Tuesday 30 June 2015

This Week Only 59% Discount — CSS Animations And Transitions - Vanseo Design

This Week Only 59% Discount — CSS Animations And Transitions - Vanseo Design

This Week Only 59% Discount — CSS Animations And Transitions

Posted: 29 Jun 2015 01:46 PM PDT

I noticed via Twitter, that Adobe has put my book CSS Animations and Transitions for the Modern Web on sale this week. It's the ebook Deal of the Week.

If you've been thinking of buying it, now is probably a good time. The ebook is selling for $12.99 (59% off the cover price) and it will remain that price through Saturday.

On Sunday 12:01 AM PST / 7:01 AM GMT a new ebook will be the deal of the week so you have about five or so days to take advantage of the sale.

The regular page for the book shows a different price, but I just checked and if you add it to your cart, the cart will show the $12.99 price.

If you've already purchased the book, thank you and I hope you enjoyed it. If you did enjoy it, I would appreciate an Amazon review or rating. Reviews and ratings help others find the book, which will enable me to write more.

Thanks.

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Download a free sample from my book Design Fundamentals.

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WCAG 2.0 — Criteria And Techniques For Successful Accessibility Conformance

Posted: 29 Jun 2015 05:30 AM PDT

It's one thing understand the basic principles and guidelines for making your site more accessible and another thing to actually meet those guidelines.

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I've been talking about accessibility for a few weeks now. First I offered some thoughts about where I am in starting this journey followed by an attempt to determine what it means to be accessible.

Last week I started to look at some documents from the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0). We took a high level glance at the principles and guidelines of WCAG and left off just as we were about to consider what we need to do to comply with them. Let's pick things up there and see what we need to meet WCAG conformance.

WCAG Conformance

To conform to the WCAG standards, a site must satisfy all of its conformance requirements, which means it must satisfy the success criteria for the different guidelines. When a site has no content that violates the success criteria, it conforms to the standard.

To conform five requirements must be met.

  1. Conformance Level
  2. Full pages
  3. Complete process
  4. Accessibility-Supported Ways of Using Technologies
  5. Non-Interference

Requirement 1: Conformance Level

Last week I mentioned there are three levels of compliance, A, AA, and AAA. To conform a site must at least satisfy level A compliance, by meeting all the success criteria for level A compliance. That's the minimum, but there's more you can do.

To meet level AA compliance you would need to meet all the success criteria for level A and level AA. Similarly AAA compliance needs to meet the success criteria for all three levels. The spec notes that some content can't meet all the criteria for AAA compliance and doesn't recommend level AAA for all sites. Level AA is really the sweet spot.

Before you spend too much time wading through all the details of a particular success criteria, you'll want to decide which level of conformance you're aiming for and then focus on the criteria and techniques that are the same level or lower.

The quick reference guide makes it easy to filter based on which level of compliance you're trying to meet, which is one reason you'll likely revisit it a lot.

Viget offers Interactive WCAG 2.0, which also allows you to filter guidelines based on levels of compliance as well as by responsibility (design, development, front end, or UX). I think it's easier to use than the quick reference.

Requirement 2: Full Pages

The idea behind this requirement is that an entire page needs to conform. If any part of the page or any piece of content doesn't conform, then the whole page doesn't conform.

It can go beyond the page, though. Say you have a page with a video and the text alternative is on a different page. The text alternative would be considered part of the full page with the video for the purpose of conforming to WCAG.

I can see where this requirement will increase in importance as content becomes more modular and perhaps lives in different places.

Requirement 3: Complete Process

For processes that involve multiple pages, such as a multiform checkout process, all pages in the process must conform before any of them do.

It makes sense. If the first page at checkout is accessible, but the rest aren't, how accessible was that first page? It certainly isn't accessible in any useful way.

Requirement 4: Only Accessibility-Supported Ways of Using Technologies

The idea here is that all information and functionality must be provided in an accessibly supported way. For example an image that also serves as a link to another document, must have a text alternative for assistive devices.

Another example would be if you created custom controls, something that isn't a button or link, but carrying similar functionality. User agents wouldn't be able to present an alternative, since the controls are custom. You would have to provide the alternative, likely in the form of ARIA roles, states, and properties.

Requirement 5: Non-Interference

This requirement offers something of an exception to the first requirement. It says it's ok use technologies that are not accessible as long as the information is also available using accessible technologies that are supported.

In addition, the non-supporting technologies must not interfere with the accessible technologies in any way.

It is then possible to have part of a web page not conform and have the page itself conform. The non-conforming content would need a conforming alternative and it can't interfere with any conforming part of the page.

Success Criteria

I've mentioned success criteria a number of times this week and last week, but I haven't provided much in the way of specific information about them. There's a reason. To talk about them means to get very deep into the details, too deep for a single post or series of posts.

When creating your site, you should determine the overall level of conformance you're trying to reach. We're new at this, so let's assume we're trying to achieve level A compliance.

Once you know what level of conformance you're after you can find the success criteria you need to meet and you'll probably be clicking through to multiple documents depending on how much detail you need.

The easiest way I've found to get to the details is to start with the guidelines. Each of the sub-guidelines lists which level of compliance it meets. For example guidelines 1.2.2 and 1.2.4 both deal with adding captions to audio. 1.2.2 is for prerecorded audio and will help meet level A compliance. 1.2.4 is for live audio and it meets level AA compliance.

Naturally the success criteria for each will be different. You can find the success criteria through the two links to the right of each guideline.

The "How to Meet" link will take you to the Quick Reference Document. If you wait a few seconds or longer, the page will jump to the criteria for the specific guideline. When it does you'll find additional links for the details you want.

The "Understanding" link will take you directly to a page with details about the specific criteria. Here's the page for understanding success criteria 1.2.2 (which is the criteria for guideline 1.2.2). The page will give you details about the intent behind the criteria, some examples of success, and additional links the different techniques and common failures.

Again I can't possibly cover all of them here, but let me at least give you an example of the success criteria for one guideline.

Guideline 1.4.1 is about the use of color and it says that color should not be the only visual means to convey information, indicate an action, prompt a response, or distinguish a visual element. One example of success is given as a form that uses color and text to indicate required fields.

A form contains both required and optional fields. Instructions at the top of the form explain that required fields are labeled with red text and also with an icon whose text alternative says, “Required.” Both the red text and the icon are programmatically associated with the appropriate form fields so that assistive technology users can determine the required fields.

Again, this is simply an example that would meet the criteria for success for this particular guidelines. It doesn't mean you specifically have to use red text and an icon with a text alternative.

Techniques for WCAG 2.0

That brings us to the last of the four layers of WCAG guidance, sufficient and advisory techniques. Like the success criteria, the information comes in the form of details for specific guidelines.

You can find the techniques in the same documents as the success criteria. They're included as a collection of links to yet more pages with yet more details.

