10 Best Web Developers from Nigeria

In response to Loy’s list of 10 best Nigerian developers (the original post has since been modified), a list which I feel is inappropriate because it included names of people who are in no way involved in web development (or other form of software development for that matter)…I hereby provide my own list of developers (desktop,mobile,web…) and web designers who I feel know their onions enough to be referred to as part of Nigeria’s Best Developers…

And I feel this is necessary because as a comment to Loy’s post aptly put it:

“Do your research before you post. I mean: the whole world is viewing your website. You could actually be limiting opportunities for REAL WEB DEVELOPERS by showcasing mediocre as Top Nigerian Web Developers...”

Am even more concerned over the inclusion of people who might not have written a single line of code in their lives!!!

Apparently, a lot of other people shared my opinion as is reflected in the ensuing comments to the post, with a lot of readers pointing out the erroneous nature of the list. Guess this fusillade of comments was what moved Loy to later put forward a clarification via a comment in which he said:

“there’ll be a real online competition that would be sponsored by companies who are interested.
That’s when we would have an online voting/ranking system built to sift the first 100 web developers that the community thinks are the best. Then, we’ll have them accessed by a panel of judges and eventually rewarded for their skills and contributions.”

That's more like it. But in the interim here is my own list of 10 Nigerian Best Developers who i feel will easily make the best 100 list. This is arranged in no particular order...

1.Dipo Fasoro
2.Ope Obembe
3.Temi Kolawole
4.Dipo Odumosu
5.Segun Okin
6.Tim Akinbo
7.Babatunde Adeyemi
8.Ayodeji Aladejebi
9.Toki Abodunrin
10.Seun Osewa

90% of the names listed here are, if not friends, acquaintances and hopefully in the nearest future I should have each of them over on this blog, for a chat.

Wrapping my head around logo designs

Still Graphics was my first love. Before I discovered the web, it was the singular thing that ignited my love for computers. That ability of being able to create such stunning and visual appealing designs was just too much temptation for my creative head. I couldn’t resist; and I had to succumb to its lure.

But in as much as I enjoyed creating still graphic designs, there was one part of it I usually find myself skipping over. And this is Logo Designing. The reason is not farfetched; its creation process is a tad engagingly than any other graphic designing process.

Logo’s are highly conceptual and the fact that you have to be able to understand the branding message intended by the logo and be able to compress this and express it conceptually into a design that won’t occupy more than a tiny portion of your screen makes it quite a task for me…

…Well until recently where I find myself spitting forth logo designs like the mint would spew out Naira notes…

Seems my brain morphed...

In the past couple of weeks I have come up with such a number of logo designs that it amazes me. Below are some samples of ideas I came up with for the AIESEC NIGERIA campaigns:



Guess I have finally wrapped my head around logo designing…cool :)

Do more, Click less

Good user interface design is not all about the fanciful Photoshop effects and graphical eye candies; it is about designing systems that enable users to easily achieve their aim of interacting with your application.

The true functionality of an application is tied to its user interface. If you like, you could pack a trailer load of functions into your app, but it comes down to naught if your user interface makes it so difficult that your users can’t find them, or makes it problematic using them.

And this is why User interface design is such a big deal and why it [should] occupy the front seat while planning out an application. There are a whole lot of considerations that go into the making of a good user interfaces but in this post, I’ll just talk about one: number of user’s mouse clicks.

As a rule of thumb, a good and well designed user interface should have as minimal clicks as possible leading to the consumption of functions in the application. Meaning that, you should always strive to cut down on the number of clicks a user makes in other to get things done in your application.

In application usage, one of the units for measuring user’s action is the number of clicks, and the more clicks a user has to go through the higher the probability that there would be a reduction in the usability of the application.

Throwing hurdles of mouse clicks at users was never a good idea.

For example an application that takes users 3 mouse clicks to sign up on is far more efficient and usable than a latter that requires 5 mouse clicks. The mantra should be “do more with fewer clicks”

Looking at the Wordpress 2.7.1 release, one would find that amongst the changes that have been made to the user interface is the reduction in the number of clicks needed to publish a post from signing in.

In version 2.5, in other to publish a new blog post, you have this:








Making a total of 3 mouse clicks

While in the version 2.7.1, to get your post published, you have this:






Capish!

Reducing the number of clicks down to two...Exactly what a good user interface strives to do.

As previously stated, a good user interface design should make interaction with the application as easy and smooth as possible, so when designing, do keep in mind that reducing the number of mouse clicks will go a long way in increasing the usability of your application.