Monthly Archives: February 2018

Modular CSS

This is a continuation of the concept of modular css I mentioned in class. Just a couple of articles to get started with.

An Introduction To Object Oriented CSS (OOCSS)

Have you ever heard the phrase “Content is King”? Being a Web developer, and therefore having a job that’s often linked to content creation, it’s likely you have. It’s a fairly overused but true statement about what draws visitors to a site.

Object Oriented CSS

How do you scale CSS for thousands of pages? Object Oriented CSS is an answer. It’s an approach for writing CSS that’s fast, maintainable, and standards-based. It adds much needed predictability to CSS so that even beginners can participate in writing beautiful websites. Nicole Sullivan first presented it at Web Directions North in Denver and the response has been overwhelming.

No More Janky CSS: Using OOCSS, SMACSS and BEM

If you are writing just a few lines of CSS, it may not make a difference how you structure it. But as a project grows and the CSS becomes larger, the question of structuring CSS becomes more pertinent. There are a number of methodologies for writing better CSS. Some of the most popular ones are OOCSS, SMACSS and BEM.

Competitor Analysis—Initial Questions

Competitor Analysis

Some starting questions for your Competitor Analysis.

Who are your competitors?

What are their features?

How do their features compare to yours?

Additional Reference:

How to Conduct a Competitive Analysis for Your Online Business [with Templates]

A Step-by-Step Guide to Conducting Competitive Analysis

How to Conduct and Prepare a Competitive Analysis

WHAT TO EXPECTAn in-depth investigation and analysis of your competition is one of the most important components of a comprehensive market analysis. A competitive analysis allows you to assess your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses in your marketplace and implement effective strategies to improve your competitive advantage. This Business Builder will take you through a step-by-step process of competitive analysis, helping you to identify your competition, determine and weigh their attributes, assess their strengths and weaknesses, and uncover their objectives and strategies in your market segment.

http://edwardlowe.org/how-to-conduct-and-prepare-a-competitive-analysis/

 

 

 

Initial Client Questions

Excerpt from Undercover User Experience Design
Bowles and Box

Researching the Business

Unlike most users, businesses aren’t afraid to make demands, so it’s usually not difficult to discover business needs. These needs might be unnecessary, vague, or misdirected, but you should still bring them to the surface. Only when business needs are in the open can you explain how to marry them with the needs of the user

The Organization/Company

  • What’s the organization’s history?
  • What’s the current standing of the organization?
  • What are the organization’sg oals?
  • Who are our competitors?
  • What are our strengths and weaknesses compared with them?
  • How is the organization structured?
  • How do we want the organization to be seen?

The Site/Product

  • What’s the site for?
  • What’s the site’s history?
  • What does the site do welt? Poorly?
  • What technical platform does it run on?
  • Does the site use a content management system (CMS)?
  • What content management processes support the site?
  • How much flexibility for technical change is there?
  • How would you rate the site’s usability? Structure? Content? Visual design?

Users

  • Who are the current users?
  • Are they the people the company is targeting?
  • What characteristics do they have?
  • Why do they use our site and not a competitor’s?
  • What do users say about our site?
  • How do they use our site now?
  • What do users need to do for us to be successful?

People

  • What’s your role in the project?
  • Who else is working on the project?
  • What are their roles?
  • What is the decision-making/sign-off process? How long will it take?
  • Who else do we need to talk to?

The project

  • What problem will the project solve?
  • What are the project’s objectives?
  • How do they relate to the overall business objectives?
  • Why are we doing the project now?
  • What specific project requirements do you have?
  • What are the constraints (time, resources, technical, legal, and so on)?
  • What’s causing them?
  • When do you think the project will be released?
  • Have we tried anything like this before? What happened?
  • Does anyone else do this well?
  • What factors could make the project a success? Could we handle success?
  • What issues could throw the project off course? Could we handle failure?
  • How could we really screw this up?
  • How will we measure success or failure?
  • What’s your gut feeling about the project?

A Simple Introduction to Lean UX

I keep talking about the Lean UX Methodology. Here is an introduction to it from the Interation Design Foundation.

Lean UX is an incredibly useful technique when working on projects where the Agile development method is used. Traditional UX techniques often don’t work when development is conducted in rapid bursts – there’s not enough time to deliver UX in the same way. Fundamentally Lean UX and other forms of UX all have the same goal in mind; delivering a great user experience it’s just that the way you work on a project is slightly different. So let’s take a look at how that might work.

https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/a-simple-introduction-to-lean-ux

A Comprehensive Guide To User Experience (UX) Research

A Comprehensive Guide To User Experience (UX) Research

Research is a vast topic so consider this a short primer

Before embarking upon the design phase of any project, it’s critical to undertake some research so that the decisions you make are undertaken from an informed position. In part one of this article series, I’ll be focusing on the importance of undertaking user research.

https://theblog.adobe.com/comprehensive-guide-user-experience-ux-research/?trackingid=MYYBS2P4&mv=email

Final Project – App Categories

Final Project – App Categories

  1. Art & Design
  2. Auto & Vehicle
  3. Health & Beauty
  4. Communications
  5. Dating
  6. Events & Planning
  7. Finance & Banking
  8. Food & Drinks
  9. House & Home
  10. Health & Fitness
  11. Mapping & Navigation
  12. Health & Medical
  13. Music & Audio
  14. Photography & Videography
  15. Productivity
  16. Shopping
  17. Sports & Games
  18. Travel & Tourism
  19. Entertainment
  20. Educational