(Flickr photo by Kenny Louie)

We’ve all been there.

You’re on your fourth cup of coffee, you’ve already rearranged the loose ends around your workspace, and you’re out of lives on Candy Crush. Maybe you’ve even color-coordinated your closet or baked some banana bread. And still nothing. No ideas, zero spark, rapidly declining motivation — and a looming deadline.

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An inspiration dry spell doesn’t mean you’re a failure or not cutout for the field. Those ruts happen to the best and the brightest in the industry. It just means you need to jumpstart your creative juices. We talked to some web designers and developers — many of them Treehouse subscribers — with years of experience under their belts and asked them what they do when they’re just plain stuck. Here are some of the most common responses.

1. Out With the Old

There might be a reason you’ve been staring at an existing project without any clue how to move forward. Part of your brain might be telling you the blood, sweat, and tears you’ve already put in aren’t going to be the blood, sweat, and tears that make it into the final product. Starting from scratch is daunting, but sometimes it’s the only option, says Ryder Carroll, a web designer and creator of the Bullet Journal.

“Rather than spinning your wheels, knock out a few totally different solutions until something gains traction,” he tells Treehouse. “Sometimes the best way to move forward is simply ejecting the obstacle. My design philosophy is that every element must fight for its life to make it into the final product.”

2. Look to the Pros

Sara Soueidan

Recently, Pinterest has received all the credit for making Marthas out of even the most right-brained among us. When you’re working on a big project, though, don’t turn to sites built to inspire the mainstream consumer — go straight to the industry’s best. Several designers and developers told us they love browsing portfolios from other people working in the field. One way to do this is to simply search topics such as “Webby Awards” or some of the names of your favorite designers and developers.

Some options:

* Dribble is a great example, giving users a peek at some of the latest work from all varieties of web designers.

* Delicious.com allows users to discover, store, and share bookmarks based on all types of topics, including design and creativity.

* Usepanda.com can act as a more customized version of all that storing and sharing of design inspiration.

Scott Vrable

Another great resource is Codepen. As Sara Soueidan, a freelance front-end developer says, “What’s special about Codepen is that you get to see code, which means that you get to see the techniques behind the code. Sometimes you learn something new and decide to share it with others, or just improve your own skills in it, and sometimes you see something you already know but never thought of writing about.”

3. Go Way Back

Scott Vrable, a web designer and developer, is particularly jealous of the next generation.

“There’s no one I’m more envious of than young children and their seemingly effortless creativity and innovation. This includes my younger self,” he notes.

Vrable has picked through some of his old drawings and childhood projects his mom had kept, and translated a drawing of his from age 5 into a logo he recently designed.

Scott Vrable’s logo inspired by a childhood drawing.

If you have the opportunity to take a glimpse at your younger creative self, it could spark an idea that your older brain might have shut down before it had time to materialize. Even if your mom didn’t save your early masterpieces, though, it could be time to try to think back to your early years. Clear your mind and remember some of your wildest daydreams, ambitions, tall tales, or imaginative games you used to play while younger. One of those memories might help you (re)dream a fantastic idea for a current project.

4. Read

Usually, it just takes a tiny nugget of information to spark an idea, and it’s tough to find that hidden nugget without reading. Search for articles, blog posts, or even tweets about code or design, even if they’re far outside your comfort zone.

“Dig into other people’s code,” Soueidan says. “Sometimes reading a large piece of code can be overwhelming, but if you end up learning one single small thing, that’s an important step forward.”

5. Don’t Think Big Picture

Alexandra White

Sure, a little perspective is normally a good thing. But when you’re trying to tackle a massive project and it’s bringing you down, it’s better to break it into smaller pieces. As Alexandra White, designer at Designing Lightning puts it, “I get the satisfaction and the reward of completing something, and stave off the overwhelming feeling.”

White suggested making a to-do list of the several parts of a bigger goal. Being able to check off a chunk of tasks will make any project seem more manageable.

