functional design

It's been just almost a year since I focused my professional attention onto usability for web applications and launched this web site. I've known for about eleven-and-a-half months that, as a hybrid between a blog and a business web site, this site has significant issues. My goal was to see if I could mix my personal perspectives with a professional profile. The experiment is over and I'm not afraid to say it's a problematic mix and change is required.

What is a software application?

When we think of a software application, most of us will conjure up the image of some sort of user interface splashed across a computer screen. As far as most of us are concerned, whatever is on the screen is the software. Period.

Engineers will tend to look at it a little differently. They are of course very aware of what goes on 'behind the screen' that makes all this stuff appear as it does and do all the things it does.

As a software artist I am a beast with two heads. I am an artist by compulsion and I am a software designer/engineer both by choice and sheer determination to understand technology. Most people tend to address one head or the other, depending upon whether they meet me first as an artist or as an engineer. Some colleagues grasp the nature of my hybrid approach and they are a pleasure to work with. Some never grasp it at all.

My friend Bill Sweetman has just concluded a gig at a large advertising agency and one of his last undertakings there was a recently launched web project entitled 'Aesthetic Intent: Where There's Passion, There's Beauty'. Bill is a very creative guy who knows a lot about aesthetics and how to work with the web as both an artistic 'medium' and as a business t

For a few weeks now my left brain has been absorbed in the details of implementing a client's web site. Being wedded to a tight deadline and having already done all the loose, creative design stuff, I'm now focused almost exclusively on solving the challenges of writing computer code in what is still a new territory for me. It's a great way to get to know the nitty-gritty details of how to build a modern, 'AJAX driven' web application.

What is the meaning of this sign?

Let me ask you again. What was the meaning that you first perceived? Did that meaning change soon after?

The chances are that you first saw a visual message 'STOP' and then, upon reflection, decoded the sign to mean 'GO'. Perhaps you might even see this image as an ongoing paradox that cannot be resolved.