Semantics, LESS and Sarcasm {Presentation}

vincebaskerville · 2 months

When SASS 1st started I wasn't doing any production projects in ruby so I never really adopted to it.. and then LESS came along and it was also backwards compatible, so it was a no brainier for people similar in my situation.

The tricky part now is picking one.. I usually say to pure front-end devs, they may want to stick with LESS if the command line scares them.. i know it's nothing crazy, but SCSS requires a lot of gems for the real power it claims over LESS... & I really dig the Compass support, and even other things like firebug support (which will come to less too)

Great points, and thank you for the feedback! :D

But if they're already in Ruby then it's clear SCSS is by far the better option.

vincebaskerville · 2 months

yeah.. sorry about that, I wasn't expecting it to be recorded — it was really an impromptu decision by the organizer. There will definitely be dedicated mics next time :/

vincebaskerville · 2 months

"Mobile First" should only imply that you create an experience that works well on mobile then can scale up. The mobile constraints should only arise from actual physical interaction limitations, such as screen size and touch-based interaction.

Well said, and I couldn't agree more!

vincebaskerville · 2 months

That's a good point for the video.. I'll start brainstorming. Thanks again!

vincebaskerville · 2 months

Thank you for checking out the kickstarter page, and asking some great questions!

As for how the book will be different, the main separator is that this book will focus on mobile UX (smartphone, tablets and some bleed into web/desktop). Most books (usability, IX, IA and the like) are really targeting for the web specifically or they're about general psychology studies and observations.

All those are great and awesome publications, however with this book I would love contribute by instead focusing on the multitude of mobile mediums. It's true that we can transfer much of the knowledge from our web/desktop understanding; however, everything doesn't scale perfectly.

As for hearing me speak on the issue, I unfortunatly haven't spoken about this specifically. All of my talks and presentations are pieces of this concept. I have a plethora of ideas of how I want to structure this book, but what ultimately will shape it is after all the brain dumping of lessons learned, guiding principles, what larger concerns and outside influences are, successful and failed trends, ux mobile strategies and elements, defensive & emotional designs, injecting personality, multitude of case studies from top mobile companies and user experience agencies.. etc

The hard part is going to be trimming everything down. I'm planning to work with some awesome editors and use the backers as a soundboard.

I do hope this helps a bit, and if not please keep the questions coming. My goal is to hopefully gain your trust so that you believe in me and this upcoming book.

Thank you again!

vincebaskerville · 2 months

I would have to disagree. Crafting the design and the layers of experience are two distinctly different things. As an example I would point to almost any website in the mid 90's using Adobe Flash (or Macromedia back then..) For many of the websites that actually did look great, they were a travesty to use. Sometimes the 1st visit might be awe-inspiring, but being forced to see flash intros and useless animation.. weird navigation layout, non-deep linking pretty urls... it was a mess. Pretty — but a mess.

crashdummy123 · 2 months

I would recommend for you not to quit your day job just yet.. but possibly take on a part-time paid or non-paid internship at a startup to see if you like it. Most startups wont take anyone on unless they are more seasoned (unless they're a co.founder) but, many times you can learn on the job by interning. We just hired a dev intern who has been with us for 4 months and was a History undergrad major.

If you have drive you'll find a way.

Manabased · 2 months

I currently am a co.founder at a company and I can tell you that one of the major things is persistence. If it's < 10 person company, everyone is swamped and so they may be looking for interns but it's really just another headache to try to find qualified people.

I completely agree with @crazycracker too.. you could bring your resume if you want.. but in most cases we'll just look at it while your there to be nice.

As for what to target... I'd say you can be aggressive with going after anything in marketing and advertising for startups, just talk about different organic ways to do things as you'll be working with a small if any budget at all.

Good luck!

vincebaskerville · 3 months

Calm down. I know mistakes happen, I have typos in some of my work too. But if people didn't call me out on it, then there would be more. Sure, I could have said it in a nicer way, but hey it's the internet.

I know and understand that it's easier to write short comments on the internet, and the simple fact that we don't know each-other doesn't warrant for a full or contextual criticism — but we should at-least try and take note if we are genuinely trying to be sincere and constructive, and not just curt.

To your second point, you posted a link to your blog instead of simply making a discussion post here. That action tells me you are trying to drive some traffic to your site, because if you were just interested in discussion, you would have pasted the text in to a post.

