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This is the third and final part of our review of the Update 2011 Conference in Brighton on mobile development and usability on Monday 6th September. You can also check out our posts on BrightonSEO Friday 9th - see #BrightonSEO 2011 – Attracting Quality Links
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If you haven’t already, check out our reviews of:
The morning session, featuring:
- Matt Gemmell on Usability
- Jeremy Keith on The One Web
- Chris Evans-Roberts – Ithaca Audio
- The Native vs Web App Debate
The first part of the afternoon, which featured:
- Seb Lee-Delisle – Angry Birds Corona Workshop
- Sarah Parmenter – UI Design for iOS
- Relly Annett-Baker – Arse Over Tit
- Interview with Ronald Wayne – Apple Co-Founder
Joachim Bondo – Going Beyond Delicious
Following the enthralling interview with Apple co-founder Ronald Wayne, we heard from Joachim Bondo – who Chess fans may be interested to hear is the creator of the Deep Green game – originally for the Apple Newton, and latterly for iPhone and iPad. So a clever chap!
Joachim Bondo at the Update 2011 After Party
As with some of the previous presentations at Update 2011, Joachim’s focus was on user experience. He stressed that ‘delicious’ apps give users more pleasure and are likely to be used and shared more than those that are ‘undelicious’
Joachim is a watch collector, and his presentation essentially used watch design and manufacture as an extended metaphor for app design and development.
In his view – although Apple’s products are designed by ‘dudes’ in California and manufactured on production lines in China where ‘people kill themselves’ (rather than being hand crafted in Switzerland like the watches he loves) – that they are on the right track with their attention to detail and ‘delicious’ product design and user interfaces.
However Joachim maintained that app developers have the opportunity to go beyond delicious – i.e. to look further than just a sleek user interface, and make sure that every component and every line of code is perfect.
His overriding point was that quality takes time – like the manufacture of a carefully crafted wristwatch, if you want your app to go ‘beyond delicious’ take the time to test every component, and that users will flock to a great product.
If I’m honest, I think Joachim’s presentation took rather a long time to make one point via an extended metaphor – and many of the other presentations at Update 2011 provided much more in the way of practical advice. However he’s clearly passionate about attention to detail in both watches and app development, and I’m sure his passion made some of the developers in the audience think twice about rushing half-baked apps to market.
Posted by Andy Trainer in Brighton, Mobile App Development, News on September 7th, 2011| 5 Comments »
So – continuing our review of the Update 2011 Conference in Brighton – here’s our summary of the afternoon’s first few presentations including:
- Seb Lee-Delisle – Angry Birds Corona Workshop
- Sarah Parmenter – UI Design for iOS
- Relly Annett-Baker – Arse Over Tit
- Interview with Ronald Wayne – Apple Co-Founder
For the rest of our review of Update 2011, visit:
Morning Session: with -
- Matt Gemmell – Unusability
- Jeremy Keith – The One Web
- Chris Evans-Roberts – Ithaca Audio
- Debate – Geek Ninja Battle – Web Apps vs Native Apps
Afternoon Session Part 2: with -
- Joachim Bondo – Going Beyond Delicious
- Anna Debenham – The Digital Native
- Geek Ninja Battle Debate – Design Challenges
- Closing Keynote – Cennyd Bowles – The Things of the Future
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So… having enjoyed a very pleasant lunch in a nearby cafe we returned to the Dome refreshed for the afternoon session.
Jonathan Hammond - Kinect Jam
The afternoon kicked off with another music act, this time from Jonathan Hammond – a musician and developer who has developed a really innovative live performance tool which uses the XBox Kinect.
With a music video playing behind him, along with a wireframe of his own body, Jonathan played along to a dance tune using the Kinect to play virtual instruments and apply effects by grabbing them out of thin air.
Whilst the performance seemed a little bit glitchy – the concept is brilliant, and when it worked well it looked and sounded stunning.
