simayerDesign | Shannon M Mayer » Success

Computer Vision Syndrome

simayer — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 13:08:29 +0000

Do your eyes have Computer Vision Syndrome (CVS)? There is an infographic over at Mashable filled with tips and techniques to help your eyes cope starring into the digital world all day.

Full Story @ Mashable

Infographic created by Mezzmer Eyeglasses

Taming Twitter for Business

simayer — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 22:06:50 +0000

Computerworld has a great article that compares six tools that help businesses effectively tame Twitter.

The article covers how to build a loyal Twitter following, send or schedule outbound tweets, and monitor traffic to build a business’ brand or respond to any negative chatter.

Full story @ Computerworld

The Web is Making You Stupid

simayer — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 17:15:00 +0000

For some of us, can you think back far enough to remember what you did without the “mainstream” internet? I can. Life was non-clouded. It wasn’t full all this informational noise that our fingertips can Google, Tweet, Facebook, or Digg. However, the upside for all of us today is the blissful constant stream of information & resources at our finger tips through our Blackberry, iPhone/iTouch, netbook, iPad, Xbox, or desktop. Our need to “want it now” and these resources giving us the ability to almost answer any question or be “more productive” anywhere at any minute, may be costing a major price – intelligence.

Recent studies as well as observational information suggest that the internet could be making us dumber. Some of the top 10 possible signs that the web is making you stupid are:

It’s hard to focus on things.
You obsessively check your email.
You spend more time on Twitter than Facebook.
The abundance of consumer reviews has made you dependent on the opinions of others.

Want to know the other indicators that the internet is making you stupid? See the rest of the Top 10 Signs.

Long Live Web Design and Development

simayer — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 14:00:00 +0000

A friend who’s been able to turn his hobby of computers into an IT career choice (systems/network administrator) told me something that surprised me a little.

Okay, I can tell I am sick of computers. I walked into Micro Center and saw a nice rig. A quad core AMD machine, 4GB RAM, 1TB hard-drive, decent video for $200.00. My reaction?? “Meh.”

I literally had to giggle. I couldn’t believe that his inner geek couldn’t muster any excitement about this relatively new technology on store shelves at a really good price. Has his career stagnated his inner geek that much? Or has the foundation of computers not change enough to impact the IT field?

Now don’t get me wrong. That’s some serious leaps and bounds of IT technology compared to what it used to be. However, the foundation remains the same when it’s broken down to the essentials: CPU, hard-drive, RAM, video output, keyboard, mouse, an external drive (used to be floppy; now a type of disc drive). All that is new is how much of one of these items can fit into the smallest of spaces.

I know my inner geek would become very bored if I continued to pursue an exclusive IT field. Fortunately, I do not have that stagnation feeling within web design or development. In the past 10 years I have seen so much evolve in web design and web development, and I’m only going to scrape the tip of the evolution iceberg within this post of how so.

Here are few things I noticed the web community is doing to always change (including the fundamentals to some degree), while the IT field’s foundations have barely changed.

Emerging Technology
There are new frameworks frequently emerging such as AJAX. There are new and different contending platforms like the ending browser wars and increasing diversity of mobile devices. New languages/syntaxes are coming into the scene such as CSS3 & HTML5. New references for something or another. My favorite: “It’s no longer DHTML. It’s DOM Scripting.”

More Artists In The Field
Each day graphic designers, marketers, entrepreneurs…all of the creative people in the world are embracing web development and web design. This leads to more imagination and ingenious methods to make our human lives much more interesting.

Search Engines
SEO has given more purpose to the web markup semantics. It’s no longer just making the hierarchy of a web page be coherent for the user to read, but for also spiders to dissect the web and be able to piece it back together for us when we are searching for something.

Social Media
There will always be a need of some form of interfacing for us to share all of that information out there on the web (or offline) amongst ourselves.

And that’s just four of the reasons why I see web design and web development not going to plateau anytime soon. According the W3C, this is how long it will take to download the internet chocked full of web design or web development variations. It’s just going to get bigger and better starting tomorrow. Long live web design and development!

How to Achieve and Succeed

simayer — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 23:50:00 +0000

There are three simple steps, rules, mantras, however else you want to consider them, that I follow in the design world. Not only do I practice them in design projects, but you can adapt them to any type of work or industry.

Don’t give up!

Try again, and again, and again. You haven’t failed each time. You just found out ways that won’t work for the project.

Develop a “thick skin” & Be open

Someone will always have something negative to say about your work. it’s their opinion. They are entitled to it; as so are you. This also does not include that you need to have the “I’m right. You’re wrong.” attitude either. Be open to suggestions.

Detach yourself

Do not become emotionally attached to your design. Even though our creations are an extension of our souls (to some extent), do what is best for the message/product.

Scrutinize the design

Ask your self questions about the design. Such questions include:

Would you use the product in its designed form?
What message does the design actually convey? (Not what it is suppose to convey.)
Are all of the parts of the message clearly conveyed?
Is the design “theme” appropriate for the message/product?