For our July meeting we plan on just having a casual sit around and shoot the stuff about web design, development, usability, IA, etc…
Some of our first meetings were simple and fun just like this, and considering summer is a great time to relax it would be perfect to come and join us for some great web related discussions! To remember some of the old good times we will be meeting at our old stomping grounds!
We’ll be meeting at Stout Irish Pub in Brighton to attract some folks from Lansing.
Stout Irish Pub
125 E Grand River Ave
Brighton, MI
(810) 225-9571
Please comment if you plan on coming so that we can get an accurate reservation. Dennis Lembree, the co-founder of Refresh Detroit (who left for Cali last year), will be visiting us!
Meeting will start at 6:30 and go until people feel like leaving.
Comments (13)
Book Review: Designing the Moment
July 12, 2008
Robert Hoekman Jr. second book, Designing the Moment, focuses on improving the online user experience. His approach is a practical one: design interfaces that respect users and allow them to feel in control.
Robert’s goal is to inspire the web professional to “improve the moment” for users. His storytelling method of explaining strategies makes the 220 page book a quick and fun read. The book contains 30 stories, based on his own experiences, of real-world applications and the step-by-step approach taken toward resolving design interaction issues.
The stories are concise, and offer a critique of each phase as changes are made to interfaces. Robert has a “think out loud” method which allows the reader to better understand the decision making process. Question steps along the way and don’t hesitate to make decisions you might change in the future. Designing interfaces is an iterative process.
Designing the Moment assumes the reader has knowledge of web design and development; it does not provide the specific code to implement the recommendations. As Robert mentions in the book,
This book is meant as a conversation starter. It’s meant to get you thinking.
The book is divided into seven parts:
- Part 1: Getting Oriented - give a good first impression to the user
- Part 2: Learning - make it easier for users to find their way around
- Part 3: Searching - improve the search interface
- Part 4: Diving In - great tips on improving forms and video controls
- Part 5: Participating - focus on social media
- Part 6: Managing Information - how to manage lots of information
- Part 7: Moving On - the sign out process
My favorite story in the book is in Chapter 7, where Robert discusses the simplicity of clear labels. Make it simple for users to to use our applications, provide users with simple, easy to understand labels and instructions. On forms or applications, rather than displaying an error message that the user didn’t enter information in a valid format, add informative text that explain what is acceptable.
Designing the Moment is a wonderful resource for information architects, usability experts, interaction designers and developers. I highly recommend it!
Microsoft July 2008 Update and Zone Alarm
July 9, 2008
As I was getting ready to finish a project last night, I noticed I couldn’t connect to the Internet any longer on one of our Windows XP computers at home. Funny, I thought. What happened? I ran my usual checks, scans, etc. but nothing seemed to point to a solution. Until I turned off Zone Alarm. No problem connecting to the Internet now. Hmm….
When our second computer stopped connecting to the Internet this afternoon, after I installed the recent Microsoft Updates, I realized there was a different kind of connection going on, between Microsoft updates and Zone Alarm.
Searching on the web brought me to the Patch (The Entire Internet) Tuesday article at the Washington Post. It turns out a major design flaw exists in DNS, which impacts not only Microsoft, but many hardware/software companies around the world. Patches have started to be released for the fix; I just happened to catch the Microsoft patch, which caused issues with Zone Alarm.
Interesting story behind how the flaw was found, and how people around the world cooperated together to fix the flaw. Dan Kaminsky is the person who found the flaw; he works in Seattle, Washington, and has posted a tool on his site to let you know if your ISP provider/company is at risk. He also describes more about the flaw, and the amazing collaborative work he led.
ZoneAlarm posted a recommendation to uninstall the KD951748 patch from Microsoft.
From what I understand from the Washington Post article, using OpenDNS should protect the your computer, which we have used since last year.
Has anyone else experienced issues? Or found other solutions?
June Refresh 2008 Success
June 20, 2008
Thanks to everyone who joined us Wednesday night for Doug’s discussion of the new Adobe Acrobat 9 version. Even though I attended the Acrobat 9 kickoff e-seminar (available on-demand), there were so many new features in version 9 Doug talked about that I didn’t even know existed.
Here are some of the websites Doug mentioned in his talk:
- Doug Halliday at Adobe PLM and his Acrobat 9 post
- IT Matters blog - PDF and Security Matters
- Acrobat User Community - tutorials, forums, e-seminars
- Acrobat.com - free online community and library available to Adobe Reader and Acrobat users
For those interested, the Denver Acrobat User Group will hold their June 26, 2008 meeting online, with a presentation of Adobe Acrobat 9 Extended. Information about the meeting is available at Acrobat User Community Events, along with instructions on how to join the meeting remotely.
Recap of Adobe Acrobat 9 Presentation
June 19, 2008
I have written a recap of the Adobe Acrobat 9 Presentation on my blog, I discuss the ways that Adobe Acrobat 9 will make web design and development easier. It was a great presentation and interesting to see where Adobe is taking their long standing product.
