Compassion

Being in web design and development has taught, you have to stay on top of technology and the constant changes. Most times we spend long hours in front of a computer, digging through pages after pages worth of code (no small feat especially if you have JavaScript or other programming languages to boot), researching bugs and problems, and burning the midnight oil probably like no other. At times, it seems like a sense of absolute isolation because the most human interaction you may get is thru…..what else? Your computer!

So, in short of next to being a robot, sometimes we don’t get the social interaction we need as human beings. Moreover, having compassion for others sometimes comes at odds. We tend to forget about expressing any empathy or sympathy at times for being electronically dependent. But to have self compassion? That involves a greater personal initiative.

It is human nature to want the best, push ourselves and strive to achieve perfection, most times to at the expense of being own worst enemy. We tend to be a lot more compassionate with others than we are with ourselves.

We must learn to be self compassionate and teach ourselves that it is not a bad thing to take some time for just us. It allows us to learn and admit our mistakes, modify behaviors that would cause self belittlement and stop berating ourselves when we fail.

If we can learn to not be so self-critical of ourselves we would take on more challenges, and understand that we must fail at times, some more than others, to learn to succeed.

To have self compassion opens our minds to accept differences not only within ourselves but from others, and allows for social development, growth, and most importantly maturity.

Veteran's Reflections

Diversity in Web Design

Imagine the greatest looking meal you’ve ever seen.  Possibly a tender, juicy, perfectly seared T-Bone, mashed potato and gravy, a nice warm plump dinner roll, and a side salad to boot.  Is your stomach rumbling, mouth watering,  appetite stimulated or are you offended since you believe in not harming any animals?  A single image or idea can create many different feelings or interpretations even if distasteful to think about.  Take into account the diversity within your family, team, organization, or even a community.  Does everyone agree on any one idea or what is appropriate, acceptable, or attractive?  An image that can be pleasing to one group of people can or may seriously offend others.

This is one of the great requirements of Web site design: users and their views should always be considered.  Good designers know that finding out the needs and preferences of people who are or will be the users of a Web site, database, or any web content, is critical and a major part to success.  This task is not as easy as it sounds even for most skilled web designer or developer. The complexity of defining user preferences can be found sometimes by creating user personas and testing. It can be appreciated by considering the vast number of differences, each with its unique complexities of tastes, preferences, and more.  One of the most vital and delicate tasks is to understand the wide variety of diversity, which is can stem from strong values, habits, traditions, beliefs, and expectations that ultimately shapes a user preferences and particulars.  Without this understanding, even the greatest of ideas will fail. Diversity in web design and development should be the upmost importance and not only fit the client’s need, but as well as the user.

Creating a Web Form

Identify strategies you used for creating your form – explain why you chose the strategy to create the form – will be verified on integrated concepts – explain why you created it the way you did

The first approaching in creating the form was to study the information needed to make the appropriate form and the competition. You want to compare other sites’ form that may relate to what you’ll be trying to accomplish. I compared 3 schools and with the research created a conventions survey to see how all 3 sites would compare to each other and what form/approached was used. This helped me make better choices in planning the form to fit the needs of the viewer and the school.

I then reviewed and organized the data and began strategizing design and layout. My goals for the form was for it to be simple, straight forward, self explanatory, easy to understand and read, easy for the viewer to change data in the form prior to submitting, consistent and with minimal distractions. I also wanted the form to be friendly in someway. I started grouping the information into close relationships. One requirement was I was used to all the information in a provided document and apply them to the form.

I felt grouping the application process requirements and any part of the content that was more for information than really apart of the application itself, belonged together and belonged in the beginning prior to filling out the form. This allows for the user to have all the information the application is requiring beforehand and for them to be able to make an informed decision if they qualify to apply now or must wait, thus not wasting the applicant’s time. It allows the applicant time to be prepared with correct documentation needed to apply. Organizing in groups also helps make the form easier to read and understand.

Multiple web pages was chosen because of large amount of information, like essay questions, helps keep it organized and less overwhelming.

I strived to keep the form simple, aligned and contained while still within a close proximity of the progress indicators. This helps to convey to the user where they are at in the form to completion and to keep from breaking out of the natural flow movement of reading from left to right. This prevents disruption, allowing the user to stay on task and move forward without any confusion.

I decided to offer up the courses for the academic page altogether so that the user can scroll through the different courses and not have to click through drop down list  only to forget what they may have in mind previously. I don’t know how many times I had reviewed school sites only to run into course listings in a drop down format. I would find one that might suit what I wanted, but I still wanted to review the rest and ended up having to dig through several links or pages! As a high school student, he/she may have not made his mind up yet exactly what he wants. Having the page set up this way he can easily scroll up and down without having to click a ton of places feeling like he’s on a egg hunt.

