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The International Academy of Design & Technology (IADT) announces the IADT Design Challenge, a nationwide scholarship competition. Two winners and 10 runners-up each will earn scholarships to IADT. Submissions for the Challenge will be accepted from Nov. 10 through Dec. 10 via the college’s Facebook page. The direct link to the contest page is https://www.facebook.com/IADTschools?sk=app_291631127532472

IADT invites designers and aspiring designers to create and submit a banner ad representing one of the four following IADT programs: Internet Marketing, Information Technology, Retail Merchandise Management or Web Design and Development. Following approval of their submissions, entrants’ designs will be open for voting by the public through the year’s end. Public voting on Facebook will determine the 24 finalists, so entrants are encouraged to share their entries with friends via the social network.  Users can vote once each day and do not have to be students to vote. Winners will be selected from among the finalists by a panel of IADT judges.

Anyone who has graduated or expects to graduate from high school (or has earned a GED or expects to earn a GED) prior to July 1, 2012, and is a legal resident of the United States is eligible to enter the competition, including both non-students and current IADT students (this opportunity is not available to residents of Puerto Rico, Texas, and where prohibited by law).

Each entry must include the IADT logo, a headline and call to action, along with the entrant’s creativity and unique design. Two first-place winners will be selected to each receive $5,000 scholarships to IADT, while 10 runners-up will be chosen to each receive $1,000 scholarships to the college. For more details as well as the full rules and eligibility requirements, visit the Design Challenge Rules tab at https://www.facebook.com/IADTschools?sk=app_281894501851194

About the International Academy of Design & Technology

With more than 30 years as an established institution, the International Academy of Design & Technology offers students a hands-on education with experienced faculty dedicated to providing students with the necessary skills, knowledge, support and guidance to pursue fulfilling career opportunities in the design, technology and business fields. IADT has nine campuses in Chicago, Detroit, Las Vegas, Nashville, Orlando, Sacramento, San Antonio, Seattle and Tampa. Students also can earn their degrees 100% online at IADT-Online. The schools are accredited by the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools (ACICS). ACICS is a national accrediting agency recognized by the United States Department of Education. Find disclosures on graduation rates, student financial obligations and more at www.iadt.edu/disclosures. IADT cannot guarantee employment or salary and is part of Career Education Corporation network of schools (NASDAQ: CECO). For more information, visit www.iadt.edu.

Creates a parallax effect whereby child elements of a container move relativly to the mouse position. This can add a sense of depth to your project.

Site | Demos

Quicksand

Quicksand is the most functional and practical jQuery goodness on this list. I’m still looking for an excuse to use this reordering jQuery script. The animations seem exceptionally smooth.

Site & Demo

Flip

Fip offers an alternative to the traditional fade in effect for loading in new content.

Site & Demo

3d Gallery

Using a combination of jQuery and the HTML5 canvas element, this plugin lets you show off your pictures in a 3d environment. The graphics are not there quite yet, but it’s an exciting peek of things that may come in the future.

Site | Demo

Circulate

This is a great jQuery plugin if for some reason you need to put some elements into orbit.

Site & Demo

Features

Features are the bedrock of any great software and great software always solves real-world problems. In this post I’ll use the alarm clock as a simple illustration. Why was the alarm clock invented? It’s a device that ensures that a person gets up at a certain time. If humans never overslept there’d be no purpose for this device. We started with the problem and the invention was created to solve it.

Software applications go awry when:

A great application has everything I need to complete my task without bogging me down with unnecessary noise. It understands my real-world pain because I’ve been intimately studied in my environment.

Usability

The second piece of the pie is usability. Simply put, an application that is “useable” is one that can be “put to use”. Before you scoff at the lack of complexity here, know that usability is most often undervalued or even completely neglected in the application design cycle.

Imagine you received a new alarm clock for Christmas (keeping with our illustration). As you open the package your eyes are dazzled with the slick look and seemingly infinite options (as indicated by the numerous buttons). You’re excited to give it a test run so you quickly run upstairs to your bedroom, plug it in and start fiddling. A half-hour later you put the alarm clock down frustrated that you can’t even figure out how to set the time.

This is bad usability …

How does this happen? Here are a few possible reasons:

In our projects I often use the phrase “usability is king.” Why? Because if you can’t use something it might as well have never been made. Good usability requires constantly keeping your users in mind.

Pleasure

This is the last and my favorite part of the pie when I’m sharing this model with our clients. It’s as if the lights just turn on. Suddenly, the different pieces come together to form a beautiful harmony.

