CategoryTeams

November 25, 2013 — Can you imagine your company having a chief electricity officer? Seems ridiculous doesn’t it, but many large businesses did when electricity first started to power the industrial economy. Electricity is such an integral part of our working life that it is impossible to imagine life without it. Companies just couldn’t operate without power, but it wasn’t always that way. Read more…

October 18, 2013 — Over the course of my career, I have had the opportunity to lead various Web design and development teams, including a number of professionals fresh out of school. Along the way, I’ve made my share of mistakes and learned some valuable lessons. Read more…

July 26, 2013 — We all make mistakes. Whether in our design and development work or just in life in general, we all do it. Thankfully, even the biggest mistakes carry valuable lessons. Read more…

June 11, 2013 — When a team builds a complex application, there is often a common breakdown of roles. Specifically on the back end, there are database engineers, application engineers and operations engineers, or something close to this. In recent years, more and more application logic is being deferred to the client side “Front-End Ops”)](https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2013/06/11/front-end-ops/). Read more…

November 16, 2012 — Which category does your organization’s Web presence fall into? Over- or under-managed? When it comes to the Web, few organizations have found the Goldilocks zone. Their online activities are either under-managed with minimal policies and procedures, or dogged by bureaucracy and internal politics. Read more…

November 12, 2012 — In Web design, as one of the seemingly few markets that is actually growing, job opening postings are common. They’re not all equally convincing, though. In fact, most of them are unpleasant, uninviting and sometimes bordering on hostile. Some, however, are great, and give you an honest and pleasant sense of what it’s like to work at the studio in question, and, in the best cases, what makes a good designer. Read more…

June 29, 2012 — Working as a Web designer can suck sometimes. This is especially true when you don’t get to work alongside the client. Unfortunately this scenario is more common than you would think. Many organizations have been carefully structured to keep the Web designer and the client apart. But is that really sensible? Would projects run much smoother without your account manager or boss acting as the middleman? Read more…

February 16, 2012 — The Web has entered an era of user-centricity. If businesses are to attract new customers and retain existing ones, they must create websites and apps that deliver intuitive and tailored experiences. Whether you run an online retailer or a not-for-profit community website, the user experience is mission critical. Read more…

January 18, 2012 — From one artist to another, I know how satisfying it can be to achieve the perfect shade of a color or squeeze the most difficult font into the funkiest space. Having spent some time experimenting with these and other aspects of design, I also know how time-consuming and downright maddening it can be to do these things without enough know-how. Fortunately, there’s an easier way to solve design problems, and I wish I discovered it much earlier. Read more…

November 16, 2011 — There comes a point in the career of many Web designers where the logical progression in that career is to take on a leadership position. A logical step or not, when a designer “assumes” this type of a position, there is often another “assumption” happening at the same  —  that wizard-like proficiency with HTML and CSS, coupled with a number of years in the industry, equips someone to take on a leadership role. This is, of course, not always the case. Read more…