Summer is almost officially here this week! Over here at DesignHammer we've been trying to escape the heat and keep up on the latest in the industry. We cover the following topics this week: buying lotion on Amazon.com, using Inverse Kinematics for tentacles, avoiding the top 3 causes for scope creep, and 7 server metrics to monitor for your Drupal site.
Buying Lotion on Amazon.com
Source: Christopher C. Wells
Takeaway: A detailed explanation of the frustrating shopping experience common to many product categories on Amazon.com. Lots of factors combine to ruin the experience: new feature promotion (Subscribe) at the expense of what people want (Add to Cart), displaying all possible options at the expense of being able to price compare, and, again, feature promotion (third party marketplace) at the expense of what people want (Add to Cart for the thing I'm looking at). And if you choose to not participate in all the extra clicking and reading, you risk overpaying by tens of dollars — or coming home to a box with 180 bottles of lotion.
Tags: #Shopping, #UserExperience
Inverse Kinematics for Tentacles
Source: Alan Zucconi
Takeaway: Analytical approaches to problem solving can be useful for generating interesting results.
Tags: #Tentacles, #GradientDescent
Avoid the Top Three REAL Causes of Scope Creep
Source: PM Times
Takeaway: The author identifies three fundamental causes of scope creep.
- Scope Defined in Inappropriate Terms
- Scope Defined Too Soon
- Scope Defined Based on the Product, Rather than REAL Business Needs
At DesignHammer, our current process addresses these issues (though like all processes, this one is constantly being redefined). We stress Strategic Consulting to try to find REAL business needs, a robust planning phase to reach understanding and agreement in terms and to avoid defining the scope too soon, and active communication between the stakeholders to make sure that as the understanding of the project changes, we can all remain nimble enough to adapt.
Tags: #ProjectManagement
7 Server Metrics You Should Be Monitoring on Your Drupal Site
Source: Zivtech vs Drupal Newsletter
Takeaway: Seven server metrics to monitor, explained in such a way that even a relative lay-person can get the basic idea of why this kind of monitoring is important for their website. This blog post is focused on Drupal, but the majority of its suggestions are relevant for all web servers.
Tags: #Server, #Monitoring, #Drupal
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