You can also find them all collected in the Techniques for WCAG 2.0 document, though I'm not sure how much they'll make sense when the connection with the success criteria is removed. The list is probably best when you know the name or identification of a technique and want to find it as quickly as possible.

One nice thing about the techniques is the spec mentions updating them twice a year to present current best practices.

Please understand that none of the techniques are required. Meeting the success criteria is required, but how you do that isn't. The techniques are examples of how you might meet the criteria and there are typically several examples for each.

The techniques come in three flavors.

  • Sufficient techniques are reliable ways to meet the success criteria
  • Advisory techniques are suggested ways to improve accessibility. They're often very helpful to some users, and may be the only way that some users can access some types of content.
  • Failures are things that cause accessibility barriers and fail specific success criteria. They're good for knowing what to avoid.

Again the details are far too numerous to try and include them here, however I will offer an example from the same success criteria about the use of color not being the only visual way to communicate information.

One of the sufficient techniques is G205: Including a text cue for colored form control labels. Click through to the specifics and you'll find an example of using the word "required" in addition to having the label in red.

1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  
<label for="lastname" class="required">Last name (required): </label>  <input id="lastname" type="text" size="25" value=""/>    <style type="text/css">    .required {      color:red;    }  </style>

Last name is a required field. The label gets both a class of required, which is styled to display the text as red and it also receives the word required in parenthesis next to the label.

I suggest first knowing what you're trying to do and then finding a technique to implement it by then clicking through to the various documents that offer the details. If you start at the either the quick reference or the WCAG spec you can find your way to the more detailed documentation.

Closing Thoughts

The web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG 2.0) should be one of your first stops in trying to piece all this accessibility information together.

The WCAG documents provide four basic principles, each with guidelines and sub guidelines. The level of conformance you're trying to achieve will determine which of the guidelines you'll want to dig deeper into.

And dig you can. Be prepared to find one source where all the guidelines are listed with links to the different resources that hold the specific details. I've presented a few throughout these posts, though the How to Meet WCAG 2.0 Quick Reference , the Viget Interactive WCAG, and the guidelines section of the WCAG spec are probably the best pages to bookmark.

There is a lot of information to absorb and digest when you're looking through the WCAG documents. Don't feel overwhelmed. Much are specifics that you don't need to memorize. They serve as reference.

Hopefully I've helped provide some general understanding and context so you can feel more confident as you click around to the specific details. Next week I want to continue and start looking at ARIA role models, states, and properties.

Download a free sample from my book Design Fundamentals.

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Friday 26 June 2015

Be More Productive Using Routines as Automation - Vanseo Design

Be More Productive Using Routines as Automation - Vanseo Design

Be More Productive Using Routines as Automation

Posted: 25 Jun 2015 05:30 AM PDT

Can you automate yourself? It seems like an odd question to ask. We automate things that are repetitive. We let machines or software assemble products and complete tasks because they can do it quicker and with less errors.


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Scaling the production of a product or business is all about automation. More efficiency is generally good for the bottom line. I'll ask again, can you automate yourself?

It still sounds strange but I think you can. Not quite the same way as we use machines and software, but you can automate yourself or at least some of the things associated with being you and being alive. I think we all do this naturally by forming habits and routines.

The last couple of weeks I've been talking about creativity and productivity and the sometimes struggle between them. I talked about time from the perspective of each and mentioned I'd do the same with routines. Today will be a look at routines and productivity. Next week I'll talk about routines through the lens of creativity.

Multitasking is an Illusion

I come down hard on multitasking, because it deserves it. Multitasking as people think of it is pure garbage. Human beings can't do two things both consciously and effectively at the exact same time. We can do multiple things at once, only if all but one of those things are done automatically and without conscious thought.

For example you can walk down the street and have a conversation with someone because walking doesn't require conscious thought. Somewhere early in life we figured out how to walk and now we just do it without having to think about it.

Some of you will probably disagree and say you can do two things that require conscious thought at once. Maybe you're also typing to someone in a messenger app of some kind while walking down the street talking to your friend.

Despite what you might think you aren't doing both at the same time. You're bouncing back and forth between the conversation with your friend and the conversation in the messenger. You're doing it so quickly you might think you're doing both at the same time, but you aren't. You're bouncing back and forth between them.

You might say so what? You're still having both conversations. I and science say you're doing each thing less effectively and less efficiently when you try to do two things at once. You're going to miss parts of each conversation if you try to have both at the same time. That might be ok depending on the conversations, but you are communicating less effectively than you would be if you were having the two conversations separately

Let Your Subconscious Take Over

Notice I said we can do multiple tasks at once when only one of them requires conscious thought. If we couldn't we never would have made it out of our cribs. It would be difficult to be alive.

We clearly do different things at the same time. I know of at least two you're doing right now, breathing and reading this. Hopefully your conscious thought is being used to read and it's the breathing that's automatic.

Moving things to your subconscious (like breathing and walking) allows you to do those things at the same time as you do something with conscious thought.

When you can do things and make decisions without conscious thought, it's not unlike being on autopilot and automating your life and yourself.

When we develop habits and routines we help move things from conscious to unconscious thought. They're in a sense automation that can help us be more productive because they free your conscious mind to work on other things.

Routines as Automation

Did you ever get in your car and start driving somewhere only to discover a few minutes later that you're driving someplace you didn't intend to go?

Maybe you turned on the radio or got lost in thought. You weren't consciously thinking about where you were driving and the next thing you knew you were following the route to work or some other location you drive to frequently.

At some point you might have been at a light where you usually turn right, but on that particular day you wanted to turn left instead. After the fact you noticed you had turned right like you usually do without even realizing you were doing it.

You weren't consciously thinking about where you were going, when to turn and what roads to follow. Since you weren't thinking about it, your subconscious made the decision for you. Your subconscious took over and led you somewhere it knows you drive to often.

The routine (driving to work or some other common destination) had become an automatic process. You may have been physically stepping on the gas, breaks, and possibly a clutch. You physically turned the wheel, but still it all happened automatically like walking down the street.

I'm not suggesting we should all drive on autopilot. Driving is something you should be doing consciously, but odds are that kind of unconscious driving is something you've experienced before and you can see how things we think require conscious thought don't always need it.

Routines remove conscious thought, because they leave the decision-making to your subconscious. They become one less thing you have to think about. You respond the same way all the time so there's nothing to decide. You no longer need conscious thought to make the decision.

Moving some decisions to your subconscious frees up your conscious mind to think about more important things while the less important ones become automatic routines. You can increase your focus on what's important to you and so gain a productivity boost by not having to waste mental energy on things that don't matter to you.

I work for myself in large part because of the freedom I have in when to work so naturally I work between the hours of 8:00 AM and 6:00 PM Monday through Friday similar to many people in offices around the world. Why?

