Book Review: Tick My Boxes

Lee — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 09:00:14 +0000

I can’t remember where exactly, but I came across this while browsing the web one day and it caught my attention as I’d been thinking for some time now about having a checklist for projects. And here it is. Tick My Boxes, The Web Developers’ Checklist.

The book is by Leon Brocard and Jake Brumby and they provide you with an easy to follow checklist for a web project start to finish. Requirements and brief to design through to launch and all the stages in between and they offer lots of useful tips along the way like usability advice and optimisation techniques. It is broken down into a 100 point checklist in total, with a good explanation of each.

This book is a very easy read and I would recommend it to beginners, junior designers/developers and students. Most experienced designers would or should know this stuff but it wouldn’t do any harm to take a look and have a precise checklist to go by.

I read it over a weekend but you could read it in a few hours easily. It’s not one of those books that you’ll read then let gather dust on the bookshelf though as you’ll find it very useful to keep by your side, ensuring your projects’ checklist is complete.

You can buy it online, although LuLu (the publisher) was looking to charge me £50 for P&P so I contacted the authors and they were kind enough to reply promptly saying they could send me a copy for £9 + £3 P&P, which was nice of them. It’s now also available for PDF download, which is handy.

So Tick My Boxes is highly recommended. Very useful, easy to read book.

Why it’s good to work on your own side projects

Lee — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 15:06:43 +0000

Whether you’re freelance, employed or a business owner, we each have our own daily routine, which usually involves doing work to please someone else, whether that someone else be a client, end user, reader etc. But every once and a while I think it’s important to work on your own projects.

As I work on my major Masters project (due December), and while doing the odd freelance job, I take inspiration from the likes of Carsonified and Contrast who have been known for their ‘drop everything else for a week’ approach to work on other projects, and I work on my own side projects.

Their approach to taking a week to focus on 1 new project (from start to finish) is great but working 1 or 2 hours a day on a side project is also beneficial.

Why bother with side projects?

Luck favors the people who try stuff - Guy Kawasaki

1. Take a break

Take a break from your normal routine and refresh your head. Exploring different ideas can get you out of a creative block and bring inspiration.

2. Expand your skill-set

Try out new frameworks, see what you can do with different APIs, test your design skills. The creative community never stops moving so you need to make sure you stay up-to-date.

3. Brand awareness – raise your profile

Whether you’re a freelance designer or a large corporation, side projects can help raise your profile simply by having your name associated with it.

4. Contribute to the community

It’s always good to contribute something to the community. It’ll be appreciated.

5. Have fun

You can have a lot of fun working on your own stuff because you’re in control of the brief and there’s no one to tell you what to do.

6. Passive income

It’s hard to beat an application that makes money while you sleep or get on with the rest of your life. You might not make a fortune, but a few extra bucks a week to fund your Saturday night on the rip is a welcome addition :)

7. Try stuff

If you want to be successful in life I believe you have to try stuff. If it works, happy days! If it doesn’t, learn from it and move on. “Luck favors the people who try stuff”, says entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki.

Where to start

a. Take notes

Take notes when you think of projects and put them on your to-do list. I carry around a small notebook in my laptop bag and constantly add ideas to my ‘Someday’ list in Things.

b. Talk to other creatives

Talking to others will spark new ideas.

c. Read

Read a book from an inspiring designer or look at a book of visuals to get ideas.

d. Mashups

APIs make it very easy to launch small apps. Look at all the Twitter mashups now available. Think of different uses for Google Maps, Flickr, YouTube.

e. What would you find useful?

Chances are that if there was a website or tool that you would find useful, then there are 100s or 1000s of people who would also find it useful.

What side projects are you working on?

A successful side project I co-founded was The Big Word Project and I’ve just launched an Irish web design gallery (Web Designire) which only took a couple of hours a day for 5 days to develop (read more about it here).

Please feel free to share the side projects you’re currently working on or have produced in the past. It would be great to have your input.

Lee Munroe » projects