People tend to be a bit lethargic just after lunch at a conference so this was a great bit of scheduling to wake everybody up. As was…
Seb Lee-Delisle – Angry Birds Corona Workshop
Graphics from Seb's Corona "Angry Birds" clone
Local coder Seb Lee-Delisle treated us to a hands on demonstration of Corona, a mobile app framework and simulator.
Corona is especially effective for game development – with its built in physics engine making it easy for coders to move vectors and bitmaps around fast. The simulator also allows you to see your work represented real time on a simulated device – and what’s more it allows you to develop for both iOS and Android.
In his 30 minute slot, Seb managed to hand-code a simple Angry Birds clone from scratch – starting from a blank page (albeit with some pre-prepared graphics) and demonstrated it live.
I’m not a programmer myself – so to me Seb made this look really easy – first creating some objects (a ball, the floor and some blocks to knock over), applying the built in physics to them all, and then added If events to the circle to enable it to be manipulated and fired at the blocks.
He then added some simple graphics that his nephew had drawn for him, and in 30 minutes had made a passable effort at a (very) simple Angry Birds type game. Impressive stuff indeed.
If you fancy having a go at this yourself, you can download the assets and the Corona SDK from this page at Seb’s site: http://sebleedelisle.com/2011/09/angry-birds-in-30-minutes-at-update-2011/
Posted by Andy Trainer in Brighton, Mobile App Development, News on September 6th, 2011| 2 Comments »
In the foyer @ Update 2011 Brighton
Welcome to part 1 of our comprehensive review of the much anticipated Update 2011 Conference at Brighton Dome on 6th September (@updateconf and #Update2011 on Twitter)
This post contains our review of the Update 2011 morning sessions, including:
- Matt Gemmell – Unusability
- Jeremy Keith – The One Web
- Chris Evans-Roberts – Ithaca Audio
- Debate – Geek Ninja Battle – Web Apps vs Native Apps
New Course Update!… iOS App Training is our brand new Mobile Development course. This 5-day, hands-on course teaches developers how to design apps for iPhone and iPad. Take advice from all the speakers at the Update 2011 event and enter the mobile app market.
For the rest of this review – please visit:
Afternoon Session Update 2011 Part 1: with -
- Seb Lee-Delisle – Angry Birds Corona Workshop
- Sarah Parmenter – UI Design for iOS
- Relly Annett-Baker – Arse Over Tit
- Interview with Ronald Wayne – Apple Co-Founder
Afternoon Session Update 2011 Part 2: with -
- Joachim Bondo – Going Beyond Delicious
- Anna Debenham – The Digital Native
- Geek Ninja Battle Debate – Design Challenges
- Closing Keynote – Cennyd Bowles – The Things of the Future
Subtitled “The Human Touch: iOS and Beyond” the event featured a range of presentations, debates and workshops around mobile development and design, both native and web based – a subject we discussed on this blog recently.
The day was brilliantly organised and compered by iOS app developer Aral Balkan, and as the title of the conference suggests, an overriding theme of the day was keeping user experience at the forefront of all mobile design and development work.
We shot lots of video and took lots of photos, and we’ll be writing up a lot of the presentations in more detail in due course. You can also check out our Update 2011 Photos on Flickr - more will follow soon.
We are looking for Native app development trainers click here for more details.
Update 2011 Conference Review: Morning Session
Intro – Aral Balkan
After milling about the foyer of the Dome for a while and chatting to some developers (and admiring the floating balls – pictured above) – we took our seats. The lights dimmed, and the Update 2011 video played.
We couldn’t have had a livelier start – as Aral took to the stage with his backing band and belted out a rocking rendition of Fifth Dimension’s Let the Sunshine In.
Aral’s enthusiasm is infectious, rather like Steve Jobs in his presentation style, and he set the theme for the day nicely – asserting that mobile developers and designers are ‘makers’ with the skills to influence, empower and inform.
