Last Summer was my best ever in England. I know many people would tell you that July was miserable and it was raining non-stop, but the thing is, I wasn’t here in July, I came back in August and it wasn’t bad at all. It was warm, hot, sun shining all day, a lovely breeze to cool you off, no afternoon showers to ruin your cycling to work, etc. So I thought: ‘I should really go to the park (cross the street, the park is that far) and work from there’.

My Summer Office

I picked up my laptop, my notebook (luckily I still have and use one), a pen, my phone and a beach towel to sit on the grass. Lovely. I was all happy and smiley.

As soon as I organised my new office I thought I needed internet connection, how naive of me to forget that!
Fear not, I could connect my laptop to the smartphone et voilà, I was ready to work.

Turned on my laptop and there was too much light to see any colour on my monitor. I couldn’t do any photo retouching or graphic layout.

I paused for few minutes, I didn’t want to blame the Sun because my open air office wasn’t working right away, I actually was quite happy to feel the Summer on my skin. Laid there enjoying the quiet sound of the empty park (most of the people were in the office!) and realised that I couldn’t do what I had planned for that day, because it required a computer. I stood there for half an hour or so, published a quick blog post from the phone and headed back home, to work.

For the rest of the week I left my laptop at home, spent every morning at the park doing research, reading, planning, sketching, taking notes, focusing on the creative process that every project requires, checking emails now and then on the phone and then went home to spend the afternoon working on the computer.

Have you ever thought that productive, relaxing and rewarding can all go together? Well, that week ticked all the three boxes for me.

Since that experience I started moving around a bit more, working from different places in the city: cafes, libraries, parks, even museums, purely because I got tired of sitting on the same chair every day. I felt like getting out meant giving my brain more space to expand, not to explode, or should I say implode?

I am aware that not every job allows you this kind of freedom and flexibility, get away from your office and hide from your boss* for half a day, but if you could do it and you won’t just because you’re lazy, well, you’re missing out!

* Hiding from your boss for half a day doesn’t mean not working!

Columbia Icefield Park // 25 June 2011
Glacier, Canada

Picture available on iStockphoto.

Since I first started freelancing I’ve always been asked for a price list.

Yes, I do quote the work beforehand and I wait for the client approval, but no, you won’t find a price list on this website.

I never really had one. Or at least I have never published one.

Why?
Because a general request gets a general answer and that general answer means a general (read vague) price, usually between £x and £xxxx.

Even when clients know what they want, they rarely know what they need, or what it needs to be done in order to get them what they need.

Most asked question: ‘How much does a website cost?’
Most answered reply: ‘It depends.’

Round of applause!

I doubt we will ever get over these two lines.

It’s like asking about the weather trying to start a conversation. Talking about the weather is not the actual conversation, you know? You are breaking the ice, touching base, tasting the waters.

Designer/Developer: ‘What is your idea of a website?’
(Potential) Client: ‘I don’t know…’

The I don’t know bit opens the gate unleashing an increadible amount of ideas. Some will be good, some… well, not so much.

It often starts with a shy I want something simple, but few sentences in and it has already become a giant monster, king of all websites, ruling the internet world.

I am exaggertaing, yes, but you get the idea.

The whole process of discovering your client’s needs and how to achieve them via the web will be very much part of the quote you are going to write, you are working already.

There is no such thing as a perfect quick quote, especially for a flexible product like a website and I find it very hard to set a fixed price blindfolded. I want to know what I will be doing and I want my client to know what to expect.
Of course there are exceptions: a sign up form will take more or less the same amount of hours to be developed, a WordPress installation has a standard process (hosting nightmares excluded), a dropdown menu is easily quantifiable, can’t say the same about a homepage!

We all know how important efficiency is, time is money, my time, my money, right? The less I will spend writing a quote the more time I will have to actually do the work.
But a more detailed and dedicated quote will save you a lot of discussions and email exchanges with the client, hence it will save you a lot of time, plus the client will know what you are doing and why.

Experience helps you through the process, it becomes easier to quantify your time and anticipate issues that could make you slow down, it’s a learning process, but other than the vague idea of what everyone needs from the web (visibility), I feel that if I had a fixed price I would be cheapening the product depriving it from the personal touch that every work has attached, it’s a piece of my creativity that lives with them.

In conclusion, I don’t feel like writing a price list, it won’t make me save enough time to justify it and it won’t make me earn more money.
Few standard references are enough, the rest is always too attached to the project to be encapsulated in a standard category.
Is there still someone who thinks of websites in terms of number of pages? I don’t and I won’t. Shoot me.

Few weeks ago I witnessed my father’s reaction to a (not massive) change of graphical user interface (GUI, look it up on Wikipedia) on his bank’s website.

I can’t deny some amusement when he burst out yelling at the laptop screen ‘It’s not there anymore!’, he didn’t say anything else, but I could also read on his face ‘How does it work now?’.

Then he turned to me and asked ‘Where is it?’ like I would know, just because I’m a web designer, we are not even with the same bank!
‘Dad, I’m sure that If you look closely you’ll find it, unless they removed it, which would be weird’. The last bit was said in a sarcastic tone of voice.
‘I think they removed it’ was my dad’s answer.

My dad is not a web savvy person, nor he is a frequent internet surfer, but that’s why this involuntary test looked immediately interesting to me: he is a typical, average user facing a non-expected GUI change.

After a bit of ranting my dad found his way to the account summary, but was not happy or interested, not even a tiny bit, in the new graphic version of the website, more elegant and slick.

First lesson learnt:

Don’t change the GUI without notice.

Second lesson learnt:

Don’t expect the user to notice the wonderful work you have done.

We know the majority of people is resistant to change, but change is healthy and necessary.

Few things you can do when you change a GUI:

• Tell users in advance.
  It’s a good time for a newsletter, put a banner on your homepage, publish a short news statement, let them know when and how much it will change, they want to know if and how they will be affected.
• Use tooltips for fundamental areas (like your login box!) for the first few days. Let the user get used to it and ease the change in.
• Personally I believe that if you change your homepage, the rest of the website should follow…

Recently I have been developing few websites (including this one) with mobiles in mind.
More and more often users are accessing websites through all sort of devices, desktops, laptops, mobiles, tablets.

The first approach back in the time when CSS wasn’t yet the magic and powerful tool that is today, was to develop two different websites: one for standard screens and one for mobile phones. Javascript was handy to detect the users’ device type and point it to the right URL.
This technique is still in use and it’s pretty useful in several occasions, such as offering products and services limited to specific device users. It also has the advantage to let the user download only what he needs: no extra CSS, no extra queries to pick the right size of images, etc.

That said, with CSS3 and the @media queries the joy of writing a stylesheet for a fluid and slick website has increased exponentially.

The idea that your layout moves and adapt before the user’s eyes is fascinating.

As you always do, you will decide what’s more important, what deserves the top space and what can be sacrificed and will go visibility: hidden;.

What I love about responsive web design is that you will worry a lot less about pulling out the right content, as it will be decided once (and for all) at the beginning of the project and displayed via CSS only. No need to interrogate your database for once.

Sure it will require more attention to details while writing your stylesheet and a lot more ahead thinking when designing the layout, but less maintenance once the website will live its own life.

If you want to know more about responsive web design (RWD) then I’d suggest this blog post by Nick Pettit, one of my favourite tutorial wizard at Carsonified!

Feel free to share your thoughts below!

i’m curious by nature, i love listening and i also love talking about what i’m passionate about.
living is a learning process, learning is a living process, i live and learn and i love to live and learn.

feel the same way and want to work with me on a project? drop me a line!

The Full (Fool) Moon.

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