback when the keys are depressed. If you like clicky keyboards, you should try white ALPS. I find that the tactile bump is more pronounced on the simplified white ALPS than on buckling springs. Actuation force is also higher than buckling springs.

Initial Issues and Workarounds

The first issue that I faced was the arrow keys layout. The MK-96 has them in an L shaped cluster instead of the now standard inverted T. Luckily I use hjkl to move around in Vim and I was able to ease into the layout without getting overly frustrated.

The next thing that kept tripping me over was the fact that the keycap nubs are on K and D instead of F and J. This again is non standard, and it makes it harder for me to correctly position my fingers over the home row. Since I find the home row by feel, I switched the caps around for these keys.

Another drawback is the position of the Esc key. On the MK-96, Esc is not placed directly above the ` key. Instead, it is placed above the 2 key, and that messes with my muscle memory when I'm using Vim. It's driven me to finally bind kj to enter normal mode.

The Dreaded Caps Lock

I use the Ctrl key a lot for window management in tmux and Vim. When setting up a new keyboard, one of the first things that I do is bind Ctrl to Caps Lock. I went ahead and did this with the MK-96. However, I quickly noticed a problem. When I held down the Caps Lock, and pressed another key multiple times, only the first key press was registered. For example, I'd hold down Caps Lock and press E multiple times to scroll down in Vim, and I would only be able to scroll down one line. In order to scroll down again, I had to release the Caps Lock and start over. This quickly became annoying.

Forceful Remapping

This was a deal breaker and made the keyboard unusable for me. Something had to be done. I grabbed a screwdriver and off came the case.

I turned the keyboard over and looked for the location on the PCB where the Caps Lock was soldered. If I scratched off the connections to the Caps Lock, it would prevent the keyboard from registering Caps when it was depressed. I would then be able to rewire the key switch to Ctrl.

I grabbed a pointy tool and scratched away at the PCB until the connections were cut of. I was not pretty but hey, it worked! I then rewired Caps Lock in parallel to the Ctrl key. As you can see, my soldering skills are pretty crap!

Finally, I connected the keyboard back to the computer to test it out. Success! I now had a keyboard I could live with.

Conclusion

So, is the MK-96 my daily driver? Sadly, no. My current favourite white ALPS keyboard is a SIIG Minitouch, which I'm using at work. The SIIG is more compact, has a sane arrow keys layout, and the Esc key is where I expect it to be. However, it is still fun to whip out the Macally once in a while.

Further reading: There's a lot of information on various keyboards and key switch technologies at geekhack. Check out the wiki, starting with the mechanical keyboard guide.

vydark – a Comfortable Vim Colour Scheme for Everyday Use

Thu, 25 Nov 2010 17:00 GMT

I've made the yang to vylight's ying, and I'm calling it vydark. My goal was to create a dark-background colour scheme that's comfortable for use over extended coding sessions.

Installing vydark

Download vyldark.vim from vim.org
Copy the file to your ~/.vim/colors/ directory
In Vim, do :colorscheme vydark

vydark is meant for use with a GUI version of Vim.

See also: vylight, the light background version of this colour scheme.

Is Your Bash Prompt Cramping Your Style?

Tue, 23 Nov 2010 17:00 GMT

It is sometimes hard to form a mental model of a directory tree when working with the command line. GUI shells tend to provide more visual cues. For example, in OS X, the Finder has a column view that allows you to quickly see how directories are nested.

So, like a lot of Bash users, I used to get around this by printing the current working directory in my shell prompt:

However, things can get pretty cramped when dealing with deeply nested directories. A better solution is needed. Ideally, I want a minimal prompt that just displays my user@host. I only need to get my bearings when I’m moving around in the directory tree. Therefore, I’ve come up with the following.

The current working directory is printed after every cd. This allows me to get my bearings when I need to, while keeping my Bash prompt short and sweet. The following incantation in ~/.bashrc does the trick:

# Print working directory after a cd.
cd() {
    if [[ $@ == '-' ]]; then
        builtin cd "$@" > /dev/null  # We'll handle pwd.
    else
        builtin cd "$@"
    fi
    echo -e "   \033[1;30m"`pwd`"\033[0m"
}

Have you come up with other solutions for longpromptitis? Let me know in the comments!

Recent Collaboration: Classic Albums Live

Mon, 22 Nov 2010 17:30 GMT

I recently collaborated with my friend Daniel Brouse on a website for Classic Albums Live. Daniel did the design and most of the markup while I did the dev bits.

Classic Albums Live gives audiences the opportunity to hear some of their all-time favourite albums live on stage, performed by outstanding musicians in venues around Australia.

The website allows users to sign up and vote for their favourite albums. I use the Last.fm web service to provide auto completion for the album search. The user drags and drops albums to order her votes.

Classic Albums Live can then view which albums are popular among their audience.

Users can view upcoming tours, read artist and creative bios, and check out the show dates. The site supports custom themes for each tour. Each tour is essentially a mini sub site.

I built a simple content management system so that Classic Albums Live can manage the tour and site contents.

