Ben Winter-Giles

Well today is the first Barcamp in Canberra and it’s shaping up to be a blast.

To follow what’s happening at the event, you can follow on twitter by adding @barcampcanberra.

At this event along side a gamut of much more fantastic presenters than I, have played my part and put together a little something for us all to have a look at.

I did a presentation on bad designs, and explored a bit in a short 15 minute window, a few points that take a bit of the ‘dis’ out of reviewing a bad design.

The slide pack (bad-design-at-barcamp) and at slideshare goes through a few gems from the 90’s, and some points as to why they mightn’t be so nasty… from a certain point of view.

THE CHALLENGE!!!

I laid out a challenge to all who attended, and you to, to nominate a horrible site, and either thump down a case for why it sucks or why it’s great, but still sucks.

The rules are pretty simple:

1. no questionable material if you please.

2. you can’t just nominate a site, you have to state why it’s good or why it sucks.

3. sites must be truely horrible.

So to participate, just comment away.

I’ll be participating as well, and I’ll be trying to stand behind any of the horrid, torrid, utterly nasty sites you find.

Game on everyone.

I remember being a senior designer for a company (who shall remain unamed) with a friend of mine James Peek (sparkos.com) doing all sorts of design work but mainly for online sites.

Back then, 100kb was considered big for a site, and even deal breaking if you were the Government.

Nowadays, I’m willing to bet no one hardly ever thinks about the size of the page, well at least that’s the impression I get anyway.

Look at this!:

Apple.com (on 9/4/200 - 576Kb

ebay.com.au (on 9/4/200 - 596Kb

Microsoft.com (on 9/4/200 - 264Kb

Adobe.com (on 9/4/200 - 716Kb

Amazon.com at a scale tipping (9/4/200 - 1MB

See now the way I see it, it’s almost broadband bloat. It’s almost a given to many designers that broadband will be in place for the end user, so we have no issues about making half megabyte sized web pages or worse (tutt tutt Amazon.com).

I recall the day when a friend of mine was gloating about how he developed a space invaders clone within 1, yes ONE kilobyte!

Now maybe I’m being a bit of a fuddy duddy, but surely SURELY 1Mb front pages are a bit irresponsible and just plain lazy. Back in the day, I along side my fellow pixel pushers, used to go to great pains to ensure the graphics were web optimised, so they would be light, and load quickly, thus not annoying the wholly bejoinkers out of the end users.

Heck we even got so tricky as to use background colours in our …. *grimmace* table cells to save pixels downloaded.

I think James even managed to do a client side web page editor in flash with under 150Kb at some point, AND it had font controls even!!!!

Of course this all raises the next question, with the advent of mobile browsing, and all that it entails (dodgy wireless broadband radio cards and so on) are we heading back to the 90’s? do the now current interface designers need to take some lessons from us old hands, and start to think about getting our websites on a bit of a pixel diet?

I think so…. I think so indeed.

ps, well done James for your site still being trim taught and terrific at a miserly 84Kb.

Just quickly picking up on posts from two people who I hold in regard in the matter of social networking.

From my perspective, which I’ll say right now has little to do with social networking applications, but more to do with enabling change to new concepts within the Federal Government…

I both agree and disagree with my brothers in arms Matthew Hodgson and Stephen Collins.

Now I’ve had little to do with social network software other than my own personal tinkering. What I HAVE had a lot of experience in doing is implementation of new concepts within the Federal Government.

One of my own personal trophies, was within an Australian Federal organisation of about 4,500 people, around 3,800 of them customer service officers. The organisation had no concepts of User Centric considerations from any perspective within the organisation. This extended from how processes were created, policy was developed, software designed and delivered let alone maintained, forms design and documentation development, and sadly even marketing campaigns had a lot to be desired. Fundamentally the organisation was failing to provide quality customer service to both it’s internal workers and it’s clients becaue of it. Everything else was blamed, and the dead cat of poor design was simply ignored as the development process just kept running the same way.

It took several years of very strategic proofs of concept activities, done as pet projects where I could bargain my way in but in the end, the concepts were adopted, and it got change beginning to occur. Eventually a critical mass of people became tuned to the concepts, and that was the catalyst it needed to keep on going under it’s own steam.

The story there is the same in my mind, when it comes to instilling that sort of ‘new technology’ concept within the Federal Government. I’m yet to come across someone in the Government who genuinely doesn’t want to do things better, or to make better products. I have come across many people who have been beaten by the ’system’ and fallen victim to the “I can’t change things” attitude.

The key point for achieving success in getting new concepts in place really falls to a few things in my experience:

1. Not everyone, in fact most people within Government get caught or have been caught out ‘prematurely’ adopting new technology, and therefore have developed a fear based resistance to anything new. This can be overcome, if you as the instigator of the change, can indeed PROVE that what you are suggesting is of worth of some kind. For government, this must be tangible and measurable, so it can withstand the battering it will get from the accountability police.

2. Proof is not what YOU as the instigator think is a good thing, it’s what THEY as the recipient think is a good thing. Things like social networking do have value, and do have many non or hard to measure benefits. But again, to beat the risk beast, you have to provide evidence that the concepts deliver against THEIR values. Sadly “this is the coolest thing on the web right now and is going to provide amazing networking options” simply doesn’t cut it with the accountants.

3. Return on investment. Government is held accountable for every cent it spends. End of story. Therefore the people involved do in my experience make significant effort to ensure that they spend well. Failure is acceptable, but if the risk of failure is increased due to unmeasurable benefits at the end of the day, you won’t find a buyer.

