Jimmy Z

Outside of my job at FamilySearch.org, I have my fair share of web development work that I do on the side. An area that I’ve always struggled, especially when the concepts of the new site are entirely original, is user interface design.

I recently discovered a new Stack Exchange community built around User Interface design. I found a discussion thread about which books the community’s designers recommend to developers. The answer that by far had the most votes was Don’t Make Me Think.

I decided that I had to read this book. I bought the Kindle version of the book and read it on my Droid Incredible. This worked well, except there is no way to zoom in on the pictures, so it was a bit hard to get everything I needed to out of the tiny pictures on a small screen.

Don’t Make Me Think defines some simple design principles and why they are important. It teaches the Why, What, and How behind making good UI choices. I can now look at sites like Amazon.com and clearly see where they are following good UI principles, and then I look at some of my stuff, and think “Woah, I really missed the boat here.” Most of my stuff isn’t that bad though. I was surprised at how many of these things I have done right already. I now feel like I have a rulebook that I can go to when making tough design decisions.

Some of the principles I like most from the book include:

• The Homepage needs to explain the purpose of the site.
• Page hierarchy is important to make the sections of your site easily identifiable.
• Page titles are needed on every single page.
• Users muddle through sites and don’t necessarily learn how to use them properly. As an example, there is an astounding number of people that use Google and Yahoo! as their browser’s address bar. It isn’t the proper way to use it, but they manage to get to the sites they are looking for.
• Clickable things should clearly appear to be clickable.
• Your search bar should actually use the word “Search”
• Usability testing with 1 user early on in the project is more important than testing 30 towards the end.

There are many more concepts that I don’t have time to write here, but if you do anything with web development or design, this book is really helpful.

As a manager, I have often found myself at the end of the day having not accomplished anything except having responded to emails. This has felt really frustrating because there are other things that my team and my boss expect me to do.

I’ve recently discovered a FREE e-book called Focus which has some very useful tips on how to avoid the above scenario.

Some of the the insights that I’ve gleaned from this book so far include:

• It’s okay to turn off your email, chat clients, etc. — my responses don’t need to be as real-time as I think they do.
• A lot of my fears around recourse if I don’t respond to e-mail immediately are unfounded.
• Distractions are okay, as long as they are planned.
• The need to stay connected with the constant streams of communication (E-Mail, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) is an addiction.
• There are tools that I can install on my computer to help me avoid distractions during focus times.
• Disconnecting and truly being “home” after work will really help me live a more fulfilling life. I have already found this to be true.
• I get more done if I focus on one thing at a time, rather than hop between the constant streams of interruptions.

I’m about half-way through Focus. I’ll likely be posting more on this as I find more interesting things in the book.

I’ve recently become a manager, which has brought with it a lot of new responsibilities and challenges. I didn’t aspire for the position and I had mixed feelings of letting go of my other responsibilities, but ultimately I welcomed the opportunity.

One thing that has helped me in my new role is the concept of managing process and leading people. Over the past year or so, Brian Corrales and I had been helping the team transition into an Agile software/project management style. We’ve been using Scrum to help us manage backlogs of stories to be completed, track our progress, stay transparent with stakeholders, and deliver early and often.

Our version of Scrum looks a bit different than in other parts of the organization, but it has come from iterative team retrospective. At the end of each sprint, we reevaluate what went well, what didn’t go well, and what we’d like to try during the next sprint to improve. A lot of the “Try” categories have evolved around the processes that we’ve put in place to implement Scrum on our team: for opening up communication, delivering more consistently, estimating better, etc.

At this point, I feel like I have an okay handle on managing process. There are still processes that I’m hoping to improve, such as the way we test and document our products, etc. but those will come gradually over time as we continue to put emphasis on those things and work them more tightly into our team culture.

I’m looking for ways to improve my leadership on the team. I feel like the team is responsive to me, my requests, and guidance, but I’m looking for ways to improve this. I’ve been trying to hold good one-on-ones with my team members, which I believe has been extremely helpful, but I’m continuing to look for more guidance/help.

I’m awake 30 minutes earlier than usual, and I’m trying to figure out what to do with that extra time. I decided that I’m going to try to make this a habit, so I want to make sure that I’m taking advantage of the time and making the best of that extra 30 min. Here’s my brainstorm of things I’ve been wanting to do:

• Write more – blog or early morning “thoughts” notebook
• Coding – I have so many projects floating around in my head that I’d like to work on
• Work hours – getting more work hours in on my second job so I don’t have to cram at the end of the month
• Exercise – make sure I’m getting enough exercise to stay healthy (stomach/core exercises especially)
• Read – I’ve got some books I’ve been wanting to finish for a long time (Pragmatic Thinking and Learning, Focus, the management books I’m borrowing from Penney)
• Study scriptures – I usually do my scripture study at night, right before going to bed, but I usually fall asleep a ton while doing this.

Perhaps this month, I’ll make it a goal to focus on one of these things. I’ll probably start with writing.