A Passion For ‘Puters

My first pre-conference session! It was very interesting with LOTS of great information. My notes, as the information came at me, are below. Enjoy ‘em!

Marc Drummond
Web Technologies Coordinator
City of Minnetonka

What tools can I learn?
When should I use each tool?
How do I use each tool?

Prototyping = an approximation of an actual design
Lo-Fi vs. Hi-Fi

Tools:

* Paper
* Wireframes
* Gray-Box
* Photoshop Comps
* PowerPoint
* XHTML & CSS
* Interactive prototypes

Discussion of what prototyping we’ve done turned into a discussion of designing for resolution. 15% still use 600×800 and these are gov’t sites, so there were lots of opinions.

Content first!
Challenges in getting content - content brief gives deadlines/responsibilities - discussion of getting content from busy people. Embarrassment/shame works…
Page Description Diagram - focus on content/hierarchy
Exercise - create a Page Description Diagram with Creative/Content brief provided

Developing Layout Concepts
Info design first! Layout second.
Elements of layouts:

* container
* identity block
* primary/secondary navigation
* other navigation
* content
* footer
* whitespace!

Purpose of navigation
Purpose of design = make them look at something specific
Discussion of grid theory/golden ratio
Thumbnail sketches - make ‘em early & often
Exercise - create at least 10 thumbnails (I got 6 done)

Break - they have Red Bull as well as all different kinds of soda on the break tables. So typical of web/coders…

Paper Prototyping
great for usability testing
Lots of info on testing - paper prototyping as the base, writing a script for the test, (in response to question) creating “tests” for the site, recruiting testers, testing team design (facilitator, user, “computer”, note-taker), take time between sessions to process - but don’t make changes between sessions, review results, make changes, test again
Example of paper prototyping using volunteers for us to see a working example - handy!! Discussion followed on the advantages/disadvantages to the process.

Wireframes = page skeletons used as storyboards
Tools - Visio, OmniGraffle, etc. to create wireframes
Notate - project name, page name, version number, last rev date, author, copyright on template for the site
What should be wireframed
Challenges of wireframing

Grey Boxing
Adobe Fireworks CS3 examples - learned about layer comps & how to use them - cool stuff!

Design issues
Color picking/psychology of color
Color Tech (brightness, RGB vs. CMYK, etc.)
Color picking advice

Illustrator examples - coolest tool in existence = Live Color - recolors your prototype VERY easily, and lets you save any of the schemes you create with it. I’m going to have to play more with Illustrator.

Creating effective communication - quick tips on design decisions to make your communication effective…
Typographical considerations - lots of considerations - spacing, justification, sizes, punctuation, test fonts at typetester.maratz.com
Design effects (lines, gradients, etc.) to help draw attention to content and make ‘em pretty, make images with people face your content to draw the eye, choosing images, etc.

Interactive Prototypes - XHTML/CSS
clickable wireframe
good for complex scripting testing
Reusable - maybe, can be timewaster…
Use a good browser to develop in, test in nasty browsers next

Demo of prototyping in Fireworks - continued from before, added information to the grey boxes he made earlier, showed how to quickly create multi-page prototypes in FW, showed how to link from master page to pages he just created. Very cool stuff - I had no idea… Once this is done, exporting all the pages as basic web pages is easy. Too cool…

More Fireworks tricks - use Common Library to make buttons and other “doo-dads” without any real work - great for quickly working up forms and such.

Finally - review of prototyping process

• Content
• Thumbnails
• Grey Box
• Advance design
• Interactive prototype
• test, test, test (all through the process)

An announcement of OAuth’s official status was posted today on ReadWrite Web - It’s Official: Mashup Privacy Protocol OAuth Is Fair Game. The article does an excellent job of describing OAuth (including a cute little live demo of it in action) and it mentions the similarities and differences between OAuth and OpenID. I’ve mentioned previously that one of the problems with OpenID’s implementation is that it is not very usable. OAuth will correct that by allowing you to use an already existing account with some of the web’s big players (Google, Yahoo!, AOL and Twitter, to name a few). It also includes, by design, the ability to port your profile or just about any other data over to the new service. You have control over what you share in a pretty fine-grained way, too, so if you want to share some of your data from a service provider (such as Google) with a OAuth consumer (such as Twitter), you can. Just by creating a profile in Google, you can port that profile all over the web - provided that the service you want to use is an OAuth consumer.
Between the profile capabilities of OpenID and the native data portability of OAuth, we should be seeing some really interesting services crop up that will allow us to really write once, use often!

