[TECH] SarioDev: Engineering IRL | Rev.20 - Rev.20 - Networking in Engineering
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Everything to do with SarioDev Apps, Projects and Engineering
Showing posts with label developer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label developer. Show all posts
Thursday, 9 August 2018
SarioDev: Engineering IRL Podcast | Rev.20 - Networking in Engineering
[TECH] SarioDev: Engineering IRL | Rev.20 - Rev.20 - Networking in Engineering
Monday, 6 August 2018
SarioDev: Engineering IRL Podcast | Rev.19 - Motivation when working mundane Engineering tasks
[TECH] SarioDev: Engineering IRL | Rev.19 - Motivation when working mundane Engineering tasks
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If you enjoy Engineering IRL don't forget to subscribe and share it with your friends. If you want any topics covered just reach out.
Thursday, 26 July 2018
SarioDev: Engineering IRL | Rev.1 - Engineering Rep and how to Improve
[TECH] SarioDev: Engineering IRL | Rev.1 - Engineering Rep and how to Improve
NSFW (Possible cursing)
This is the very first installment of Engineering IRL. A great taste into what this podcast is all about.
The Engineering IRL podcast is about improving your engineering mindset and applying these concepts to real life.
SarioDev: Engineering IRL | Rev.17 - IT versus OT and Cybersecurity
[TECH] SarioDev: Engineering IRL | Rev.17 - IT versus OT and cybersecurity
NSFW (Possible cursing)
In this revision of the Engineering Podcast we discuss the differences between IT and OT, explain the key concept of what each are, what the difference is and relevance to cybersecurity. A really simple analogy makes it crystal clear and more!
If you enjoy Engineering IRL don't forget to subscribe and share it with your friends. If you want any topics covered just reach out.
If you enjoy Engineering IRL don't forget to subscribe and share it with your friends. If you want any topics covered just reach out.
The Engineering IRL podcast is about improving your engineering mindset and applying these concepts to real life.
Tuesday, 24 July 2018
SarioDev: Engineering IRL | Rev.16 - 1 Drawing can Solve 1000 Problems
[TECH] SarioDev: Engineering IRL | Rev.16 - 1 Drawing can Solve 1000 Problems
NSFW (Possible cursing)
In this revision of the Engineering Podcast we uncover ways you can solve problems via drawings. Technical diagrams usually describe a product or solution, but they can also describe a concept or a process, from which you can draw conclusions or measure against. Also a fun thought experiment!
The Engineering IRL podcast is about improving your engineering mindset and applying these concepts to real life.
Wednesday, 30 May 2018
How to get past your creativity block and why you should try new tools for your design
Let's explore why the tool has nothing to do with the art, but why the different tools can help you open up your creativity. We can explore other ways to get you out of your rut, no matter what you are designing or trying to be creative about. What tools have you determined will help you solve your problems? Why are you stuck? Lets try beating designer's block.
We've all heard the saying to some effect - and it applies to engineers and designers as well, but it's not the whole story. Here's an important part not to get wrong - this doesn't mean that tools have no effect on the overall outcome. This can't be true as there would be no point of their existence at all.
So let me unpack a little bit, tools enable, they are an extension of a user, a great designer can design on a napkin if necessary. So, no, you can't always blame your bad work on bad tools, but there is merit and skill in knowing which tools actually work (not just based on reading the reviews and picking on a 5 star rating!), the most experienced professionals will know which tools would be appropriate for a job personally.
BUT. Let me interject here with a reason why there is value in using other tools, even if you have found "the one" in terms of your perfect tool for the job.
Depending on the tools you decide to work with, you are inherently locked into a certain framework, certain pros and cons that come with said device. You have likely picked the tools based on comfort first, and then perhaps some experience you have around the tool or knowledge about it for the job.
You have then determined that other tools cons are not best for the job.
That.
That is precisely where the value can come from. Here's my situation currently. In a previous post, I talked about using Gravit Designer and how I have determined that was going to be the tool I used for 10Up development.
From another well known quote "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different result", well in this instance it was time to look for a new angle. And that new angle was going to come in the form of new tools.
Think about it. You try to solve the same problem using some different tools and different places and in some cases you can expect different results. This is precisely what I was going to do. Change tools. Not because the first tool was broken, but to create a change of pace, change of angle, different perspective, whatever you want to use to explain it, but the inherent cons in the frameworks forced upon you by specific tools may just be what the doctor ordered.
