Displaying all posts with the tag 'kevin'
UI: User interface. The means of communication between a person and some software. When designing an application, lots of question arise. How should it look? How easy is the interface to understand? What should the colour scheme and borders look like? I was having a conversation with a friend of mine recently who told me the secret to success is to give away your secrets and as it's my turn to write a blog I figured I'd give away some of my secrets!
First you need to take yourself away from the computer and sit down with a pencil and paper; even if you can't draw here's a little tip to help you get over your drawing fear. Lines. Draw a browser window on your piece of paper, but rather than draw a box, with each side of the box draw several lines on top of each other with quick strokes of the pencil. Sounds mental, but what you're trying to create here are ideas, and ideas come from sketches, and that's what you're creating.
Draw a basic layout of buttons, boxes and content suggestions with written titles inside the boxes. Being away from the computer will help you picture an innovative design inside your head. Draw down these ideas and if you come up witha few different ones then keep them. Who knows, maybe they will become handy later.
Once you have a general idea for the layout of your new software you'll need to head back onto the computer for interface inspiration and there're hundreds of websites which you can choose from. I like the websites with user submitted entries and one of my favourites is http://dribbble.com/ - its great because it only contains snippits of screenshots rather than the whole project which means you really do only take the inspiration from someone elses work rather than end up wripping it off.
Firstly, everyone in the office has been feeling guilty that nobody has created a blog since before Christmas. So I've given Sarah the task of making sure someone blogs at least once a week and she's in the process of delegating to the masses. To start everyone off, here's my first blog of the year about something I came across while browsing the technology news that's set to launch imminently.
The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card sized computer that plugs into your TV and a keyboard. It’s a capable little PC which can be used for many of the things that your desktop PC does, like spread sheets, word-processing and games. It also plays high-definition video. The creators want to see it being used by kids all over the world to learn programming in schools and as a hobby.
Their idea is very simple; to see cheap, accessible, programmable computers everywhere without spending hundreds of pounds on a PC. They want owning a truly personal computer to be normal for children.
I honestly think the device is an insanely excellent idea, the possibilities are endless! You could even go as far as making a robot with this credit card sized computer. I know that this probably isn’t for the faint hearted, but starting at £15 + VAT what more could you buy at that price that could offer as much fun!? Let’s all become programmers!
The Raspberry Pi Foundation is a UK registered charity – For more information visit their website: http://www.raspberrypi.org
As a client and friend of ours (sam clarke) has already learnt earlier this year, "a downside of freely sharing on the net is that not everyone will play fair."
Another one of our clients (designdough) experienced the same situation this week after their entire concept, design and code was stolen and replicated by a local! competitor who states "Cardiff's most established graphic design studios with over 20 years experience delivering effective, original graphic design solutions for a wide range of applications and clients".
I'm all for developers jumping in and seeing how things are done, It's interesting, a fast way to learn and a good way to improve your skills for later projects. But plagiarism is something everyone at codeworks strongly disagree on.
The company in question was contacted by our friends at designdough and after a few hours of discussion what was firstly changed, was then taken down. Rightly so! Now i personally can't comment on the circumstances of who was responsible for copying ours and designdough's hard work, but i can comment on the fact a company who states they deliver original content need to have a serious look at how they operate.
Personally, we would like to see an apology from designworld for stealing our code and an explanation as to how this happened and what they're going to do to make sure it doesn't happen again. Our intentions here are not to slander this company for a mistake, but highlight the important issue that if you outsource your work make sure you trust who you're working with.
It's also worth mentioning as much as we're annoyed we're also flattered that the design together with the code was that good, they felt the need to steal it, so together with designdough we must be doing something right!
Update: We've since had a response from the company; "we gave the brief to a freelancer which was 'big image, couple of panels of text' and what we were presented with we liked so it went straight up. Obviously though the buck ultimately stops with the Partners, so I can only apologise again for this incident and rest-assured that we will tighten up our procedures from now on and ensure that everything is checked in much more detail. We will obviously not be using that supplier again ..... Apologies again for this incident and I hope this puts your mind at rest regarding our intentions and integrity."
We're glad to hear from the company and consider the matter resolved, we hope that other companies can learn from this and get to know their suppliers a little better.
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