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inspiring women

prisca — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 18:15:13 +0000

Unfortunately we’re running a little late with our post – though the day is drawing to a close – we’re just in time to pay tribute to the women who inspired us, in honour of Ada Lovelace Day . Naming only so few might seem too short as there are many more we could mention — but this will need to be left for another day, another post.

For now – here are our inspirations – from Brooke and Prisca.

Molly Holzschlag — web standards evangelista
one of the most inspiring women in our industry – open about all – pushing boundaries and keeping standards in the limelight.
→ visit molly.com

Ann McMeekin — freelance web, design and accessibility consultant
loving Ann’s no-bullshit attitude – always to the point and without excuses. Hearing Ann speak about accessibility brings home how vital and important these issues are.
→ visit pixeldiva.co.uk

Veerle Pieters — graphic and web designer
amazing work and an unsurpassed sharing of knowledge via her blog
→ visit veerle.duoh.com

Obviously there are many well known women in web and design whom I admire and have learned from. But I would like to say a word or two for a couple of other ladies I know a little better – my friends, co-workers, teachers, mentors and inspirators…

Prisca is an artist and great designer. I love her style and the way she works (her efficiency is blinding!) She remains an inspiring teacher to me, always encouraging, positive, strong… a great mentor.
→ view portfolio: graphiceyedea

And Zara is on some transcendent creative wavelength. She can create anything! Her capabilities never cease to amaze me. And her animation is beautiful.
→ view portfolio: GhostCogs

Laura takes gorgeous photos. And she’s a fine web designer too. She cycles everywhere and is extremely environmentally friendly. Laura is always doing a million things at once (and yet stays cool and unflappable) – her energy is really inspiring to me.
→ view photography portfolio

There are so many others, but I am gushing aren’t I?! I just have great respect and admiration for people I actually know who are making a difference doing positive, creative things. And they set examples for me to learn from. They have more of an impact on my aspirations than well-known characters whose work and being are not as tangible… or maybe it’s just coz they’re all so loveable..!

Conference season

brooke — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 19:44:44 +0000

They say October is the season, and this conference noob got a double first dose this year at two very different conferences.

conference, London

Most recently was the conference, which I attended with Prisca and Laura. You can see photos of our ‘attendance’ on Laura’s flickr.

Being a virtual conference, it had the freedom to ‘take place’ anywhere so most awesome was being able to watch local time, from localhome, as it were, speakers presenting from their own corners of the world, including Molly Holzschlag at some early hour in her morning, talking about ‘The Web as It Was Meant to Be’. Other highlights for us were Ann McMeekin on ‘Making Web Accessibility Sexy’ with some inspiring examples of people incorporating accessibility into beautiful design. Also Simon Wardley’s ‘Why open matters from innovation to commoditisation’ was interesting insight into cloud computing, not least due to Simon’s wonderful knack for fast-paced slide presentations!

And there were many more great speakers…

The first evening of in London, we got to see live presentations in the generally not-open-to-the-public Centre for The Magic Arts, a great venue. We heard Jeremy Keith waxing philosophical about The Long Web; illuminating thoughts on issues of identity on the web from Gavin Bell; terrifying tales in Simon Willison’s Web security horror stories, plus a few others. The evening was finished off with the intriguingly cool Tim O’Reilly in conversation.

It was great for us to be three of the many international attendees at the world’s first virtual web conference :)

An Event Apart, Chicago

It was an amazing opportunity for me to visit this beautiful city to attend my first conference. I’d never been to Chicago so that in itself was pretty exciting. But getting to see speakers like Eric Meyer and Jeffrey Zeldman was oh-my-god-I-can’t-believe-it exciting!

It was a little nerve-wracking too at first. I still feel so new to this, and going to a conference at this stage in my skill-development seemed slightly premature. But the US is a pretty diverse melting pot and after meeting all kinds of people my first morning, I was a lot more comfortable. And most delightful was that none of it was waaay over my head, as I worried it might be. (I obviously had a great teacher ; )

I found all the speakers’ presentations interesting, inspiring, educational, illuminating, a pleasure, fun, exciting… but I did have a few personal favourites. Andy Clarke’s ‘Underpants Over My Trousers’ was a fun approach to design using comic book styles and traditions as inspiration for the design process. I also loved Rob Weychert’s approach in his ‘Design Lessons in Chess’. The analogy was an interesting perspective, applied to users and designers as chess players on the same board. It’s not that the user is an opponent exactly, but a ‘player’ whose moves we are trying to manipulate/guide as a designer – and the basic solution is limiting moves/options. Interesting isn’t it?

Curt Cloninger’s ‘What Would William Do?’ used William Morris’ art and design philosophies as a theme for his presentation. William once said: “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” I really liked that quote… With the gorgeous backdrop of William’s designs, and a focus on craftsmanship, Cloninger gave us a glimpse of design in the context of a bigger picture – because designers: craftsmen, engineers, architects etc – ‘we make the world; homes, cities and online’ and that’s a great responsibility, one which we can use to make the world a greener, more usable and better place :)

I was also really drawn to the presentations with more of a focus on web-app design. Jeff Veen took us back in time to 1854 and the first use of infographics, (John Snow and the cholera outbreak,) which has arguably influenced the way we present data today. An enjoyable talk with a couple of interesting development anecdotes from Jeff’s Google days.

Jason Fried’s talk surprisingly captured my heart. I suppose it was the most enlightening for my position as User Interface Developer in my current full-time employment. Fried got down to some serious nitty gritty of user interface. It was called ‘Designing the Details’ and I really dig the details, because it’s those little things that make the user-experience more than just straightforward, but a really easy breeze that actually puts a smile on your face. Who needs to set user preferences when the application remembers them for you?