Typically you hear about getting in a different mindset, going outside, looking at other solutions, mediating, etc. But I thought, no, let's try this.
So, I got myself a Wacom Intuous and started playing with Piskell App for creating pixel art and Sketchbook for drawing ideas (Yes a pencil and a napkin can also suffice) and started trying to design for the same problem, starting with completely different tools.
At first I just started creating whatever I could create, but eventually that got some juices flowing onto my original problem. The great thing here is the fact that even if you don't completely solve your issue, if you have gotten past a certain design hurdle - boom - all of a sudden you are back. Reverse engineer that idea and come to the original place of work and execute.
You're simply searching for a trigger and other tools may not be where you really want to develop your idea the forced perspective may be all you need.
Changing tools may help you with your creative block but there is one more reason for the technical experts out there and it is tying back to what I said at the beginning of this writing
"the most experienced professionals will know which tools would be appropriate for a job personally"
As a professional you owe it to your self learning to use tools you never have in order gain personal, physical experience with other tools and further yourself as an expert in your craft!
As always, good luck to all on your side hustles. If this helped you or made you think at all, share it with your friends and family! You never know who could need it.
"A Poor workman blames his tools"
We've all heard the saying to some effect - and it applies to engineers and designers as well, but it's not the whole story. Here's an important part not to get wrong - this doesn't mean that tools have no effect on the overall outcome. This can't be true as there would be no point of their existence at all.
So let me unpack a little bit, tools enable, they are an extension of a user, a great designer can design on a napkin if necessary. So, no, you can't always blame your bad work on bad tools, but there is merit and skill in knowing which tools actually work (not just based on reading the reviews and picking on a 5 star rating!), the most experienced professionals will know which tools would be appropriate for a job personally.
BUT. Let me interject here with a reason why there is value in using other tools, even if you have found "the one" in terms of your perfect tool for the job.
Depending on the tools you decide to work with, you are inherently locked into a certain framework, certain pros and cons that come with said device. You have likely picked the tools based on comfort first, and then perhaps some experience you have around the tool or knowledge about it for the job.
You have then determined that other tools cons are not best for the job.
That.
That is precisely where the value can come from. Here's my situation currently. In a previous post, I talked about using Gravit Designer and how I have determined that was going to be the tool I used for 10Up development.
Sometimes you get stuck
The problem is, I got a little bit stuck when designing the new graphics. Now, I'm not sitting here blatantly blaming my tools and saying the designer tool I've chosen is why I can't create the right graphics for my app. But because of the fact that I was stuck, for me it generally means time for a change.From another well known quote "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different result", well in this instance it was time to look for a new angle. And that new angle was going to come in the form of new tools.
Change it up
Think about it. You try to solve the same problem using some different tools and different places and in some cases you can expect different results. This is precisely what I was going to do. Change tools. Not because the first tool was broken, but to create a change of pace, change of angle, different perspective, whatever you want to use to explain it, but the inherent cons in the frameworks forced upon you by specific tools may just be what the doctor ordered.
Typically you hear about getting in a different mindset, going outside, looking at other solutions, mediating, etc. But I thought, no, let's try this.
Design the same problem with different tools
So, I got myself a Wacom Intuous and started playing with Piskell App for creating pixel art and Sketchbook for drawing ideas (Yes a pencil and a napkin can also suffice) and started trying to design for the same problem, starting with completely different tools.
At first I just started creating whatever I could create, but eventually that got some juices flowing onto my original problem. The great thing here is the fact that even if you don't completely solve your issue, if you have gotten past a certain design hurdle - boom - all of a sudden you are back. Reverse engineer that idea and come to the original place of work and execute.
You're simply searching for a trigger and other tools may not be where you really want to develop your idea the forced perspective may be all you need.
And 1 more reason
Changing tools may help you with your creative block but there is one more reason for the technical experts out there and it is tying back to what I said at the beginning of this writing
"the most experienced professionals will know which tools would be appropriate for a job personally"
As a professional you owe it to your self learning to use tools you never have in order gain personal, physical experience with other tools and further yourself as an expert in your craft!
As always, good luck to all on your side hustles. If this helped you or made you think at all, share it with your friends and family! You never know who could need it.
