Work Philosophy
A number of things drive the way that I work with and for clients. I always try to keep these things in mind when going about my business, and it shows through in the work that I produce, and the innovative solutions I come up with for difficult problems.
The Cluetrain Manifesto
This is an excellent book, which is based on the web site http://www.cluetrain.com and its 95 theses. Read them. They embody a large proportion of the way I think about new media and its use in business. If you have never thought about things in this light, then I will show it to you. If you don't like it, then we will probably have a rocky road before we share a common vision.
User-Centred Design
UCD is something that I factor into all development and design work that I do. All-too-often, developers neglect to think about the people who will actually use the system they are developing. Whether you are making an email newsletter, a database-driven information site, or a complete online application, there is always someone who needs to be able to use it for something, and they are often ignored in preference of business objectives. You can't force people to use a system in a particular way. You can use knowledge of the way a system is used to your advantage.
Standards-Compliance
I hear a lot of designers saying "I'm only going to develop for IE6 now" - big mistake. This attitude is based around the idea that Internet Explorer is the dominant web browser in the market (which it is). The problem with this is that it may not be the most popular browser for long, or other browsers may gain more market-share, which will mean that you previously-90%-compatible web site will degrade as that browser's market-share dissolves. I try to develop everything using web-standards such as XHTML, CSS and table-less layouts. By using these standards, I am making sure that if the dominant browser changes, it won't matter, because your site supports the standards which new browsers are being written for. Using these standards also means that it's normally a lot easier to use the same content on a variety of platforms/mediums (try printing a page from this web site to see what I mean, then read more about how this site was built).
REST
REpresentational State Transfer is a fancy name for the basic structure of the Internet. I combine this structure with some usability/IA ideas and apply them to all sites and applications that I build to provide for things like:
- Permanent URLs where possible
- Human-readable and logical directory structures
- URLs which don't unnecessarily expose the technology behind the site (which could cause problems if that technology changed)
- URL-addressable applications