Strategic Direction

Help Wanted

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 05:40:59 GMT

You’re a web developer. You want a new job. There are a zillion choices. So where do you begin your search?

For those of us that chose web development as a career path some time ago, the evolution of web sites from simple storefronts to widgets and rich applications has been particularly vindicating. For many, the growth of web development has also been quite lucrative as it’s an industry with a very low barrier to entry; no degree required, just a few visits to W3Schools, a free FTP software client, a domain to work on and you’re up and running. But running to where?

A Good Starting Point

There are primarily two types of organizations that employ web developers—web application development firms and interactive advertising agencies. The former is concerned with using technology to build tools and innovate resources on the internet whereas the latter is concerned with using the web as a marketing channel to generate fast, demonstrable return on investment (ROI). Having worked at both, I’ve experienced the difference in climate and culture firsthand, and seen some noteworthy themes emerge. These themes are important because they can help provide guidance to the aspiring developer and make sure that there is an alignment between 1) the aspects of a job that the individual finds fulfilling and 2) the kind of skills and behaviors that the organization needs to be competitive in its industry.

This is the career insight I wish I had a decade ago when I was faced with the question, “Where should I work?”

Interactive Advertising

Environment

Fast-paced and aggressive, interactive ad agencies are home to a mix of excitement and chaos. They will test a developer’s talent and as well as her resolve. The timelines are tight, the clients are demanding, and agencies typically emphasize aesthetics over functionality. Necessity isn’t just the mother of invention here, necessity is the only thing that justifies the time spent inventing. You probably won’t find any learning laboratories in the office space, but you will beef up your portfolio rapidly with highly recognized brand names and ultra-cool campaigns. Finally, the fundamental tenets of software development are alien to agencies (i.e., requirements definition, information architecture, version control).

Some examples of well-known interactive agencies include G2 Interactive, Avenue A Razorfish, and Ogilvy Interactive.

Skills Emphasized

Versatility is the name of the game. Agency developers must wear a lot of hats and feel comfortable multi-tasking on a range of projects simultaneously. There is never a shortage of work, never a dull moment, and rarely a moment of free time. It’s a clock-watcher’s heaven—the days go by very quickly and the weekends arrive in no time. Knowledge acquired at an agency is usually broad and shallow.

Creative professionals expect “pixel perfection”. They want their graphical designs cut-up and coded to look precisely the way they do in comps. They don’t want to hear about browser compatibility issues, semantic integrity, or CSS 3.0. That is why mastery of presentational skills such as CSS is key to success in this industry. Developers that show a knack for layout tricks and design will find themselves in leadership roles pretty quickly, acting as mentors to others. Interactive advertising was slow to adopt standards-based design (“table-less” web development), so many agencies regard developers with this skill set as gurus and will pay a higher price for their expertise.

Remember DHTML? Often mistakenly referred to as its close relative AJAX, DHTML skills are a handy weapon in the web developer’s arsenal. Frequently, advertising customers will ask for a user experience design that calls for some kind of JavaScript function and, though many functions and libraries are just search engine away, devs can save a lot of time with existing knowledge in this area. And remember: time is of the essence.

A decent understanding of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) doesn’t hurt. Using search engines as a means to market web content exploded in the past few years, and web developers are on the front lines of executing tactical recommendations.

Web Application Development

Environment

Rational and deliberate, web application development firms go through iterative cycles to produce and continuously improve software tools for the Internet. They adhere to the principle that “haste makes waste” and work within a well-defined software development methodology. Web app companies foray into more sophisticated, database-driven technology environments, where components like data entity relationship diagrams, web services integration, and application programming interfaces (APIs) are part of the standard vernacular. These kinds of organizations make their living on continuous innovation and are therefore more likely to invest time and money toward the creation of big, hairy, audacious frameworks by which to extend existing products with new ideas.

Some examples of well-known web application development firms include Mozilla, Facebook, Google, and 37signals.

Skills Emphasized

Skills specialization is prevalent. Web applications are usually developed in separate tiers, clearly separating concerns between database administration, business logic, UI structure, and layout & presentation. It is not uncommon to find a firm that employs a “graphic design guy”, an “UI guy”, a “JavaScript/behavior guy”, an “application developer guy”, and a “database administrator guy” (or gal). So developers in these companies wear one hat and wear it very well. In other words, unlike agencies, knowledge acquired at application development firm is usually deep and narrow.