Great software not only has the features that I need and affords me the ease of use for them, but it also makes me happy. It appeals to my senses and, like sugar in cough syrup, it disguises the hard stuff. It’s an alarm clock not only created with me in mind, but one that also appeases my natural desire for fun.

Give me an application that doesn’t feel like work and you’ve won my allegiance.

Don’t Forget the Paprika!

Great applications don’t just excel in one or two of these disciplines. They triumph in all three. Just like a dish that requires all of the ingredients in order to taste good, great applications have the features that I need, the usability that I require and the dazzle that keeps me coming back for more.

If an application is feature-rich and pleasurable, but it’s hard to use, I’ll give up in frustration. If it’s feature-rich and useable, but it isn’t fun, I’ll be subjected to an arduous existence. If it’s useable and fun, but it doesn’t have the features that I need, then I’ll despise or discard it.

If an application has all three, then I’ll become a loyal supporter and my mouth will sing its praises. This is what good application design is all about.

Shameless Plug Anyone?

Are you in need of a design agency that can balance all three disciplines? Are you looking for a hot-rod (pleasure) that flies (features) and has your name written all over it (usability)? Contact us today to see if we’d be a fit for your next web venture!

Business Intelligence Usability

http://tdwi.org/pages/posters/business-intelligence-usability/download.aspx

Architecture, support, change management, analysis/design. Link include full PDF download.

Designing the User Experience

http://www.usabilityprofessionals.org/upa_publications/ux_poster.html

From their website:

This “Designing the User Experience” poster illustrates the path to more usable products.

Starting from the beginning with defining the users and their requirements to the conclusion with usability testing, a complete user-centered design process is laid out, using a game board metaphor with “ladders” to help you jump ahead, and “chutes” for places where a good process was not followed.

A link is provided to the UPA store where you can order the poster.

A Website Named Desire

http://visitmix.com/work/descry/awebsitenameddesire/

This is one of the coolest posters I’ve ever seen. Unfortunately, I don’t think you can buy it anymore. Let’s hope they bring it back…

Typography

http://fabianohikaru.deviantart.com/art/Typography-80428966

http://fuzzyzebra.deviantart.com/art/the-Zebra-Eye-62720494

http://adila.deviantart.com/art/Motivation-Stay-Happy-125220157

These three are from deviant art. You can order prints from their website.

Curious about what we do? Check out our portfolio…

1. SMS integration

While signing up, facebook asked me if I wanted to receive updates via my phone. Desiring to test-drive the new system I happily opted in (at this point I didn’t realize that not everyone has been invited into the new messaging system). Soon enough I started receiving notices as new “friends” would connect with me. I wasn’t super excited because I was afraid that the notifications would annoy me- something that hasn’t happened as of yet. So what are the bullets for the SMS integration?

Friend Notifications

When someone friends you, you’ll receive a notification and can optionally text back “info” to have FB respond with some basic information about your new friend. There is also an option to “follow” the person.

Status Updates

With the new system, FB provides a special SMS # where you can prop your status updates. I know this feature already existed but it’s a lot more discoverable now.

Message Notifications

This one is my favorite features so far. Essentially when someone sends you a message, facebook notifies you with a text message. If the message is longer it may cut off some of the text but I’ve found that it get most of it.

What if you want to respond to the message though? Intuition would say, “well just text back”- intuition is right.

This is revolutionary! With this innovation facebook seamlessly merges two communication channels and the user ends up forgetting that they’re even using facebook’s messaging system.

Implications

Opening up the door for an SMS interface has multiple implications. I’ll just throw two of them out there. For starters, users without smartphones are able to use all of the features listed above that they’d otherwise have no access to. In a world where not everyone embraces new technology, facebook has again opened itself up to a wider “non-desktop” audience.

Additionally, an SMS interface allows me to have one less communication channel. Who doesn’t experience the pain of having 20 different proverbial “inboxes”? And yet you need them in a world where just one app can’t seem to get the job done. At the end of the day we use gmail, texting, facebook and our phones to do a simple task. Communicate. With this update facebook has sided in favor with the human and has innovated after carefully observing it’s subject… us. Am I scared about how much facebook knows about me? Well that’s a whole nother’ discussion! (yes).

2. A facebook.com Email Address?

This one caught me off guard. As I opted into the new system facebook asked me if I wanted to reserve a facebook.com email. Again, wanting to be an early adopter, I grabbed the suggested email joe.ardeeser@facebook.com with delight.