No sooner had he finished, then on strode Matt Gemmell’s evil twin, and shot him! As Aral exited stage left, Matt took the mic – smoking pistol in hand….
We’ve already written up our summary of Matt’s presentation, which was a really entertaining illustration of how to achieve great usability in App design, by looking at the exact opposite – Unusability!
Matt is a freelance iOS developer, and delivered the presentation in the guise of his evil twin, who gave us a “worst practice” toolkit on how to “really piss off users” with clumsy, useless, non-user-centric apps.
This was a really entertaining way to deliver some good advice, and he flipped things round at the end with some really useful best practice takeaways, that were of course the opposite of his evil twin’s advice! Read the rest of "Update 2011 Brighton Conference Review: Morning"
Posted by Andy Trainer in Brighton, Mobile App Development, News on September 6th, 2011| 4 Comments »
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Today Heather and I have been at Update 2011 - a conference here in Brighton aimed at mobile developers (Twitter @updateconf and #Update2011)
First up – a big congratulations for Aral Balkan for organising a great event – hopefully we’ll catch up with Aral at the after party, which we’re off to in a moment!
The event was a great mix of live music, lively debates and some useful and thought provoking presentations on mobile, and design for mobile.
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If there was an overarching theme for the day, it was to keep users in mind when designing – a principle that is all the more important for mobile – where many developers are tempted to include device specific features for the sake of it – not because the user wants them.
There was also a fair amount of discussion around web apps vs native apps, which we wrote about on this blog last week.
We are looking for Native app development trainers click here for more details.
We’ll be writing up our review of the whole day, and also detailed summaries of some of of the presentations and debates throughout the week – so watch this space – and we’ll also have some video to share with you all too.
However – first things first – here are my thoughts on Aral’s introduction, and the first presentation of the day, given by freelance iOS developer Matt Gemmell
Intro – Aral Balkan
Aral Balkan
First up we were treated to an entertaining and very energetic introduction from event organiser and “Geek Ninja” Aral Balkan, who belted out a version of “Let the Sunshine In” with his backing band.
This was a great way to kick off a conference (rather than just shuffling on and saying “hi”). Aral is clearly passionate about what he does and has something of the Steve Jobs about him in his delivery style.
Aral pointed out that Update 2011 is part of the wider Brighton Digital Festival (of which BrightonSEO, which we are attending later this week is also a part – more to follow on that of course!)
He was pleased to be running the event in Brighton as he sees it as a place full of ‘makers’ – whether they be programmers, developers or UI designers, they all have the power to influence, empower and inform people in the work they do.
A large part of that is down to good user interface design, which, let in to the first presentation by Matt Gemmell:
Matt Gemmell at #Update2011 : Unusability in iOS Apps
Matt Gemmell
Matt took to the stage in the guise of his own “evil twin” toting a pistol which he shot Aral with – who stumbled off in throes of agony (Matt is of course an advocate of friendly mobile UI design – but used his alter ego here to make some good points about what the ‘bad guys’ out there are doing).
This entertaining presentation reminded me of Dr Harry Brignull’s talk at the last BrightonSEO on “Dark Patterns” – web interfaces for commerce sites etc… which are designed to confuse and con people.
Matt (sorry – Matt’s evil twin!) gave us a great overview of how to design user interfaces for mobile apps that “annoy people, let them know you hate them and if possible – create physical injury”! His evil persona argued that the “dark side is more fun” – and that the bad guys have already won.
Read the rest of "#Update2011 : Unusability – How not to design mobile apps!"
Posted by Andy Trainer in Brighton, Mobile App Development, News on September 5th, 2011| 2 Comments »
Adobe Muse
Well well well - it seems that Adobe can’t stop releasing previews and betas at the moment!
We recently saw the unveiling of Adobe Edge – a potential future replacement for Flash which creates animations using HTML5. You might like to check out my summary of Adobe Edge (and my atrocious attempt at an animation).