The style of the site was kept simple and colors not to bright or annoying. It let’s the users know where they are, what is coming up next, but also what they’ve already finished. The site is simple enough that coming back later you can add logos and colors to match the theme with some minor styling adjustments.

Setting Goals in Web Design and Development

Goal setting is simply asking yourself, “What do you want to achieve?”.

Defining goals in the beginning is important for the web designer and developer so that it gives a clear strategic plan to work through and towards the end result.  Goal driven sites also perform to fit the client and visitor needs.

A step to goal setting in web development is determining realistic long term and short term goals. We may in time, over the course of building the project, refine and rework those goals to be broken down into secondary goals for future modifications and improvements.  This way we still have smaller accomplishments while continuing to strive towards the big picture. Goals for a project, big or small, will also allow us to be able to gage our progress along the way.

Setting goals is a way of road mapping your next step ahead of time. As a web site developer and designer it will help keep you focused on productive output and accomplishments. It explains necessities of the site, design and purpose. If set to be attainable and not out of reach, these goals can be motivating in many ways.

By setting goals you can ensure your site reaches visitor and client expectations as well as your own.

Choices

Last year, I made a blog posting over making choice http://jennifiergoodwin.wordpress.com/2010/08/30/making-choices/ from a web designer or developer point of view. The opportunity has arisen again, and this time around I wanted to do a posting that went into a little further detail about what choices the designer or developer would have to think about and offer to their client, as well as what choices the client would be facing when deciding to build a website.

There are a multitude of choices for web design and developing nowadays. Making a decision on those choices can be proven to be difficult. Careful steps must be taken in deciding what is best for the client and their website. A developer or designer must take time to explain to a client each choice that is being offered to him and why in particular the client should decide to choose one over another.

So what are some of the choices we are faced with as client and a web developer/designer?

In the first steps of website development, the developer/designer will need the client to provide information on what he/she is looking for in his site. For example:

• Do you want a large or small website?
• Do you want to sell a product or offer a service?
• Do you need to update this site on your own or how will you be updating it in the future?
• Do you have a logo or want a logo made?
• Would you like to use images?
• Do you have images of your own or would you like the designer to design for you?
• Do you want a mobile version and social networking?
• What is the functionality of the site?
• What is your budget for the site and is it flexible or not?
• What is the main objectivity/purpose of the site?
• What is your target audience?

This is only a small list of choices to think about, and that’s only the beginning.

As a developer/designer, we already know that a website should reach a vast amount of people. To do that, one of the basic minimums is to develop a site that is compatible in all browsers as much as possible. Basic browsers that everyone knows of are Internet Explore (Microsoft), Firefox (Mozilla) and Safari (Apple). There are also Google Chrome, Opera, SeaMonkey, Flock, Prism (Mozilla), Deepnet Explorer, Avant, Maxthon, mobile browsers and more! Did you know as a developer we still have to think about making your site compatible to fit mobile devices? Yes, your site still needs to be accessible to everyone!

Another list of choices to be looked at is the appearance.

• What kind of layout do you prefer? 3 column, 2 column, vertical, horizontal?
• What colors did you have in mind?
• Do you have particular images or graphics you want to use?
• Will there be ads?
• Do you want to use a logo?
• What size of font or font style were you wanting?

Content is usually where some of the choices can really get complex.

• What social media, such as Twitter or Facebook would you like to have?
• What is most to least of importance that needs to be in your site?
• Do you want a newsletter or email sign-up?
• Where do you expect for the logo to be?
• How will you handle payments?
• How many products or services do you plan to offer?

After some important choices are made by you, a developer will then decide what will best suit your needs for the website. The developer has a variety of choices between programs, languages, and techniques they could use to make your site more interactive such as:

• JavaScript
• Ajax
• jQuery
• Perl
• Python
• Ruby on Rails
• Flash
• Action Script
• and more!

As you see, both the client and the developer/designer have many choices to review and decisions to make. These choices listed are only the beginning stages of building a website. There are so many more before completion and delivery of a fully functional site.
In website development, as a client, developer, or designer we have many things to choose from. Having choices in the web industry allows for creativity and flexibility.
Without choices, websites would not only be boring but repetitive.

Excellence

Strive for excellence, not perfection. ~ H. Jackson Brown Jr.

Excellence is often a perception of self improvement and delivering beyond expectations, whether it’s your own or someone else’s. It is usually a talent or a quality that is unusually good and so surpasses standards.
Excellence allows you to continually learn and improve, while perfection can be stagnant.

So, what are the ingredients for excellence?