This comes as a timely feature as I was just chatting with a friend about some junior highers that he knows. He was telling me that some of them don’t even have email addresses. They simply sign up for facebook with their parent’s email address and use their facebook inbox for all of their communication. Intriguing…

So what does this mean? Is facebook trying to get into the email space? Well, that’s a stupid question. Of course – but at what level? Will facebook compete with gmail some day? Can they? The competition between the 3 giants (google, apple and facebook) seems to get fiercer every day. It will be interesting to see how this pans out.

3. Aggregated Facebook Communication Channels

I’m not sure if I’ve seen the full scope of this one yet but it’s definitely cool. With the new system you get one communication thread for each friend. This thread combines all of your pre-existing messages and your chats with that friend.

The “See Friendship” Feature

Facebook has created this new feature called “See Friendship”. The new “one-thread-per-user” message system follows this same kind of thinking. If I’m visiting one of my friends profiles I can click on “See Friendship” and it will show me for that friend:

• All of our communications
• Photos that we’re both in
• Events that we both attended
• Common “likes”

In doing this, facebook affords me an online, easily accessible “memory lane”. It automatically tells the story of all of my friendships. Something unimaginable years ago. No longer must you toil with history-keeping if you desire to capture life. Facebook does it automatically and often by proxy through your friends.

My round about point is that with the new messaging system, it follows suit. I just locate my friend under my messages and all at once I have every bit of communication that I’ve had with that person (well all fb emails and chats). At first it’s a bit strange to see interactions from years ago on the same page as recent communication but now that I’ve marinated on it a bit, it’s really cool (and humorous).

Perhaps We’re Not Fighting Gmail?

No doubt that if this is how the facebook messaging system will continue to work, it’s a hard argument to say that facebook would try and replace gmail. Facebook email lacks the features that an enterprise email solution requires. It would be terrible if gmail did what I just described. With some of my client emails the page would be infinite in length and terribly hard to work with.

But there must be something here. Facebook time and time again has pushed itself into different markets with a definite agenda. Why would I use google picasa if my social world lives on facebook? Why would I use evite when all of my contacts are already on facebook? The more the FB story unravels, the more they seem to be creating an Internet of their own. From advertising to game and video hosting to 3rd party apps that can be easily refurbished for non-facebook use, innovation is the unmistakable facebook signature.

Closing Thoughts

Creating great features with good usability requires an intimate knowledge of real-world users. It’s much like a man with binoculars honing in on a rare species. He must look closely and make astute observations in order to understand his subject. Great software design always has it’s binoculars on.

Facebook has the world in it’s database and they’re more than aware of that. With each new chapter they continued to design for the human and as they do they have a monopoly on all of the new design patterns. They have a unique ability to teach the world new ways to use the internet and as they do many of us are left wondering what will come of facebook when it’s run it’s course. Will facebook become another myspace- forgetting what it even stands for? Well that’s any easy one… no. I guess we’ll just have to watch and see…

Curious about what we do? Check out our portfolio…

Here are a few screen shots of the completed site:

WCENT.com Homepage w/ Hero Shot Rotator

WCENT Corporate Events Page w/ Feature Image

WCENT Who We Are Page

Now for the screenshots…

BajaBound.com Homepage w/ Heroshot Rotator

BajaBound.com 'What We Provide' page

BajaBound.com News Posts (blog)

Often times when developing your WordPress site it will be necessary to display the date of when a post was published, when a comment was made, or for a custom post type, such as an event. Date and time information of each post or comment is stored in the database and are easily accessible when designing your own theme. The WordPress date format can be simply configured from the general settings panel within the site’s administration area. However, for more control, such as adding other instances of the post date elsewhere on a page, we can utilize WordPress’ built-in date-formatting functions.

The two main functions WordPress offers within the loop are the_date() and the_time(). The primary difference between these two methods is that the_date() may only be called once within the loop successfully. This function call should be reserved for the most prominent position of the date. On the other hand, the_time() can be called throughout the loop without a problem.

For either of these function calls, the resulting output will be the date and time of the post or comment in question echoed onto the page. By default, without any parameters, the configuration of the date/time information will follow the form of the one set in the administration settings as previously mentioned. Still, this output pattern can be customized by passing in a string parameter.

