Category: Design
Building a Color Palette
An often overlooked but extremely important aspect of branding, marketing, advertising and general business presence is having a well designed and professional color palette. This is an excellent read into the topic and might be helpful in bringing your company to the next level.
https://www.refactoringui.com/previews/building-your-color-palette
2018 SAP TechEd Live Interview
I had a nice Live Studio interview with Britt Womelsdorf at the 2018 SAP TechEd event chatting about the SAP Cloud Platform SDK’s. Check it out here:
(The video has since been taken down, but here are a few photos).
The general script below is what I planned to use:
1.) Paul: Quick introduction …
- SAP IT, responsible for developing Android apps for SAP’s 90k employees.
- And today we will be chatting with Britt Womelsdorf, who is part of product management for the new SAP Cloud Platform Android SDK
2.) Paul: “With mobility being a key priority for organizations, it seems like SAP has responded to this by delivering some important user experience frameworks over the past 7 or 8 years, including SAPUI5, OpenUI5, Apple iOS SDK and now the Android SDK, why do you think these are important to organizations?”
Britt: Mobility high-level, IT department, enterprise and organizational level opportunities
Tool: Glowforge Laser Cutter
Glowforge was one of the most successful crowdfunding projects at the time, with raising $27.9m in 30 days!
This was my first crowdfunded purchase, and a pretty substantial one at that at around $2,500 … between this and the Prusa 3D printer, they have probably provided the most interesting and beneficial learning opportunities. While slightly simpler to use compared to a 3D printer, since all functions are only in 2D, there are multiple small nuances around the design, materials, multi-step operations, cutting depths, speeds and laser focus which have had a steep learning curve.
So far we have made a bunch of interesting, practical and useful projects, sold a few on Etsy and also made a few personalized meaningful gifts.
DIY: Golf Yardage Books
I have collected well over 30 yardage books from all over the world. Most of them from bucket list courses like Pinehurst #2, Harbor Town or one of my favorite courses, The Ocean Course at Kiawah. But sometimes courses didnt offer or sell them, so I started down the rabbit hole of designing and printing my own.
Majority of them were for tournaments I played in on the Golfweek Amateur Tour. The design process included using Google Maps to get an aerial photo of the course, and then subsequently outlining each hole using Adobe Illustrator and vector shapes. Then measuring and taking the yardages from the course and annotating the map.
Book size: 3.75″ x 6.5”
Rocky Branch Park – Kiosk Maps
Design: Adobe Illustrator, GIS for Maps
Printing: Gaston Printing and Signs
Mockups and Design
Craig Brickser from CTD Trail Design provided the base GIS layer gave the map some depth. I then used reference points, old GPS data from previous rides and exploratory rides to overlay this onto the maps, to create the trail lines. There is a fine line with regards to how much, or how little detail to show on public facing maps, so there was some trial and error. Included are some early versions, and mockups of the existing trails.
This main map was (and is still) used to create the individual loop maps at the hub of each trail.
Final Version
Lesson: Maps are not static … shortcuts, additions, changes, removals and closures make them a on-going maintenance component 🙂
DIY: Greens Mapping
As an avid amateur golfer, I always look at the professionals for ideas, tips or tricks on what they are doing to improve their game, or gain a competitive advantage. One of the differentiators between amateurs and pros is their green reading books. It is essentially a layout and guide to each unique element of green helping them to decide where to hit their ball on approach shots, and what to expect on any given putt. While these are still simply a guide, and the golfer still needs to putt the ball along a planned path, they do provide valuable insight which is not always evident or visible when looking at the green.
Because of this I spent some time trying to understand if it was possible to map greens for this purpose and develop my own green reading technology as a startup or, simply improve my own golf game through this innovation. Here is what I have found on this journey:
You Don’t Need Big Data – You Need the Right Data
I enjoyed this article from Max Wessel at SAP talking about how big data is not always the answer, but more specifically that you need the right data. There is a lot to unpack when you start apply and adding your business processes to this context.
The term “big data” is ubiquitous. With exabytes of information flowing across broadband pipes, companies compete to claim the biggest, most audacious data sets. And businesses of all varieties — old and new, industrial and digital, big and small — are getting into the game.
Masses of social, weather, and government data are being leveraged to predict supply chain outages. Enormous amounts of user data are being harnessed at scale to identify individuals among a sea of website clicks. And companies are even starting to leverage huge quantities of text exchanges to build algorithms capable of having conversations with customers.
iOS App: iMessage App – Stick Figure Family
This was my first foray into iMessage Apps, and while extremely basic, was pretty fun to develop and deploy. Check it out in the App Store.
Description:
Stick Figs for iMessage let you add a variety of different stick figures representing you, your family and your pets. Use the sticks to add context to images and text you share with your friends and family, giving your messages and photos a personalized touch, and showing you care about your family. This collection has over 30 different variations for all occasions.
