Into the world of UX

There is a mind shift that needs to happen for a designer to delve into the world of user experience design. Your aesthetic design sense changes because you're thinking not only of the visual design elements but how they work together. You have to care about the overall look and feel but also of the usability of the application and how users will interact with it. UX design often incites many debates about what it means, it's application, the skill sets people should have if they are to label themselves as such, etc. But the point is that user experience design is important and some people find themselves relegated to that position in addition to being a designer, a front-end developer, an interaction designer, etc. Some of us come from a Human Computer Interaction background, a technical development background, a psychology background, a designer background. All of that I think is great because working in technology these days means being able to adapt, acquire and use different skill sets.

For my role as a UX designer and developer, it means that I have a lot of things to think about... How intuitive is it for people to use the product and to navigate it? What does the visual design of the product say to our users? Does the functional design help to achieve the users goals? How well do the interactive pieces fit together from an architectural point of view? Does the design of the interface support and enhance the user workflow and does the application help to support their needs and goals?

Should all of these things be handled by one person? Probably not. Ideally there would be a team. But in some cases, including mine, you work on all aspects at one point or another. The thing I've learned is to try to separate it. I may be in charge of completing the design from start to finish and perhaps even code it but I try to approach them seperately at first. Tackle the workflow, the design, then usability, then the experience... you may cycle back to the workflow and fine tune it again, then critique the experience and the usability and then redesign. Development might happen after the first pass then you redesign it and make changes to the  implementation.

It's a challenging world to work in but can open a designer and developers mind in new and unexpected ways. It also helps to bridge the gap between design and development as we try to create experiences that are effective, effortless and enjoyable.

Girls Learning Code

A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of being involved with a March break camp aimed at introducing and preparing some of our young girls to web making, as we call it. The camp was called Girls Learning Code. You've heard me talk about Ladies Learning Code (LLC) and my involvement with that and Girls Learning Code (GLC) was actually the whole reason why I wanted to get involved with LLC in the first place. More than my desire to help and teach other women and men about technology is the desire to help our youth, more particularly, our young girls look at technology as another medium for their creativity.

Yes, I would like to see more women in our field but more particularly I would like to see more young girls realize the potential for technology to help them achieve their goals. I want them to see it as something that they can manipulate in their own creative way. I think there's a huge potential for our young girls to think of amazingly fantastic ways of utilizing our technology in new ways. And I think for the next generation it's important to cultivate an industry around technology that takes into account the perspective of males and females.

GLC is new and I don't think there's anything quite like it in Toronto at the moment. I'd like to hear from anyone who knows of anything else in Toronto or anywhere else really so we could see what others have done to help our young girls. As the first run of GLC I think it was amazingly successful. The girls created their own hacked website by the end of the week. And in the process they were exposed to various creative applications that introduced them to programming. They were also given the freedom to use their own creative hobbies to add to their website. We took them to see the Google offices which they loved and also to meet with other female entrepreneurs who are creating wonderful things with technology. The goal was to expose the girls to the various avenues in technology and bits and pieces of what that may involve. I think they were able to get a sense of what coding really is, how the web is created and just how great the potential is for someone to make the web what they want it to be.

The group web projects that they created seemed to have one recurring theme across all of the groups: helping others through technology. Each of them rallied behind a cause from which they would build their website around and all of them had some sort of fundraising business model by which they could help others. It's amazing that in a group of 40 young girls the common characteristic seems to be compassion and empathy. This is precisely why it's important for our young girls to grow up and contribute to the digital world that we now live in. And that's not to say that our young boys can't be compassionate and empathetic but I think as females we have an innate need to care and nurture.

I am extremely proud of those young girls and hope to see them running the world someday. I also hope that GLC will continue to evolve and expand and hopefully by the time I have kids I can send them to camp!

I'll leave you with Mozilla's interview (rough cut) of the girls impressions and experiences... aren't they great?!

Ladies Learning Code

For those of you who don't know, Toronto has a pretty fantastic developer community! There's a bit of a startup vibe in this city and that helps to encourage and feed the developer and designer community. Designers are eager to learn from developers and developers understand more and more the importance of designers.

