Petsmart: You forgot the display:block

Probably wouldn’t have noticed, except that I just finished a new email design where this came up in testing.

When you put images inside of tables, some email clients (gmail) will add padding unless you include the style=”display:block;” on the img tag. This pretty much ruins your entire email design.

Generational Gaps at the Workplace

Being one of the youngest people at your workplace is interesting. Communication and learning practices that are ingrained in me and others my age can seem weird, off-putting, or even scary to those who didn’t grow up with the internet.

This is not meant to stereotype “young people” or “old people,” but hopefully to help bridge some generational gaps that I’ve noticed  from the last couple years of working:

Asynchronous v. Synchronous Communications

When I have a question, comment, or update on a work project, my default communication technique is email.  If it’s a really quick question and I know the person is online (gChat), I’ll shoot off an instant message. If I happen to run into them, or if it really involves complicated, 2-way communication, I’ll talk in person.

Until a 30something coworker pointed this out to me, I never realized that it can be seen as “rude” or “asocial”  to use asynchronous communication techniques like email, IM, txt, etc. Some members of previous generations think it’s more appropriate to call or talk face-to-face.

Some members of younger generations, myself included, view asynchronous communication as more effective. Why would I walk across the building to ask “did you get my email?” or call someone and have a 5 minute phone conversation, when I could get the same result with an email in a fraction of the time?

Both synchronous and asynchronous communications have their place, but if you are a younger person in a workplace dominated by older people, think about how your IMs and emails are being perceived. If you’re comfortable with your supervisor, talk to them about this and see if you can get on the same page about how to communicate so you’re both happy.

Learning Styles

When I want to learn something, I Google it. I can learn how to do pretty much anything after an hour of Googling. For older generations, this is not how they typically learn new skills. For them, learning involves in-person training, conferences, reading books, watching instructional videos, calling someone and asking them how to do it.

I’ve also personally noticed that for older generations, it’s about depth and not breadth of knowledge. They want to learn everything about a particular issue before delving into a solution.  For younger generations, we’re more interested in quickly learning a little about a lot, and skimming through Google when we need to learn something new.

This has been a particularly difficult issue for me in the workplace, even after discussing with my supervisors. I end up in awkward situations where I’m repeatedly turning down week-long conferences because I will learn more in an hour of Googling (for free) than I will at a conference (for a ton of money). Or I’ll implement a new piece of technology and spend time putting together what I feel is adequate links to websites that explain how it works, only to have to then do in-person training on the same material.

Summary

Younger generations value efficiency and self-education in the workplace. The more you can get done quicker, the better.
Older generations value personal contact and thorough knowledge from others. The more in-depth, personal communication, the better.

Carnaby Village: Welcome Home in 1 month!

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So psyched that Shane and I found a much better townhome at Carnaby Village in Reynoldsburg, because the one we thought was great at Residences of Bexley Woods turned out to be really shady and told us we might not get what we were told would be plentiful, even after we had applied 8 months in advance. The staff at Residency of Bexley Woods were rude and not particularly helpful after Danielle left. We were basically told “Nothing with hardwood floors is available now, and might not come up before April.” When I asked how much notice we would get between when one came available and when we could see it and move in, Jesse said “We would assign you a unit, and maybe a day or two before you move in you could see it.” When I asked what our options would be if we saw it and it didn’t meet our requirements (only 2 days before a theoretical move in), he told me “Well you’d either take take a unit with carpet, potentially no garage or covered parking nearby, and a layout or finishes you don’t like and can’t change, or you can keep waiting until one comes up.” “Our lease is up April 1…” “You might have to wait until closer to the summer for an opening.” Now I understand all the negative reviews of Residences at Bexley Woods. Glad I didn’t put down a deposit.

I’m really glad that happened,  because Carnaby Village is a little more space for a little less money than Bexley Woods, the staff is much nicer, and (the deal sealer for me) the staff lets you decorate as you wish – paint the walls, finish the basement, refinish the cabinets. Better yet, participate in Residents Rewards program by doing things like paying rent on time, attending game nights or volunteering and get points that you can redeem for target gift cards or apartment upgrades like new light fixtures, faucets, carpet, etc.

I’m super pumped. So, here are the before pictures, stay tuned in the next couple months for what we do with it (and probably photoshopped reno pictures).

 

Dressing Room

Finally finished decorating my dressing room, or at least as finished as can be since I’m moving in a couple months. I’m pretty happy with the way it turned out -although it looks a little like an advertisement for Command hooks.

Marquee Light Letters

I saw these at Urban Outfitters and thought they were super cool, but at $200/letter, completely overpriced. Then I thought “that can’t be too hard to make” and luckily found this tutorial at Design Sponge Can’t wait to make these.

Best error message ever

Heuristics spreadsheet makes usability easy

I love Twitter. Today in my feed, I found this fantastic spreadsheet for tracking the usability of your website. It provides a quick checklist to make sure your website is as usable as possible, and also gives concrete reasoning you can provide to your boss or client.

[ learn more ]  [ download the spreadsheet ]

Halloween Card

Finished this up last night. Gotta love projects where you use fonts with titles like Bleeding Freaks.

Photoshop Batch Processing – aka automate your actions

Using batch processing right now to apply an effect to a folder full of images to use in a Halloween Party card invite.

It’s pretty basic, open 100 files, duplicate the background layer, apply a cutout filter, set blending mode to overlay, save.

If you’ve never created an action before, take a look at some of these default ones and you’ll see how useful they can be for actions you’re going to use over and over, like making a vignette.

Making actions and batch processing a folder of images is easy. I made HalloweenCard in about a minute from this tutorial. 26 seconds later, I have 50 new psds of “Halloweeny” images. Sweet.

Why does documentation suck?

I hate learning a new language. This week it’s ampscript, a script that can be written in emails to query database information. At least that’s all I understand of it.

I must have reread this Ampscript/Salesforce page at least 50 times in the last few days, and I still don’t know how to properly form a simple query. Why is there only one example? Why do I have to hunt around for days to find the answer to a simple question like “what values does this function return?” or “how do I traverse relationships in Salesforce?”

I’m pretty sure there’s an enormous career opportunity out there for an educational designer to document programming languages in a usable, easy way. I’m pretty sure I’m going to waste at least a few more days on this, when an informed source could have provided me this information in a couple sentences.