Source: http://mashable.com/2011/04/23/mac-vs-pc-infographic/

I know we all know someone (or are guilty ourselves) who fall under at least one of these categories. Read The Oatmeal’s post on How to Suck at Facebook.

Source: theoatmeal.com

Twitter, Facebook, Google+ … how to decide

Source: Column Five Media

Source: http://www.thedesignbureauofamerika.com/blog/article/another-day-another-dropshadow-

Pushpa is a Sanskrit word which means to ‘blossom’. Meena, owner of Pushpa, supports others to blossom into their fullest potential. She works with clients utilizing EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques), which is part of a family of methods called Energy Psychology.

Website & blog post coming in the next few weeks. Stay tuned

Ben McConnell :: Living in the World of Possibilities

Ben McConnell is a motivational speaker. At just 24 years of age, he has encountered many challenges throughout his life including several broken bones, a seizure disorder and abdominal issues. In addition to these obstacles, he has also been totally blind for the vast majority of his life, with no recollection of colours, shapes or anything visual. His inspiring story is one that needs to be shared.

Working with Ben was an amazing experience that not only expanded my technical skills, but also inspired me through his life experiences as a Blind person.

He taught me about how he uses the Internet by using a text-to-voice program called JAWS, and it led me to start researching what web programmers can do to make their websites accessible to people with
vision impairments which I incorporated into the website.

Although the primary audience for his website is people who are sighted, I wanted to develop this website to be accessible to anyone with any type of visual impairment. Accessibility was my primary focus in developing this website.

I worked directly with Ben to develop all of the text elements, and I worked with his mom, who is sighted, for all of the visual elements.

Logo Design

For Ben’s logo, we chose to go with a high contrast black and white square. We loved the boldness of Ben’s name and that it connected psychologically with blindness. Using a san-serif font created a modern, clean and memorable logo.

Website Design (www.benmcconnell.ca)

For the website, we maintained the black and white colours of the logo and added bright green as an accent colour to create a catchy design. The main elements on the home page are his logo, easy-to-use navigation, a photo of Ben traveling in the Mediterranean, and most importantly, two “call to action” buttons that draw attention to the main goals of the site: reading Ben’s inspiring story and informing people how they can book him for speaking events.

Secondary information on the home page includes excerpt sentences from his testimonials, as well as some highlights of his speaking experience. Both of these link to those specific sections of the website for the visitor to read more.

The target audience for this website includes professionals such as educators, doctors, business people and others who are interested in gaining a new perspective from his story – a story that emphasizes perseverance, the power of positive thinking and the discovery of potential.

Web Design Geek Talk (Technical Info)

Ben’s website mockups were designed in Photoshop and then I coded the website pages by hand using HTML and CSS in Dreamweaver. I installed Google Analytics in order to track website traffic and added meta data to optimize the website for search engines (SEO).

In order for the site to be accessible to Ben (and other people with visual impairments), I added <alt> tags on all of the images and <title> tags to all of the links, as this is what he hears when he is
surfing the web. It’s not good enough to simply just put something like “Click here” because a Blind person will only hear the “Click here” instructions. They will have no context of what they will get if
they follow that link. The title tag with the <a href> tag is what is read aloud when the user navigates through the website so this needs to be descriptive.

All in the Nick of Time

At the end of August 2011, Ben had a major speaking event as the keynote speaker at a teachers’ professional development day and our goal was to complete his entire website (plus all of his presentation slides!) all before this date. This deadline was very ambitious, but we both spent many hours leading up to the event working hard to complete it. With the help of his family, we were able to get everything we needed finished on time
and were very pleased with the final product.

Although it may not make too much sense without the context of Ben speaking with the slides, his presentation, titled “Believe in Me”, can be viewed here.

Thanks very much to Ben and the McConnell family! It has been a pleasure working with you, and I have been truly enriched by this experience. Please visit his website at www.benmcconnell.ca

-Erica

Ben McConnell is a motivational speaker. At just 24 years of age, he has encountered many challenges throughout his life including several broken bones, a seizure disorder and abdominal issues. In addition to these obstacles, he has also been totally blind for the vast majority of his life, with no recollection of colours, shapes or anything visual. His inspiring story is one that needs to be shared.

Current website can be found at: http://www.benmcconnell.ca

Read about the development of Ben McConnell’s website in my blog post.

Today, I stumbled upon this article written by Farhad Manjoo titled ”Why are restaurant websites so horrifically bad?” The article was very entertaining and analyzes different restaurants’ websites and their (generally terrible) usability, including the restaurant that uses a Flash intro showing how the chef signs his name and eventually ending up on a photo of the Fabio look-a-like chef. Interesting idea, but probably not what customers expected nor wanted when they visited that restaurant’s website.

The article discusses usability and the tension between what a customer expects a restaurant website to have and the all too often reality of the website giving them everything but. A link within the article took me to a comic about this very topic:

images from http://theoatmeal.com/comics/restaurant_website

Get What You Pay For Photography is an Edmonton based photography company started by 2 women who believe in good karma. Many people need good quality photos but sometimes the price tag is way out of reach. With Get What You Pay For Photography, YOU decide what to pay AFTER you view the photos.

Current website can be found at: http://www.getwhatyoupayforphotography.com

Read about the development of the Get What You Pay For Photography website in my blog post.