I've been getting involved in the community when I can and the biggest instigator of that was Ladies Learning Code (LLC).For those of you who don't know about Ladies Learning Code, they are a not-for-profit who provides reasonably priced development workshops targeted for women (though men can attend). The demand has been astonishing! They've had at least one workshop a month, two per month in 2012, and each one has sold out almost instantly! All of their workshops are lead by volunteer instructors who are working in the tech industry. Each workshop is aided by volunteer mentors who also work in the industry and are there to help the students with any questions they may have during the workshop.

Heather Payne along with Melissa Crnic, Breanna Hughes, and Laura Plant run LLC together. They are such an enthusiastic group of women that you can't help but be excited about it!

Since I met with Heather back in December I've become a volunteer mentor at their Wordpress workshop this past January and this weekend I'll be there again to help out with their HTML/CSS workshop. It's such a great vibe and you meet such wonderful fellow mentors in the industry and amazingly enthusiastic people who are eager to learn! I'm also mentoring at their Intro to Photoshop & Illustrator workshop next weekend.

If that wasn't enough - and this is one of the biggest reasons why I wanted to get involved with LLC - they are also running a March Break camp for girls called Girls Learning Code. I will be one of the instructors for the full week and I'm incredibly excited to help the girls feed their creativity in technology. You can find more information here.

Ladies Learning Code has major plans to expand and provide more and more opportunities to encourage women and young girls. Last week they launched a job board that helps to connect people in the industry with the LLC community to find talent for various positions. The job board itself is based on a Wordpress theme that they purchased but Heather asked me to modify the CSS to be consistent with the Ladies Learning Code website and branding. Check it out... it may lead you to a great opportunity!

For more info about Ladies Learning Code, check out their website. You can also sign up to their email list, or to volunteer as a Mentor - and I would highly recommend it! - join their developer email list.

Mission 2 "Flight to Freedom" launches TODAY!

For most of 2011 I've been working on Mission 2: "Flight to Freedom" and I'm so excited that it's finally out and just in time for Black History month in February! I'm eager to hear the reception among teachers and students. EFS has done some awesome things in this Mission in terms of game design, introducing things such as the escape map sequence and interface, side scrolling scenes, 3D animation sequences, game badges and smart word integration to communicate the issue of literacy in slave communities.

As a game artist I tackled some new challenges with this project. The background scenes and interactive environments that I had to create were of a larger scale to allow for side scrolling and a more immersive environment. As always, the character design and environment artwork required some thorough historical research to ensure the historical accuracy as it relates to the costume design, architectural details and objects. Where Mission 1 took place in Boston in 1770's America, Mission 2 takes place around Kentucky and Ohio in 1850's America around the time of the Fugitive Slave act. So the date required a whole new set of historical research.

Mission 2 has you in the role of Lucy, a 14 year old slave girl in a hemp plantation near Lexington, Kentucky around the late 1840's - 1850's. You are acquainted with slave life on a plantation and what it meant to be a young slave. Things happen that force you to run away and you realize that running away is a huge risk and takes a lot of courage and intelligence. You have to learn who to trust and to either stay out of trouble or be part of the resistance.

Mission 2 has a really exciting narrative and doesn't sugar coat life for a slave. I hope the kids take away a more thorough understanding of the complexities of slave life and the political climate of the time through this game.

My hats off to the New York teams at EFS who developed the game, THIRTEEN who produced the game in association with WNET, and our historians at ASHP for the work they've done on this mission.

Read the announcement on THIRTEEN here.

On SOPA/PIPA...

This being the day where the web community comes together in protest of SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act) I would like to share with you all a video that explains so clearly and understandably the issues and implications that such a legislation would have on the web community and the internet as a whole. This explanation is provided by Sal Khan of the Khan Academy. If you are unaware of what SOPA/PIPA can do or have read a barrage of articles surrounding the issue but need some clearer explanation, please watch.

And to read more about SOPA/PIPA and today's protest:

The SOPA blackout: Wikipedia, Reddit, Mozilla, Google, and many others protest proposed law

SOPA blackout: Bills lose three co-sponsors amid protests

Google Plans Home Page Protest Against U.S. Piracy Measures - Businessweek

And for Canadians, specifically: Black Wednesday: In Protest of SOPA, Darken the Web