pelago

The “personality gap” between programmers and designers is really a matter of perception. Unfortunately, the idea that artists only design and techies only program limits the productivity of today’s Web teams.

Our education often teaches us that we are either creative or scientific, and never the twain shall meet. Employers extend that model, separating artistic duties from technical tasks. But how employees identify themselves significantly impacts the production process. Pigeonholing them isn’t an effective way to produce quality work.

YOU’VE PROBABLY SAID something like it 20 times a day while bantering with your IT colleagues: “Let’s take this ERP discussion offline with Chuck, who can penetrate the FUD on this.” This makes perfect sense to your network manager, but your CFO will be baffled. As you prepare to do battle with that same CFO over your budget, being clear and concise is more important than ever.

So the next time you’re in the boardroom trying to sell upper management on a plan to migrate away from your company’s legacy systems, don’t speak geek. Instead, speak the language of business. Here’s a guide to help you translate some examples of techy talk into the kind of lingo any CFO (or CEO) can understand.

In the same way that a great concept is the foundation of a great logo, information architecture is the foundation of a useful Web site. Whether it’s in your face, or barely noticeable, an architecture needs to be clear and understandable and it needs to communicate. Architecture, navigation and interface design combined with visual branding, determine the overall user experience and influence the audience’s brand perception.

Much web design has suffered from an over reliance on graphic design principles. Too many graphic designers have tried to force the Web to be what it is not, in the process creating ineffective and sometimes unusable websites. Quality web design is driven by information architecture design principles. Graphic design should support these principles.

This article outlines a set of tools that will put you in a leadership position, make sure your projects meet business goals, increase the support for your work, and, in the end, improve your credibility.

We use different analysis and creation techniques as apporpriate for the situation and nature of the problem. There is no way to sketch out the design for something without describing with some level of specificity how these specific attributes will be fulfilled, so we don’t invest specific time in following a single model or protocol. We focus on the designs themselves, and our expectations for the interaction qualities. As our ideas get support and detail, it’s my job as the Program Manager to write the specification.

Before you decide to jump in and start coding your own site in HTML, consider some of the pros and cons of taking on this project yourself versus outsourcing it to a Web design professional.

As Tom Peters says in the May 1999 issue of Fast Company, “You are your projects.” If that’s the case, knowing your way around project management software and the basics of project management are essential to your career.

You might think that those two perspectives cover everything you need for a success. Certainly, many products have had modest successes this way. But to have a big success, you need more than just engineering and marketing.

People usually associate rules and goals with work, often thought of as the opposite of play. And when work is tedious and rules too constraining or goal-driven, work could not be more opposite of play. However, when innovation and invention essential components for growth are included in the work objective, so must a modicum of engaged play. It’s during play that the mind takes the time to consider alternative actions which, in turn, allows creative thoughts to surface.