- 9:06 AM Andre - MESH 2009 WOOHOO!!!
- 9:10 AM MDM -
- 9:10 AM MDM - Standing room only
- 9:11 AM Andre - Talking about the shift from being a web design firm to a product firm
- 9:11 AM MDM - Ryan has worked at 37Signals for 6 years. They use to build sites for clients then they decided to build an app for them self. Basecamp was born.
- 9:11 AM MDM - They are now a software company.
- 9:12 AM MDM - How does the work day look at 37Signals…Is the topic for today.
- 9:13 AM Andre - Doing a bit of a demo of some internal 37Signals apps in dev
- 9:16 AM Andre - Interface design is 90% copywriting
- 9:17 AM Andre - Everyone at 37Signals runs a local copy of their apps and can iteratively make changes to help them communicate with the rest of the team.
- 9:21 AM MDM - Its very common to make (develop) collections of lists like to-dos, email, tweets etc. It helps to see how the changes you make to these lists in real time so you can see the new style and how it effects where those list appear in your app.
- 9:23 AM Andre - Main theme of the demo/workshop is iteration. Once you have your core foundation, the 37Signals team seems to work best working inside the code as they make changes. In real life this is no different than a designer/front-end dev using tools like Firebug, etc. to improve and streamline your UI in near “real-time”.
- 9:25 AM MDM - Traditional UI Workflow – - Wireframes – PSD’s – HTML – Actual Code
- 9:26 AM Andre - Suggesting that design task should include wireframing + PSDS + HTML/CSS… should not be broken up into multiple disciplines.
- 9:27 AM Andre - When design + developers can work tightly together you end up with a better product… cannot just have programers in control of the software. You need tight collaboration.
- 9:29 AM Andre - Designers should be responsible for everything the customer sees.
- 9:29 AM Andre - Can’t successfully use a product without the UI… software is all about the experience.
- 9:31 AM Andre - Having designers who can work inside version control tools and be comfortable in the code/templates is an ideal state.
- 9:31 AM MDM - The loop involved with a designer is real long compared to the action of “reload” when a coder makes a change.
- 9:32 AM maplealmond - @enricobianco New saying: “If its not code, its wishful thinking.” #meshu09
- 9:32 AM Andre - Ryan is pimping MVC (Model, View, Controller) right now… designers play in the views (templates)
- 9:33 AM enricobianco - So the user experience is important, but this is still _software_ we’re building. That makes a _lot_ of sense. #meshu09
- 9:36 AM MDM - Web apps have three layers View – 90% HTML, Controller – Moves data between model and views, Model – Meat of code. (DB, logic)
- 9:37 AM rccgd - Sitting on the floor at the back of Ryan Singer’s session, discussing MVC model. #meshu09
bit.ly - 9:37 AM MDM - Web pages have only two layers CSS and HTML.
- 9:39 AM MDM - 37Signals work flow. Programmers are in control of Controllers, Helpers, Models. Designers on have access to Views.
- 9:40 AM Andre - More on MVC over on Wikipedia – tinyurl.com
- 9:40 AM verneho - MVC frameworks allow devs and designers to work simultaneously instead of some concrete workflow/process. #meshu
- 9:43 AM MDM - One of the main differences between Templates and View is that the data that changes in removed
- 9:43 AM maplealmond - It feels like Ryan is saying “Designers aren’t smart enough to touch that programmer code.” As a programmer, that feels weird. #meshu09
- 9:44 AM Andre - When they start a project they discuss and try to explain the Model in plain english. This helps the designers understand what the model is and how they have to design. Gets everyone speaking the same language in a simple way.
- 9:49 AM MDM -
- 9:50 AM Andre - So in other words, you can’t have “single specialty” people on your team. Designers need to be able to understand dev. Devs need to be able to talk to clients, designers, etc. Collaboration is key.
- 9:53 AM Andre - Suggestion just made to break out your code/CSS into really simple pieces. Keep all your CSS for your comments in a comments.css file. Allows you to jump back in and understand really easily a year later when you need to make an update.
- 9:54 AM Andre - Customers, designers, developers, EVERYONE should be using the same language to describe how the code works. Same words for same stuff for everyone. Makes support and long term understanding easy.
- 9:54 AM MDM - Domain Driven Language. domaindrivendesign.org
- 9:54 AM Andre - Keep your templates as HTML as possible in order to allow designers to retain control.
- 9:55 AM Andre - Simple HTML with simple inline bits of code/data… no heavy processing in the templates.
- 9:55 AM maplealmond - #meshu09 But… but… but what if I WANT the table columns generated dynamically by an enumeration of the attributes?
- 9:56 AM Andre - Gotta be careful of developers who want to get more clever and add code.
- 9:56 AM Andre - If you don’t need to complicate things, don’t do it. Only automate stuff once it’s a pain in the butt for a long time and you know exactly what should be automated and how…
- 9:57 AM MDM - Lets Review. Designers are res. for specific layers of software code. Designer and Programmers work together on source code.
- 9:59 AM MDM - Lets Review How: Programmers are your best friend. Get the coders to set up the apps locally and check out code via version control. Create naming conventions that make sense.
- 10:01 AM MDM - Questions
- 10:08 AM MDM - Talking about how for example if you are approached with a new feature that is “important” and needs to be on a specific page. Someone comes and says this feature need to be there. You push back and say where. Everything can’t be important. If they are nothing is.
- 10:09 AM timothyleung - Ryan giving amazing explanations on feature overload and how to do with it #meshu09… Communication being the key. Also tradeoffs + %’s
- 10:11 AM MDM - Ryan’s Digits
@rjs on Twitter
rjs.tumblr.com - 10:15 AM MDM - When to use Ajax? If you need to produce a whole new list you should just reload.
- 10:15 AM MDM - Thats it folks.
- 9:02 AM MDM - Design seminar at MeshU Ryan Singer, UI Designer/Product Manager 37signals.
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