Job opportunity - Lead Systems Integrator
June 9, 2008
The Computing and Information Technology Division at Wayne State University is looking for a Lead Systems Integrator. This position has lead web designer duties responsible for designing rich and full featured user interfaces for internally developed enterprise-wide web applications.
Successful candidates will have extensive experience designing unique and innovative web sites using all the advanced tools available today. This position works as member of a team of application developers charged with enhancing existing applications and creating new ones when needed. For more information or to apply visit Wayne State’s job opportunities page, Posting Number: 035332.
Mark your calendar! The next Refresh Detroit meeting will be 6:30pm, Wednesday, June 18, 2008 at Ann Arbor SPARK in downtown Ann Arbor, Michigan. We are fortunate to have Adobe representative Doug Halliday lead the presentation.
Doug will highlight the exciting new features in Acrobat 9 including:
- Flash integration with PDFs
- Forms - simplied workflow to create forms, new ways to collect data
- PDF Portfolios
- Real-time collaboration for shared reviews
- Improved print workflow
- Adobe Presenter
- and many other new features!
Adobe expert Greg Pisocky will join our meeting remotely to explain the accessibility features in Acrobat.
Location
Ann Arbor SPARK
330 East Liberty Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48104
Doug Halliday is Business Development Manager, Manufacturing, at Adobe Systems Inc. In this capacity, he is responsible for driving customer awareness of Adobe solutions in manufacturing, developing partner relationships and formulating strategies with key customers, particularly in the automotive and heavy equipment sectors.
Greg Pisocky is a Business Development Manager in Adobe Systems’ Corporate Product Management Group. As an accessibility specialist, he advises Adobe’s customers on techniques for developing accessible content for those with disabilities.
Ann Arbor Startup Weekend
June 3, 2008
We’re putting our heads and our ideas and our skills together to launch startup companies in one marathon weekend. Startup Weekend has been bringing these exciting, community-building weekends to cities all across the country. More than 100 people from all kinds of industries and skillsets will launch 10-12 companies. Friday night we’ll vote on ideas and choose the top dozen or so. After that, you’ll be able to choose which idea/team you want to work on and spend the rest of the weekend putting everything together for a launch. When all is said and done, you’ll be a co-founder of an honest-to-goodness startup. We need all kinds of participants!
We need idea people, marketing people, design people, technical people, business people, etc.; everyone can put their skills to work in creating these new companies. And this is a perfect time to try out something new - if you’re a techie who’d like to try graphic design or an accountant who’d like to try a little marketing, this is an excellent opportunity to expand your horizons. Through the enormously generous support of McKinley, Inc., we’ll be holding the event in office space at Liberty Square, next to the McKinley Towne Centre. There’s plenty of room for us to spread out, good access to public transportation, as well as easy parking.
The registration page will ask you to choose a general area of skill that you’re interested in. You are free to choose whatever you’d like to work on, and during the weekend, you’ll be free to explore different roles on the team(s) you’re working on. Think of the choice as an indication of general direction, not a declaration that locks you into a certain role. Pick what you would like to spend your weekend doing, not necessarily what you do for your day job.
FAQ Why should I attend?
1. Be a part of your local tech community, help build it and connect people.
2. What did you do last weekend? Experience an amazing energy, it could change your life.
3. Meet brilliant, amazing, motivated people. Find people that you know can work hard, finish projects and work well with an unknown landscape. Find a cofounder.
4. Be a part of something bigger, get excited.
5. When is the last time you had a challenge such as launching a company in 54 hours with 100 or so strangers? When is the last time you saw your company on the front page? (more reasons and links at startupweekend.com/reasons-to-attend/ ) Are you starting real companies? Yes. If you have an idea, you can find a team to make it reality. And if you have skills, you can join a team and be a part of something new and exciting. What happens after the weekend? Each team will decide for itself how to proceed. It may be that the team continues work on weekends, or some other structure or plan that works for everyone involved
Refresh Detroit May 21st Meeting
May 7, 2008
May’s Refresh Detroit meeting will be on the 21st, from 6:30 to 8:30 at the downtown Ann Arbor District library in Ann Arbor. Map to the location.
SPONSORED BY
TOPIC
We will be having a few quick presentations by members of our great group, and general discussion on the latest news, challenges, projects, and ideas that the group members have encountered in their web related occupations/hobbies/activities.
The event like always is free to anyone who is interested.
The current speakers will be
Nick DeNardis
Designer of the Wayne State University Library and Information Science website. He will discuss the latest release of the website, their goals, process and challenges. Nick was kind of enough to publish his presentation online, thanks Nick!
Brian Kerr
Information architecture, user experience, and django development guru. Exact topic details to come…
Paul Tarjan - Yahoo! SearchMonkey
The fine folks at Yahoo! are sponsoring this event and promise to bring lots of swag as well as give a short presentation on their new open source semantic web search in your own applications and websites. This new product they are releasing is called “Search Monkey” and you can read more at:
http://www.ysearchblog.com/archives/000523.html
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/24/yahoo-open-search…
http://searchengineland.com/080424-113600.php
March 19th Podcast
April 5, 2008
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