Eric E. Ellis | Web Design | Project Management | ProjectEric.com | Charlotte, North Carolina

The Weather Channel’s new weather.com has been out for a few weeks now.  I couldn’t help but notice the four feature articles for 7/29/10.

All bad things, sure.  Whether you buy into the reports and dire straits of Mother Earth or not is really not the issue for me.  Lately, I find myself avoiding the home page at all cost.  The news appears so bad I literally feel myself getting stressed out when I arrive there.

The Weather.com Home Page Feature Section

When did the Weather Channel stop reporting the weather?

At the same time that news outlets stopped writing news I guess. Like most widely used sites, weather.com has been slowly evolving since its inception.  Look back and you’ll see their home page features morph from fact-based to sensational. 

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I’m always looking for research on agile practices, specifically as it relates to web design & front-end development (HTML, CSS, JavaScript).

Quite frankly, not a ton exists. SCRUM, an agile methodology, was originally geared to the software world, so I find that most research pertaining to it has a developmental flavor. Nothing wrong with that of course. Just not entirely applicable to web design and development.

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Todd Zaki Warfel

I attended Todd Zaki Warfel’s webcast on prototyping last week.  Hosted by our good friends at UIE, the seminar focused on the principles behind creating informative, useful web-based prototypes.  It’s a fantastic primer, and I encourage anyone who’s interested in learning more about prototyping to grab a (legit) copy of the session from UIE.

I’m not going to reveal all of Todd’s key principles (watch the webcast!), but I do want to hit on several that I like to incorporate into my own work methodologies at ProjectEric.com.

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Key Web Design Milestones

I have to admit.  In the last few years, I’ve grown to loathe, despise, hate, the word ‘process.’

Process: deal with in a routine way; a particular course of action intended to achieve a result; programmed instructions in order to obtain the required information.

Process, by its very definition, breeds controlled routine.  Repeatability for consistency’s sake.  It aims for efficiency.  But are prescribed processes inherently efficient ways to work?  It’s an interesting premise, especially in web design where work must remain nimble, creative, and non-conformist.

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Web Design from Scratch recently released a snippet of the PDF eBook “Save the Pixel,” by Ben Hunt.

Couldn’t be a more appropriate and targeted vision statement for ProjectEric.com.  It’s what I strive to produce in all my designs, whether I’m working with a team or individually:

“Keeping it simple is hard. One reason it’s hard is because we so often feel compelled to be doing something “more”, to be different in order to keep the visitor interested. That’s how cleverness creeps in. When you’re creating your web site this little voice can start telling you that it’s too boring, too much like the next site. You feel a desperate need to come up with something with a bit more jazz.”

Members of large design companies or institutions find this quite troubling.  After all, they were hired specifically for the purpose of being creative.  Creativity breeds new stuff.  New stuff makes its way onto a site.  Over time, your site starts to look like a Christmas tree, all lit up with various colors, placements, font types, mindless stock photos, you name it.

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What Are Employers Looking For These Days?

I run into recent college grads every now and then.  They’re excited.  Passionate.  A bit naïve.  But willing to roll up their sleeves and enter adulthood.

I love their optimism.  As I get older, I find myself saying “That’ll never work” too many times throughout the week (at least I recognize it).  They enter the work world with fresh eyes, new ideas, and a healthy sense of entitlement that only Gen-Yers can pull off.

But I see — too many times — an “I can” spirit with an “I don’t have the right skills” set of credentials.  I’m not talking about just work-world experience.  Granted, too many big firms today attempt (expect?) to hire newly-minted college alumni and at the same time, expect each one to possess a portfolio of a 10-year veteran.

No, I’m talkin bout skillz. Game.  That thing that tells an employer, “Yes, this guy (or girl) has it.“  It’s that right balance of designer, developer, project manager, theoretical, user-centered IT.

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3 Web Design Planning Mistakes

I’ve been a part of some fairly large projects in the past that – how can I say – missed the execution mark.  Slipped milestones, cost overages, scope creep.  You name it.  I’ve witnessed it.  It’s web design; wild results come with the territory.

The misses occurred, not because of lack of execution, but because of undocumented execution.

To be sure, everyone understood the basics: when major milestones needed to be hit, when design reviews were to take place, how many resources needed to be assigned.

The devil is in the details

What we found was more subtle.  We simply never wrote the details down.  We expected things of each other.

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Some design shops offer just the sizzle

Slick concepts, state-of-the-art Flash animation, fancy logo design. Throw in some new business cards and an annual report at a reasonable price and any proposal can be made to look like a world-class offering.

Don’t forget the steak.

ProjectEric merges the art of web design with the meaty science of project management to launch sites on time, on budget, and in scope. Every time.

A full-service web design firm, ProjectEric caters to small businesses and non-profits across the country, serving up just the right amount of mouth-watering design solutions. Then we heap on a serving the best project management money can buy, ensuring that design milestones are never missed, expectations are always exceeded, and projects are always completed with you – and ultimately your customers – in mind.

The goal: create a web presence that targets the right clients at the right time, in the right way. While it’s no different than most other marketing channels, ProjectEric’s transforming approach merges branding strategy and creative design &  development with real business goals.