London – My Cat4, 2004

Stonehenge, Summer 2000.

I’ve spent the last three months picking random normal working days and noting the amount of time I would spend on different tasks.

Why did I do this?

I wasn’t always getting as much as I wanted out of my working days and I wanted to find out if I was doing something especially wrong.
As it turns out I need to optimise my time spent on communicating with clients.

What did I get out of this?

Although these numbers are not accurate since I timed myself and scribbled the results here and there on any piece of paper I could find on my desk, it still gave me a vague idea on the time consuming tasks. Those areas are the ones where I need more efficiency.

Results of the study *

Over three months I picked 10 days and took note of the time spent on recurrent tasks.

• 59% Web development
  This includes coding, creating graphics, layouts, wireframes, etc.
• 24% Emails and phone calls with clients
• 9% Reading web stuff and tech news
• 5% Training
• 3% Accounting

I realise all these tasks are essential to what I do and I can already think of cutting down to 2% the accounting since the more familiar I will get with those procedures, the faster I will be. But that won’t make a huge impact on my daily workload.

I definitely need to find a more efficient way to communicate with my clients.
Delivering quotes and explaining projects in detail is where I am wasting most of my time. It’s also where I get the chance to give clients the attention they need though.

Not replying emails is not an option, I can picture the phone call a week later:
Client: “Are you dead?”
Me: “Yes, but I’ll be back next Monday.”

An assistant is not an option, can’t afford it. Plus I’m not sure I would go there before I feel I have optimise my way of working, don’t really want to pass on my bad habits and then blame them for the mess! I want to be the good boss when it comes to it.

Write and speak faster… Joking.

I can reserve only certain times of the day to the communication bit and reduce disruptions to the web development work to a minimum.
Yes, that’s probably what I will be doing.

Suggestions? Please leave a comment!

* This is not a scientific nor serious statistic study, it was only made by myself for myself and I doubt it has any scientific value at all, so draw your own conclusions.

When I used to commute to work, roughly 3 hours a day on trains and tube, I used to read a lot. There wasn’t much else I could do while sitting on the train.

I read novels, but I also read papers and… books about web.

For the last 7 months I’ve been working from home and I’ve noticed that my pile of books is not growing as fast as it used too.

Truth is I am spending more time in front of my computer working, I don’t have the journey to work, so I start early and finish a little later, not by much, I give myself a limit.

I tried to read before bed time, but I find myself tired and it’s hard to focus for long enough, therefore I hardly get the chance to read books about the techy stuff I am curious about.

In the morning I look for news, and Twitter is my favourite way of reading a bit of everything: from what’s happening around the world to the latest in the new technology world, to sports and, why not, gossip, just for that blank moment when you drink your coffee (black, one sugar, thanks). I find myself reading a lot of articles lately, but hardly any tech book.

I tried to substitute the morning news with books, but my head is spinning twice as fast organising my day: clients’ emails, to-do-list and deadlines! I can’t sit back and enjoy the read, even if it’s for the sake of my learning skills, which becomes somehow work related.

Don’t get me wrong, I love working from home, it has a lot of benefits, I just miss my reading time, but I guess I only need to readjust my rhythm.

Lunch break? Weekends only?

When do you read? What support do you read on? Proper books, e-books, online magazines?

Following up from the 21st of February post, Event, workshop or training course? I had a chance to look for some of the events that could be of interest for any web designer.

It’s unlikely that I will manage to attend one or two of those listed, that’s why I called it wishlist and it’s ordered by wish importance, desire to attend and not ordered by date.

Dreaming doesn’t cost much, but most of these conferences do.

Feel free to suggest any other event you think it’s unmissable for a web designer.

1. Future Insights Live

   When: 30 Apr / 4 May
   Where: Las Vegas, NV, USA
   How much: Tickets start from $795.00

2. An Event Apart

   When: Various dates from 2 April to 29 August
   Where: Various cities in the US.
   How much: Tickets start from $449.00

3. Future of Web Design London

   When: 14 / 16 May
   Where: London, UK
   How much: Tickets start from £358.80

4. SXSW Interactive

   When: 9 / 13 March
   Where: Austin, TX, USA
   How much: Tickets start from $950.00

5. The Next Web Conference

   When: 25 / 27 April
   Where: Amsterdam, NL
   How much: Tickets start from €650.00

6. UX London

   When: 18 / 20 April
   Where: London, UK
   How much: Tickets start from £745.00

7. UX Lx: User Experience Lisbon

   When: 16 / 18 May
   Where: Lisbon, Portugal
   How much: Tickets start from €295.00

8. Future Innovation Technology Creativity

   When: 27 / 28 February
   Where: Amsterdam, NL
   How much: Tickets start from €239.00

9. Internet World 1992-2012

   When: 24 / 26 April
   Where: London, UK
   How much: Free if you register in advance.

10. I wouldn’t mind attending a WordCamp, but every website I visited for each location it didn’t really make me want to go.

* Err… Some are missable, but I couldn’t be bothered to change the title, sorry.

www.2ts.it

Visit website: www.2ts.it

The backlighting enhances the texture of the petals and makes them seem made ​​of paper.
Kew Gardens, London, UK.

