Category: Business
Business tips, ideas and techniques for a professional and efficient workflow as well as round-ups, tutorials and articles that will help you improve your personal daily routine in the web design world.
Popular tags in this category: Freelance, Tutorials, Tools, CMS.
Have you ever wanted to take a client by the collar, shake them around vigorously and demand that they take you seriously because you are the expert? If so, you are not alone. Whether you consider yourself an expert and want recognition or are looking to one day become one, you need to step back and ask why being perceived in that way is important.
Many of us desire to be seen as experts because we would like our opinions to be taken seriously. Others want to be respected and valued, partly to satisfy our own ego, but largely due to a belief that we know best and that things should be done our way.
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Are you fed up with hearing about yet another Silicon Valley Web application built with fairy dust and funded by magic pixies? If so, this post is for you. Most of us will never get to work on a Web application that is funded by venture capital and for which the business aims are a secondary consideration.
For us, developing a Web application is about meeting a particular business need as part of our job working with some large organization. Whether as an in-house developer or as part of an agency, we work under strict business constraints and with limited budget and time. Personally, I thrive on this. But it is challenging, so finding the right approach is crucial.
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Truth be told, I am a philistine. When people talk about recycling, I don’t think of saving the planet. In my earlier post, “Lessons Learned: Productivity Tips For Running A Web Design Business,” I wrote about how we can reuse and recycle what we do in the Web industry to save time and money.
Now let’s explore the subject further. We will look at how we can recycle existing work (done by ourselves or others) in order to be more efficient. By doing so, we can finish projects more quickly and generate a better profit margin. The great thing about recycling is that we can all do it, whether we are a developer, designer or website owner. Let’s begin our journey with the masters of recycling: developers.
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Social media is more than a buzzword. It’s now a lifestyle decision for a lot of companies. Many individuals and organizations have abandoned a traditional Web presence (which used to mean a website and email address) in favor of a Facebook page coupled with a Twitter account.
So, where does this leave email? Has the @ symbol lost its meaning as an address, and instead become the signifier of a Twitter name? I think that we need to radically reconsider our approach to email in this changing landscape and understand that it can be a powerful tool when leveraged correctly.
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It didn't work out as you expected, did it? The freelance life was supposed to give you more time with the family and free you from that incompetent boss. You even thought you might be better off financially. Instead, you're working longer hours and under constant stress, worrying about various aspects of your business.
To relieve the pressure of entrepreneurial life and avoid burning out, freelancers and business owners need strategies. In this post, I'll share some tactics that have helped me be more in control of my business, my projects and life in general. I hope they help you, too.
Let's begin by putting some solid plans in place.
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Marcin Wichary’s fascination with the relationship between humans and machines began at an early age. As a boy in Poland, he was mesmerized by the interaction between arcade patrons and the video games they played. Years later, Marcin would help shape the way that millions of computer users interact with some of the world’s most popular websites. He would even recreate one of those arcade games for the Web.
Marcin is Senior User Experience Designer at Google, but his numerous roles and broad influence at the company are not conveniently definable. His fingerprints are on the code of Google products ranging from Search to Chrome. He gained publicity for his work on the Google Pac-Man Doodle, which he co-created with fellow Googler Ryan Germick. According to Ryan, “Marcin is a genius. He’s a UX designer but he’s also maybe one of the best front-end programmers on the planet.”
Marcin joined Smashing Magazine author Dan Redding for a conversation regarding his professional career, his interest in photography and a curious creation known as the Crushinator.
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Working with code that was created by some other person or organization is routine for developers, but it can be one of the most demanding activities, particularly if you’re still learning. From using code libraries to working on a team of developers, there are bound to be times when you need to get to grips with code written by someone other than yourself.
Whether you’re a software developer or a Web designer who does a bit of coding from time to time, your work routine might sometimes be isolated, but your work typically is not. When you use an external resource or work on an existing system, you see that your work exists in the context of other technologies and, yes, other people.
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The Web is full of creative and practical resources that we can use to improve our projects. Photography, fonts, music and code are perfect examples. Finding stock objects and existing implementations is often quicker, cheaper and more practical than producing your own.
Whether free or not, these resources normally come with a license to ensure fair use. For professionals, understanding the limitations of a license is critical; with this knowledge, you’d be surprised by what’s available. Understanding copyright and licenses allows us to do what we do best: be creative.
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The differences between designers and developers often erupt in pointed jabs on the Web or at conferences. Jokes or not, the jabs create friction whose consequences are real. I am a designer, and by no elaborate means of job-title-rejigging do I consider myself a developer, but I see the cruelty of designer and developer egos going both ways. So, what happens if someone throws a pair into a sack to hash it out? How do we emerge?
Our projects, careers and maturing industry rely on our ability to learn to work together instead of against each other, and looking at what we have in common is one way to begin addressing interdisciplinary cat fights.
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