Liquifusion Studios

Web Applications That Inspire Me to Do Better Work

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 00:20:51 GMT

01/18/2012

My craft is building websites and web applications, so of course I love to study others' work. Here are a few web applications that I use daily and why I love them.

Mint.com

Beautifully designed.
Really focused on providing useful functionality.
Budgeting features allow me see where I stand with my budget categories at a glance. Acompanying iPhone app is especially great at this when I'm out and about.
Features an interface that records your input without needing to click a submit button. This is a pretty couragous move, but it works well most of the time.

Google Analytics

Shows the data first and lets you narrow it down from there. No need to fill out a web form blindly before seeing the resulting data.
Reports load really fast, considering all of the calculations that web analytics requires.
Real-time reporting is mesmerizing to watch on a busy site.
Most reporting tools should work like this.

WordPress

If all you need to do is create blog posts, WordPress is simple and has just the right amount of features.
Most of the forms are very easy to understand.
Interface design has quite a bit of polish and is inspiring to mimic on my own projects.

"Zero Email" Is Not the Answer

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 23:47:54 GMT

12/06/2011

Tech firm Atos is banning employees from sending each other email, ABC News reported last week. As with most drastic moves like this, this is not the answer. Atos is more than likely treating a symptom, not a cause.

I agree that email is a huge time-suck. People, especially in corporations, abuse email and generally have a lack of regard for the value of each others' time. And many of us are addicted to checking our email at all hours of the night and on weekends. But I would not say that this is a reason to get rid of the medium altogether.

What is the answer then? Tame your inputs. Control yourself.

Anyone who knows me well knows that I am a huge advocate of the Getting Things Done process. The premise of the book is that information is flying at us at absurd rates. We'll always have more information than we can consume. We'll always have more work than we can finish. I can't recommend enough the GTD approach for handling this.

If you keep email, then the answer to the problem is to get your team's culture under control.

Switching to a social networking tool is not going to eliminate any problems for you. It just shifts the problem of information overload to another medium.
We use "social networking" here at Liquifusion in addition to email. We use 37signals' Campfire. It's a chatroom with a recorded transcript. Need to get a hold of someone on your team quickly? Just leave an IM, and they'll get a hold of you when they can. But this does not replace email entirely.
Emails are for communication with clients, sharing links to documents, and longer messages. We actually use email pretty sparingly here as it's just easier to IM each other or get on Skype.
Creating a process for email saves you a lot of mental energy. If you only check email occasionally (and not in real-time), you can actually focus on the real work. Believe me, it's true. Give yourself an allowance of checking your email 2-4 times per day.

This assumes that everyone in your company will communicate through email responsibly. If you just can't get your culture to that point, then GTD is a great way of handling that. Getting rid of email is not the solution.

Design Process: Sketching Interfaces

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 23:08:56 GMT

11/30/2011

One thing that differentiates us from many other web agencies is that we actually spend time with our clients to help them plan how their website or web application is going to work before we start building. We're always trying to make this process more efficient. Lately, we've been focusing on how to make "wireframing" or "blueprinting" more efficient.

One thing that we decided to try recently was to make the planning phase a little lighter. We still recognize the need to plan out what needs to be built, but why not make the process lighter without losing the benefits of having a plan? This resulted in sketching instead of wireframing.

One guinea pig project was a redesign of our Reservoir Support section.

Here is what the sketch of the main page looked like:

I was able to sit down with Doug and talk about what each block was and how it would all work together. At the end of the conversation, he had a good idea on what the plan was.

If you compare it to the finished product (pictured below), you'll see quite a resemblance.

There are some extra elements that made their way in while I was building (like the login box on the right). But we were able to negotiate this stuff as the project went on.

Using this approach, we were able to commincate our expectations with each other, yet stay nimble when things needed to be added or changed. And now we're looking forward to passing these time savings on to our clients when we think this approach will be appropriate for the project.

Resilience and Success

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 01:53:20 GMT

09/29/2011

I've been a homeowner for almost 20 years. In that time, I've never made a claim on my homeowners insurance policy. In less than a week, I had two separate insurance claims.

The first was due to a large tree branch falling on our electrical lines and pulling the wire down off the house. Less than a week later, we had a neighbor's pine tree fall into our backyard and take out part of our fence and storage shed. It also hit one of our favorite plants - our Angel Trumpet bush. It's been like Grand Central Station around here with electricians, carpenters, and other workers helping us put everything back together. In the midst of all this, we also learned that we would have to replace one of our heat and A/C units. It's been quite the month to say the least.

However, I was pleasantly surprised recently as I noticed new growth on our Angel Trumpet bush in the backyard. The pine tree had taken out at almost half of this large bush, and several of the remaining branches were broken off with no leaves remaining. Initially I was caught off-guard because I didn't expect to see growth so soon after being hit by the falling pine tree. The new growth brought to mind how resilient plants and nature are all around us.