Excellence is all about choices. We all have the ability to strive to be great, successful, the best or just mediocre. It’s whether or not you choose to motivate yourself in achieving that goal.
In order to be, retain and have excellence you must have the motivation to invest yourself. Envision and believe you are excellent. Then plan and have a strategy in allowing yourself to strive at your best to obtain it. Value the fact there is always room for improvements.

You also need the perseverance to achieve anything in spite of difficulties and discouragement. Aspire to be passionately successful in all that you do.
You have to be 100% fully committed, dedicated and focused. Sure, there will be times you won’t feel 100% or discouraged, it is a natural human emotion. But, it is the unwillingness to settle for the minimum or second best, that drive, ambition, and strength that will make you rise above the rest.

A little diversity in your excellence helps make you stand out among the rest. Without some difference how else would you be able to excel, let alone have something to compare or compete with?
You also need to be flexible. This allows you to easily change gears in any environment, big or small, hard or easy.
Keep a positive attitude, have some humor but also some humility and respect. When you deal with customer service in a business, you must be mindful of your communication, your actions and attitude. A little bit of anger management can go a long way.

Have compassion and the patience to see other’s perspectives without the distortion from your own opinion. What this will entail is being open minded, as well as humble. It can bring a profound sense of appreciation and respect for you, allowing the opportunity of self development while learning from others.

Excellence does require for accountability, honesty and integrity, while mixing in trustworthiness. It’s not just about being honest and true to yourself, but also to your clients as well as your employer! It is being reliable, accountable in good times and bad, and following a set of workplace ethics. Your employer relies on you to be a worthy employee while demonstrating professionalism, especially in a teamwork related environment.

Finally, reflect on your past and learn from it. Do not be afraid to fail in order to succeed. Having excellence can develop successful learners, effective contributors, and confident responsible citizens.

Workplace Ethics

Workplace ethics are a code of conduct within a business that is a form of policy, procedures, and practices set forth by a organization or business for maximum productivity without being unprofessional.

In some part, these ethics rely on the employee, themselves, to have some self regulation and their own set of moral standards and principles.

Ethic guidelines usually asks an employee to have trustworthiness, honesty, integrity, and a positive attitude. What is expected along with that is respect and compassion for others, having equality and fairness to all allowing for diversity in the business environment, and participation in teamwork. These policies are set forth for accountability to all employees that works in this environment, and makes them be a worthy role model to and for others. It also allows them the choice to communicate with an open door policy to leaders within the business and organization no matter what level a person is at.

Providing training for employees helps the staff or team members have a complete understanding of what is expected and how to take proper steps in resolving any problems that should arise professionally and consequences if not followed.

Ethics of a workplace is usually shaped by the business or organization leaders that helps guide employees to be professional in their choices and decision making.

In closing, Ethics in the workplace is essential to any business striving to be successful. It can be the difference in becoming a Fortune 500 type business or becoming just another Enron.

My student site revamped

Jen’s Portfolio

It’s been a little crazy around here, but I finally got it done! I’m excited and relieved!
After alot of problems with software, etc. I was ready to give up. I am glad to say I pushed forward and spent some major time researching to work around or straighten the kinks out. I have learned so much!

Are you respectful?

Respect can be defined by many as an attitude, admiration, the state of being honored, to show consideration for, and treating with dignity. It is being treated with consideration, having regards for other’s feelings, and providing full attention by listening and hearing them.

Developing along with designing web sites can take having a lot of respect, especially for others.

Indeed, we can say that you must learn respect for yourself worth, before you can develop or give it to others. No question there. If you don’t have respect for yourself, how can you possibly think you’ll provide quality care or respect for your clients or other people related to the web industry?

The type of respect I’m referring to is the one you have not only for your clients and coworkers, but also for the average “Joe” visiting the site you are developing. Having respect for the visitor can mean a lot of things for a person involved with developing or designing a website.
How can you show to your visitors that you have respect for them even though you may never see or meet these few to hundreds of thousands of people?

When creating your site you need to consider honor and conforming to web standards. Accessibility, usability, and readability are key points showing that you do have consideration for everyone visiting and using the site, not just limiting it to a select few.

Try being a visitor to just the very first page of a website. Before your page ever finish loading the first few images, you decide to browse around for a moment. You’ve immediately notice that you cannot make any sense of the navigation menu. To make matters worse, all you see is a ton of blank boxes with x’s in the smaller box, and forget reading some of the text. You are having to chase around all the other little x’s so you can close out all those blocking advertisements, pop-ups, and flashing what not’s!

We’re not done yet. See them little bears dancing over there? Or how about Crazy Frog (better known as Axel F or The Annoying Thing) as he jams out to his song at eardrum exploding volumes on the corner of your screen?