One reason is that it matches the schedule the majority of the world works under and it makes it easier for me to talk to clients and see friends after work.

It's also one less thing to think about. I don't have to wake up and think about whether I'll work that day and when. I wake up at the same time and start and stop working at the same time. After awhile my mind is used to it and what can be done subconsciously is. When the clock strikes a certain hour, my conscious mind is already waiting for me to get started.

Routines as Modular Blocks of Thought

Similar to the way you can extract blocks of code to create component and pattern libraries and then work to improve them, you can extract blocks of conscious thought, make them routine and habit and work to improve them. I use habits this way all the time.

Last year I decided to get into better shape. Most of my work day is spent sitting on my ass. I don't need to do a lot of physical activity to do write or design and consequently I've gotten out of shape over the years through a lack of exercise and a sedentary lifestyle.

The thought of exercising when you live a sedentary lifestyle is not a pleasant one. It's hard to imagine yourself exercising when you don't have the energy.

Still I wanted to get in shape so I had a friend buy me an ab carver, one of those wheel things that you can use to exercise your core.

I started as easily as I could. I tested the equipment one day. A couple days later I tried the easiest version of the recommended exercise routine and I did one set instead of the three suggested. It wasn't hard to do.

I doubt I was doing my body much good at first, but I was establishing a routine. One set of very light exercise may not sound like much, but it does develop the routine. Once I could do one set, I added another and then a third. Then I started increasing how many repetitions I would do in each set.

A year later I added another piece of equipment for chest and shoulder exercises. I started the same way with an easy routine so light I could barely notice it and little by little I iterated the routine.

Fast forward to today and now six days a week I'm doing something to work a group of muscles in my body for a good 15–20 minutes. I'm consistently increasing the repetitions whenever the routine starts to feel a too easy.

Later in the year there's another piece of equipment I want to add to work different sets of muscles. I'll continue to build up. I can tell I'm in better shape than I was before I started.

I took something that seemed like it would be difficult, established a simple routine, and iterated the routine until it was more productive and useful to me. A year and half ago I couldn't envision where I am right now, let alone where I hope to be a year or two from now, so I started with as simple a routine as possible and built from there.

I don't have to remind myself to do the exercise. It's routine and I just do it. I built up slowly. Each change wasn't much of an increase. I don't feel like I'm doing more after increasing the repetitions of each set and I look back over a longer period of time and realize I have increased more than I thought.

If you normally do 20 pushups, you won't notice the difference in doing 21. Once 21 becomes your routine you won't feel the difference in doing 22. Continue those small increases though and in a few months you're doing 50 or 100 pushups.

You are a Process

The same way I suggest you treat your work as a process I'll suggest you do the same with yourself. See yourself as a process that you can improve, by improving the parts, automating some as unconscious routines and habits. Free your conscious mind to focus on other things.

Observe yourself. What decisions do you make the same way all the time that you could probably turn into a routine?

Steve Jobs famously wore a black turtle neck and a pair of jeans for the last 10 or so years of his life. He's not the only person to do have done that. I've heard Einstein did something similar where he owned a number of the same suits and picked the next one off the rack each day, though I've also seen reports that he didn't.

The reason is similar to why some people pick out clothes the night before. They have more time to think about it at night and in the morning when the decision needs to be made, but time is scarcer, it's already been made. It's one less decision to consciously make in the morning which allows you to use the time thinking about something else.

In the case of Steve Jobs, his clothing choices might have been about branding in part, but the main reason is because it was one less thing for him to consciously think about in a day filled with lots or conscious thought and decisions.

I don't necessarily wear the same things every day, but I don't spend a lot of time choosing what clothes to wear. I usually pick up the jeans and t-shirt closest to the bed when I wake up and that usually works for me.

Fashion isn't important to me so I relegate decision making about what to wear to something of an automatic process. I'd rather spend the mental energy on something like planning what I'll be working on that day.

Another routine I iterated is when I wake up. I'm a night person by nature, but I wanted to wake up earlier than being a night person usually allows.

Many of us wake up at the same time every day when the alarm goes off. Have you ever noticed that after awhile you start to wake up on your own a few minutes before the alarm goes off? Waking up has become routine. You might not be awake, but your subconscious knows what times it is near enough to wake you.

I wanted to wake up earlier than I had been. Instead of setting the alarm a couple of hours earlier, I set my alarm a few minutes earlier. It didn't take long to get used to the change and again wake up before the alarm. Then I set it a few more minutes ahead. I'm now more likely to see the sun rise when I wake up than just before I go to sleep.

You're different than me so you'll have different priorities for the things in your life. What you wear might be very important to you, but something else might not be. Automate that thing by making the same or similar decision every day to the point where you no longer have to think about it. Make it routine. Make the decision once and put on autopilot.

Closing Thoughts

Maybe it's not the usual way we think about them, but routines are a way we automate our lives. I use routines to create processes in me and how I work. Every routine is one less thing that requires mental energy so that I can focus the mental energy elsewhere.

Despite what we may think, we aren't as good as we believe we are at doing two things at the same time when both require conscious thought. Conscious thought needs focus and multitasking reduces focus.

What you can do is relegate the less important things to your subconscious. You can develop a routine and your subconscious will take over. Let it and use the time to consciously think about something more important to you.

Iterate and improve your routines like anything else. Make small incremental changes that you won't notice, but will still improve your overall position. Over time you'll see the difference.

You have this wonderful automation tool inside you. Let your subconscious take over where it can so your conscious mind can focus on other things. Let your subconscious make decisions you don't need to think about.

Of course living your entire life on autopilot is not the best way to live. I'm not sure what the point of life would be if you were always on autopilot. There is another side to this. Next week I'll look again at routines, but through a different lens. I'll talk about breaking out of your routines so you can be more creative.

Download a free sample from my book Design Fundamentals.

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Tuesday 23 June 2015

WCAG 2.0 — Accessibility Principles And Guidelines - Vanseo Design

WCAG 2.0 — Accessibility Principles And Guidelines - Vanseo Design

WCAG 2.0 — Accessibility Principles And Guidelines

Posted: 22 Jun 2015 05:30 AM PDT

Where do you start? Where do you find the guidance to help you build more accessible websites and web apps? Both are questions I asked myself when I began this journey into learning more about web accessibility. I found the initial guidance I was looking for in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

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The guidelines cover a lot and you can get lost in the details at times, but once you learn your way around a little and have some context in place you'll be able to weave in and out of the details to your liking.

WCAG defines web content in general terms as the information in a web page or web application. It can include text, images, audio, video, and even code and markup for structure and presentation.

Following the guidelines will make your content more accessible to a wider range of people with disabilities and it should make your content more usable in general.

The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)

Before digging into WCAG, I want to point you to another section of the W3C first. The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) section on the W3C's website offers some general context and points you to documents that provide technical details.