Tuesday, 22 May 2018
Why UX is King. User Experience Matters.
If you are an engineer or developer consider this;
It's always interesting when the battle between function and UI/UX as a priority takes place. On the one hand you have the point of view that "if nothing functions, who cares how good it looks" and on the other you have "sure it functions, but who cares if you can't use the thing and it looks bad".
So how do you choose what is the priority?
Let's consider 10Up
10Up is one of those games where an individual puzzle itself can be entertaining. Depending on its difficulty determines how much mild entertainment one would have in the exercise. So the real game is built upon repetition and solving as many as you can against the clock.
So this has always had several design challenges especially considering both UI and UX. In 10Up 1.0 it was imperative that I had function down and whilst considering some UI, no care was taken into UX. I thought I had this middle ground between getting function and some form of UI/UX.
Engineers typically prioritize function
Here's where it is a problem for most engineers: It was a math problem, and you have the tools to solve it.
This is where functions matters above all because without function who cares what it looks like. The software is a tool, similarly like a hammer as a tool, you wouldn't care if a hammer looks good or ugly, can it pound these nails? - No one wants an expensive pretty hammer that can't even destroy a paper cup.
Well, here's the thing, this comparison is actually not complete enough to be comparable. The equivalent of having poor UX on a hammer (although not entirely feasible) is knowing you have a hammer but not knowing where the handle is. Or when you grabbed the handle, the head would shrink for some reason and you had to press a secret "smash things" button to make the head expand to the functional mallet you were asking for.
So the current issue with 10Up is the user flow for a human to solve a puzzle was not intuitive. It was hard for me to understand this as I could work it out, all the tools were there AND I added some colours to indicate where to be looking. I just needed to explain it once and the person could play easiliy. So I focused alot of the advertising and marketing on including some game play working through the puzzles to educate.
But here's the punchline:
A User Interface is like a bad joke. If you have to explain it, it's not very good.
Great.
So now we know that User Interface is important because people can't use the tool. We understand that the purpose of a tool, aside from is function, IS to be used.
But here's where we say, "but, I have a deadline of yesterday and I don't even know if the thing works or not! I can't be wasting time on user interfaces!"
How do I get more time to focus on UI?
Well thankfully you read this article. Here's how you "make time" for considering your User Interface. The more you practice it, the better you get. It takes just as much time to make a poor user interface as a good one. Remember -it doesn't have to be amazing and completely polished (much like the functions) but if you consistently consider UI even when building new functions, it becomes second nature, like driving a manual and you won't be discussing this again.
It's about balance.
I am not suggesting you spend 20 hours on UI/UX and 5 hours on function and after one full day you have something that doesn't function. I'm saying as you build your functions instead of creating that default object, you set a few variables and place some frames around it. You include what you need to and you are fast enough that there is no detriment.
Now if I'm not done convincing you, here's the final kicker.
At the end of the day the tool you are building should be designed in a way that it could scale if necessary, or bug fixes can be resolved. Half the problems from the client will be caused by UI/UX problems.
By contract a customer or client may say "Function A is a necessary requirement" and you can focus on it being perfect. But at the end of the day the first thing the client wants to see is the interface. And when you've got this scrounged up last minute interface, the work behind already seems like it is rushed as well.
For future you - you will be building functions and bandaid fixes purely because of your poor UI!
So work on your UI/UX skills from the beginning!!
Now for some bonus content have a look below for some exploration of 10Up user interface within the game. A point and drag system to a central point as this will push users to understand that they are combining items one by one.
Below is some early stages of the character designs I mentioned in my previous blog.
As always, good luck on your side hustle!
Saturday, 12 May 2018
10Up App Development - How to work through design hurdles
Hopefully you all caught a glimpse of my previous post sharing that early stage graphic design has begun (and why and what tool). Well if you look carefully at the image there there is an image of one of the number designs.
The intention was to go with circles surrounding the number and would involve creating each digit possible and number. But there is a fundamental issue with this for when a number is not 0-9. i.e. single digits. For a game like 10Up, in theory the maximum number sequence a player could do is 9 x 9 x 9 x 9 which equates to: 6561. It would be unwise to endeavour to create unique individual digit graphics for 6561 numbers AND this doubles in effort each time I decide to add an animation etc.