The Format String

Both the_date() and the_time() accept a string that defines how to format the resulting time and date information. What’s included in this string is a set of date format characters. The WordPress date format functions accept the same characters as PHP’s date() function call. Refer to the table on this site for a complete list of all the available characters for date format definition.

Let’s take a look at an example of how the date format string can be used with the WordPress date format functions. First, using the_time() function call, we could say:

This entry was posted at <?php the_time('g:ia'); ?> on <?php the_time('l'); ?>, the <?php the_time('jS'); ?> of <?php the_time('F, Y'); ?>.

This could output:

This entry was posted at 8:45am on Tuesday, the 28th of December, 2010.

Notice how the_time() function call is made multiple times here to achieve the desired format. This could not be done with the_date() because of its restrictions as previously stated.

The number of possible date and time formats are endless. Using WordPress’ built-in date formatting functions you can produce practically any imaginable output. Visit the WordPress Codex to learn more about date configuration options and how to integrate them into your site layouts.

Creating a successful website in today’s world has become increasingly difficult. In order for viewers to use your site you need to be visible, able capture their attention, and hold their interest. Fortunately, with the use of a content management systems (CMS), all three of these objectives can be made easier. A CMS is designed to simplify the process of publishing various forms of content to your site, providing a level of abstraction between that content and the code powering its presentation.

Now the question is which CMS should you go with for your site? There are many systems available, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. However, three of these CMS’ have positioned themselves as the most commonly used amongst web developers: Joomla, Drupal, and WordPress. All three of these are open source and have large communities of developers supporting the systems’ advancements.

Choosing the Right CMS

Let’s approach the question posed by this article objectively: In terms of which of the three major CMS’ is capable of achieving your desired goal for your site, the answer is any of them. They are all so widely supported, their core structures can be extended to accomplish any task.

Referring back to the three main objectives to creating a successful website mentioned in the first paragraph, site visibility has become increasingly important as more and more hits are made with search engines with any given set of keywords. Users must be able to easily find your site amongst the rest of the crowd, and the best way to do this is to optimize it for search engines. No CMS can completely manage search engine optimization (SEO), but they can help by automating search engine friendliness (SEF).

The second objective, capturing the user’s attention, is addressed once the user has found your site. The layout needs to be attractive and easy to digest while providing a clear focus on what your site is all about. This is primarily addressed by the visual design and organization of your site, which is often the most time-consuming part of site development.

Lastly, a great website will hold its user’s interest so they explore pages beyond the homepage and will return later for more information. This is supported by content which your site’s pages hold. Updating and contributing more material is vital to your site’s longevity.

In order to differentiate between the big three CMS’ we will use a set of criteria based off of these primary website objectives for comparison:

Now that we have established criteria, let’s look at how each of these three CMS’ attempt to address them.

Joomla

Being one of the first open source CMS, Joomla is a widely-used platform that powers many sites today. Although that number has tapered off slightly due to increased CMS competition, users are attracted to it’s easy to use interface and scalability options.

That being said, Joomla needs a bit of work out of the box to be search engine friendly. The URL of pages can be rewritten with some minor configurations to include the title of the page but the ID number will always need to be included. The title tag for each page will be set as whatever you name the article when creating the content, additional meta tags can not be configurable. Other meta tags, such as description and keywords may be set per article as well. More control over these meta tags can be granted with the use of extensions such as the SEO patch.

When it comes to development, Joomla has its strengths and weaknesses. Although it may be difficult to learn at first, Joomla’s content-based model offers a modular approach to theming the layout of your site. The system is extremely customizable, utilizing a model-view-controller (MVC) framework similar to many other APIs. This allows developers to override the Joomla core without compromising its integrity. Components, such as e-commerce carts, event listings and forums, can be installed. However, when comparing to Drupal, Joomla’s platform is not nearly as flexible. It covers basic functionality really well but more advanced tasks would require a lot more time to get working right. Examples of this include the lack of support for multiple site installations or communication between different components.

Joomla Article Manager

One of Joomla’s strength is its relatively simple administration interface. It does come with several useful features, such as a WYSIWYG editor, to make the management of content easier. Unfortunately, the number of configurable options available can, at times, be overwhelming and make it difficult to find where certain settings are. Practically anyone can be taught how to use it, but when comparing Joomla vs WordPress, it’s still not quite as intuitive.

Drupal

Drupal has long been known as the developer’s CMS. Avid supporters of the platform are trying to change that image by introducing more user-friendly elements to the interface. The main objective for Drupal 7 was to retain the power Drupal is known for while making it more accessible to all users.