There's a lot of information here that you can get lost in as well, but it's easier to find your way around and because of the many resources, the pages serve as good jumping off points.

One of these jumping off points for me was this page showing the main WCAG documents you'll likely refer to time and again.

I'm not sure how quick the quick reference is, but it can serve as a checklist to find things you may have overlooked. It's strength is that it can be customized to only show a few guidelines at a time, such as HTML techniques and failures to meet the highest level of compliance (AAA) or the required CSS techniques necessary for level A compliance.

I think the quick reference will be most useful after you've learned more. It'll serve as a good reference and checklist.

The latter two documents (Understanding WCAG and Techniques for WCAG) are mainly lists of links to details about specific guidelines. These will be most useful as reference material when you want dig deeper into any of the guidelines.

The word technique is something of a misnomer. The WCAG techniques show examples of things you might do, such as add a skip link at the top of every page, as opposed to offering specifics for how you might implement the example.

You won't need help for many of the techniques, but understand if you don't know how to implement one, you probably won't find the information through the Techniques for WCAG documents. They're what to do more than how to do it.

As with the quick reference, I think both documents can confuse more than help until you have a little more context so I want to focus on the one document I haven't mentioned yet, the W3C standard for WCAG 2.0.

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0

WCAG exists to show how to make web content more accessible to people with various disabilities. I talked about five common types of disabilities defined by the WAI last week, but here they are again.

  • Auditory
  • Cognitive and neurological
  • Physical or Motor
  • Speech
  • Visual

Unfortunately WCAG can't address every possible degree of every possible disability. No set of documents could. Still, following the guidelines will make your sites more accessible and more usable in general.

WCAG Layers of Guidance

Because different people with different needs will make use of the various WCAG documents, those documents provide several layers of guidance from the general to the specific are provided. These layers include:

  • Principles
  • Guidelines
  • Success Criteria
  • Sufficient and Advisory Techniques

The principles are the most general and under each principle are multiple levels of guidelines. Each guideline links to specifics for both criteria and techniques to successfully meet the guideline.

The guidelines, criteria, and techniques are further broken down into three levels of compliance, A, AA, and AAA, with the last being the most difficult to achieve. You need to successfully meet the criteria of some guidelines to be level A compliant, more to be AA compliant, and the remainder to be AAA compliant.

This is why I think context will help a lot here. Much of the documentation is reference and cross reference material for you to look up. Before you can do that though, it helps to understand what you want to look up.

Principles and Guidelines

At the top of the hierarchy are the four principles of accessibility, which are perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust. Under the principles are multiple levels of guidelines and it's hard to talk about one without the other.

In total there are twelve top level guidelines below the principles, each with additional sub-guidelines to achieve the different levels of compliance.

Assuming I counted right, which is a larger assumption than it should be, there are 25 sub-guidelines for level A compliance, an additional 13 guidelines for level AA compliance, and 23 more guidelines for complete AAA compliance. Each level needs to meet all the guidelines of the lower levels in addition to its own.

The guidelines aren't testable. That's where the success criteria and techniques come in, but for the moment let's focus on the principles and guidelines.

Principle 1: Perceivable

Information and user interface components must be presentable to users in ways they can perceive.

The perceivable principle is probably the one you think of most when accessibility is mentioned. The idea is to present alternatives for people who are unable to consume your content as originally created.

Give images alt text. Add captions to images and video. Create content in multiple ways. Write it out, record it, show it as an image. Make your content presentable to assistive devices without any loss of meaning. In general make it easier for people to perceive your content through multiple senses.

Four top level guidelines are associated with this principle.

  • Guideline 1.1 Text Alternatives
  • Guideline 1.2 Time-based Media
  • Guideline 1.3 Adaptable
  • Guideline 1.4 Distinguishable

With the exception of the first, each has further sub guidelines, but I won't try to list them all here. You can find all the guidelines and sub guidelines here.

The text alternative and time-based media guidelines are about offering alternative versions of content and making sure those alternate versions are equivalent. For example when I record podcasts I present a text version of the recording. It's not a transcription but a somewhat edited version of what I said in the recording. The audio and text aren't the same, but they are equivalent.

The adaptable guidelines are about presenting equivalent content across different devices and conditions. Ensuring content is machine readable for example.

The distinguishable guidelines refer to things like providing enough color contrast between design elements and offering controls to raise or lower the volume of audio and video files.

Principle 2: Operable

User interface components and navigation must be operable.

Where principle 1 is concerned with all content being perceivable to anyone accessing the site, principle 2 is about navigation and the interface.

Make sure all functionality is available from a keyboard in addition to devices like a mouse or trackpad that require fine motor skills. Make sure navigation is present to help people and machines find content and quickly determine where they are in the site. In general provide different options for people to interact with your site.

This principles also has four main guidelines, each with additional sub-guidelines that I'm not showing here.

  • Guideline 2.1 Keyboard Accessible
  • Guideline 2.2 Enough Time
  • Guideline 2.3 Seizures
  • Guideline 2.4 Navigable

The first group of guidelines naturally deals with keyboard interaction. The second set, enough time, are about allowing visitors to set time limits if they exist and providing controls for some moving information.

The seizure guidelines are about avoiding the potential for your design to induce seizures in some people, the navigable guidelines are about helping people find what they want and where they are.

When this principle is met, visitors to your site will be able to find their way around the site quickly and easily and they'll be able to use the site as well.

The operable principle crosses into website usability, which is something we should already be familiar with. However, I suspect most of us aren't particularly good with the first guideline, though we probably do ok with the other three.

Principle 3: Understandable

Information and the operation of user interface must be understandable.

This principle is fairly straightforward and again concerns things we probably already think about. I would hope the goals of every designer involve helping make the content understandable.

The guidelines for this principle suggest content could be made available in multiple languages and the writing should be at an eighth-grade level. Despite the guideline I think the level should depend on the audience for your content and not automatically be written at such a low level.

This time there are three main guidelines.

  • Guideline 3.1 Readable
  • Guideline 3.2 Predictable
  • Guideline 3.3 Input Assistance

Multiple languages and reading level are included in the readable guidelines. So are things like the use of unusual words or abbreviations.

Predictable covers things like a navigation label accurately identifying where it leads. It also covers sticking to conventions once you've established them. If all your in-content links are red then having one be blue would be unpredictable and lead to confusion. Be consistent.

The guidelines about input assistance ask us to minimize the potential for errors and to help correct any that might occur. For example an input form requiring a phone number could make clear what inputs are allowed (to perhaps show a number pad on mobile devices) and use regular expressions to ensure that only the correct input is accepted. An error message would make clear which inputs need correcting and how to correct them.

Principle 4: Robust

Content must be robust enough that it can be interpreted reliably by a wide variety of user agents, including assistive technologies.