Then last week, they also lifted the lid on Adobe Muse. Muse is a “code name” – so we wait with baited breath to see what the final product will be called. Adobe is currently “working with the branding team to determine the final name of this product” (perhaps the developers are fans of the Devon rock band of the same name!)
Whatever it ends up being called – Muse is a web design tool that allows designers without any coding experience to create website designs and publish them without having to look at any HTML. It’s a What You See is What You Get (WYSIWYG) tool.
Hang on a minute though! Adobe already has the industry standard WYSIWYG web design tool on its books in the shape of Dreamweaver – which has been around for a LONG time (we’ve been running web design training since 1999 and our Dreamweaver course was the first Silicon Beach Training ever offered!)
Dreamweaver was originally released in the age of static HTML pages – and has had to reinvent itself over the years to keep up in the age of dynamic database driven websites. It hasn’t done a bad job of that, and remains a very useful design tool and code editor (Dreamweaver CS5.5 also includes tools for mobile authoring – which is the biggest growth area in web design at the moment). But – to use Dreamweaver effectively to produce dynamic sites which include blogs, social integration etc… (all of which are really important now), increasingly requires more coding experience.
This is where blog and web design CMS systems like WordPress and Joomla have come in to their own in recent years. Via simple interfaces and easy to use plugins, these tools allow people with genuinely NO programming experience to set up sites with interaction and social integration. They are theme based, and don’t have as much flexibility in terms of layout design as Dreamweaver – but nevertheless can deliver professional results.
So who is Adobe Muse for, and what can it do?
Adobe Muse’s strapline is “Create websites as easily as you create layouts for print” – so it’s clear that this product is aimed squarely at print designers who want to build websites (the tool was created by the team behind InDesign)
We’ve downloaded the beta, and the interface will certainly be familiar to all you Photoshop and InDesign users out there:
Click image for full-size version
OK – so far so good – Muse is a kind of “Dreamweaver lite” with a more designer-friendly interface. I had a quick play, and without having to follow any tutorials quickly made a very simple 4-page site using a master page.
Read the rest of "Adobe Muse – The New Dreamweaver?"
Posted by Andy Trainer in Dreamweaver Training, News, Web Design on August 22nd, 2011| 8 Comments »
Back in March we ran a short (but very popular) Re-Tweet Competition in conjunction with the training advice service MyTraining Manager.
The prize was a free place on any of our public training courses, and we had hundreds of entries.
Our lucky winner was Stephen Whitehead from Bellerbys College, who chose to attend our 2-day Illustrator Course
He finally got round to attending the course last week, and was delighted with the training – so we’ve included his Illustrator course review below.
Tutorial: How to create a scalable map in Illustrator
If you are a Photoshop user looking to add to your skill-set, or ever need to produce professional vector graphics (logos, maps etc…) – Illustrator is a very powerful addition to your tool kit.
Illustrator Training Course Review
Stephen Whitehead - Competition Winner
I’ve been using Adobe Photoshop professionally for over ten years now – and Adobe Illustrator is a package that I’ve wanted to train in for some time – but could never justify the budget.
However having now taken the Silicon Beach two day Illustrator introduction course I would recommend anyone who is a frequent user of Photoshop or has ever been interested in creating digital art and identities to consider taking this course.
Now that I am able to work with vector graphics – I feel as though I’ve found a missing piece in my understanding of digital design.
For me this was without doubt the most creative and downright fun training course I’ve ever been on; not only for discovering the tools and functions of the software but also for the wonderful trainer David who led the course.
He was animated, funny and with years of industry knowledge – was extremely knowledgeable.
David encouraged questions and took a real interest in demonstrating how Illustrator could help all of the delegates who came from a wide degree of backgrounds – across print, education, marketing and digital sectors.
He helpfully offered some mnemonics to help us to remember the various tools in the package.
I came away with a real buzz and feeling of accomplishment afterwards.
So thanks to Silicon Beach and MyTrainingManager for this wonderful prize!
