Day 5: Grid Based Design & Typography + Craft Coffee

As we move forward with more and more projects, class has become a little less dynamic. We spend a lot of time in class working now versus learning new things. As Chris mentioned earlier today, this is the point where you begin to see some people start to excel and other lag behind. I know I need to focus on organizing my code and making sure I focus on the separating the uses of HTML for structure and CSS for style. Additionally, this means making sure I note everything while I code, and open and close accordingly. I think this will come with time, but today Chris got confused looking at my code…not a good sign. On a brighter note, Chris has been super helpful and hands-on when it comes to debugging our code or explaining things individually.Starting with some templates he gave us which included separation of header, body, footer, etc. helps a ton. Not to mention understanding how to use tags.

Unfortunately, we’ve either gotten behind or strayed away from the proposed curriculum. This may be for our own sake, or we are just slower than we should be. I’m hoping it’s simply to make it more personal. I actually wish we could go a little faster because I do want to learn Grid-based design, typography, and navigation in relation to UI design for websites. That’s the subject that really fascinates me, but I appreciate slowing down the pace to begin mastering the basics of what we’ve learned. If I remember anything from years of martial arts, it’s that the basics (main 20%), will give you 80% of the desired results.

Today we worked with FileZilla which is a free FTP client. After the ordeal of buying a domain name and hosting, we finally uploaded some of our work. Check out my Hans Zimmer page. Super basic, but glad to have something to show for the first time in a long time.

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Craft Coffee – Giving you fantastic, new coffee experiences

Today we met with Mike, Angie, and two interns. Mike gave us his history as well as how Craft Coffee came about. He openly answered more detailed questions I had about building out the backend and the relationship.

4 Key Messages:

1. DO NOT start a company without an idea that has been festering and slowly but surely been in your head for a while. It needs to be something you really care about and make the extra effort to do with or without pay. For Mike, he was already keeping his eyes peeled on the entire coffee industry. When you talk to people and they think you’re insane…then you’re ready.
2. Take notes wherever you go…especially about people’s complaints and bitching. You could start an entire series of companies based on a few people bitching and moaning.
3. Act on insights – Craft Coffee pivoted after understanding users wanted:

• Convenience – which came in the form of a subscription
• Guidance – Craft Coffee curates what goes in the box
• Tactile – People wanted to see, taste, touch, and smell the coffee beforehand, which is where coffee samples came about

        4.   TEST, TEST, TEST

• His conversion rate tests were exactly on point when they finally did an official launch. This was great for planning and lowered risk for future investors.

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Mike gave us a very important project to work on this week and I’m very excited to get working on it. I know that this is the sort of stuff that needs to get done in any startup. Not to mention I’ve been wanting to do some UX research!