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Phil (aka MP3Monster)'s Blog

~ from Technology to Music

Phil (aka MP3Monster)'s Blog

Tag Archives: UI

Microservice UI Positioning

14 Sunday Jun 2015

Posted by mp3monster in General, Technology

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

CSS, Design, devops, Microservices, Redhat, UI

Last week I was fortunate enough to attend RedHat’s day in London on Microservices. There were some great presentations and some ideas that are both simple and potentially very effective. It wasn’t a simple Microservices solves everything get into out tech stack, there was some reality checks as well.

The challenge I have been unable to square up yet, is the idea that each Microservices would have its own UI.  On the surface, it makes a lot of sense, after all the UI needs to reflect the capabilities of the service.

The challenge comes in the form, that a User Interface needs to have consistency across the board. Yes, many will immediately point to CSS., which undeniably provide a level of consistency. But UI needs run a lot deeper. Let me point out a couple of illustrations of this:

  • Recent switch to web interfaces reflecting the new ‘flat’ visual format
  • Adoption of app on a page through AngularJS
  • Lots of illustrations can be seen at elegant Theme

This goes beyond CSS3 in many cases, but the libraries being used – so impacting development. Now here is the rub, the backend service functionality won’t change but the UI implementation will and needs to be deployed consistently across the board in one go for B2B and critically for B2C. You can destroy a good product with a poor UI and sell a rubbish app with a good one. All of which would mean deploying updated all Microservices at once if they embody the UI. The linking of all the Microservices like this is completely contrary to the goals of agility driven the Microservices strategy.

Add to this, the Microservices approach promotes a DevOps approach, yet organisations may only employ 1 or 2 real user experience specialists rather than  try and spread them across multiple service teams it maybe better to focus them into one or two service teams that just build the UI.

Which kind of leads me to the argument that I would suggest that your UI is a separate service or small group of services to the core functional side of things. So those PR driven website overhauls, and revisions to match user experience expectations can be done without impacting the core capabilities, demanding a total regression test and locking your entire set of services into a unified release cycle.

Review of Creating Flat Design Websites

18 Friday Jul 2014

Posted by mp3monster in Books, General, Technology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

book, Bootstrap, Design, Designmodo, HTML, Packt, review, skeuomorphic, UI, website

I always find when looking at book if I encounter early in the book comments such as “…eventually I found out that design is not about the answers, it’s about asking the right questions …” as Antonio Pratas does in the Acknowledgement of Creating Flat Design Websites that the book feels like I can trust the author as this sort of thing is both an honest observation and one that reflects some more considered thinking. The book beards this point out. For example rather than pitching the technology or approach as a tool for all things as many IT books have habit if doing, even in the first couple of chapters we are clearly informed that flat design isn’t necessarily correct approach in all cases and examples are given to illustrate the point.

The opening chapter explains the ideas of flat design vs skeuomorphic, and a brief history of the design approaches and “flat’s” ruse in popularity. Even providing an incredibly simple illustration that doesn’t demand that you be a graphic artist to achieve to show the differences and how you might move from skeuomorphic to flat.

The following chapters look at the consideration for usability, referencing Jakob Neilsen’s work (and if design piques your interest I’d highly recommend the work of Neilsen’s partner at NN/g – Don Norman with writing such as the Design of Everyday Things). The only criticism I might make here is with UI design, and specifically web there are legal (in the UK this cones presently as part if disability discrimination) and industry standards (particularly W3C’s WCAG standard/guidelines) aren’t really mentioned. But if you start digging into good usability material you will encounter these aspects.

From this point when are then guided through a design approach with plenty of recommendations on how to approach the design phase (from the basics of considering your target audience onwards).  It is only chapter 5 that really get stuck into web tech with HTML and the Designmodo framework built on Twitter’s Bootstrap and chapter 6 covers building your own flat UI framework. So this book maybe pitched at web app development, but actually the bulk of the books content holds true whether you’re working on web solutions, thick apps for the desktop or the mobile variety as it embodies the principles if good interface design.

Not only does it successfully talk about good design it bridges the gap between techies and graphic artists without the sense it is trying to address either skills base. No mean feat.

Rather than stealing the book’s wealth of useful resources, I’ll point you at links relevant the book and it’s author. From there you’ll find a cast array of helpful resources. The references :

  • Packt Book webpage
  • Antonio Pratas’ website
  • Antonio Pratas on LinkedIn
  • An article on skeuomorphic design
  • Twitter Bootstrap
  • Designmodo framework

CreatingFlatDesignWebsite

AJAX Resources

11 Tuesday Aug 2009

Posted by mp3monster in General

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

AJAX, development, software, Technology, UI, web

With WebUI’s getting more like thick applications as a result of the increasing adoption and sophistication of AJAX use I came across a website that does a good job of pulling together AJAX lessons, examples and tips tricks called www.ajaxlessons.com. Its a link’d recommedn adding to any web developers list of dev resources.

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