AJAX lives here. Client-side data processing and asynchronous server requests have become a convention in user interface design because they make interactions with websites feel more intuitive and desktop-ish. AJAX is also a helpful term for hiring managers to use as a filter on a job-related resume search.

Form fields abound, so it helps to know your way around the functionality and presentation quirks involved with these elements. Particularly crafty developers will employ all sorts of homemade alternatives to traditional form fields, with clever use of anchors and JavaScript functions.

Unit testing pays off. Quality assurance reigns supreme in app development. Developers that can check their own work get farther faster.

That’s It?

So is that all you need to consider in taking the next step on your job hunt?

No.

It goes without saying that there are multitudes of other factors that should weigh in your ultimate career decision, but it is helpful to be cognizant of the more salient aspects of the industry that your stepping into. The extent to which these aspects are consistent with your working style and provide opportunities for you to grow and excel will play a central role in your overall contentment (or frustration) in your daily life at work. And that’s what it’s all about—trying to achieve a little bit of zen on the job.

Bio

Walter Stevenson is an Executive Producer at Ignite Health, an Inventiv Health company that specializes in interactive advertising for the healthcare industry. He is the proud author of the Task microformat draft specification and maintains a personal web site at www.walterstevenson.com.

Designing Through the Storm

Walter Stevenson — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 02:09:38 GMT

Allow me to let you in on a little secret: I am a terrible designer. Well, maybe it’s more accurate to say that there are moments when I’m a terrible designer. We’ve all experienced low points, and whether they’re caused by tight timelines, hostile clients, infighting, personal disasters, or something else entirely, we have to find a way to work through them.

What works for me

It’s hard to be critical of your own work when you have your nose to the grindstone. As a designer who also manages a team of desigers, I’ve had the opportunity to test several techniques for working through slumps, beating burnout, and coping with creative challenges.

Your own personal paper trail

Establish your goals and document them before you begin to design. This doesn’t necessarily mean composing a full-fledged design specification, but it helps to have written notes on hand in the later stages of a project as a sanity check. Ideally, your notes will be part of a larger documentation structure that includes some form of creative brief, project management documentation, and up-to-date client feedback and sign-off notes.

Your personal notes can consist of both words and images that encapsulate two distinct types of ideas: subjective goals such as “The result should look elegant, yet mysterious” and objective goals such as “The result should avoid large clumps of text and small fonts.” It’s helpful to maintain both of these lists as aids for realigning your work with the original project objectives along the way.

From big to small

As with any other design project, you’re probably going to start with big, rough concepts and then move forward with refinements after obtaining client approval of your general artistic direction. Even on projects with very tight schedules, you’ll still want to get documented approval before you fine-tune, lest you wind up with a concept that’s judged “unusable” at the last moment.

Keep client communication balanced

I like to send mockups, layout schemes, sample markup, photographic ideas and mini-prototypes to project stakeholders at short intervals to solicit feedback. Even if no one is tapping on your shoulder for a progress report, I recommend resisting the temptation to complete your masterpiece in a vacuum.

If you’re not getting enough feedback or are nervous about approval and the project stakeholders prefer not to be bothered, adopt the shortest mutually acceptable feedback cycle. If, on the other hand, you have a client who wants to micromanage every color change and typeface tweak, you’ll probably need to push back a little so that you have time to focus on the design itself as well as the client’s input. Which brings me to my next point…

Break between iterations

I have a tendency to do my best work first. If my initial ideas aren’t approved, I can end up in a spiral of decreasing quality and increasing quantity in my quest to comply with client requests.

After my first criticisms roll in, it’s important for me to step back and take some time to internalize them. If you’re like me, you’ll need to try to understand the motivations for the revision requests and patiently consider your response before moving on to the revision itself. This also gives you time to develop a well-reasoned argument if you decide that you need to push back.

If you’re sure that the client has missed an important point or made a decision without understanding the potential consequences, you’d be remiss if you didn’t make a calm, diplomatic argument for your point of view. In many (if not most) instances, you’ll be overruled; such is the nature of client services and professional design. In those cases, you’ll need to take a deep breath and figure out how to refocus on the problem in a way that meets the client’s requirements.