So how do you get around this stuff?

Well to make a long story short, if you have an idea and want to get it in play;

Firstly, remember you are working in or talking to a large organisation. Change takes time, and is not easy. So be “patient, persistent, and positive while maintaining perseverance”. (Thanks Pat)

Secondly,  figure out what is of value to both the person you are talking to, and the organisation on the whole. Your solution has to map to those values, not yours. If you are finding yourself making up values that align to your solution, you may be doing this the wrong way around.

Thirdly, look for opportunities to demonstrate in a controlled and risk free or contained environment what you are thinking. Pictures speak a thousand words… active prototypes being used by real people speak a heck of a lot more.

Fourthly, and this is critical. Figure out how to measure the performance of the idea both for now and over time, and then actually measure or concept clearly in the right language (in terms of values discussed above). If you cannot measure and justify the value of doing something, it’ll never happen, or it’ll get ridiculed and no one will do it.

It’s never easy, and people in my experience can get short sighted in terms of seeing long term benefits of many things. Years of beatings over ‘cowboy applications’ and ‘poor decisions’ can do that to a person, even me. To get a concept over the line, at least to proof of concept stage (which is about as far as you’ll need to get in many cases) you need to be able to prove it’s value, in the same terms as those you are pitching to.

Hold a positive view of the Government, there are many things that can be done better, but without a doubt, there are many things they could do far far worse too.

Please send hate mail to benwintergilesatgmaildotcom

Happy new year everyone.

Be safe, well, and learn a lot this year, and congratulations for making it through last year too!

Well Thanks to Gary Barber, I’ve been tagged in this new meme which is really pretty interesting. Of note Garry has been a friend of mine since 06 when we met at Web Directions south, and am keenly trying to get a gig over in WA so I can come drink / er… visit at some point.

For those who haven’t heard about it yet:

The rules :

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules.
2. List EIGHT random facts about yourself.
3. Tag EIGHT people at the end of your post and list their names.
4. Let them know they’ve been tagged.

Well here goes, eight things you didn’t know about me:

1. I possess the following injuries, arthritis in left knee (cycling / skiing), multiple fractured shins (Muay Thai), broken tail bone and 18 shoulder dislocations (Taxi ran me over on a pedestrian crossing), broken back in two places (never knew horses had an eject button)

2. I’m ‘class 4′ colour blind despite being a designer by training, and can’t really see much in the way of color grades.

3. Sometimes I feel I speak horse better than I do english.

4. I’m a pretty good Thai cook thanks to my Mum being a cook (who is Thai).

5. I’m actually Thai / English, not Latin american.

6. I’m dyslexic also, and often can’t read heavy documents for very long because I get to exhausted by the letters and words moving around.

7. I used to be called Ben Giles, but got married to Trineti Winter in a Buddhist / Catholic wedding ceremony (yes both at the same time) and we took each others names.

8. I didn’t actually get into computers until late (about 18), and I suspect because of that, I guess I see computers and technology more as enabling tools than as a way of life. … despite the number of gadgets and doohickies I have on my person / home.

I hereby tag the following netizens:

1. Miles Burke: Friend and fascinating fellow, sturdy after hours stamina.

2. Nathanel Boehm: Want to hear more about his fascination for naming inanimate objects.

3. Sarah Issacson: Friend and just a lovely person. Dropped off the radar of late (phh new child some sort of excuse I’ll bet.)  (Who is simply georgeous BTW.)

4. Vicki author of unheardword.com: Lovely gal, into horses been quiet of late.

5. Nick Cowie: Friend, also possesses solid post work activity stamina.

6. Stephen Collins: Tremendously clever fellow.

7. Donna Mauer: Lovely gal, very high up in the field.

8. Andrew Boyd: Very interesting and knowledgeable webby.

Well! I don’t normally post about my personal things, but this is a little something close to my heart.

A few weeks ago I was visiting some friends and next door to them, was this little brumby pony, at best 12 hands high (or about shoulder height to the average human).

Sadly, she had been torn away from her environment and mum, with two other brumby ponies a few months ago. As I understand, this was because “she would make a great birthday present!”. So a present she became, to someone who knew nothing about horses, and really didn’t want or have the means to have her. Needless to say, and the photo says it all, she wasn’t cared for at all, and left in a “paddock” filled with building materials, trailers, boats, pattersons curse, and a filthy sink to drink from, with an occasional loaf of bread when the owner remembered to eat.

The other two ponies, because they were all so young, died because they were pulled away from their mothers far too early.

Run free and safe young ones.

So after some quite ridiculous posturing from the ‘owner’ I handed over $100 (well my wife did and I got her as a birthday present.) and I’m now the owner of this lovely little pony.

She’s a beautiful little pony, who is strong in her mind and heart. And in time, the body too. She’ll enjoy running with our other four horses in a large 20 acre paddock with only a border fence in it.

My parting comment here is something I hope people remember and influence others with.

Animals, dogs, cats, mice, rabbits, fish, horses and any other, are not to fall subject to our predatorial catch and keep behaviours. They are pets, but as pets become part of the family, and deserve to hold their dignity and be respected. They were on this planet long before us, and have the right like us all to enjoy their turn in the sun. Don’t illegally take brumbies out of their environment, they can’t go back once you take them out, and once they are out, they need to be cared for properly. If you are not prepared to take on everything that comes with an animal, buy a playstation.

Please remember this over the coming christmas period, and choose your presents carefully. They deserve good choices too.

Have a safe, happy and joyful Christmas period, whatever your beliefs.