If you’re looking to cut down development time while sketching, wireframing, or coding hi-fi prototypes in HTML, Nathan’s work in the 960.gs is sure to be a great starting point.

Read more about the whys and hows in Nathan’s explanatory post on sonspring.com, and download the framework (only 180KB for all the tools, only 4KB of actual code code compressed) at 960.gs,

I really enjoy sharing this talk and am considering working up a few others based on the questions that have come up after. I sure hope Eleanor and Sharon will have me back again next year.

I appreciated Len’s fresh take on memes:

In the past 30 minutes, I’ve read some fascinating stuff about folks I’d otherwise have no exposure to. I’m following them now, and my social network has grown that much more. It’s also interesting to watch the rules evolve as information flows from person to person.

Indeed, I appreciated getting to know more about him, so I’ll now return the favor.

Four jobs I’ve had:

1. My first job was sacking groceries at the local Minyard Food Store. It was minimum wage (with occasional tips), but I learned a lot about grocery store merchandizing and marketing, which would come in handy later in my career when I worked as an intern and a consultant at the FritoLay and PepsiCo IT world headquarters..
2. During summers of high school and college I was a Lifeguard at the local public pool. My last year there I even won our local “Superguard” competition (its kind of like the olympics for life guards).
3. In college I was an “RA” (Resident Assistant) for 3 years. Every staff I worked on was a great group of guys. A few of us still stay in touch. I’ll be back on the 40 Acres in March to lecture again on “High Fidelity Prototypes.”
4. For most of my professional career, my wife (an elementary and middle school teacher) hasn’t understood much more about what I do other than “computer stuff.” But when I worked for Voyager Expanded Learning for a year, she actually helped me with my assignments. I was there in 1998 helping them develop websites on CDs for low-income schools. Back then not many schools had internet connections. So, we would develop colorful and fun websites for kids that complimented the curricula Voyager sold. Because the sites were on CD, schools could still teach kids how to use a browser (we even had a primitive javascript-based search engine). Sounds rather silly now, but it was a novel idea for the time. I had my most rewarding project ever there: developing a Flash-based kiosk that was part of a small exhibit at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

Four shows I DVR

1. Texas Longhorn and Dallas Cowboys football - sports are really the only reason we have DishHD. It’s hard to watch football now any other way. I like the Voom channels (especially “Private Life of a Masterpiece” on GalleryHD), but most everything else we watch is available through iTunes or Netflix.
2. LOST - is watched religiously timeshifted 30 minutes after it starts; that way we can see it as soon as possible without waiting for commercials.
3. My wife and I really got into Pushing Daisies before the writers’ strike. I hope it comes back when they return. Since then we’ve been watching Wonderfalls and we’re starting Dead Like Me to scratch the itch.
4. Did I mention how sentimental I can be? I record the very old reruns of Davey and Goliath for my kids to watch while they’re waiting to go to church. I’ve also subjected them to every single episode of Speed Racer.

Four places I’ve been:

1. My mom is British and her side of the family all still live in England. I’ve been several times for pleasure and once for business. Hope to go back in a few years with the entire family.
2. China was an eye-opening experience. I worked at a Cheetos plant that didn’t have any cheese (the favorite Chinese flavors were prawn and steak).
3. Dothan, Alabama is the “Peanut Capitol of the World” and with respect to Len’s comments, is home to some of the friendliest people in the world.
4. The place I’ve been and most want to take my wife is Venice. Someday when the kids are all off to college we’ll do the Grand Tour.

Four favorite foods:

1. Just about anything on the menu (or on tap) at Henk’s. He’s really Dutch, but they serve the best German fare in Dallas.
2. I could eat Sunet Beef Fajitas at Mi Cocina every day for lunch and dinner. Sunset = spicy queso with fried shoestring onions.
3. Amy’s Ice Cream is a must-stop in Austin, TX. Mexican Vanilla with KitKat is my all-time favorite flavor.
4. While I am thinking of dessert, my wife makes a mean Apple Custard Pie. She slices the apples paper-thin. It’s even better the morning after for breakfast.

So, there you have it, Len. Thanks for sharing, and the encouragement to actually post something on this so-called blog of mine.

I’ve invited several others to carry the torch. I’ll post their links should they decide to accept the mission.