The gallery module supports image cropping, and user-defined aspect rations. The site does automatic image resizing and caching of resized images. The client only has to worry about uploading and cropping their images. The site will generate appropriately sized images whenever they are needed on the front end.

The blog is pretty standard as far as blogs go. It supports post creation and archival, guest and member comments, comment approval and moderation, and tags.

The membership system allows Classic Albums Live to manage the website’s users. The site integrates with Campaign Monitor for mailing lists.

Is there a classic album that you would like to hear live? Let Classic Albums Live know!

Need a frontend coder?

Sun, 21 Nov 2010 23:23 GMT

While I work on some personal summer projects, I'm looking at getting some front end contract work - you know HTML/CSS/JS sort of stuff.If you know anyone looking to turn pictures into websites, get them in contact with me.Hourly rate negotiable depending on contract length.

Making the OSX Terminal.app work properly

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 11:03 GMT

I just acquired a 13″ MacBook so I can build some me iPhone and iPad apps, and the allure of Unix on the desktop is a nice added benefit, however it is apparent that the default terminal emulator is kind of balls out of the box. I spend A LOT of time in a terminal, with VIM being my IDE is choice. What many people might not know is that modern terminal emulators support mouse gestures, as does vim (:set mouse=a).

I use this. All the time.Vim 7 supports files tabs, which allows you to open multiple files at once (command :tabe ). Vim being vim, you can navigate your tabs using key sequences (Next Tab :tabn Previous Tab :tabp Move to tab :tabm et al.), but clicking stuff with your mouse is easier.The scroll wheel is also quite useful, which vim also supports.Finally, click and dragging over text in vim with a mouse enters Visual mode, which allows you to yank and delete blocks of text, also quite handy.The problem is, Terminal.app doesn't support mouse stuff… Out of the box any way.

Step 1: Download and install SIMBL

Step 2: Download and install MouseTerm

Step 3: Restart Terminal.app

Right, so that is sorted, next up: OSX's stupid keybindings. Ok, I guess it makes sense for the home key to go to the very beginning of the document and end to do the opposite, but really the Windows way of home and end placing the cursor to the beginning and end of the line is more practical. Also, PgUp and PgDn don't work. So, open Terminal.app then select Preferences from the Terminal menu. Click the Keyboard tab, and paste the following strings into the areas next to the Keys:

home: \33[H

end: \33[F

pgup: \033[5~

pgdn: \033[6~

FINALLY, these binding don't place nice with vim, so open up .vimrc and enter the following:

set mouse=a

map ^[[F $

imap ^[[F ^O$

map ^[[H g0

imap ^[[H ^Og0

West Coast Bloggers

Bad Interfaces – eMusic Getting it Wrong

It's Very Simple

Changing the Approach

Satay-Mu Revisited

Going dark for SOPA & PIPA

Satay-Mu

Do not judge a book by it's cover

Bill Gates, superhero: the infographic

Glenfarclas 15 Year Old

Return to Helvetica aka recent whisky tastings

XO Lounge

Bruichladdich 12 year old Second Edition

The Venn

Old Shanghai Food Court

We need a better plan B

Return to Hoka Restaurant

Debunking the Myth on Agile T Shaped UX Designers

Looking in the Wrong Place.

Australia forgets about Accessibility?

The Report Cards

The Statistics

Top Issues

The Gatekeepers

Tran – The Web Agency Developer

Joanne – The Web Agency Project Manager

Nik – The Business Owner / Director

Peter – Govt Directors / CEOs / IT Managers

No Solutions Here

Remember Web Standards

Where did Accessibility Go?

Issues Blocking the Path

False Hope and Stepping Up

The CMS Issue.

Vendors are not to Blame.

Education is a Factor

One more Problem, the other Gatekeeper

Front Row Conference 2011 — Day 1 Presentations

Taking Stock of Volunteer Contributions

The upside.

The downside.

Just think and say thanks.

Where does the money come from?

The Rise of the UX Developer

It's not all that bad.

The watching, learning, mentoring.

Dev's control the game anyway.

Unveiling Kay Lives Here v3

Things are not Dead Here

Increased Workload

Less Quiet Time to Reflect

Volunteer Work

Lack of Ideas for Articles

Twitter

Overall

Managing multiple WordPress installs

Do you feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?

Geek lust: 10″ Samsung Galaxy Tablet

Endings and beginnings

Bad Interfaces – Technology Leading the Way

What is Dissatisfied

Doing the Likert Scale

Alfred As an Application Switcher

Our CalorieKing App Was Released Today

The Art of Experiential Scoping

The Core UX Reading List

The UX Book List

More Specific Methods and Techniques Tuning

Let's Get a Lot Deeper and Serious

Ethics in the Web Industry

The Mobile Web is Not Going Away

Change is Required

Interconnectivity is the Key, not the app

I Want My Web, My Way, Now.

Why Use PDF over HTML

Preserving the Print Format

Encapsulated Format

Easier to Publish

Existing Hardcopy Documents

Other Reasons