Feb '1028th
Today, while doing a bit of sorting through old stuff, I stumbled across some pages from notebooks I’d kept during my time at secondary school. The notebooks are part of a series I contributed to with my friends. I think there are about 4 or 5 in total, I have one, my friends have the others. I guess this was my first open source project. Everyone in my small group of friends contributed to them, writing, and sometimes drawing what happened throughout the day.
Read the rest of this entry »
Blog Personal
doodles sketching starting out
1
Feb '1025th
If you’re like me, you always feel a twinge of guilt when sending an invoice to a client. It’s not that you feel you’ve done a bad job, you just find it hard to ask for money, especially when it’s in exchange for doing something you enjoy.
Wording the email/letter is difficult. It has to go something along the lines of “Hi, I’ve attached an invoice for x which you have to pay in 14 days. Please.”
Recently, I’ve started adding a few Google Analytics stats to client emails when I’m sending them an invoice for content changes they’ve asked me to make on a site. I feel that I’m giving the client useful information that makes my request for money seem a little less routine, and hope that it shows I care as much about the success of their website as they do.
Read the rest of this entry »
Freelancing
business google analytics invoices money
7
Feb '1019th
I’ve had a few people ask me for the recipe of the chocolate cake I made for the 200th Boagworld. I wasn’t going to post this on my blog because it’s not really about web design, but to justify that, I’ve marked it all up in the (I believe not yet finalised) hrecipe microformat.
Anyway, I hope my mum won’t be too upset that I’ve posted this up here. It’s a family recipe that has been perfected over millennia. Possibly.
Read the rest of this entry »
Recipes
0
Feb '103rd
I’ve been looking a lot at the use of colours in physical objects recently. Often you’re asked to work on a site where the brand colours are some hideous combination of yellow and blue or red and green, and you’re expected to make those colours work well together.
Read the rest of this entry »
Design
affordance colour Design
1
Nov '0927th
While working at Clearleft, I learnt the importance of thorough planning before site development. Planning how you are going to write the code is just as important as how you are going to design the site. It makes you really think about blocks of content as individual, reusable components and helps make your CSS more consistent and easier for someone else to understand.
Read the rest of this entry »
Blog
Development planning prototyping
5
Oct '0926th
At Barcamp London 7, I gave a presentation on some CSS tricks I learnt while building Scrunchup. Read the rest of this entry »
Conferences Development Portfolio
barcamp bcl7 css presentation slideshow
5
Oct '097th
A lot of the clients I work with who have just set up a web presence for their company think it’s a good idea to start a mailing list and a blog. Everyone else is doing it, so why shouldn’t they? The problem is, so few companies get it right and very few people will bother to read them.
If you’re like me, there are very few corporate mailing lists you willingly subscribe to. They’re just so boring and salesy.
The Innocent Smoothie website is one of the few companies that I think get their corporate blog spot on. Even though I rarely buy their drinks (too expensive for me), I still enjoy reading it.
Read the rest of this entry »
Blog Reviews
blogging innocent smoothies mailing lists
2
Oct '095th
While on the train to Future of Web Apps, I saw some adverts for Dixons displayed in the carriages. Here is the text from one of them:
“Step into middle England’s best loved department store, stroll through haberdashery to the audio visual department where an awfully well brought up young man will bend over backwards to find the right TV for you. Then go to Dixons.co.uk and buy it”.
(Also, note the tagline: “Dixons.co.uk – the last place you want to go”)
I thought this was a really clever, albeit cheeky advertisement. It is brutally honest, and makes the point to look elsewhere for a better browsing experience, but once you’ve tasted what’s on offer, to go to the place that sells it cheaper. It draws upon the fact that although we love good user experience, we are heavily swayed by price.
However, what does this say about user experience? This ad suggests that only the luxury retailers can offer it, that it’s expensive, middle class and unnecessary after the product has been chosen. But is it? Surely good user experience extends beyond the point of sale, and even in a recession, it should be an investment, not an overhead.
Have Dixons shot themselves in the foot, or do they have a point? Is good user experience only for the high-end of the market, and should retailers like Dixons continue to scrimp on customer service and let retailers like John Lewis pick up the bill?
Blog
user experience
9
Aug '0924th
Problem: You want to create a grid based layout with floats, but you don’t want to wrap things in extraneous divs to force blocks to clear properly.
In an ideal world, all the content is the same height, and blocks will float and clear properly. But this is not an ideal world.
Read the rest of this entry »
Blog
css
10
Aug '099th
Yesterday, I gave a talk at a web conference called Tomorrow’s Web. I gave a summary of some of the conference talks here.