From an SEF standpoint, much like Joomla, Drupal requires a little configuration for optimal performance. “Clean URLs” can be activated, but all it does is switch the path for a page from ‘?q=node/83′ to ‘node/83′. Optionally, URL aliases can be set for each piece of content to make it more readable. While the title meta tags are automatically set to the title of the nodes, this, along with other meta tags can be further customized through installed modules such as Page Title or Nodewords.

Extensibility is where the flexibility of the Drupal system really shines. Thousands of modules are available for installation to tailor the CMS into practically anything imaginable. The API is extremely developer friendly, providing many safe ways to hook into the core. The back end support allows for an easier way to control content type to taxonomy relationships as well as user permissions than with the current version of WordPress. However powerful it may be, the development of an Drupal site will require a lot more time to complete because of all the modules needed to make everything work correctly. The theming of a Drupal site takes an approach similar to that of Joomla’s, where components are called from templates to inject the page with relevant information. Much like its structural flexibility, developing a skin for Drupal is relatively advanced once the API learning curve has been surpassed.

Drupal Page Editor

In Drupal’s case, being more developer friendly does not automatically make it more user friendly. This was clearly a CMS designed with developers in mind for developers to use. The menu structure of system options is very difficult to process for new-comers. Basic functionality that comes standard in Joomla or WordPress, such as a WYSIWYG editor or drop-down menus, are non-existent in the standard installation Drupal. The time required for training to manage a Drupal site, once complete, would be much greater than with Joomla or WordPress. Fortunately, hundreds of modules are available to make this process easier.

WordPress

Once known only as a blogging tool, WordPress has developed into a powerful CMS force to be reckoned with. By remaining true to its usable interface, it has become the most widely-used CMS across the web.

Like Joomla and Drupal, WordPress’ SEF integration isn’t perfect. While the permalink URL rewrite format is fairly customizable, there are some caveats that must be adhered to for proper site navigation. Also similar to the other two CMS’, the title tags for pages are naturally set to post’s title. However, further control over this tag, as well as other meta tags, requires the installation of a plugin such as All in One SEO Pack.

What made WordPress a true competitor in the CMS battle was the introduction of custom post types and taxonomies with the release of version 3. Although they can be, at times, a little tricky to implement, they provide great flexibility to your site’s system and a more organized content structure. As with any API, there is a learning curve to WordPress’. It is very capable, although not as powerful as the Drupal platform. Because of the wide range of support for this CMS, there have been well over 10,000 plugins developed to make the scalability of WordPress seem like a breeze. The process to update these plugins, as well as the core itself, has also been streamlined to encourage the use of the latest versions to reduce security risks. Theming for WordPress relatively straightforward. Once an understanding of the template hierarchy has been achieved, the creation or modification of beautiful designs can be quick and painless. If design isn’t your strong suit, there are over 1,000 themes to choose from in the free themes directory, far more than Joomla or Drupal.

Wordpress Administration Dashboard

One distinct advantage WordPress has over its two main competitors is it’s simplistic approach to creating and managing content. When comparing Joomla vs WordPress, WordPress is still top dog in terms of usability. The back end interface is so intuitive, the training required for tasks ranging from creating a new post to adding an entire new page takes relatively little time. It is for this reason when trying out all various CMS’, users tend to stick with WordPress.

Summary

In the comparison of Joomla vs WordPress vs Drupal, the criteria can be met by one way or another. The real deciding factor comes down to what you really need your site to do in the end and how much time and effort you’re willing to put into it. Sites developed with WordPress can get done much quicker with the other two while providing a great administration user interface. Drupal may take a little longer to develop but is the route to go if you require flexibility when integrating different features. Joomla sites land somewhere in the middle of the other two, powerful and comparatively easy to use.

Our personal CMS preference for most sites is WordPress. The usability advantage it has over the other two allows our clients to not be so overwhelmed by its functionality and lets them feel more in control of their own site. Site management and plugin/core updates is simple enough to be handled exclusively by them, thus giving us more time to spend on other projects we may have. WordPress is fast, secure, and is constantly being improved at a faster rate than either Joomla or Drupal with major releases coming out every 4-6 months.

Returning to our original goal of creating a successful site, we need to understand that any CMS can only get us so far. The ideas and tone of the content must be unique to create a fresh and pleasant effect for our visitors. They need to be able to find it, be attracted to it, and remember it. All three of these objectives’ success rely on our own creativity and determination.

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