I don’t think I’ve completely updated my Presentations & Publications page with all of this yet, but if I do it here, I can just copy & paste later, right? This is my schedule for the next couple of months - if you are going to be around any of these places, look me up and say hi!

Sept 8-12 -National Association of Government Webmasters Conference - speaking on Sept. 11th on Web 3.0, but will be there for the whole conference.
Sept 17th - MaintainIT Webinar on making Public Computers 2.0-ready
October 1-3 - Missouri Library Association Conference - speaking on the 1st on Collaboration 2.0 (2:45-3:30) and Library Learning 2.1 (3:45-4:30) - but will be there for the whole conference, introducing speakers and going to business meetings….
October 19-22nd - Internet Librarian - since I somehow forgot to send in a speaking proposal, I won’t be speaking here - just attending!
Nov/Dec - Computers In Libraries - Article on how to use social media/2.0 tools to collaborate.

That’s it - so far! Hope to see you around at one of these places!!

I link to the occasional article from Digital Web, when they post something web-design related that I want to point my loyal readers toward. Today, however, I’m linking to Digital Web not because of a web design article, but because of a library-related article. The library angle?

I’ll discuss ways to navigate some of the clutter of older card catalogs (now ‘updated’ to the web); services like interlibrary loan that get you stuff from almost anywhere; some of the specialized database-driven applications you can’t affordably access from the outside world; and a host of other tools and issues you have probably never considered. In the end, you will come out a more agile designer and developer.

It’s basically about how to use your local library’s resources to save some cash and get some great material that just isn’t available anywhere else. It’s geared mostly to academic libraries (the author is a librarian at a university, so that makes sense) and it’s brutally honest about the challenges of navigating most library websites, but it is a great outreach effort to other disciplines to get more people into our libraries.
This is sort of what I’m trying to do by presenting at the NAGW conference this year, as a matter of fact. I deliberately chose a non-library conference to present my Web 3.0 stuff at because I wanted to share what libraries have to offer with non-librarians. No point in preaching to the choir, there… I’ll probably do a revised version of this presentation at library conferences, too, but the tone/direction will be different. It will be more of a “how to make your stuff EASY to use”, not “how to use what your local library has to offer” sort of thing.

Bobbi and I finished up our 4-day workshop on all things Web 2.0 on Friday. I was surprised at how tired I got after each day of teaching, but it was also strangely invigorating, too. The students in the class were really engaged and willing to learn, although there was a lot of complaints about too-full-heads, I think they got some good information out of it and I’m really looking forward to seeing what they do when they get back to their home libraries and get some time to put this stuff into practice!

Becoming 2.0 class hard at work

I’m doing a bit of “audience testing” - if you all could request specific information in a book about collaboration 2.0 - anything at all - what would you like to see? I’m not promising I’ll include everything (it’s more of a booklet than a book so space is limited…), but I’d love to hear what you all are interested in and what would make you think this is a non-pass-upable bit of reading!

You all might know that I’m the Information Technology Manager for the Missouri River Regional Library. This means that I work behind the scenes a lot, making sure that computers are working, networked bits are flowing and that everyone has the technology they need to do their jobs. I also spend some time working on the PCC desk, our public computer service point, but that’s about the only interaction I get with patrons. Until today. We are pretty seriously short staffed, so when an email went out asking for help in the circulation department, I volunteered for a 2 hour shift. I have to say that I’m really glad I did.
I’ve worked circulation before - for a few minutes at a time and about 4 times over the past 10 years - so it’s been rare and short. Getting 2 solid hours to see the kinds of questions they get, the sort of needs they have and to actually talk to patrons who are using the technology I provide is pretty cool. I’m also doing a bit of dual-training. The Circ manager is working with me and is being incredibly patient as she’s training me, but she’s also picking my brain about various tricks she would like to use with our new Gmail interface to mail, so I’m training her on the use of our new email system, too! This is something I may try to do far more often - it’s been a great way to get me out of my all-computers-all-the-time rut (though I’ve been working on my Web 2.0 presentation in between patrons…) and into the main life of the library!

Engaged Learning has a series - just wrapping up this week - on 15 common objections to social sites and media in the workplace. There are LOTS of things that I’ve heard from folks and some great ways to combat those ideas. He’s encouraged comments on each of the objections, too, so you can scan through and get an idea of how other people would approach the same problem. Read through these and be armed next time someone tells you that blogs have nothing to do with training or that allowing access to Facebook will cause all employees to spend all their time socializing instead of working!
These are geared toward corporate environments - but some of the ideas may work well for schools, which do a lot of banning of social sites. Either way, it’s worth a read and being better prepared to handle objections is never a bad thing!

