SteveBarnett

Decision, Consequence: User-Centered Design for your Front-end

Every day we make decisions when writing and sending our JavaScript out onto the web. We make decisions about what JavaScript features we're going to use, what version of EMCAScript, what framework, and many more. Each one of those decisions comes with a consequence or a compromise. Some of our choices affect us; most of them affect our users.

Tim-Berners Lee, The Web Developer, says of the Web: "This is for everyone." Some of the decisions we make have consequences that go against that grain. Using lots of client-side JavaScript or including large JavaScript libraries may make things easier for us as developers, but it also means raising the barrier to entry of our sites and apps, excluding large numbers of people from using our stuff. This is particularly true for South African audiences who don't all have the newest, shiniest, tech.

I'll be talking about how User-Centered Design (UCD) can help us mitigate those problems, how it helps us

SteveBarnett

Hello!

We hope you're looking forward to the RailsBridge workshop on Saturday as much as we are. :)

To get you thinking about the topic, please reply with answers to one of the questions below before the end of the day on {{ a days after sending this }}. We'll be discussing your answers at the workshop. Please note that if you don't reply to this message we'll assume you can't make it, and change your RSVP to No. Eep!

What are three things you already know about programming? What do you plan to do with what you learn at the workshop? Regards,

SteveBarnett

Continuing our Machete order rewatch of the Star Wars movie, we (Jess, Jo, and I) watched Revenge of the Sith. Watching Attack of the Clones had been painful, and we were all reluctant to actually watch RotS. So we decided we had to come up with a coping mechanism: a drinking game. We mostly made up the "take a drink" categories as we went along. We stopped drinking on every hit after about the first half an hour so that we would make it all the way to the end. 😱

Here are the results. :)

category	count
Unconvincing romance	9
Oblivious to evil	18
Jedi council not getting involved	4
Wooden "acting"	34

SteveBarnett

Contract killer.

https://github.com/SteveBarnett/Contract/blob/master/contract.md#the-details

If, at any stage, you're not happy with the direction our work is taking, you'll inform us and pay us in full for all time spent on your project until that point and cancel this contract.

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Mike Monteiro. “Design Is a Job.”

SteveBarnett

How much does your UI cost your users?

About the talk

When we're designing an interface, the patterns that we pick are sent out into the world and our users spend time and money to interact with them. Some patterns are heavier than others to implement (and some are badly implemented), and that means our users wait longer and pay more (actual money, real Rands!) to use our products.

We'll look at a range of common patterns for web-based User Interfaces, and analyse what the time and money cost of them are, based on how they're likely to be implemented (in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript). We'll discuss how these patterns might contribute towards the overall Front-end performance of a web site or app, and how we can chat more with Front-end devs to get the best possible results for our users.c

About the speaker

SteveBarnett

Front-end Performance

About the workshop

This workshop is for WordPress Theme developers who are interested in improving the Front-end Performance and User Experience of their Themes.

We'll start by reviewing why the Front-end performance of Themes (or any web site) is important, and what special considerations we have for a South African market. Then we'll look at what indicators of good performance are, what tools we can use to help us, and make a checklist that we can use for reviewing sites.

We'll use these ideas to look at a few off-the-shelf Themes as examples, and see where they might be able to improve on their Front-end performance. We'll spend the second half of the workshop working on our own projects making them lighter, faster, and better for our users.

SteveBarnett

Hello!

We hope you're looking forward to the upcoming RailsBridge workshop as much as we are. :)

To get you thinking about the topic, please reply with answers to one of the questions below before the end of the day on Friday 3rd June. We'll be discussing your answers at the workshop. Please note that if you don't reply to this message we'll assume you can't make it, and change your RSVP to No. Eep!

• What are three things you already know about programming?
• What do you plan to do with what you learn at the workshop?

Regards,

SteveBarnett

Hi there.

Thank you for your interest in RailsBridge! :) Our workshops are targeted at groups of people that are underrepresented in tech. Do you match this description?

Thanks!

Regards,

(Steve &) The RailsBridge Cape Town team

SteveBarnett

From http://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/P0318/P03182015.pdf

General household survey 2015

Statistical release P0318

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Telecommunications

SteveBarnett

Intro - 5m

• Who I am
• What we're doing
• Not testing you, testing the app
• "Be selfish, self-centred, honest, brave. Think out loud. If you get stuck, that's great."

Warm up - 5m

• What do you do?