I am amazed by Twitter. A simple question asking “What are you doing?” and it has become wildly popular. What I think is even more interesting are the great web apps that have showed up around the web utilizing it’s API. Some of these are really cool (foamee, strawpoll, twistori, fuelfrog). I am inspired and think aggregating certain twitter data could be very useful.

Twitter, let’s build something. I have an idea for a twitter-based web app and I plan to build it over the coming weeks in my spare time. Check back here or follow me on twitter to see how it goes.

Usability is beautiful. I think it shines when the interface is simple. Simple to the point that users get it when they see it (an Ah-Ha moment), and the flow comes naturally. That simplicity comes with a focus on understanding your user and the problems they want to solve. Your solution orients them in a way to solve their problem more effectively and moves complication out of the picture.

I attended Refresh the Triangle for the first time last Thursday at iContact in Durham.  Rob Goodlatte gave a great talk on “Justifying Design”.  He made some good points about what to consider when designing for the web.  There were two points that he made that I certainly agree with and I think are worth mentioning again:

1. Design is about Problem Solving.
2. Define Goals by Asking Interesting Questions.

As a designer/developer, when creating a website or web application, your goal is to understand and solve a problem for your user.  In order to do this, you have to ask the right questions throughout the build process.  You have to be intentional about understanding your user and identifying their whole problem.  The result (and what I think Rob’s ultimate conclusion was from his talk) is a functional and elegant user experience.

Also, iContact did a great job of hosting the event.  It was nice to meet with some of their developers and their host for the night, Brandon Milford.

I ran across this site today and I am glad I did. Refresh the Triangle seems right up my alley in terms of development and design, and it’s local. It’s also sponsored by companies from around the Triangle. This is great and something I always love finding out about. Hopefully I can make it over to this from time to time. It looks like it is hosted on the last Thursday of every month.  This is something that looks to be growing, and certainly worth checking out