The reason I did this talk is because I am concerned that young web designers and developers are jumping into freelancing without much thought, and then discovering how much of a minefield it can be. So I decided to cover things like how to set up, what sort of problems young freelancers come across, and what I’ve learned from the mistakes I’ve made. I hope you find it useful.
Read the rest of this entry »
Conferences Portfolio
presentation speaking talk tomorrow's web
4
Aug '098th
Today I gave a talk at a web conference called Tomorrow’s Web, which was organised by Rob Day, 16, and Grant Bell, 17. My talk was about how to be a good freelancer, and I’ll be uploading my slides, notes, links, and hopefully some video in my next post, but here’s a summary of some of the speakers.
Read the rest of this entry »
Blog Conferences Reviews
Conferences tomorrow's web youth
6
Aug '095th
Whenever I am asked what I do by someone who doesn’t work in my industry, I find it quite hard to give them a decent response. I usually just tell them I’m a website designer, even though that’s not really accurate and I’m more confident working with code than on a design.
Read the rest of this entry »
Blog Development
Development front end
3
Jul '0930th
I’ve been rebuilding my site in HTML5 as a practice run for future projects to see what problems I come across. When I tested my site in IE, I noticed all the elements that the browser didn’t recognise were not styled with the CSS. After a little bit of searching, I came across this fix by Remy that resolved the issues I was having. I just thought I’d share it with you in case you came across the same problem when making the transition to HTML5.
Development
HTML HTML5 IE
3
Jul '0929th
In 1992, Radiohead released their first single; Creep. The song became very popular and they had to play it at every gig to satisfy their fans, and it wasn’t long before the band became sick of their creation. They brought out new songs, but people just wanted to listen to the old ones, and they will forever be remembered as the band that wrote Creep.
Read the rest of this entry »
Blog Personal
teenagers women in tech
5
Jul '0922nd
If you run an online banking service, surely the most important feature on the site should be security. However, we all know that your data is only as secure as the password you use to protect it. This is why I find it so shocking that Natwest online banking has such a strange policy on what your password can and can’t contain.
Read the rest of this entry »
Blog Development
security
9
Jul '0918th
Chessbrook is the second school I have worked with. It was a really great project to work on because it was quite challenging. The school is an education centre for students who have not been able to cope in mainstream education.
I really like what Chessbrook are doing, and they were perfect clients to work with. At the end of the project, I did usability testing with the students to get their feedback on the website.
Portfolio
Design front end project school
0
Jul '099th
This week I finally finished writing a contract I am happy with giving to clients. I thought it might be useful to give you an overview of what is in it, as I know there are a lot of people who still don’t use them. I don’t think it’s until you’ve been burnt that you truly appreciate how useful they are.
I used Andy Clarke’s article in 24ways as a guide. I strongly recommend you take a look first, I think he sets the right tone in his (more colloquial than legal fluff).
I’m not going to give you an exact replication of what it contains before I check it over with a lawyer. I also think it’s important to write it yourself so that you know and understand it inside out, but here are a few things you really should mention in it.
Read the rest of this entry »
Blog
contract
9
Jun '096th
I worked on the HTML and CSS for Clearleft’s dConstruct 2009 website, using microformats to mark up the schedules and locations.
Read the rest of this entry »
Case Studies Portfolio
dconstruct Development front end project
0
May '095th
While interning at Clearleft, I helped work on the front end code for the Mozilla Addons site, pair programming with Natalie Downe.
Portfolio
clearleft front end mozilla project
0
Apr '095th
This was the first project I worked on while interning at Clearleft. I pair programmed with Natalie Downe on the HTML and CSS.
Portfolio
clearleft front end project wwf
0
Jan '0920th
While attending a Business Link course on starting up, I met Nicola Dolan, a lady who was setting up her own company that offered IT Training courses. I worked with Nicola to design the branding for her company, and also designed and developed her website. I had fun building a nice jQuery accordion menu for the course outlines page.
Portfolio
branding Design front end jquery print design project trainingu
0
Nov '085th
The Portland Arms pub website was commisioned by the landlady to provide information to locals about events at the pub, as well as an up-to-date seasonal menu. The pub dog, Buster, updates his online blog (http://www.theportlandarmspub.co.uk/blog/bustersblog.html) with his perspective of life at the Portland Arms, with photos of the people, and other dogs, he meets.
The landlady takes photos using her iPhone of the food served in the kitchen and uploads them to the website via Flickr. She also takes photos at special events, and these are automatically posted to a slideshow on the site (http://www.theportlandarmspub.co.uk/gallery.php). Many locals didn’t know where the pub was, so I added a Google map which shows users where the pub is, and they can plan their route to the pub using this feature.
