His argument and article sparked up a lot of thoughts and questions in my own mind. For someone who feels like they have been training their brain to not feel overwhelmed by the internet, a lot of this writing helped me feel at ease. I very rarely sit at my computer and read an entire article on the web. I do subscribe to several RSS feeds and get daily newsletters in my inbox, but I do not read this information the way I read a book. I feel that one of the reason is the platform on which I am reading. For me a book is something that I can relax with on a beach and get lost in the writing. A desktop computer can have these associations with work, multi-tasking, and makes it hard to go “inside” your mind.

So how have designers responded to the issue of digesting content on the web?

IN TABLETS – I immediately thought of the iPad and the recent development of tablets. Aside from Apple making this new piece of technology to give tech geeks a new gadget to play with. The tablet platform is very different from the Desktop computer in that it is allowing a new experience for reading content and media on the internet. The size ( very close to a book), simple interface, and intuitive interface gives many suggestions that this device is perhaps aiming to take the place of a book. If that were not enough, advertisement is showing that it is a device that is something that you should relax with. While I think that it will be hard to take replace the connection and interaction a person has with a book, these tablets seem to be heading in a positive direction for taking in content on the web.

IN WEB DESIGN - Within the past several years we have seen many changes in the way content is designed in a web browser. There have been several advancements and scientific discoveries which have improved the way people interact with computers and web pages. A large part of these advancements and discoveries I think come from the study of a long list of umbrella terms such as Usability, Ergonomics, User Experience, Information Architecture, Graphic Design, HCI and the list continues. Moving forward in the “Digital Age” these practices are constantly looking at ways for humans to have more efficient experiences with technology, “More output then input”. Using traditional Graphic Design theories such as the use of grids, typography and information hierarchy, content for the web is transformed into more digestible and scannable content. This is of course in unison with User Experience, programming, and the underlying idea of creating applications that behave in a way a human can understand. Designers showed much of these things coming together at the advent of Web 2.0 .

The list goes on. For me, it is just a very exciting time for being a creator and designer of internet content. With new technologies such as Google Tv and tablets more people with have a chance to experience this content in new ways. I am really interested to see where it will take us and how we will make it apart of our lives.

While my plans of  going back to school are still up in the air, learning about Java and Object-oriented programming gave me a lot more prospective into computer programming.

1. Computer Programming is mostly problem solving. When was first introduced to programming in High School by way of  C++ and Basic Web Design. I thought it was interesting, and what I thought was interesting was the ability to tinker with code. For me, this tinkering is really solving and resolving problems. Breaking and fixing. Changing perspective and questioning. Computer Programming can be taking several problems that exist in a “non-tangible” domain and solving each problem till it is a tangible solution.
2. Computer Programming is unforgiving. While I am not 100% exactly too sure what I mean by this statement, I have learned that a programmers logic must be dead on for a computer perform what you want it to do. By learning to look closer, line by line, you can really break down each process and make sure that each line has specific purpose to the end result. This means that tinkering and hacking programs together should be avoided in many cases. Use what you know and what you want the computer to know.
3. Computer Programming takes time. Being accustom to using various open-source platforms, I mostly have the pleasure of working with frameworks and API’s.While this is a great thing to have available, I sometimes feel that by using a snippet or framework I am taking a shortcut. This is not always entirely true, but  after being introduced to what is involved when writing a program, it made me realize the amount of time it can take. This also made me realize that sometimes by not writing from the ground up you loose control of the end result.

Now that my class in Java is coming to an end, I am thinking of what will be my next focus. While I am tempted to take a second semester of Java, I am also wanting to focus in on Front- End Web Development (which is my main area of expertise) , HTML5, CSS3, jQuery, and ASP.net.

I guess time will tell.

This week, I watched a video by designer Andy Clarke who wrote an excellent book on CSS called Trancending CSS. In the video he shows his process on creating a web site which he suggests designing in the browser. So, rather then sending a PDF or static mock up of a web design to a client, send a working demo right away. He explains that the benefits of this is providing the client the experience of the site immediately and the designer a easier way to make revisions through editing CSS. Much like Zeldman’s book, this video got me thinking about my own process in designing and producing a web site.

Here are some key concepts that I re-learned:

1. Content is King - Andy Clarke shows that you can start the web design process with a word document. Writing out content as you would outline a book or and essay. This approach allow you to purely focus on Information Architecture and is a good way to think about how the mark-up should reflect this content.
2. Write Once, Publish Everywhere - Zeldman encourages clean semantic code that is accessible to everyone and every device. This is done by using code that appropriate to the content that is being presented and limiting things like “Code Forking” and “Browser sniffing”. These things make the website slower and can lead to some undesirable results. The best solution is to write code once and the right way. This is the core idea of term “Progressive enhancement”.
3. Client Relationship - Andy Clarke will sometimes invite a client to sit next to him while making revisions to a design. He does this by making real-time adjustment to the css which gives a client instant feedback. This approach lets the client get involved with the design process and gives them a sense of how their site works. This I feel is a much better approach then exchanging emails over a static image.