Last Monday (10/22/2007) I drove down to Austin for the day to share a slightly modified version of the high fidelity prototyping talk I gave just over a year ago at Refresh Dallas. The class was great. They were very receptive and had great questions during and after the presentation. Unfortunately, our time was cut about 15 minutes short by a “non-specific” bomb-threat, but we got through most of the presentation and several students stayed after to chat while UTPD scanned the building.

I enjoyed the experience and will be happy to go down any time they’ll have me again.

The presentation and pre-class notes are available on the Downloads page.

EMC acquired Geniant specifically for inclusion in the Microsoft Services group of EMC Global Services. Not too much should change in the short term. As we get fully integrated with our new team, I’m looking forward to the best of both worlds: having the increased opportunities afforded by a global organization while still working inside a super-talented user experience / design group. Given the wide range of opportunities related to EMC products and services, there should be many rewarding projects to work on.

Interestingly, we learned during orientation that the “2″ at the end of the EMC logo is simply an ornament. It’s never pronounced nor included in text versions of the company name. It’s only used in the type-based graphic logo. Regardless, when seen it does the intended trick of invoking thoughts of relativity, intelligence, or Albert Einstein himself.

Garrett, Jared, and Nathan did a great job crafting the Geniant blog and priming it with some good posts. Now it’s up to the rest of us to fill it with content.

I took my first step towards that end this evening by posting my first article “Web Standards Basics”. I’m guessing most folks reading here are already aware of the benefits of using standards for front-end development, but we’re hoping that the Geniant blog will reach a wider technology audience. Take a look when you get a chance.

My friend and co-worker Garrett Dimon recently relaunched his eponymous blog. The results are fantastic. Garrett cites the work of Edward Tufte as his inspiration to provide visually compelling examples when writing about web design, technology, and other usability topics. The new layout is completely clutter-free, focusing completely on the topic at hand. His simple grid layout provides a variety of interesting ways to incorporate illustrations and examples that are both meaningful and pleasing to look at.

I’m looking forward to reading Garrett’s future posts. If you’re into user experience and visual design, you will likely look forward to them as well. Add his feed to your reader if you haven’t already.

Stephen Anderson provided a wonderful talk a few weeks ago at Refresh Dallas (and subsequently at Refresh06 in Orlando) on “Creating Pleasurable Interfaces: Getting from Tasks to Experiences“. He does a great job of making the squishy elements of UI design feel tangible. The truly wonderful interfaces that we use everyday are our favorites because of the intangibles that Stephen so eloquently describes in this talk. There’s a lot to learn in there and apply to any project we’re working on.

In this talk Stephen mentions the work of Ralph McQuarrie. When George Lucas was shopping the idea for Star Wars to different studios, he was concerned that the traditional method of providing a script to read would not do justice to the scope of setting and drama that the story would provide. He wanted something more than just words on a page to literally illustrate the characters and settings he wanted to film. So George hired artist/illustrator Ralph McQuarrie to do just that. The use of such supplemental material for movie pitches was not at all common during that time. McQuarrie later said “I understand my pictures did something to convince [20th Century] Fox to make Star Wars”.

I know Walt Disney used rough sketches for storyboards in the production process, but I think George Lucas’ approach to develop such high visual fidelity illustrations was novel for selling the project. Lucas realized that there was too much room for interpretation when he only used a script; he wanted to provide more concrete examples of the vision he had for the project. That’s exactly what we do when we insist on some form of prototype to advance our project instead of relying only on a written requirements and design document.

When you’re just trying to get a project off the ground, high visual fidelity concept screens can really help make your inspiration infectious with investors and other project sponsors. Illustrating the key ideas with great visual clarity so they can get a flavor of what their investment will return.

UPDATE: Benjamin Keen’s Data Generator provides the best of both tools mentioned below in an easy to use online form. He provides many useful datatypes (phone/fax, names, custom lists, etc.) that should cover most of the needs I can think of. Many of the types allow masked options editable for custom formats (like a Texas drivers license or client-specific account number). The output formats include HTML, Excel, XML and SQL. Very nice work.

Here are the links I referred to in the presentation this evening.

• Henrik Olson’s “Balancing fidelity in prototyping”
• Dan Brown’s “Representing Data in Wireframes”
• Garrett Dimon’s “Just Build It: HTML Prototyping and Agile Development”
• Lots more on my del.icio.us feed on prototyping

I’ll try to have the deck posted by this Sunday. As promised, here’s the PDF of the deck of last Thursday’s presentation.