Tuesday is my “desk day”. This means that on most Tuesdays, I don’t even turn on my computer in my office… I get in around 8ish, open the PCC (count money, turn on computers, wipe down monitors/keyboards/mice, pick up trash left by yesterday’s patrons and get the desk machine ready for the day), check on backups and network traffic and spend some quality time with my co-workers in the smoking lounge (a corner of our driveway as far away from the building as they can put us…) before the patrons start to come in at 9am. This morning, I also went to our ILL librarian to check out why she couldn’t print from OCLC’s web page. I found a JavaScript error on the page and Nikki (my intrepid Computer Support Guru) forwarded it on to our Tech Services Manager to then forward on to OCLC. After that, I dealt with the influx of patrons at 9am, then joined Nikki at her desk to discuss the trouble ticket issues that have come in since yesterday. After giving her some advice on fixing email issues that have cropped up overnight (I hate Exchange mail, I can’t wait until I can offload that duty to Google…), I head back to the PCC desk to check on the patrons and check my email and FriendFeed “friends” tab.
After reading through all that (and seeing the flood of fixed trouble tickets from Nikki - Yeah! Our board report and stats this month are gonna look good!!), I head to Google Reader to catch up on the blogosphere. Hmmm, lots of “day in the life” posts. Interesting…
One of the things I read about in my blog reading was the fact that Facebook now has “blog networks“. I installed the application and started adding blogs to my network. That was fun and killed some time until Nikki came out to take over the desk duties at 10:00.
After she relieved me on the desk, I answered a few emails, ordered a part for a projector, met with my boss (who totally made fun of the audio quality of my laptop on Uncontrolled Vocabulary last Wednesday, while I totally missed an opportunity to ask him for a raise so I could get a new laptop with better audio inputs…), and ate lunch. By noon, I was back on the PCC Desk.
I checked my email again, collated and counted numerous print jobs from the 30 computers that share our PCC printer, and looked for (and sorta found) a few classes for kids that I could steal borrow from kind folks on the Internet. I’ll try to have a full roster of classes for our Children’s programming coordinator by Thursday, but I’m having issues finding good quality “homework help” type of classes on the ‘net. Anyone out there got some they’d like to share?
At 2:00pm, my desk duties for the day were over!
Today, I did stick around long enough to turn on my desk computer. After it booted up, I checked email again, opened Twhirl to check on my FF friends and got to work. I responded to a vendor email about a possible new PC Reservation system, which promptly turned into a phone call when the sales rep called me because she had questions, and made arrangements to visit our library’s branch either tomorrow or Thursday to look into video projection issues they are having. I started to work on Ghosting the newest version of our OPACs, but realized I was missing a rather crucial hardware component, so I’ll be running to Best Buy this evening on my way to the library softball team’s game. Since that didn’t work out for me, I decided to upgrade our Wordpress installation that runs our library’s blog. That worked just fine, and it might have fixed some of the issues Bobbi’s been having with tags and categories. I’ll find out for sure tomorrow, when she gets in to work.
I took off today at 4pm so I could pick my son up from the hospital at which he volunteers and headed home for the day. Now I’m finishing up this post and then I’ll be heading to Best Buy, Barnes & Noble (for a Venti White Chocolate Mocha Frappacino - perfect baseball watching refreshment) and then to cheer on our library’s softball team (Dewey Decimators are sooooo gonna win tonight!) before heading back home to get some sleep!
More tomorrow…

Ok, not a terribly descriptive title, but I’m at my computer at 6:45am local time, going over my schedule and trying to access my library’s email and getting a bit “eeked” out over both. Last night, just before I went to the Facebook meetup (which was great fun - pics later), I got a text saying that our network was down. Checked weather.com - no storms, so I texted the director to let him know. The network came back up within 10 minutes - no harm, no foul. This morning, I pulled up my work email - or attempted to - and discovered that neither server - email or web - is responding. No text has come through saying that the network is down. Oops…
The other “eek” for the day is my schedule:
7am breakfast at Hyatt Regency Grand Ballroom - OCLC Social Networking roundtable - Hyatt Regency Grand Ballroom - OCLC Social Networking roundtable
10:30am LITA Heads of Library Technology Interest Group - Hilton Anaheim — Coronado
12pm EBSCO Public Library Luncheon Confirmation
1:30pm *LITA Top Technology Trends - Hilton Anaheim — California Pavilion D
3:30pm Drupal BoF session
5:30pm OCLC Blogger’s Salon
And all that on 5 hours of sleep. Guess it’s time to text the director again and get my butt down to breakfast!