The final principle, robust, is about making sure your content can be reliably accessed by as many user agents and devices as possible. That includes both those that exist today and those predicted to exist tomorrow.

For example your site shouldn't trip up a screen reader. We'll get into this more next week when I talk about ARIA.

The robust principle has single guideline with a couple of sub-guidelines so I'll list all three here.

  • Guideline 4.1 Compatible
    • 4.1.1 Parsing
    • 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value

As a whole this principle is about maximizing compatibility with user agents and devices. The first sub-guideline is concerned with markup. Things like making sure HTML tags are closed, nesting elements properly, ensuing unique ids, and other things we hopefully already do.

The second sub-guideline is concerned with ARIA roles, states, and properties, which I'll start to look at ARIA next week.

I'd say the ideas of responsive design and progressive enhancement fit right in with this principle as does coding to standards. I'd say this also makes a good stopping point for today.

Closing Thoughts

One of things I've found difficult in my previous attempts to learn more about accessibility is knowing where to start. It's easy to find specific details, but harder to find a good overview that provide context for those details.

The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) is a good place to start for less technical information and for resources pointing you to documents with technical details.

Your next stop should be the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), which provide context and details for what to do to build more accessible sites. The guidelines are organized to provide several layers of guidance from general principles to specific techniques.

Start with these four principles and their guidelines and sub-guidelines to understand the context for the details that will come next.

Next week I want to continue talking about WCAG and look at the the more detailed layers of guidance. We'll talk about success criteria and the techniques for achieving success and how you ultimately conform to accessibility standards.

Download a free sample from my book Design Fundamentals.

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Friday 19 June 2015

Why Your Creativity Wants You To Waste More Of Your Time - Vanseo Design

Why Your Creativity Wants You To Waste More Of Your Time - Vanseo Design

Why Your Creativity Wants You To Waste More Of Your Time

Posted: 18 Jun 2015 05:30 AM PDT

Should getting more done in less time always be the goal? When it comes to the work you do, is it always better for your business to do the most you can in the least amount of time? Or are there good cases for taking a non-linear path to your goal? Can wasting time be a good thing for your business?


Note: This post includes an audio version. If you don’t see the audio player above, Click here to listen. You can also subscribe in iTunes

Last week I started a series on productivity and creativity and talked about time from the perspective of being productive and maximizing efficiency. Today I want to again consider time, but from a different perspective. I want to talk about time and creativity and how sometimes the best way you can use time is to waste it.

Less, but Better

You can probably guess I don't think more is always what you want. Sometimes you'd rather get less done, but with more quality. You want to do less work, but make the work better.

Creativity doesn't respond well to the same conditions as productivity. Creativity isn't about the most. It's about the best and the best takes more time.

You need to explore things from every angle, understand your subject as much as you think possible, and then understand it a little more. Creativity requires empathy and understanding and it takes time to truly have either.

Creativity Needs Time to Explore

Creativity needs time to explore. You need to go deeper into a subject or your work. You need more time to discover the essence or core of the thing you're doing. You can't get to the core quickly.

You have to explore the problem and be free to try different options and directions. You ned to be open to see what's there and where an idea leads you before deciding if it was the right direction to have traveled.

You go into a creative problem more open to the possibilities of both the solutions and the problem. Part of the creative process and solving creative problems is discovery. You need to explore different areas over time to discover whatever it is you're looking for.

Unlike a mathematical problem you don't know where you'll end up when you start. You don't work toward an expected solution. With creative problems you spend time discovering the solution and sometimes discovering a better problem to solve along the way.

And in the end you don't know whether you found the best solution. You try several and choose as best as you can.

See Things from Different Perspectives

Part of the reason creativity takes time is because you need to see a creative problem and its possible solution from many different angles.

Sometimes I go into an article with preconceived ideas and opinions. I think I'm heading toward a certain conclusion and all I have to do is prove that conclusion. As I explore the topic, I discover alternate thoughts, ideas, and opinions that completely change what the article ends up being.

Sometimes the article takes a different shape. Maybe it just has a different conclusion. Sometimes it leads to an entirely new article because I put in the time to understand the subject deeper.

You need to see the same thing from different perspectives to understand it better. You need to spend time with it from every side possible. It's one reason why I want to talk about time and routines from the perspectives of both creativity and productivity; to help understand them better.

Creative problems aren't simple things with binary objective answers. Their answers are fuzzier and more vague. There's no sign post at the end to tell you that you reached the right destination.

Despite what many people think, math problems are easy compared to creative problems. Mathematical problems have correct answers. Creative problems don't. There's no single right answer. There are a handful of very good answers.

The way you can be confident you've reached a good creative solution is often to have tried several possible solutions and that takes time.

Create a Relaxed State in Yourself

Some people think they work better under pressure. The research disagrees, especially where creativity is concerned. We're better creatively when we aren't up against a deadline. Our best creative work comes when we're relaxed, feel more confident, and have the freedom to explore.

Creativity works better when you're in a relaxed state. It doesn't thrive under the pressure of deadlines. Realistically you can't explore everything. At some point you have to settle for whatever you have when clock strikes. There probably is a deadline somewhere along the way, but creativity doesn't thrive close to it.

Before jumping into creative work, I almost always spend some down time or engage in a simple mindless task. Usually I take a look at the problem I want to solve and then I do something else. I might watch TV for half an hour or read something online.

The down time helps put me in a more relaxed state and sets the conditions for the muse to arrive and lead me into a creative flow. Ironically by wasting time before creative work, I get more done while working and done with higher quality.

Working this way leads to far less time after the creative, because I seldom need to scrap everything and start over. I often have to start over when I force the creative work into a timed box to fit into a productivity system. It's better to waste a short amount of time before instead of a lot of time after.

Creativity also needs to be ready at a moment's notice to change and follow another direction. It wants to be spontaneous and follow where the path leads instead of predetermining the path in advance. Discover the path instead of choosing one off a map.

You can't force that into a schedule. You have to go with the flow when it's there and follow wherever it wants to take you.

That kind of relaxed state takes time to get to. It might seem like it's all lazy and wasteful, but it's setting up conditions in which you can relax, be open, be spontaneous, and allow your creativity to thrive.

Beyond the First Thought

Another reason creativity takes longer is because your first idea usually isn't your best one. The first one only scratches surface. You don't know enough yet to have good ideas. The interesting stuff is much deeper and takes time to get to.

Your first idea sets a path to walk down. It sets the direction to explore. Better ideas are usually found along the way as you're walking and exploring.

No one (besides myself and one close friend) ever sees my first attempt at a design. It's universally awful. Not just bad, but downright awful. However, I've found I need to explore that idea to throw it away. The act of getting it out of my head, creates room for new and better ideas.

Seeing what was wrong with the original idea leads me to what's right with another. It takes time to work the first awful attempt. It takes time to reflect on why it's awful. It takes time to come up with a new direction.