Let me define what I mean for accessibility first.

Since I first started my adventure in the web design field I looked for points of reference, guidelines, rules, suggestions, something I could go back to compare and evaluate my work with.

The W3C has always been a good place to find the resources I needed and I find this draft on usability and accessibility pretty helpful in order to understand what accessibility is, where it overlaps with usability and where it doesn’t.

When designing it’s important to keep in mind your end users, you want to meet their expectations and you want to surprise them, but not disorient them. You want your visitors to find what they need, which supposingly is your product/service.

Graphic design, content, functions, they all need to meet a set target.

It’s an easy mistake trying to please everybody. The reality is that every product or service has its own target, no matter how broad it is, it won’t be everybody.

That said, I believe accessibility should be for everybody.

Accessibility is about ensuring an equivalent user experience for people with disabilities. For the Web, it means that people with disabilities can perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with websites and tools, and that they can contribute equally without barriers. Accessibility is not an option, it is a human right, as recognized in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).
Source: http://www.w3.org/WAI/EO/Drafts/access-use/accessibility-n-usability-2010-10Oct-31.html#accessibility

Other than the indisputable ethic and moral value that accessibility has, let’s not forget that there are obbligations and commercial benefits to it too.

I am going back to the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) again, because they put it better than I could, obviously:

Social, technical, financial and legal factors are different aspects you want to consider when developing a business case for accessibility.
Read more here: http://www.w3.org/WAI/bcase/Overview#factors

Web designers are not different from architects: you have the opportunity to build something that will be enjoyable by all who decide to visit your creation or build something that will inevitabily leave someone out. What would you do?

Useful links

• Accessibility on W3C
• [Draft] Web Accessibility and Usability on W3C
• Web Accessibility on Wikipedia

I know it would be ideal to go to events, participate in workshops and take training courses constantly and frequently, but the reality is that costs and time are not always making it easy.

Sure they have different purposes and different outcomes, but if you had time to pick one only, which one would it be and why?

Let’s say the event is one of those you don’t want to miss, the workshop could be ground breaking for your business and the training course is essential to learn new skills or improve the ones you already have to consolidate your way of working.

Let’s also say that more or less they will have the same economic impact on your budget.

I’m really struggling to assign the medals here… (and in fact, I won’t)

Event

It usually lasts one or few days, you will get a glance at what others (ideally the best) are doing, where the market is, what kind of approach works best, you may find inspiration from other people’s work, what new products are coming out and so on.

And don’t forget the chance to network, which is probably the most important one, if you don’t suck at it like I do.

Downside: you hardly get any hands on whatever you will be hearing about on the day(s).

Workshop

It usually lasts one or few days like an event, but it’s all hands on. If the focus is on what you were expecting it to be, you will come out with a pack of knowledge spendable in several occasions.

What it’s hard for me, not knowing a lot of people in the Workshops World, is to pick the right one. I believe a lot depends on the person or people that will teach and guide you through the different tasks.
Choosing the subject is not hard, choosing the workshop with the best way of teaching it is.

Training course

Duration may vary, but it usually takes up more time than the two options above (I’m talking about 40 hours course or so).

A training course expands your knowledge, enlarges the foundation of your business, it feels more solid than a workshop.
The subject will be analysed in depth. I am not talking about a year course and you probably won’t have your skills pumped up all in once, but I expect to get out of a training course with the tools to stand on my feet and grow the skill myself.

Downside: time. It requires enough time that you can spend away from your projects.

All the options are investments. They are all ways to improve the professional you.

So, I guess I’m looking for advice here: If you had to choose just one opportunity for professional development over the year, which would you pick?

I’ve always appreciated clean code and good comments, but I have to admit I can be a messy code commentator.

This post is a promise to myself: I will comment my code in a better way.

What way, though?

Although programming languages can be very different I believe they have one thing in common: if they are not well organised, they are hard to read.
This includes the way developers write and lay out the code and their comments to it.

After reading few articles online (see list at the bottom of this post), I came up with this top 7 checklist, which is basically a list of how to avoid my bad habits at coding and commenting.

In order to achieve the goal to radically improve my coding abilities I’ll try to follow my own advice and I’ll be more than happy to hear your say!

1. Separate blocks of code with comments
   /* =Structure ------------------- */
body { padding: 0 2em; }
/* =Header ------------------- */
#site-title { width: 40%; margin: 0 0 0 165px; }

2. Comment while you edit
3. Delete the commented lines of code (guilty!)
   background: #fff;
// maring-right: 2em; < DELETE ME!
4. Use TODO while prototyping (and remove it as soon as it’s done!)
   .three-columns {
  // TODO > define the 3 columns style
}
5. Make code as self explanatory as possible (that I do, yay!)
6. Edit your comments if you edit your code
7. Avoid obvious comments
   .game-results {
  margin: 1.5em; // add margin around box < no kidding
   }

List of interesting articles on the matter

• 13 Tips to Comment Your Code
• And here is the original… if you fancy some Spanish 13 Consejos para comentar tu código
• Don’t comment your code!
• Is commenting your code useless?

Note: will open in a new window

Oh and happy Saint Valentine’s Day to those who celebrate it.