There are many other things that I re-learned recently, but these I feel are the most notable. I think that a large part of my job as a web designer and in life is to be always re-learning and questioning things that I do. This keeps things interesting and allows me to see things in a new light and take on new perspectives.

Relearning is a habit that I hope never dies.

You can watch the program in it’s entirety on: PBS.org

While the application is still in it’s early stages, I am looking forward to seeing how it develops. I hope that they can keep the application UI simple while making further developments in areas like Video/Voice chat. One feature that I enjoy most, is the ability to connect and disconnect from individual IM clients in less than 2-clicks. Additionally, the ability to set one status for all your IM accounts is invaluable.

I found this writing while surfing the web:

In most cases, a Web page will have one primary topic. This topic will be represented in the HTML title and so you should use the H1 tag to identify the page in a similar way as the title. The H1 heading should be the top-level heading on your page, and there should only be one on every page. Search engines place a lot of value on the text inside H1 tags, so make sure that it’s optimized and well-represents the page contents.

There are no rules about how many H1, H2, etc. tags you can have on a page. While it’s standard to have only one H1 top-level header, if your page has a lot of different sections, it might make sense to divide it with several H1 tags. However, for search engine optimization, it’s better to create separate pages for content that you want to call out with separate H1 headings.

Upon further research, I found that the W3C does use multiple instances of the H1 tag, but never more that 2 times. I suppose that there is no final answer on multiple H1 tags other than it is best practice to always only use one H1 tag.

The internet really is an anarchists play ground. A web designer has access to tons of web communities, blogs, how-to’s, open source code, and plenty of resources to become knowledgeable and advance. A “Do it yourself” attitude is what has driven me and i’m sure many others through the market of the internet. An evolving interest in what the Digital Age has to offer for a craftsmen, engineer, user, and designer. Much like a punk band can form learning 3 chords, a computer savy person can start to tinker and understand how the internet works. They may not be successful right away, but all the information is there to begin. The only thing that is necessary is the DIY attitude and the discipline teach yourself outside the classroom.

While I am finding that there are many discussions concerning the term Digital Native. I think there is something really interesting about the “learning curve” factor that separates a “Digital Native” from a “Digital Immigrant”.

As humans, we are constantly adapting to our immediate and surrounding environment to continue a process of evolution. This has been said to be a result of humans need for survival. As much of the world is moving into using digital products, there are a large group of people that our being thrown into this digital world, which is forcing the need for this group of people to adapt to digital products. These rapid changes are happening with house hold appliances, phones, automobiles, and items that we use everyday. I take for example, my own grandmother who has owned nearly 10 different cordless digital telephones in a span of 3 months, because she was unable to learn how to make a phone call. This was not by choice, it was because phones with digital interface were the only ones available.

I would classify myself as a partial “Digital Native”. I remember getting 5 computers at my school when I entered elementary level. They were old Apple desktops. The entire class would huddle around the 5 computers as 5 lucky students got to play Oregon Trail. From that point on, a large part of my youth was spent surrounded by friends getting new video games, buying my first computer, collecting compact disks and now eagerly awaiting the iPad. I feel growing up surrounded by these technologies and friends using them has placed me in a group of “professional users in digital products”. By this I mean, having the ability to adapt to a new digital product or device very quickly. I feel that this is a possible result of technology and digital products being marketed to my generation at an early age. While many groups people did not pick up on this marketing, it is now becoming unavoidable. Digital experiences are replacing old ones. Even how we order pizza.

This brings me to the responsibility of the “Digital Native”. As professional users in digital products natives should have a responsibility teach, design, and produce digital products. These digital products should be able to be used and understood by both “natives” and “immigrants”. By doing so, Digital Natives will soon be able to share similar digital experiences with Digital Immigrants.

This brings me to my original thought of differences in digital and print graphic design. While a multi-disciplined graphic designer can have an excellent visual language and apply these talents to both print and web, will the web design be effective if usability is not considered in the design problem? I read an article on Smashing magazine recently that was talking about conventions in web design and listing various standard methods for applying forms, call to action buttons, and other web elements that have proved to be effective. One example of this was simply to add form descriptors above the field, which seems like such a small design decision, but this has been proved to be most effective through several human computer interaction testings.

Conventions and Usability is really such a large part of web design, which I think is still not getting enough attention in the business of web design. It switches the paradigm of the role of the traditional graphic designer, where grids, typography, and color become a sort of behavioral science. This can mean that things like ergonomics and human factors take precedence over personal taste or subjective criticism. Designers are using statistics and test results to make better informed design decisions. The use of grids, type and color are simply as a means of getting to a highly usable solution.

While I personally think that usability should be considered over visual aesthetics, it does not excuse the fact that websites should be beautiful. If one were to consider both usability and visual aesthetics as the design problem the solution would be visually pleasing and highly usable.