And I like that Fried isn’t telling 37signals users about every single user-enhancing action – they’re so intuitive, the chances are the user will discover them eventually, and when they do, they’ll love the little detail! And if they don’t find it, they aren’t really missing anything crucial. Some great ideas to tinker with when an application is fully functioning and just needs some super-fine refining for user treats :) And the great thing for us non-javascript-writers is that a lot of them can be done with javascript libraries, and a little cookies research (I think – yet to get stuck into some serious DHTML…!)

I didn’t take a camera to Chicago (I hear the *gasps*!) but I did make a friend who had a camera. And there are a few photos at my flickr of me meeting Eric, Andy and Robert at the first night’s social.

Looking forward to the next conference…. whenever or wherever that may be :)

conference

Laura — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 20:39:30 +0000

Last weekend was the first conference, organized by Aral Balkan, a web conference over three days and a new way to ‘attend’ conferences: from the comfort of your own sofa. :)

The sessions covered a wide range of timely topics including web standards, accessibility, web application development, flash, and scalability.

One of the great things about this conference is that is was green: an environmentally-friendly web conference as the speakers and attendees interacted with the conference locally – no aeroplane or train travel carbon footprint for attendees of :)

The first day of the conference, Prisca, Brooke and myself attended the London Hub, held at The Magic Circle – a members-only magicians club in the centre of London. The magic was in the air, and apart from a few technical glitches, the conference was great and the speakers that day were fabulous.

To name but a few there were talks from Jeremy Keith, Ann McMeekin, Simon Willison, Gavin Starks, Chris Heilmann, Simon Wardley and Tim O’Reilly . Aral Balkan was a great host and made sure the first day of the conference kickstarted the event with a friendly and energetic atmosphere. The remaining 2 days, Saturday and Sunday, were held online with the speakers talking from their homes or work spaces.

Our team decided to watch the conference together so I moved to Prisca’s flat for the weekend, and Brooke came along as well. It was great to sit there in the comfort of Prisca’s house and watch the conference from the sofa.

conference eyedea hub" src="http://eyedea.eu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/2973168864_dd51f1d4a9_o.jpg" alt="" width="219" height="145" />It was quite hard to digest all the inspiring talks we watched, and there were more talks to catch up on that were going on in different rooms. On Sunday, I managed to return to my place in time to watch the two last talks and I have to say it was a brilliant end. Simon Wardley’s talk was great and the end of the conference with all conference team members pulling their faces onto our screens was a funny and sweet moment.

Now, I will try to find some time to watch more videos from the conference and gain as much knowledge as possible.

Blog Action Day

Laura — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 22:20:17 +0000

As Prisca did last year, the eyedea team is making a contribution to Blog Action Day this year, the theme of which is ‘Poverty’.

I don’t want to tell you what you should or shouldn’t do. I only want you to stop for a moment and think about other people, just for today. And if it’s not too much to ask, more more than today if you can.

Consider our lifestyles and see how lucky we are, while other people in different parts of the world don’t have the same: running water, electricity, a roof over our heads. These are basic necessities for us. These are luxuries for other people. We need to be more conscious about the small things we take for granted in order for us to prevent the unnecessary waste of resources, precious and limited.

We can change the fact that developed countries (just 20% of the world’s population) are using 80% of the earth’s resources.

Let us learn to share, to be more generous with others and to think of the disadvantaged. With small gestures, we could change a lot and put a smile on a face.

So I ask you only for today, to think not just of yourself and your immediate life, but think globally. And think of the consequences of each action. The smallest gesture could have an effect on the other side of the world. You could turn off a light or use a tap more economically. These conscious choices and actions are the ones that will help make this world better for everyone.

‘eyelearn’ re-branding online

prisca — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 20:20:38 +0000

After a lot of hours and hard work – the new look for the ‘eyelearn‘ courses is finally online ;)

With an established logo in form of the vanilla blossom which is still in use on the forum – the new site seemed to push for a revitalisation for the ‘eyelearn‘ courses.

INMD – Ping Pong game

prisca — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 18:38:16 +0000

Inclusive New Media – workshop report

updated PingPong game [designed for users with severe ID]: http://dev.eyedea.eu/inmd/

After a lot of technical disasters on day 1 of user testing – I was determined to wow my testers with the changes and implement as many of their suggestions as possible. It did take a bit of time – but I managed to get the finals edits done – all equipment was set up and working this time (thanks to Simon being there!).

So I am happy to report that the second day of user testing went fantastic with my target group repsonding with great enthusiasm, really having fun with the game…

common knowledge

prisca — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 16:24:50 +0000

Yesterday I received a lovely email from John Pipal from CommonKnowledge – letting me know that our membership is now official :) great news…

I’ve been working with John Wallett on a few projects in the past – and always enjoyed their little gatherings, for christmas mulled wine and cheese ;) People are very friendly, open minded and nice to talk to. Being taken in as new member now is ….

for your eyes only…

prisca — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 20:25:07 +0000

Yesterday our private area for our clients went live – looking light and elegant…
Today – the first feedback was very positive.

As we all were using online protected areas for our clients in the past to allow a smoother workflow and more immediate feedback – we decided to create a new portal for our team projects. The presentation of research, mockups, site plans and any other development work online has proven to be invaluableto both our clients and us. To work productively as a team with our clients the online previews keep everyone instantly up to date and allow for quick feedback.