Never design to prove a point

Then there are those nightmare projects (and stakeholders) that challenge your ability to be reasonable. At a certain level of frustration, it’s tempting to turn around and give your critics exactly what they’re asking for—a literal interpretation of the suggestion that highlights its weakest aspects or contradictions.

This benefits no one, and you won’t get the “I told you so” moment that you’re after. In reality, the client almost invariably loves the very comp you’ve created to show them the error of their ways. If you’ve made a clear argument and still lost the battle, it’s time to move on and begin brainstorming creative ways to fulfill the request without compromising the project’s aesthetic integrity.

Seek inspiration

Often, when I find myself struggling for a new angle on an old concept, all I need is a source of inspiration. It’s a simple tactic, but one I often overlook—particularly during moments of stress.

Grab a fashion magazine, revisit your favorite website, or even dig out some promotional junk mail from the trash; whatever it takes. Your peers, your role models, and your competitors (in short, your environment) can all help you think differently about the problem at hand.

When your work isn’t working, tell someone

Your client wants the project to succeed. If you’re having trouble and you’re not sure whether your concerns amount to real show-stoppers, stay on task and give yourself a deadline to make a stronger assessment. At that point, you should be able to say confidently that you are either on the right path or off-course; if it’s the latter, it’s time to talk to your project manager. The key is budgeting enough time into the project to take action.

One of your manager’s main responsibilities is to provide the resources and support you need to do your job—provided that you articulate your needs promptly. Sometimes you have to spend more time or money than originally allocated for a given design task; as long as that’s the exception and not a habit, most managers will understand.

What works for you?

The above practices have helped me and the designers I work with stay productive and creative even in stressful circumstances. They certainly won’t work for everyone, though—perfectionists may need to learn to let go instead of being more focused, and some designers freeze up after feedback instead of going into a frenzy of rushed revision.

So let’s talk about it. How do you get yourself back on track when something goes wrong? Project and team managers, how do you help your designers produce consistently great work when morale weakens and obstacles arise? What tricks have you learned for managing the client-communication side of the design process when things get tense?

Practice Makes Perfect

Walter Stevenson — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 02:03:28 GMT

No web site is perfect. For that matter, no development team, management methodology or project workflow is perfect either. Cosmic forces are working against us to keep projects firmly rooted in the real world, reminding us that our lofty ideals are simply unachievable. Does that mean we stop striving? No (well, most of us don’t). We push for excellence because we know that if we fall just short of it, we’re still in pretty good shape. Doing a good job is not just important for keeping customers happy, but it gives our work and our life more meaning. For interactive agencies, doing a great job translates to developing with best practices. But what are best practices? According to California State University (2006), best practices are “processes and activities that have been shown in practice to be the most effective.” In other words, ‘doing a great job’! For web developers, doing a great job typically means building solutions that are:

* Easy to maintain * Easy to find * Easy to use

To achieve these goals, development teams have finally started warming up to the following practices because have shown consistent effectiveness over time. The concepts aren’t new, but widespread adoption would be.

h2. Separate concerns.

The main concept behind separating concerns is to reduce dependencies between an application’s different features and functions, as well as the dependencies between the people who administer these different aspects of the application. You’ve probably heard the terms “presentation layer” or “data tier” before. Jesse James Garret offers this accurate breakdown of concerns as a PDF on the elements of user experience. This “Separation Anxiety” article introduces the idea of separation of concerns from the perspective of the developer.

h2. Optimize content.

Web site users and search engines are after the same thing—relevant content. In this ALA article, Andy Hagans describes how to leverage accessible content for optimization efforts. In this complimentary article, the author explores some of the specifics of execution.

h2. Design with web standards.

The Web Standards Project provides this informative introduction to the topic of designing with web standards. Additionally, Jeffery Zeldman’s Happy Cog Studios offers this great presentation, putting web standards into a rich historical context.

h3. What’s your take?

Does your organization take web standards seriously? Are best practices considered a newfangled concept, a nice-to-have item, a competitive differentiator or a virtual necessity for survival in today’s dynamic web?

References
California State University. 2006. Retrieved on December 19, 2006 from http://it.csumb.edu/departments/data/glossary.html