O’Reilly: Inside RIA

When you finally do find a company that is a home, it's important to recognize that and invest time with that company. As I detailed in the first part of this series, there are many benefits to jumping from company...

Beyond the obvious questions of: am I paid fairly, is the company stable, do I like what I do and the people I work with, there are a number of questions that you need to further ask to easily identify a home. One such question is, "Are there working managers?" In some companies the manager of application development is not actually a developer and never has been a developer. Most of the times when this is the case the company has no career path for developers beyond senior. Or there may be titles created beyond senior but no path that leads to VP or a C-level position. In those companies that path is reserved exclusively for "managers".

The current economic climate notwithstanding, developers tend to change employers quite a bit in comparison to other professions, at least according to my own anecdotal evidence. From my own experience I've been at six different companies over the last ten...

In a world that is overly saturated with technology and the ever so present visual clutter of messages trying to vie for our attention we, as Designers and Technologists must embrace the "Art and Science" of the experience. As we look back over the course of the last several years in the Rich Internet Application (RIA) market we begin to see some patterns emerge. Patterns and languages circling around the idea that true change has, and always will, come from the delicate balance between Art and Science.

The single biggest recommendation I can give to developers out in the field, the one thing that they can do that will impact their career and personal growth, is to get involved in higher education by teaching. The benefits are so many, so far reaching, and so distributed that I felt they would make a great topic for discussion.

"Chaos in the world brings uneasiness, but it also allows the opportunity for creativity and growth" -tom barrett As global markets and economies are shifting and rearranging businesses must have the ability to quickly and efficiently adapt to this ever...

This is an introductory post into the UX Revolution. In this series I will talk about the changes that RIA development is going through from an experience design perspective. I'll touch on everything from applications like Flash Catalyst to best practices in the XD process. Enjoy!

The reason I say "Whose Coat is this Jacket" is because if everyone uses the term application or website to describe everything, then it really means nothing at all. That gives us no basis on which to form judgment on whether or not deploying rich user interfaces makes sense. Without a hard definition of "true functionality", we are unequipped to create any kind of real distinction between the two terms to try and make sense of it all.

There is a vision for the Rich Internet Applications out there in the industry, but now that many players are coming into the arena, that vision is blurring, and the concept ends up being anything anyone wants it to be.