Relative Requirements – CSS Wizardry

Prioritising Requirements | Trys Mudford

Over the past few years, I’ve given quite a few workshops and talks on evaluating technology. This methodical approach to evaluation and prioritisation from Trys is right up my alley!

In any development project, there is a point at which one must decide on the tech stack. For some, that may feel like a foregone conclusion, dictated by team appetite and experience.

Even if the decision seems obvious, it’s always worth sense-checking your thought process. Along with experience and gut-feelings, we also have blind-spots and biases.

I feel like there’s a connection here to having good design principles—the kind that explicitly value one facet over another.

A Matter of Principle

This is an oldie from Julie Zhou, but it’s a timeless message about the value of good (i.e. actually useful) design principles.

See also what she said on this podcast episode:

When push comes to shove and you have to make a trade off, how are you, in those moments, as a team or a company going to prioritize? What are you going to care about the most? Good values will be controversial in that respect because it’s something that another company might have made a different decision than you.

The web we choose to build. Principles for user-centred front-end development by Colin Oakley

I was really chuffed to see some posts of mine referenced in this rather excellent piece about design principles for front-end development.

Design process for the messy in-between » cog & sprocket

Designing your design process:

1. Know your strengths and focus resources on your weaknesses.
2. Learn to identify the immovable objects.
3. What has to be perfect now and what can be fixed later?

Drupal’s commitment to accessibility | Dries Buytaert

Shots fired!

I’ve come to believe that accessibility is not something you do for a small group of people. Accessibility is about promoting inclusion. When the product you use daily is accessible, it means that we all get to work with a greater number and a greater variety of colleagues. Accessibility benefits everyone.