Archive for the 'webclass' Category

Working and learning in web development

Published
by
Michael
on 22/10/2007
in tafe, teaching and webclass
. 0 Comments

Last week A List Apart released the results of the Web Design Survey (that some of my class actually took part in):

The attached report shares everything we learned. We offer it freely to this community that has given us so much. For the curious, we also provide an “anonymized” version of the raw data. It contains every answer to every question by every respondent, excluding only personal information—no names, just the facts. Crunch it yourself and tell us what you find.

The survey contains analysed data such as:

  • Perceived relevance of education
  • Perceived age/gender bias
  • Job satisfaction
  • Break down of salaries
  • Hours worked
  • Methods of staying current,
  • etc.

Never before has this kind of data (from over 30,000 respondants) been available… did I say I love working/teaching/learning in this field??

I am redundant

Published
by
Michael
on 24/9/2007
in education, learning and webclass
. 2 Comments

As of today I am on the road to being redundant.

At the start of every semester I give a spiel to new learners in our class about how one of my main aims is to make myself redundant (as a source of web design and development knowledge). Today a few learners in class politely informed me that they’ve already read the articles that I’m posting. They’re connecting with professionals in the industry, finding their own favourite ‘mentors’ and reading their strategies and technical tips because they want to learn.

It’s a great day.

Five things all clients want to know

Published
by
Michael
on 16/7/2007
in webclass and webdesign
. 0 Comments

A few days ago, Russ posted a list of 5 things that all clients want to know. Things like:

Can you deliver what we want, on time and within the budget?

Can you explain a simple, logical process for delivering the website to the client? Can you explain how problems can be avoided or resolved?

The list is a compact summary of things we need to be ready to answer, but to me the most important point is the underlying reason why these points are always coming up:

Over the years, I have found that most clients don’t want a sales pitch, they want reassurance. They want to know if you can be trusted to help them solve their problem.

How do these questions help you demonstrate to a client that you can be trusted to help them solve their problem? Read through the five points again and you’ll see that they require you to:

  1. first and foremost, demonstrate your ability to communicate effectively on a range of levels,
  2. demonstrate from your experience your own insight into common problems that may arise and simple processes that you use to get the job done, and,
  3. provide examples of your skills through previous work,

And these three things are often things that are hard for people starting out in web design to learn as part of a course - as they require experiencing common problems, experiencing simple processes, and needing to communicate these to get your next pay (hopefully activities like the 3Hr Full Code Press help to some degree!)

Of course, the next best thing would be to have a professional come in to class and share their first-hand experiences… but how often does that happen? Well, thanks to the generosity of Russ at MaxDesign, we’ll get to learn from his experiences and pick his brain on the 20th August at 2pm! Whether you’re a current student or a prospective (or another web designer in the Blue Mountains area - just let us know), keep the date free!

(BTW: It’ll also be right after the real FullCodePress event, so we’ll also get to hear how it all went as well as some of Russ’ ideas for a student version of the competition!)

3 Hour Full Code Press

Published
by
Michael
on 5/6/2007
in education, reflection, teaching, webclass and webdesign
. 5 Comments

Full Code PressIn August this year, there’s an event being run by the Australian Web Industry Professionals Association and New Zealands Webstock event called FullCodePress:

It’s a geek Olympics! Web teams take each other on to build a complete website for a non-profit organisation in 24 hours. No excuses, no extensions, no budget overruns.

Wow… what a learning opportunity! Something like this, tailored for beginners, would be great for a web design course - with a few small administrative difficulties (like staying at TAFE overnight!). Nonetheless, inspired by the learning opportunities of FullCodePress, our class has decided to trial a very scaled-down 3 hour version once a month.

The idea is that those people who are confident with the process can lead a team 3 people, with the not-so-confident or new students participating to the degree that they are comfortable while seeing a small project from idea to html/css prototype (see Web design challenges for more details). Three hours obviously limits the scope drastically, but we don’t want to create yet another on-going project as students already have enough in their ToDo lists.

To keep the activities both relevant and yet re-usable in a class context, we’re basing them around national awareness weeks (such as Reconciliatin week, or Drug Action week), providing students with the purpose, goals, target audiences and content description for the prototype.

Our class has just had their first 3Hr Full Code Press this morning, so I’m looking forward to the debrief in our team meeting this afternoon (I get the feeling some teams worked well together and others struggled together)! I think there’s so many opportunities for learning in this kind of activity, such as reflecting on team skills, cooperation, design processes, technical skills, seeing different solutions and learning from each other at all levels. I’m particularly excited because it accomodates the type of classroom we have where there’s lots of learners with very different background skills and knowledge.

If anyone is interested in trialling the activity, you can find it (and add to/improve it) on Wikiversity under Web design challenges. Hopefully some of our students can provide some feedback on the experience from their point of view…

35 Designers x 5 Questions

Published
by
Michael
on 24/4/2007
in webclass and webdesign
. 0 Comments

Genie - our communications facilitator for our web design course - will love this!

35 designers. 5 questions. 5 precise answers. Result: 175 professional suggestions, tips and ideas from some of the best web-developers all around the world.

There are a few Australian designers in the 35, including Russ Weakly and Cameron Adams… The first question?

What is the 1 aspect of design you give the highest priority to?

Both Russ and Cameron’s answers fell under the category - you guessed it - communication:

The initial stages of design: meeting the client to establish key audiences and aims; designing overall site labelling and architecture that meets the aims of these audiences; testing initial layouts to determine if they are successfully achieving the key aims. If these aspects have not been thought through carefully and tested then the overall site could fail - regardless of how elegant or engaging the design.

Read the wealth of 35 designers answering 5 simple questions - including “What is the 1 most useful CSS-technique you use very often?” at 35 Designers x 5 Questions