Category Archives: Tech_Learn

Maintaining Technical Currency

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It’s essential to stay current in your career, especially if it centers on technology. The #1 way to stay up-to-date is to become and remain a practitioner – learn by actually working with specific technologies “hands on”. Second – continuously track state-of-the-art changes. And third – expose yourself to as much information as possible about specific technologies, related businesses, and information from people who are driving change in technology.

Here are some ideas and resources to consider in maintaining technical currency: Continue reading →

Breaking Development Conference
Nashville July 2014

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Breaking Development Conference – Nashville – July 2014  #BDCONF
Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Convention Center Nashville TN, July 29-30, 2014

THE VENUE
The Opryland Hotel and Convention Center is an immense hotel and conference center, with 40 acres of shops, gardens, and restaurants under roof. The hotel boasts 2,884 rooms. It’s fun just to find your way around the hotel and an awesome place for a web development conference. Over 152 meeting rooms; 600,000 sq. ft. of total meeting space. One ballroom alone has capacity for 7,050 people.

CONFERENCE FORMAT
I really like the format of Breaking Development conferences: Best-of-class speakers, top sponsors, and all sessions in one room, one at a time, with everyone hearing the same thing at the same time.

Attendance is limited and not crowded. I estimate 175 were in attendance, plus speakers and the terrific conference folks from Unmatched Style. You didn’t have to scramble from one track and session to another and don’t miss one session in favor of another. Great way to run a conference, with plenty of time to meet with both other attendees and speakers.

#BDCONF used MailChimp’s Gather App to send txt updates to attendees throughout the conference. This was a great way to keep everyone in synch, especially about evening meetups, etc.

CONFERENCE TAKEAWAYS
Emphasis was on mobile design and UX. I saw 2 main themes: (1) the state of mobile web and how we are struggling to move our design mindset from large screen to small, and (2) new approaches to managing web design/development projects and getting to done (#GTD) faster.

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Following are links to individual session notes from Breaking Development Nashville July 2014:

If you missed the conference in July, the next Breaking Development Conference is in Orlando November 3-5, 2014

Other Takeaways from Breaking Development Nashville – July 2014:

  • Expectations of device: location, context, voice, …
  • Lotsa bashing of the Hamburger Menu. It’s only intuitive to designers/developers.
  • Don’t use Carousels. They don’t convert to click-throughs.
  • Tip: Collaborate on a Google Doc to share note taking.

“If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
~African Proverb

Small Screen Navigation – Ben Callahan

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Breaking Development Conference – Nashville – July 2014
Conference Session: Small Screen Navigation
Ben Callahan – SparkBox

A review of current mobile design patterns for navigation and interaction. Trigger Indicators and Interaction Patterns.

My Notes:

  • Don’t assume the big companies got it right. Don’t blindly copy patterns.
  • Vast differences in nav indicators and response across sites (e.g. “>” on some sites opens/closes a menu; on other sites it takes you to a page).
  • Content First – make sure we are building the right nav.
  • Give priority to high use cases.
  • Focus – overlay content with nav, e.g. content half hidden while overlay with menu.
  • Behavior – e.g. single top-to-bottom accordion menu JavaScript – strive for a single DOM.
  • Fallbacks aren’t worth it. Start with the lowest common denominator.
  • Usability – Web Designers understand Hamburger Menu, average user does not.
  • “Familiarity breeds usability” e.g. same nav on PC and Mobile.
  • “Design without testing is guesswork.”

Other conference notes on Ben Callahan at BDCONF can be found at: Ben Callahan notes on Speaker Deck

“You cannot do timeless work on your own. It takes a team. Collaborate!”
~Ben Callahan