I get the point you were trying to make earlier much more now; however, we just have our differences of viewpoints. I understand this thought, and may take it into consideration by adapting when & how I write. I enjoy writing, and I know I'm not that great, but I am working on it.

vincebaskerville · 3 months

I do apologize for the typo, and if a small typo deters you from reading any of my articles then that's ok with me; however, I do find it ridiculous to accuse me of blogging spam in an attempt to drive traffic to my site. It's a serious article on a contentious issue, that many people I know and have talked to agreed on.

I write and share my articles. That's it.

I do use spell check, but things slip pass me. I have a friend who edits my post for me on occasion, but this is my personal blog about our industry. I don't claim to be perfect, and in fact content reviewing is just my weakness. I always welcome criticism as I am always looking to grow, so thank you for your words of wisdom.

vincebaskerville · 3 months

6 down votes.. ouch.. No love for team building I guess :/ -- either that, or my title pissed people off o_O

tastycakeman · 3 months

Congrats & good luck!

FishTacos · 4 months

That's completly normal. The trick is to really just still try not to let yourself go. You still want to do some of the old 'fun' things, going to movies, french-toast-fridays, obstacle racing courses, bars.. whatever they are.

We've just hit our 1year mark & we all have premature greys growing everywhere — but if you ask anyone else they'll say we're doing great. It's all part of the game.

Keep your head up and you'll be ok :)

james-f · 4 months

Great story and glad it all worked out. Good luck with the app!

DorkRawk · 4 months

CakePHP, Django or even Codeigniter are all great frameworks to choose from. It's really up to you as to which you feel more comfortable in. One maybe the hip choice now, but if it takes you longer to get things done then it isn't the best choice for you and your startup.

Good luck!

returnmypantsplease · 4 months

Proposal sent, looking forward to the event.

vincebaskerville · 4 months

I'd love to get some feedback on this as well as the author of the article

spikebaylor · 4 months

In addition to these websites, I also list a few other tools/resources you may be interested in too for the UI Design: http://vincentjordan.com/2012/01/24-top-resources-for-user-experience-geeks/

UX Booth: http://www.uxbooth.com/
UX Design via Smashing Magazine: http://uxdesign.smashingmagazine.com/
Flow Interactive: http://www.thinkflowinteractive.com/
UX Magazine: http://uxmag.com/
Anders Ramsay Blog: http://www.andersramsay.com/
LUXr Blog: http://luxr.co/blog/

vincebaskerville · 5 months

Thank you for reading my post, and although I value your opinion I think you may have the wrong idea — or at least we disagree on the thought of community.

I'm where I am today from reading various peoples blogs, articles, snippets and so-forth and so I think it's part of the natural progression to share our experiences. If you disagree with certain points, or my whole article, I'd love to learn from it as I won't ever stop learning.

GuruCam · 7 months

Thanks! We're definitely playing around with tweaks for the pricing chart & as for a free version, we are planning on launching one. Our goal right now though is to get on other platforms and then get our free 'world' release out.

Thanks again for checking us out though :)

vincebaskerville · 7 months

No problem, really glad you enjoyed the article :)

vincebaskerville · 7 months

Thanks & I'm glad you enjoyed the video.

If you don't have any experience at all, I would definitely recommend that you at-least look into the languages of the web. They could easily transfer into iOS dev via Appcelerator or PhoneGap.

However, you could also use Adobes' products like Flash, Air and Flex. However, you would still need to know ActionScript (which is similar to JavaScript).

But there are a plethora of hackathon and startup weekend type events, where you could potentially partner up with another dev & attack an idea together.

I hope this helps & good luck!!

vincebaskerville · 7 months

Thanks, and I'm glad you enjoyed the article! As for your situation, that is tough. Many people find themselves in the chicken & egg debacle; however, with you already being a developer it sometimes is an easier sell to others because you'll share the weight.

I don't know your idea, nor how complex it is, but I still would highly recommend that while you're working on it to still try and get 1 or 2 other co-founders to back you. Either another developer to help with the complex dev work, or/and a business/marketing person to help with all the actual work of creating a company.

It's tough to find quality trust worthy people (who aren't already busy i might add).. but it shouldn't be avoided.

Just my two-cents. I wish you all the best! =)

vincebaskerville · 7 months

This took a while for me to learn this personally... & it's honestly still a battle — however, It's so much more awesome being with a powerful team!

vincebaskerville · 9 months

thanks for the comment [but not the thumbs down :( ] ... but if you have an iPhone, I encourage you to grab one of our free versions and have a play & let me know if you still feel the same.

We were very meticulous about the process & believe the mobile app to be pretty innovative & really easy to use.

Thanks again for checking out the article though.

vincebaskerville

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