Blog Portfolio
Design front end project pub
0
Sep '083rd
Today, the holding page for scrunchup.com was launched. Everyone involved in the project has been stunned by the overwhelming response it has had. An hour after it was published, we’d had 100 subscribers to the mailing list.
So what’s this all about?
It’s not easy for young people starting out in the web design/development industry. There seems to be the assumption that teenage-webbie-wannabies are only interested in making a quick buck. Many don’t attend conferences or meetups, and there are few courses that use up-to-date material.
Read the rest of this entry »
Blog Case Studies
project scrunchup teenagers
6
Aug '081st
The British Band Instrument Company website was launched as an online brochure of instruments being sold to across the world, specifically in the Middle East. I added a translation feature, and made all the text editable so it could be translated into different languages. After some research, I placed the navigation on the right rather than the left because people in the Middle East read from right to left. I also added images onto the buttons (using the “sliding doors” technique) so that the user could visually distinguish the instruments. I used the sliding doors technique to speed up load time and ensured the site was usable on IE6 at a screen resolution of 800×600, as I anticipated that many users in this part of the world would not have fast Internet speeds or high-end technology.
Blog Portfolio
bbico front end instruments international project
0
Jul '088th
A few days ago, I came upon the CushyCMS website www.cushycms.com
I’ve tried using Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla! and Mambo, and I’m not going to pretend this is better than them all. It’s not, it just meets a different need. Whereas CMSs such as Wordpress are great if you want to make a site with a blog, have the ability to add pages, plugins, and change themes, sometimes sites don’t need all that functionality. Maybe on a 5 page site, you just want to be able to let the client change a few words every now and then, so a full-blown CMS can be a little overwhelming.
Blog Reviews
cms micro-cms Reviews
11
Jun '0827th
On Thursday, Harriet Harman the Equalities Minister in the UK put forward plans to allow organisations to discriminate in favour of candidates who are female or of ethnic minority.
You can watch her speech here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7475470.stm
As a woman, I would not want to be given a job with the knowledge that the reason I got it had to do with my gender rather than my professional capabilities, and I would not want my colleagues to also be thinking that. In fact, it would put me off working anywhere with a high ratio of men to women. I want to work somewhere because my work is appreciated, not so they can tick a box or improve their statistics.
Read the rest of this entry »
Blog Personal
women in tech
9
Jun '088th
I will have to be brief because I feel riddled with guilt whenever I spend time doing anything other than revision.
So this is the second week of exams. Last week I did my Module 4 ICT exam, which was… well… the questions were quite reasonable, apart from the one asking me to describe the ‘behaviour’ of a computer system which threw me a bit. I was feeling great at the beginning of the exam and pacing myself well (even writing legibly!) Last year I rushed and finished in half the time and spent the remaining hour fretting because I thought I hadn’t been given all of the questions.
Read the rest of this entry »
Blog Personal
school
0
Jun '086th
I built the Britball Run website while working at Kempt. It’s a car tour event held in the UK that raises money for various charities. I found it quite a challenge because I don’t know much about cars, but it was a fun project nonetheless.
Portfolio
cars Design front end kempt project
0
May '0812th
In this year’s Future of Web Design conference, Andy Budd gave a fantastic talk comparing User Experience on websites with the hotel industry. He described the need for a good first impression, and the importance of going the extra mile to make the customer feel comfortable and ultimately leave with a good impression.
I worked for almost 2 years in the fast food industry, albeit making and serving fruit smoothies. Although this could be described as a huge contrast to the hotel industry, I think there are still a lot of similarities because they both rely on good User Experience. The main difference between the User Experience in a hotel and in a fast food restaurant is customer expectations. In a fast food place, customers don’t expect to be served a gourmet meal in less than 5 minutes. They understand that they may have to queue for a short while, that the tables won’t have tablecloths, will probably be a bit sticky and the cutlery will be made of plastic because they don’t have to pay as much. But customers are usually willing to pay more for exactly the same thing, but where they’ll get better customer service.
Here are a few tips I’ve learned from my experience of the fast food industry that can be applied to the web.
Read the rest of this entry »
Blog Design
ux
2
May '089th
It’s tough this time of the year when everyone seems to have gone in hibernation for exams. It feels like the times I am in school, I only see my friends briefly, and I’ve been spending way too much time cooped up at home with a stack of revision notes and a grumpy moulting cat to keep me company.
Read the rest of this entry »
Blog Personal
school
0
Apr '0830th
St Albans Girls school is my secondary school. While I was studying there, I wrote to them asking whether they would consider a redesign of their website, which they agreed to. The old website was ‘not fit for purpose’ as one parent noted on the current website questionnaire feedback form which was sent to all parents. I started this project in October 2007, and it launched in Spring 2008.
