Tag Archives: Productivity

How to evaluate software for a client

When we’re working on a project, we often have to compare complex things – features/services/software – and work out which one is the best in the given situation. I use a spreadsheet and create a matrix. This is what you should end up with.Click on screen shots to see the next step. There’s a brief explanation of each step underneath.

Open a spreadsheet, and in A2 type Criteria and then copy and past your criteria list beneath that, one cell per item.

Select cell B1 and type in Weighting. Assign a Weighting value to each criteria. The value represents the level of importance this item has within your overall decision. It doesn’t matter what range you use as long as you’re consistent. I used the range 0.1 (not important) – 1.0 (essential).

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Tips on writing a web design brief

If you are thinking about commissioning work on your existing or new website, you’re going to want to write a brief to give to your developer/designer at some point so they know what you want. Here are some topics to get you thinking in the right direction and help you do just that.

What do you need a website for?

It may sound like a daft question, but it is at the top of the list for good reason. Even if you have an existing website, ask yourself the same question again. What do you need it to do for you? What are your short and long-term business goals? Do you need to raise awareness of your product? Increase sales by widening your audience? Get your brand message across to a new audience? Once you’ve really know what it needs to do, we can start to think about how we can achieve it… This question will help us define what the key design and functionality needs to be.

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Scripting Photoshop

If you’re involved in web production, it’s likely that at some point you need to generate a lot of graphic text – page headers are often graphics.

If you do this kind of work, it’s well worth investing some time to learn how to script Photoshop – you’ll save plenty of time and reduce your chances of RSI.

We scripted Photoshop to create all the graphic titles on the Moore At Kew website, pulling all the text from an external text file. kirupa.com – Photoshop Scripting