Philosophy

My development philosophy is guided by attention to detail, by responsiveness to emerging trends and technologies, and by more than twelve years of development experience.

The word that best describes how I feel development should be done is elegance. Elegance suggests significance, simplicity, attractiveness, and functionality: something is elegant if it is meaningful, if it is free of clutter, if it is pleasing to the eye, and if it works.

Significance

We are drowning in information and starved for knowledge. Unknown

A well designed website provides information and services that are valuable and relevant. The best customers are usually return customers: it's difficult to get people to visit a website the first time — once they do arrive, it's extremely important to present them with valuable, relevant information and services in order to ensure that they come back. Eye-candy will impress people the first time they visit a site; content will keep them coming back.

Simplicity

La perfection est atteinte non quand il ne reste rien à ajouter, mais quand il ne reste rien à enlever. (Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.) Antoin de St. Exupéry

Except under very unusual circumstances, a website should do everything possible to eliminate confusion for visitors: if people are confused and are unable to locate the information that they are seeking, they will leave to find it elsewhere. Well designed content and an intuitive user interface are vital aspects of a succesful website.

Attractiveness and Functionality

The medium is the message. Marshall McLuhan

There is a long-standing debate among those who create for the web regarding the relative significance of content and presentation; however, content and presentation need not be in conflict with one another. The challenge in building for the web is to unite content and presentation in such a way as to create a site that presents valuable information in a functional and attractive way; when this is done well, content and presentation are symbiotic.