Read the rest of this entry »
Case Studies Portfolio
project school
0
Apr '0827th
There’s a really sweet girl I babysit, and last night, she drew a picture of me. It took her about 15 minutes, and I was so happy with the result that I thought I’d post it up here.
Read the rest of this entry »
Blog Personal
drawing
4
Apr '0823rd
Today my friend Raiesa took me to see a little garden she had found. She’d been telling me about it for a while, and I hadn’t had a chance to see it with all the coursework I was working on. Today I met her in the library and we walked along a scenic route to some old ruins. There’s a little footpath by the river which we followed past some allotments, up some steep steps and over an old railway bridge. After a few minutes, we reached a wooden gate. She opened it and we walked through.
Read the rest of this entry »
Blog Personal
adventure friends
1
Apr '0819th
Future of web design is a conference hosted by Carsonified. The speakers are all influential designers, specialising in fields such as User Experience and Branding. This year’s event took place from the 16th to the 18th of April.
As much as I’d like to, I’m not going to write a minute-by-minute account of the Future Of Web Design conference. I’m suffering from the side-effects of writing 300 pages for my IT coursework and I’m not sure how much more I can type before my swollen fingers drop off. So I’m going to summarise a few of the good and not so good events of the 3 days.
Read the rest of this entry »
Blog Conferences
FOWD
3
Mar '0831st
I hope the following doesn’t sound *too* cheesy, but it’s something I feel very passionately about. I think the negativities of the Internet are all too often over publicised, whilst the positives are rarely highlighted. When we look back on past events, the apartheid, gay discrimination, the holocaust… it makes us wonder how people we as a society could let these sorts of things happen. I guess the problem was bias. People formed decisions based on what the government told them. The Internet is a contrast to this bias, with people from different backgrounds and cultures living all over the world writing about things that are important to them. So if there ever was a greater opportunity for peace, I believe its in the Internet.
Blog Technology
internet
1
Mar '0826th
A few months ago, I was asked by the head of the Spanish department at my school whether I could make a preloader for some Flash audio lessons he’d made. I guess word must have got round the staff room that I knew a bit about the software! He explained that he ran a website called Proidiomas teaching people who speak Spanish how to speak English. After sending him the functioning preloader, he asked me to do some other projects including making a Flash game and redesigning his website. So here’s how it went…
Read the rest of this entry »
Case Studies Portfolio
project
0
Mar '0823rd
Yesterday, after months and months and months of saving, I finally bought a Mac. I think I’ve been saving for over a year now, so it’s hard to describe how I felt when I was able to take my baby home! Excited mostly, but also a little nervous about making such a financial commitment over something I had never had a chance to use before.
Read the rest of this entry »
Blog Personal Technology
mac
1
Mar '0819th
I spend most of my lunchtime in my school library with my friends. It’s a lovely place to be, warm, cosy and it doesn’t smell bad like the common room. The other day was a bit weird because most of my friends had gone home, all except for my friend Mishka. We were reading through the Ofsted report which had just been published, and giggling because… I don’t know, it just seemed funny at the time.
Read the rest of this entry »
Blog Technology
literacy
2
Mar '0815th
Today I’m going to talk about something vitally important and close to my heart… biscuits! The following is a constructive analysis of my 5 favourite biscuits, weighing out their pros and cons.
Isn’t it obvious that I’m putting off doing something more important?
Read the rest of this entry »
Blog Personal Reviews
food
6
Mar '0812th
Had a nice surprise this week. A friend who had asked me to look/play about with a menu she’d made for her dad’s Thai takeaway contacted me to say the logo I’d done for it was being used as their shop sign! I’ve designed so much stuff that’s only seen on computers that when it does get made into something that’s bigger than me… very cool!
Read the rest of this entry »
Blog Case Studies Portfolio
food print design
6
Mar '088th
A few weeks ago, a group of sixth-formers including myself were asked to sing at a conference in London. We were given few details, (except that 250 headteachers, and Madonna might be there) and very little time to rehearse for it. We didn’t even know where it was or whether there would be the use of a piano there. Yesterday we were minibussed to the Foreign Office in London, and I have to say, it was one of the most interesting experiences in my life.
Read the rest of this entry »
Blog Conferences
women in tech
4
Feb '0828th
This website has been up and running for over a year. However, I was so ashamed of the last design that I didn’t tell anyone about it. And what’s the point in having a website that you don’t want anyone to see?
Read the rest of this entry »
Blog Case Studies
project
4