All are essential for my process. Maybe not essential, since that first design isn't always awful like I implied, but more often than not it is and I need to get it out and waste the time exploring it to get to the good ideas.

Ideas often need to stew and simmer a long while before they're anything worth sharing and before you really understand what they are.

This series is a good example. Most of it was random thoughts over several different planned ideas I might write about. None of what I had worked on its own, though. As I collected more ideas and jotted down more thoughts, I found the connection through them.

It led me to rethink them all as a series with a connected theme and here we are. This post, and the others in the series, wouldn't exist had I approached them with a productivity mindset. Allowing the ideas to evolve over time and let them progress on their own time frame ultimately led to what's here now.

Closing Thoughts

If you rush through life you'll miss things. Many of the things you miss, you won't really miss. They'll be irrelevant to anything you care about. However, in between the irrelevance you'll miss out on some good things and some good ideas you can;t come across any other way besides sifting through the irrelevance.

The goal isn't always to get as much as possible done in the least amount of time. It's a goal a lot of times and it produces greater quantity, but it doesn't lead to greater quality. You're always giving up some of one to get more of the other, at least to a degree.

Creativity needs time to explore and see the problem and its possible solutions from different angles and perspectives. You need to be open and take in everything. You ned to combine it all together through the filter of your experience. You can't do these things instantly.

You do your best creative work when you're relaxed and confident and when you feel free to travel down paths that may lead nowhere to find the ones that lead somewhere. You need to go down the wrong paths at times to find right ones.

Deadlines hinder creativity. They don't lead to eureka moments. In fact eureka moments come when you take time away and let your subconscious work on the problem while you're off doing something else. A eureka moment is your subconscious saying "Thanks for the time. I figured it out. Here you go."

Your first creative thought usually isn't your best. It might be, but usually it isn't. It's more often the idea to get you started on your creative journey to a solution or idea you're looking to find.

Ideas often need time to simmer before you have something worth sharing with anyone or before people are ready for the idea and for it to have an impact.

It's time to move on from time. Next week I'll talk about routines and habits and how you can use them to make your life and work more productive. The following week I'll talk about routines and habits from the perspective of creativity.

Download a free sample from my book Design Fundamentals.

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Tuesday 16 June 2015

What Does It Mean To Develop Accessible Websites? - Vanseo Design

What Does It Mean To Develop Accessible Websites? - Vanseo Design

What Does It Mean To Develop Accessible Websites?

Posted: 15 Jun 2015 05:30 AM PDT

If I ask what it means to develop accessible websites, what would you say? Would you respond that accessibility means adding code for screen readers? Is there anything more? Does accessibility start and end with screen readers?

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Last week I started a series about accessibility and shared how I'm not doing a great job and why that might be. I also shamed myself a little by calling attention to my failings with this site in the hopes it will lead me to make the site more accessible to more people.

I also hope you felt a little empathic shame yourself and want to join me on this journey to create more accessible websites.

What is Accessibility?

I do think the common thought is that accessibility means developing websites for screen readers. There's more, of course, but I get the sense that most people equate website accessibility with screen readers.

The way I think of accessibility is to place it on a scale. At any point in time a site is accessible to some and not to others. Anything I can do to help one more person access the site makes it more accessible.

That could mean anything from adding ARIA roles for screen readers to supporting an older version of a browser. It could mean providing keyboard shortcuts for people who have difficulty using a mouse and it could mean a responsive design that works across more devices, and so much more.

I was curious to see how accessible is defined and I collected some definitions from the dictionary app on my Mac, which combines results from a couple of different Oxford dictionaries.

accessible
able to be reached or entered
able to be easily retained or used
easily understood
able to be reached or entered by people with disabilities

It's interesting that the word disability doesn't show up until the fourth definition. Accessibility is for everyone.

As I was working on this series, Melanie Jones posted some poll results on the Simply Accessible website. The poll was a fill in the blank. Accessibility is…

My favorite response to the poll was "To care for every user." I think that's what accessibility ultimately means. Care about every user (or practically speaking, as many as possible) and do everything you can to make sure your site works for each of them.

The first place we should start is to increase our awareness. For example here's something I found on a site about disability awareness.

Put aside the presumption that disability resides in only some individuals. All of us do or will experience some change in ability, whether permanent or temporary.

We all have disabilities. When we make our sites more accessible, we're helping a lot more people than we realize.

I can see, but I don't see as well as I did 20 years ago. If type on a site is set too small, then it's not accessible to me. Years ago I developed some kind of repetitive stress injury using a mouse at work. I no longer use a mouse. I use a keyboard to navigate as much as possible and fall back on a trackpad when I can't.

We all have disabilities, even if we don't have the exact disabilities with think accessibility is supposed to be about.

Five Types of Disabilities

While I think the all inclusive definition of accessibility is the right definition, when we talk accessibility with websites, we're mostly looking through documents about developing sites specifically for several types of disabilities.

The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) suggests there are five common types of disabilities that affect how people can consume and interact with websites. In alphabetical order they are:

  • Auditory
  • Cognitive and neurological
  • Physical or Motor
  • Speech
  • Visual

Keep in mind that people might experience one or more of the above to various degrees. I can see, just not as well as I used to. Also keep in mind that someone might have a visual disability from birth, due to aging, or even due to some temporary circumstance. The degree of disability can and will change over time for many people.

Auditory disabilities can range from being hard in hearing in one ear to being Deaf. Accessibility considerations include providing transcripts and captions to all audio content. They include providing options to pause and play and increase volume and might even include accompanying audio content with sign language.

Cognitive and neurological disabilities involve disorders of any part of the nervous system. They can affect how people see, hear, speak, move, and how people learn and understand information. Accessibility considerations could be to write simple sentences as opposed to complex ones and to allow flashing and blinking elements to be turned off (or better not including them to begin with).

Physical (Motor) disabilities include any limitations of muscular control, from arthritis to paralysis. Considerations include adding keyboard support and alternative means of interaction in general.

Speech disabilities include any difficulty producing speech that is recognizable and understandable by others or by speech recognition software. Considerations include more ways to contact you than a phone number.

Visual disabilities include things from a lack of sensitivity to certain color hues to complete blindness. Considerations include text alternatives to imagery, controls, and structural elements.

Again these disabilities aren't binary. They aren't on or off for all people. Many people experience various levels of any or all of these types and they aren't always permanent. Sometimes our environment can play a role in our ability to access a website. Low bandwidth, bright light, lots of ambient noise, or using an old browser can make using a website challenging for anyone.

Do You Need an Accessibility Budget?

Similar to having a performance budget to improve site performance you might have an accessibility budget to improve site accessibility.

The word budget may not be the right one since a lot of this won't require any additional expense in money or time. In some ways accessibility is just another constraint to add to design.