This is a fundamental problem where in version 1.0 I got around by simply creating squares and adding a text field to the image. Now this is a fine approach, functional even, but one of my goals for 2.0 is a big focus on user interface and user experience.
I am working with 2 idea thought processes right now that I will work through and update here with which path I decide, but essentially I have the original original 10Up theme (Windows 8 Release) which involves unique colourful characters for each digit. and for double digits and above a special character not unique.
The other is a shape or single character holding a rectangle shaped object for which the text field would reside. (less visually appealing)
Currently both need to be explored, and neither may be the answer. But my next step will be to go back to the fundamental goals of the 2.0 update and reverse engineer from there. That's always the technique I go with when rehashing ideas and creating something new.
The intention was to go with circles surrounding the number and would involve creating each digit possible and number. But there is a fundamental issue with this for when a number is not 0-9. i.e. single digits. For a game like 10Up, in theory the maximum number sequence a player could do is 9 x 9 x 9 x 9 which equates to: 6561. It would be unwise to endeavour to create unique individual digit graphics for 6561 numbers AND this doubles in effort each time I decide to add an animation etc.
This is a fundamental problem where in version 1.0 I got around by simply creating squares and adding a text field to the image. Now this is a fine approach, functional even, but one of my goals for 2.0 is a big focus on user interface and user experience.
I am working with 2 idea thought processes right now that I will work through and update here with which path I decide, but essentially I have the original original 10Up theme (Windows 8 Release) which involves unique colourful characters for each digit. and for double digits and above a special character not unique.
The other is a shape or single character holding a rectangle shaped object for which the text field would reside. (less visually appealing)
Currently both need to be explored, and neither may be the answer. But my next step will be to go back to the fundamental goals of the 2.0 update and reverse engineer from there. That's always the technique I go with when rehashing ideas and creating something new.
- Identify some variables
- Get some inspiration from other places
- Go back to the fundamental goals of the project
- Open each thought process and explore it
- Run through each process possibility in head
I call it VIGOR - variables, inspiration, goals, open, run. In the next post I'll share the result of my quest and hopefully have some new direction with the overall design.
So here's a question; what do YOU do to get your creative juices flowing and how do you deal with slight bumps in design?
As always, good luck with your side hustle!
Monday, 23 October 2017
Moar Blogs ! - Engineering Blog?
It's all in the title.
I've been working on a whole bunch of small projects throughout the years, many of which I have shared and had great discussions with people in the past.
Well it turns out that at the end of the day, my favorite topic that's embedded in all my project is Engineering, which turns out to be also what I'm good at.
As I've developed as an Engineer my side projects have been a part of that growth and also been a creative outlet. Daily I teach other up and coming engineers what I know whilst at the same time honing my skills. Thinking back I believe it's starting to get to the point where I want to discuss more with other engineers and also share what knowledge I can as well.
Now I follow many engineers, big engineering projects and listened to a few podcasts and followed some engineering focused Facebook pages, but I still feel there's many gaps.
I believe that engineering is the best job in the world and if this type of discussion interests you, feel free to contact me. I've worked with quite a wide range of engineers and whilst my experience is increasing, I'm still quite connected with engineers who are just starting their studies in the topic and also freshly graduated engineers too.
I'm keen to help solve problems, answer questions and also give some tips that will help you grow as an Engineer.
I've been working on a whole bunch of small projects throughout the years, many of which I have shared and had great discussions with people in the past.
Well it turns out that at the end of the day, my favorite topic that's embedded in all my project is Engineering, which turns out to be also what I'm good at.
As I've developed as an Engineer my side projects have been a part of that growth and also been a creative outlet. Daily I teach other up and coming engineers what I know whilst at the same time honing my skills. Thinking back I believe it's starting to get to the point where I want to discuss more with other engineers and also share what knowledge I can as well.
Now I follow many engineers, big engineering projects and listened to a few podcasts and followed some engineering focused Facebook pages, but I still feel there's many gaps.
I believe that engineering is the best job in the world and if this type of discussion interests you, feel free to contact me. I've worked with quite a wide range of engineers and whilst my experience is increasing, I'm still quite connected with engineers who are just starting their studies in the topic and also freshly graduated engineers too.
I'm keen to help solve problems, answer questions and also give some tips that will help you grow as an Engineer.
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