The Practical Take on Platforms

theFWA has a great set of quotes from leaders in the creative industry about what transitions like the one from Flash to other technologies really mean. Beyond the rhetoric, these are the tools of a community, and it is the creativity that is the real strength, not the platform. Also, a great Freudian slip in the use of the word “canvas” :

…”The relevancy of Flash and potential of HTML5 both lie in the hands of the creative community. More importantly, the future of the Internet remains a vast and exciting canvas so long as we seek to continually provide the most engaging and effective user experiences possible.”

-Jared Kroff, Creative Director, RED Interactive Agency

Good Week for Interactive Devs!

The scare this year has been that you, as a developer, would have to choose a platform and focus on it. Noone minds a bit of focus, but the fact that seemingly artificial barriers to re-use of code and effort were being introduced; the mobile platforms were making it necessary to choose a side, because learning all the platforms was a big reach. Blackberry, Android, iOS, Flash Platform, each with its own SDKs, IDEs, frameworks, and of course, time destroying tricks and gothas. But things are looking a little brighter:

Career and Business Advice

Uncle Darell was a role model for me in business, but not just any business – the business of making clients happy while making oneself happy. I want to share some of his wisdom on the subject of career and running a company and most importantly adding some extra good to the world:

Here are three key areas that work for me:

Career pointers from ACM

http://cacm.acm.org/blogs/blog-cacm/94307-are-you-invisible/fulltext

The main idea? There is more to success than accomplishment. As much as it pains many technicalpeople to ‘market’ themselves, it is not necessarily a bad word. Think of it this way – if you think you have something to offer, it is part of your responsibility to let other in your organization and client base to know about it, since it benefits them and you. You are the person most qualified to understand your accomplishments and put them in perspective for others to be inspired by.

Keep an up to date portfolio of work and ideas – you can’t execute on everything at once, but by letting people know your accomplishments and direction, your talents and skills have more opportunities to be expanded.

(thanks to subreddit/programming)

Why to stop multitasking

Surprising  article (including the author’s informal experiment in uni-tasking). It applies to interfaces and user experiences as well: simple put – focus the user on the task at hand by focusing the interface. This is something cockpit designers have known for decades, and they have a life-and-death incentive to get it right!

Harvard Business Review