More Web Work

Web Form Design

Although I work in IT, primarily Helpdesk, I've been involved with developing several websites for automation and ease of use. 2 of these websites use forms to collect data and provide an easy, centralized solution to various inefficient processes. While designing the form is quite easy (centered textfields, process indicator, floating navigation), it takes quite a while to ensure that the inputs are sanitized and following the proper types. I'm sure there are existing solutions for forms (ie. groundwork), but I considered this as a good opportunity to get some hands on with the actual implementation.

While forms requiring text are one thing, controlled forms with pre-defined selections are another. One of the forms involves selecting equipment, which obviously can't be text input. Instead, I opted to provide icons/buttons to choose the pre-configured equipment or select different parts to put together. This was very easy to implement, but needed a bit more thought put into the interaction. Not everyone is tech savvy, which means that the form would need to indicate recommended configurations or force users to follow a strict parts selector. Once again, not hard to implement but needs a bit of thought.

Personal Projects

I haven't really made much progress in migrating the existing projects, mostly because the old method went through a central process while this new one doesn't really need it. However, this new one also doesn't have any sort of standard, which means I need to define one for consistency (sending JSON with a project ID and message object maybe).

I've decided to start improving my skills by essentially cloning existing websites and apps. For example, re-creating Facebook with dummy data. I think this would be a good exercise in GUI development. Since I don't want to focus primarily on Web development (I plan to go into Mobile), I'm also planning to practice either cloning existing apps (Facebook for example) or creating some simple but useful apps that I can publish.