Crazy Frog, The Annoying Thing, or Axel F

Crazy Frog’s Original
Dj Crazy Frog

Oh and let’s not even mention the fact, that I the viewer have to parade around your maze you call a site to try to find an off button! This is the first page?! “I’m outta here!”

Oh wait?! Did I lose the element of focus here? Sorry, I’m a bit distracted. Yeah,I have to say, not the way I want to spend my afternoon!

Treating your website visitor with a bit of dignity, when developing your site, isn’t the only people you need to show consideration for. Providing clean, clear, fully understandable and documented markup behind the scenes for the site also shows respect for your co-workers or even future developers that may be handling the site at a later time.

You can also be and act as a respectable person by giving respect and being respectful. Don’t disregard when people contact you! Answer your emails back, immediately is best, but as soon as possible. It does not matter if it’s a passer-by, client, co-worker, or classmate. They have taken the time to reach out to you, and you should have enough decency to respond in a timely manner and not leave them hanging. Word of mouth spreads like wildfire, especially if it is the “bad” kind. It is hard to gain the trust and respect of others while building and keeping a long lasting relationship, but it is fragile enough to break like glass. You could be the breaking factor of a good relationship or possible business opportunity if you are not considerate of other people’s time.

Caring about others, your website content, presenting it well, and paying attention to even the finer details, such as spelling within your site, can reap lots of respectable benefits from everyone directly or indirectly involved with you. Joe is probably not going to be the only person to visit your site. One day you or your site may be recommended to someone very prominent in the web developing field and you want to try to make the best first, memorable, and lasting impression that you can.
Be conscious of what you do because likely it will effect you.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you – Matthew 7:12

Positively so much attitude!

What attitude you talking about?!

I was a manager at a truck stop quite many years ago and was approached by my employee. It was late into the night, or early in the morning, whichever you prefer. She explained the scenario and how the trucker was extremely belligerent over some issues, to be specific, one was over the fact we didn’t have crackers. He had been yelling and demanded to see the manager on duty. Before I went to have my rear chewed out, I searched high and low for crackers to no avail. As much as I didn’t want to, I sighed and proceeded to the front where I met up with the guy calling me every ugly name in the book and then blaming me for being the ugly person.

Angry trucker – “Your attitude stinks!”
Me – “Well, if I smelled so bad, why didn’t you say so earlier?”
Angry trucker – “Wha, wha, what?!”
Me – “I mean, if I really smell that bad, why are you sticking around?!” *smiling and winked*

Stunned he just looked at me and didn’t know what to say. Instantly he begins to laugh, laugh so hard he begins to cry.

Not so angry trucker – “That’s not what I meant though, hun.”

As he continues to laugh and wipe the tears from his face, I then begin the repair. In a calm and sympathetic tone, while still smiling, I first apologized for the inconvenience and explained how I understood his feelings on the matter. Then I offered to drive several miles down the road to the nearest super center to get his crackers, and take care of his bill by paying out of my own pocket. The trucker by then has calmed down, still smiling from the good laugh; we proceed into a more kind-hearted debate on why I shouldn’t have to do all that for him.

Positive attitude helped me through that situation, without it I may have been hiding in the bathroom crying my eyes out before I finished introducing myself to him. At that time, I knew what I had to do, what my job was all about, and how important it is to display a sense of confidence that I could get the problem resolved.

It is not easy to slap on a happy face and stay positive every day. Heck, its human nature to have our good, bad, and mediocre days.
What about positive attitude as a web designer or developer? Just speaking from experience s, you must have a good personal perspective of yourself, your goals, and what the job will require out of you.

Why? Without having this information, you will not be able to handle yourself, your emotions, or make a rational judgment call when the time comes that you need it. You need to know every aspect of your job, difficult or not, and be able to produce more than expected. You feel better about yourself if you can handle your job and yourself with ease and professionalism.

You’re going to deal with people who are going to criticize, be hard to deal with, or just never happy with whatever outcome. This comes with the territory when you’re a web designer/developer. There is an exception though; you are going to deal with people like this world-wide!

So what can you do?
Learn to handle criticism, whether good or bad, like water off a duck’s back. Honest feedback is important and an excellent opportunity to allow you to learn and grow.

Positive attitude show through your emotions, the way you speak, look and act. Make an effort to be calm, react rationally, and be professional. Think optimistically, use positive words, and believe good things will always come out of everything.

Remember the Little Engine that Could? “I think I can, I think I can!” You have to have passion! Personal development never ends! Seize your opportunities, experience and learn from them, and be grateful you have them.

Share your knowledge. You have a lot of good, positive feelings of accomplishment for helping someone out. If anything, you can pass on that positive attitude! It can be contagious, just remember not to use the sanitizer if you do share it!
Least of all, have a sense of humor, life is too short to dwell!