Introducing Gridpak
This week we quietly launched Gridpak, a tool that we hope will dramatically speed up the process of creating with Responsive Web Design layouts.
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Planning and documenting front-end components
At Erskine it’s more than just accepted, but it’s encouraged to question the way things are done. If something isn’t working, figure out another way and test it out with the team. We’re always experimenting and our processes are constantly questioned. The way we’re working now is ten times better than it was six months ago, and the same thing will happen in another six months. It’s inevitable.
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Geek in the pub
Recently, I was fortunate enough to be invited to speak in Leamington Spa at the regular Geek in the Park event. The event is split into a friendly picnic during the day, leading into an evening of talks on various web-related topics in a local pub.
Also leading discussions during the evening were freelancer Andrew Disley, Clearleft visual designer Paul Robert-Lloyd and content strategist Relly Annette-Baker. Topics ranged from the blurring of the lines between web and native apps to the Large Hadron Collider.
My talk, entitled 'Brain science, not rocket surgery’ briefly spoke of some of my personal mantras when developing interfaces on the web. I spoke of designing good perceived affordances (citing in some detail Donald Norman’s thoughts in The Design of Everyday Things), crafting realistic user journeys and the benefits of sensory feedback.
I was very pleased to receive feedback from attendees who appreciated my perspective or believed that I articulated some of their feelings. Speaking publically is always a valuable experience, and I went away with plenty of ideas to implement for my next engagement.
Special thanks go to Trevor Morris and Anthony Williams for organising a fantastic event and inviting me along.
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Bibliomania
There’s seldom an afternoon goes by in the Erskine office that a solitary brown Amazon box fails to arrive, let alone numerous boxes. Our personal and office collections have become something of an obsession, and so, before bibliomania completely sets in, I thought this would be a great opportunity to ask around the team and share with you the books that we have been reading over the last few weeks.
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Personal task management with Things.app
Here at Erskine we use all the usual suspects to keep the day in order: The 37signals Suite (mostly Basecamp and Campfire), Beanstalk, Harvest, Redmine, the list goes on. All of these are great for a team or client overviews, but in my opinion are not enough to personally stay truly organized.