For example it takes just as long to choose a color scheme with enough contrast as it does to choose one lacking contrast. The difference is the awareness and the knowledge that hue alone isn't enough to distinguish one element from another.

Where you might have previously looked at a blue and a red and decided if they looked good together, now you'll consider their value and make sure there's enough contrast in light and dark as well.

Not everything will be as simple. You'll likely need more time to learn to use ARIA attributes and make them part of your routine. The work is akin to incorporating responsive design. At first it's confusing and difficult because so much is new and unfamiliar. With each project a little more becomes familiar until it's no longer confusing or difficult at all.

If you make use of frameworks or pattern and component libraries then you'll add extra code for accessibility once and reuse your library or framework as you always have. Here and there you should improve on that extra code, but we aren't talking about significantly more work than what you do now.

I realize there are more costs involved in both time and money than I'm implying, but a lot of what we need to do doesn't have to cost much of anything beyond some time to learn what to do.

If you've been developing websites for any length of time think back. You used to spend more time developing fewer things than you do now. The technology has improved, your skills have improved, and your processes have improved. What once might have taken an hour to code, probably takes a few minutes now.

My point is we generally won't need to spend a lot of money or time to make accessible websites. For most projects it'll come down to an awareness of what to do and forming some better habits so you actually do those things.

There's still a lot of learning involved. Take it one step at a time. Set some priorities for what to learn first and then learn one thing at a time. Add the thing you learned to your routine and move on to the next priority on the list.

As we'll see over the next couple of weeks, there are various levels of accessibility compliance. So from a budget point of view, it makes sense to start with the minimum compliance and work your way up from there.

Closing Thoughts

Making a website more accessible means making it easier for more people (or machines) to consume and interact with the site. You want to help everyone find and consume content and complete whatever tasks your site has for them to complete.

Accessibility is far more than coding for screen readers, though developing for screen readers is certainly an important aspect of website accessibility.

Much of the documentation regarding accessibility does concern itself with five different types of disabilities. In alphabetical order they are auditory, cognitive and neurological, physical or motor, speech, and visual, and they can range from having a hard time reading small text to paralysis and many things in between.

I don't think accessibility has to cost a lot of money. A significant amount of the work will require some learning, but once learned it's more good habits than additional work. That's not to imply there's no cost, though you should recover any costs as your effort will help more people buy from you.

Next week I'll talk about the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). I think they offer a good high level view of the subject and offer good starting place for us to learn more and get into the specifics for how to build accessible sites.

Download a free sample from my book Design Fundamentals.

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Friday 12 June 2015

Work Smarter — Be More Productive With Your Time - Vanseo Design

Work Smarter — Be More Productive With Your Time - Vanseo Design

Work Smarter — Be More Productive With Your Time

Posted: 11 Jun 2015 05:30 AM PDT

I'm guessing you'd like to be more productive than you currently are. I'm also guessing you'd like to be more creative as well. The thing is what you do to get better at one is often the exact thing that makes the other harder to do. Improving your productivity probably sets up conditions under which creativity is not at its best and vice versa.


Note: This post includes an audio version. If you don’t see the audio player above, Click here to listen. You can also subscribe in iTunes

This is a topic I come back to from time to time and I've been thinking about it quite a bit lately. I thought I would consider two topics, time and routines, each from the perspectives of productivity and creativity.

Today I'll talk about time and productivity and next week I'll talk about time and creativity. In the weeks after I'll do the same with routines.

Limits in Time

You may remember in early April I talked about how have you to put in a consistent effort if you want to be successful. I said you have to show up and work hard every day no matter how you feel, but there's only so much time you can squeeze out of any day or week.

At some point you bump up against the limits of time. There's a limit to how many hours any of us can work. I might work 50 hours in a week where you might be willing to work 70. A third person might hit 40 hours exactly and call it a week.

The specific number isn't important. What's important is there's a limit to how much time any of us can work and let's face it, we usually can't sustain the maximum hours we can put up with for long. At some point you have to work smarter and not more hours.

The situation is similar with effort. You can only put in so much effort before you have nothing left to give. We all have limits to how much energy we have, at any moment, over the course of a day, week, or month. Like time, the limits of effort will be different for different people and at some point you have to work smarter instead of harder.

Work Smarter Through Processeses

I think the first step in working smarter is getting better at what you do. The more you write, the more you design, the more you develop, the better you'll get at each and the more you'll be able to get done in the same amount of time.

Devote some time every week to improving your knowledge and skills and you'll consistently find you can do more in less time. Beyond getting better I think the best way to work smarter is to develop processes for most everything and optimize each where you can.

You can identify parts of the process and optimize them individually. For example my writing process has several distinct parts from brainstorming ideas to publishing the finished content.

One way I optimize the idea generation part of the process is to find better ways to capture ideas when and where they come to me. I have several apps that sync between phone, tablet, and laptop so wherever I am when an idea strikes I can record it and later move it into my collection system.

It doesn't make writing a draft any easier, but it does lead to less time having to come up with new ideas when I need one. It optimizes one part of the process.

You can also optimize the process as a whole. Identify the parts that overlap so you can work them together. One reason I'm writing more series this year is because the research overlaps. The amount of time it takes to research a topic to write four posts isn't four times as long as the time it takes to research one post on the same topic.

Writing the series is working smarter, because I can finish more posts in the same amount of time. It is more time than researching one post, but far less than the amount to research four separate posts.

When designing a site for a client I send all deliverables as prototypes and I continue to iterate them based on client feedback. I deliver and improve working web pages. By the time my client has approved the design, a significant amount of development is finished.

I can take code from the prototype for the production site and often the two end up being the same or nearly the same. I combine design and development in a way that allows me to complete one while working on the other.

You'll probably find it easier to optimize the components at first, but watch for the larger patterns that will show you how to optimize the whole process too.

Reuse and Automate Where You Can

When you look at your process in terms of its component parts you'll probably find some of the parts can be reused over a project or across different projects.

Find these patterns and set them up for reuse. Don't forget to improve them the same way you should work to improve everything else. Time you spend making a single reusable pattern better is time spent improving many projects at once.

Ultimately this leads to the use of frameworks and component and pattern libraries. They increase efficiency since they don't reinvent the wheel on every project. You don't have to use someone else's framework or library. You can develop your own.

For example do you always set up a client or project directory with the same subdirectories and standard files? Automate the creation. Set up a script you run through the command line or keep a copy of your project folder template that you can copy and paste.

Take advantage of tools like TextExpander that let you type out large blocks of text with a shortcut. Use editors with code completion or add Emmet, which similarly expands shortcuts.

I have a snippet set up in TextExpander for the basic HTML structure of a web page, from declaring a doctype to the closing </html> tag. I type ;html and it expands to the entire structure. It may not save a lot of time, but it adds up, especially as I have other snippets to expand to other patterns of code for navigation bars, different layouts, and similar.

