ScrunchUp
September 3rd, 2008
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.
Posted in Blog | 6 Comments »User Generated Quilt
July 26th, 2008
My Graphics lessons at school were combined with Textiles to save money. During one of the last lessons of the year, I got bored of sitting by myself drawing lightbulb boxes and went to see what the Textiles lot were doing. They were learning how to make quilts, so for the first time in about 4 years, I picked up a needle and thread and started stitching bits of fabric together. I haven’t stopped since then, and the quilt is starting to get rather big.
At the same time, I’ve been admiring Rachael’s Q*Bee quilts where people trade digital quilt patches. So I thought it would be cool to create a real quilt that anyone can contribute to.
Posted in Blog | No Comments »Review of CushyCMS
July 8th, 2008
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.
Posted in Blog | 6 Comments »‘Positive Discrimination’
June 27th, 2008
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.
Posted in Blog | 8 Comments »Exams!
June 8th, 2008
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.
Posted in Blog | No Comments »User Experience on the web, fast food style
May 12th, 2008
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.
Posted in Blog | 2 Comments »Revision Woes
May 9th, 2008
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.
Posted in Blog | No Comments »A 7-year-old’s picture of me
April 27th, 2008
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.
Posted in Blog | 2 Comments »Raiesa’s Secret Garden
April 23rd, 2008
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.
Posted in Blog | 1 Comment »Highlights of FOWD
April 19th, 2008
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.
Posted in Blog | 3 Comments »Why I think the Internet is the best invention
March 31st, 2008
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.
Posted in Blog | 1 Comment »I can haz a Mac!
March 23rd, 2008
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 »
How Can Technology Improve Literacy Skills?
March 19th, 2008
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.
Posted in Blog | 2 Comments »Biscuits!!!
March 15th, 2008
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?
Posted in Blog | 6 Comments »Lemongrass - Thai Takeaway Design
March 12th, 2008
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!
Posted in Blog, Portfolio | 5 Comments »Breaking the Mould - Women in Leadership
March 8th, 2008
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.
Posted in Blog | 4 Comments »The Making of maban.co.uk
February 28th, 2008
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?
Posted in Blog | 3 Comments »My Photos