Resilience (ri-'zil-yen(t)s) - an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change (merriam-webster.com)

Over the years, I've noticed that resilience is a key attribute of our more successful clients. Challenges are a natural part of business, especially during tough economic times. Even when the economy is good - the pace of technological change can force many businesses to adjust their business model. Successful businesses don't avoid the challenges, and they don't simply restore the status quo after suffering misfortune. They grow beyond where they were before encountering the issue. The ability to recover seems to give them confidence to face issues and challenges with a more positive outlook. We like working with these types of clients - they model the behavior we want in ourselves and in Liquifusion.

While I don't think our Angel's Trumpet bush was expecting to be hit by a pine tree, it was prepared to deal with the setback. In less than 2 weeks, new branches were forming and it was well on its way to growing back into the tree we have grown to love in our backyard. If you really want to reach your potential - be ready to recover from the changes (and challenges) that you know are coming.

Once you learn to quit, it becomes a habit.
Vince Lombardi

Quote: Forgiveness and Creativity

Thu, 08 Sep 2011 21:03:58 GMT

09/08/2011

It is the act of forgiveness that opens up the only possible way to think creatively about the future at all.

- Father Desmond Wilson

Whether you're religious or not, the concept of forgiveness applies to David Allen's Getting Things Done very well. (Allen lists this quote in the sidebar of one of the chapters.)

To put this into context, Getting Things Done (GTD) calls for you to constantly renegotiate promises that you've made with yourself. If you don't do this, you start beating yourself up when you don't accomplish something that you set out to do. How many times have all of us felt that nagging feeling when walking by a cluttered room or looking at our mile-long to-do lists?

But it goes further than that. The past can be a heavy anchor that weighs you down. If your past self failed, then how will your present or future selves do any better? This shame can be like quicksand. A self-fulfilling prophesy of sorts.

Forgiveness changes that. You can let go of all of that garbage and start fresh. There's nothing that you can do about the past anyway, except learn from it.

The next time that you're weighing yourself down with regret, figure out what you've "failed" on, renegotiate with yourself on what's realistic, and move forward. You can't do everything at once, but you can advance yourself one small step at a time.

Using Reservoir for Blogging

Fri, 19 Aug 2011 21:09:20 GMT

09/06/2011

Welcome to our new blog! Now we use our Reservoir CMS to host liquifusion.com, so it would make sense to start off our blog by sharing details about the experience of using Reservoir for blogging.

The Usual Features

First off, when using Reservoir for blogging, you don't need to skimp out on features. Reservoir has an easy-to-use "What You See is What You Get" (WYSIWYG) editor, commenting, RSS support, categories, tags, ratings, image management, and so on.

Anyone who has used WordPress for blogging or content management picks up the Reservoir system quickly.

Real-time Analytics

Most bloggers are accustomed to using Google Analytics (GA) for tracking blog usage. GA is a fantastic service, and you can hook Reservoir up to it with one simple setting.

But Reservoir adds an additional Analytics feature that's real-time. What does this mean? Once you release a blog post, Tweet about it, and such, you can watch the traffic roll in, all in real time. If the user is logged in to your membership platform, you can even see who is currently reading your post.

Google Analytics cannot do this. First off, there is a few hour lag in traffic. You cannot see what is happening right now. And GA cannot show who is currently using your site. Reservoir can.

Social Features

Reservoir includes the ability to easily add social "Like" buttons for Facebook and the Facebook commenting system. We've also customized clients' sites to include lists of recent tweets from Twitter.

You can also allow content rating and display lists of top-rated content.

Another feature that keeps members coming back is a built-in forum system. Call-outs to the forums in your posts and in the sidebar keep them interacting with your site.

Flexibility of a Full CMS

Customizing the look of your blog pages is also easy, thanks to Reservoir's flexible layout system. If you want the list page to look differently than the post page, it's possible. If you want to add some text, images, or widgets to the sidebar, it's easy to do.

And if you want to list your latest posts elsewhere on your site, it's easy because the blog is integrated. The blog no longer needs to be a silo, separated from the rest of your site.

Easy FeedBurner Integration

Using Google FeedBurner to track subscriptions, usage, and the health of your RSS feeds? There's a setting for that in Reservoir, and it handles the rest for you in the site metadata.

You just flip the switch, and it works. No need to install plugins or change the code in your layout files.

Member Integration

Chances are that you're using Reservoir to offer your customers a membership website. If a member is already logged in to your site, things like commenting are easier because the system already knows who they are. No need for them to fill in their name, email address, and website URL.

Reservoir also tracks the actions of your members, so you can see who is actively engaging with your blog through commenting and rating.

Find Out More About Reservoir

Reservoir really does make blogging easy and powerful. A blog is a great way to offer some free content to draw people into your organization's front door. Then use the power of your membership system to bring in business from your blog.

Hey, it's so good that we're using it ourselves. And we're picky about our technology choices.