I can type a handful of short commands in a minute or two and have it all expand to the basic structure of a web page that might have taken a half hour to type out.

Anything you do that you'll do again is ripe for automation. Find the repeated work and think about which of it can be extracted and abstracted for reuse

Do One Thing That Serves Multiple Purposes

I've always thought that multitasking is complete garbage and I'm probably someone who most people think of as a multitasker. It's not uncommon for me to have the TV and stereo going while I'm working out a color scheme.

I might have a podcast playing through the headphones while I'm creating notes for a post and keeping an eye on my forum. I always have a number of apps and a number of projects going at the same time.

The truth is I'm not doing any of those things at the same time. Neither is anyone else who thinks they're multitasking. All but one of the things calling my attention will be background noise while I work on the remaining one. I'll bounce back and forth between them all, but my attention is only ever on one thing at a time.

I prefer what I call multipurposing or doing one thing that serves multiple purposes. For example writing here doubles as a way to improve my knowledge and skills as a designer, a developer, a freelancer, and a writer, while also leading to published content that can attract people to the site and maybe hire me or buy a book.

At the start of the year, I knew very little about SVG. I had been through some basics and found them relatively easy to understand, but it had been a long time and knew I’d need to learn from scratch.

By the end of the year I'll know how to work with SVG fairly well. I've written two series (15 articles) so far and have two or three more series planned for later in the year and possibly into next year.

I wanted to learn something new and I wanted to have something to publish here. I choose a topic I wanted to learn about and learn well enough to teach someone else. The result is an increased understanding of the topic and some published content all for a similar amount of work and time than doing either separately.

I also have some ideas for future designs that will lean on SVG. By the time I'm ready to put my ideas into practice, I'll understand more than I need to about SVG and the knowledge will likely generate new ideas as well.

I use the same time to accomplish multiple goals at once. The trick is having processes and understanding where parts of one process or project overlap with parts of another so they can be worked together.

You want to go into the work knowing that it needs to serve two different things. Knowing in advance allows you to tweak your approach so you can serve both. Regularly stepping back to see your work at the big picture level will help in finding the overlapping items.

Understand Yourself and Know When You Work Best

Just as important is to know yourself. You can easily find tips that say an organized desk will make your more productive or taking a nap at just the right time will make your more efficient. I have no idea if either of those are good ideas, but I think it's silly to think we all respond to the exact same things.

We're all different and while we certainly respond to some things in similar ways, a better approach is to know yourself and understand what conditions make you more efficient.

You might have more uninterrupted time in the morning and early afternoon. You might find you have the most creative energy after midnight and mid morning all you can handle is mindless busy work.

Organize your schedule around your time and energy patterns. I'm more creative early in the morning and late at night. In the middle of the day I run low on mental energy and I can best deal with mindless busy work. I find I can do analytical work at any time of day.

I don’t try to do high mental energy work during times when my mental energy is drained, usually right after lunch. I also don’t schedule busy work for times of the day when my focus and energy are typically high. I would waste the time and energy balance for lack of a better phrase. One reason I like planning further ahead is because it allows more flexibility to reschedule any given day.

Again my writing process has distinct stages. Each requires different amounts of time and different amounts and types of mental energy. On most days I can set the conditions for any of those kinds of energy to be available. I understand myself well enough. Some days I can't and can only work certain parts of my process. I simply won't have the energy for anything else.

Maybe I don't have the energy to write the draft for an article, but I can proof another one. Because I work the process instead of the article, I have many, many, many, and many written projects started. Most are little more than an idea. The next largest group adds outlines and sketches for what I'll write. A few less have notes and so on until the very few that are just about ready to publish.

On a day when I only have energy for research I can work on ideas needing research and pull them along to the next stage. Naturally there are points where I've committed to publishing something on a specific day and I can't avoid working on it. I can still make the most of my time and energy balance for everything else.

I'm far enough ahead of schedule to be able to take a day or two off any time I want and still stay on schedule. I can skip what I'm committed to if the time and energy balance isn't there for a day.

It may not seem efficient to work on something I don't plan on publishing in the near future instead of working on something I will, but I get more done overall this way. I'm not writing an article this week to publish next week. I'm working a process that can produce some number of articles per month.

Knowing this, when I do have the energy for writing a draft or working through a high level edit I do those things. I know the energy won't be there every day so I make sure to take advantage of it when it is. This might and often does mean changing my entire day's schedule based on how I feel that morning or afternoon.

Knowing yourself lets you maximize how efficiently you and your system mesh. You don't have to do things the way I do them, but I'm sure there's a way you can make your time, energy, and schedule fit together better. Understand yourself. Know what you need in order to work effectively and productively and optimize your schedule with your time and energy balance.

There are always exceptions. Sometimes you don't have a choice. A client calls with a project on Monday and needs it finished by Thursday. Something time sensitive needs to be completed so you may have to work on it during less than optimal times given its priority.

That's ok. Unless you've reached a point where 100% of your time needs to go to one project, you'll have some flexibility to schedule it as optimally as possible and then schedule your remaining work around it, again as optimally as possible.

Best is to get ahead of your schedule when you can. If you do, you'll find you won’t bump up against time crunches as often as you might now. Where you can, schedule things in a way best for you.

Closing Thoughts

When you aren't getting enough done, your first thought is probably to work more hours or to work harder in the hours you set aside for work.

Both working more and working harder have limits. There's only so much time in a day and we all have limits on how much energy and how much of a specific type of energy we'll have over any time frame.

At some point you can't work more or harder. You have to work smarter. Develop processes and optimize them at both the component and overall process level. Modularize, automate, build reusable parts. Spend the same amount time on working on something you'll use again and again.

Learn to see where processes, projects, and tasks overlap and put multipurposing to work. Spend time on one thing that can serve multiple purposes. Step back and look at the big picture of your work and schedule. The overlap might be with something you weren't planning on working on for a few months, but overall you'll be more productive to work on it alongside something now.

Most of all know yourself. We're all different. The specifics of what works for me may or may not work for you. Learn when you work best and understand your time and energy balance. Figure out what conditions are needed to work on different tasks so you can schedule your work in tune with how you feel at any particular moment.

This all gets easier if you get further ahead of schedule. Being ahead will allow you to be more flexible in how you schedule your work and how you can change it to adapt to the day's circumstances. You can get a lot done even on days you don't have energy when you have more options for doing more types of work.

I've been talking about time only from the productivity side. Of course, there's another side to this topic. Sometimes you don't want to get as much done as possible or use your time in the most efficient way.

Sometimes wasting time is the best way you can spend your time. I'll stop there and hold off on the details until next week when I talk time from the perspective of being more creative.

Download a free sample from my book Design Fundamentals.

The post Work Smarter — Be More Productive With Your Time appeared first on Vanseo Design.

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