Tony Breed ✶ Web Development Manager

Leadership

My job as a manager is to enable success for my employees—to put them in an environment where they can thrive and produce their best work for the company.
Weekly one-on-one meetings are key for communication. An employee should never be surprised to find out there's a problem.
Hire people who are better than you, especially in your weakest areas.

Most people are terrible at defining what they need, but they will often try to prescribe a solution. Work with them to get them to focus on the problems to solve, and the user tasks to be done.
It's OK if conversation gets off track during requirements-gathering. Listen and take notes. Often something will come up that wouldn't have come up in a more directed session.
You don't have to solve all edge cases, but you should handle them gracefully. And try to validate that your edge cases are really edge cases; maybe they come up more than you think.

Trust the process: you won't know at the ourset what the right solution is. Go through the exercises and the solution will become clear eventually.
A web site or app should be clean, easy to read, and easy to navigate.
Stick with the familiar for functional elements. Users have become used to certain practices; give them what they expect.
Always test your designs to see if they work, and never underestimate the power of users to surprise you.
Simpler is better. When you're building a complicated application, break it down and focus on individual tasks.
Sometimes a user needs to be guided through a process—something they will do just once, or just occasionally, for example. But for tools and user will use daily, you can sacrifice slarity and focus for speed—those users will learn the complexity quickly.