_________________
We’re really pleased Stephen was so happy with his course. If you’re interested in attending any of our Adobe Training Courses – feel free to call us on 01273 622272 for more details.
We run regular competitions – so be sure to keep checking the competitions section of this blog for future opportunities to win free courses and other great prizes.
Posted by Andy Trainer in Competitions, Illustrator Training, News on August 16th, 2011| No Comments »
Adobe Edge
For a long time the industry standard tool for generating animated and interactive web content has been Flash.
The vast majority of animated content on the web including banners, intro sequences, ads, cartoons and even some navigation elements have traditionally been developed in Flash.
However - things have started to change over the past couple of years.
1) Apple rained on Adobe’s parade by refusing to support Flash on iPhones and iPads – rendering any Flash content invisible to users of these devices (when over half a billion people are using mobile devices to browse the web – that’s a big deal!)
2) The latest web standards including HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript libraries like jQuery are enabling developers to produce animated content that is more accessible and has faster load times than Flash
3) More and more browsers are now supporting HTML5 and CSS3
So if you can develop animated content that contains the same functionality as Flash, but will load faster and display properly on ALL browsers – what is the future for Flash…?
Enter Adobe Edge!
What is Adobe Edge?
Adobe Edge is a new animation tool from Adobe, that can create animated web content using HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript. You can import images in most web formats including jpeg, gif and png and also create tweened animations using vector shapes.
In short – Edge looks a bit like Flash – without the Flash! Here’s the interface. The stage and timeline will be familiar to all Flash users out there:
Adobe Edge Interface
Why is Adobe Edge Important?
Tools like Adobe Edge are important for anyone who wants to be able to use animated web content on their site which is accessible from all devices, and who don’t want to have to learn how to hard-code HTML5, CSS3 and jQuery.
Read the rest of "Adobe Edge: The Future of HTML5 Web Animation?"
Posted by Andy Trainer in jQuery Training, News, Programming, Web Design on August 10th, 2011| 8 Comments »
What Makes a Good PRINCE2 Training Course?
Small PRINCE2 Class Sizes Guaranteed
PRINCE2 is the most widely used Project Management methodology in the UK – so there are a lot of training companies offering PRINCE2 Foundation and PRINCE2 Practitioner courses.
So why choose ours? Well, we are proud of the service we offer so here are a few benefits of choosing PRINCE2 training with Silicon Beach:
- High Pass Rates
- Small Group Sizes
- Experienced Trainers
- Comprehensive Pre Coursework
- Supplementary PRINCE2 Resources
- Purpose-built Training Rooms
What sets our PRINCE2 training courses Apart?
Excellent PRINCE2 Pass Rates
The most important factor for an examined course is the pass rate. After all, when coming on a course you want to have a good idea that you will be successful. We believe that our pass rates demonstrate the quality of our PRINCE2 courses. At the time of writing our PRINCE2 pass rates are:
- 99% pass rate for PRINCE2 Foundation
- 87% pass rate for PRINCE2 Practitioner
Both well above the national averages!
So why the high pass rates? Well, here are a few of the reasons…
Small PRINCE2 Group Sizes
You won’t ever find more than 12 delegates on our PRINCE2 courses.
There will always be questions you want to ask about how PRINCE2 applies to real projects – not just to help you pass the exams, but also to help you apply what you have learned to the projects you run.
Our small classes mean you will get plenty of opportunity to ask questions.
PRINCE2 Trainers who are Experienced Project Managers
We only use trainers with real world PRINCE2 project management experience. This is important for two reasons:
- The PRINCE2 Practitioner Exam is about applying the PRINCE2 methodology to scenarios. A trainer with real experience is in a great position to explain the rationale to you.
- PRINCE2 is a toolkit, which is adjusted for each project. Our trainers can draw on their experience to advise you how to tailor PRINCE2 to suit your projects.
Posted by Andy Trainer in News, PRINCE2, Project Management on August 5th, 2011| No Comments »