Above all, listen to yourself. Whether the ideas are buried deep inside the recesses of your brain or need to be found in a new environment, they’re your ideas and you know what to do with them.

Now put down the coffee and the Candy Crush and go for it.

The post 5 Ways to Find Inspiration When You’re Stuck in a Rut appeared first on Treehouse Blog.

The Web is a well established kingdom of acronyms and buzz words. I’m sorry to say so, but we tend to generate a lot of terms that more often than not are a marketing trick rather than a useful definition for describing part of our field.

UX, IxD, IA, UCD, CX, agile UX, lean UX, guerrilla research, strategic UX, emotional design… we’re swimming in the sea of strange phrases that abandon clarity in favor of self-aggrandizement.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a luddite. I’ve spent a significant amount of time on the design battleground working as a Usability Specialist; UX Designer; Information Architect; UX Manager. Plenty of buzz words on my own résumé.

The arrival of “Agile UX”, and soon after “Lean UX”, caused me a little more confusion than usual: both terms suggest a strong relationship of design with the overall process of product development—which I absolutely admire; both tend to focus on making design faster; both fit into the broad vision of new user experience design tools. But…what’s the difference between between Agile UX and Lean UX? In everyday tech conversation, most people use these two terms interchangeably. Why then do we have two terms if they’re both referring to the same thing?

Agile UX

The movement toward agile development is rooted in the creation of software. In the old days design wasn’t nearly as valued as today and software was one of the most unfortunate examples of that omission. As a matter of fact, little attention was paid to the end user. Software development used to be all about delivering results, no matter how ugly or convoluted the user experience may be.

The biggest concern for creators of the original Agile Manifesto was efficiency of the software development process, rather than the value and the place of design. In fact design wasn’t even mentioned in the manifesto, which forced designers to fight for their place in the process later on. Initially, Agile went up against the classic Waterfall development process that was constantly trying to close dynamic process in the static form of a robust documentation.

Agile followers and set of simple principles:

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• Working software over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a plan

These guidelines quickly became popular and right now Agile is considered to be the gold standard for the development of digital products.

To fit into this pretty picture UX design had to reconsider its own techniques and focus. The result of this re-evaluation is Agile UX. Essentially, Agile UX describes the approach of Agile Software Methodology in the UX Design context. The ultimate goal of Agile UX is to unify developers and designers in the agile process of product development.

Lean UX

Unlike Agile UX, Lean UX comes from startup culture. The concept here being that a business must ship a product as soon as possible—sales (or some other form of traction) need to rack up quickly for the project to survive. To do that knowledge must be gathered and serve as the basis for a set of iterations of the product.

The goal is to produce a minimum viable product and push it out to the market as rapidly as possible. The process usually involves getting the core product out first, to establish if there’s a market demand, and then building towards a fully realized version in a series of steps. Lean development models test ideas throughout the development process, focusing on constant measurement and so called “learning loops” (build – measure – learn).

Constantly gathering data on the target user group is an integral part of the Lean process. Consequently, people have begun to refer to the traditional process of web design that relies on analytics as part of Lean methodology.

As all UX design is informed by an understanding of human behaviour, some people argue that Lean UX is just well executed UX.

Which should you choose?

Agile UX and Lean UX are two approaches to the modified design processes that fit the way clients and consumers expect modern products and services to be delivered. The terms are typically taken to mean the same thing.

However, the different results that are arrived at from the different methods are clear: Agile UX produces a more polished product; Lean UX produces multiple products of increasing polish. Ultimately, both techniques can arrive in the same place, but via very different routes.

When choosing which path to take for your web projects, determine the most appropriate path for the end result. If you’re able to iterate through many versions, as with a side project, then Lean may be the way to go; if you’re more comfortable releasing a fully realized version then look to Agile.

17 HTML5 Responsive Galleries & Components Bundle – only $37!

Bringing the Green Back

UMBC students and faculty collaborate with a Baltimore community to make a lasting impact.

When Nicole King moved to Baltimore in 2008, she wasn�t very familiar with the city. Six years later, she�s developed deep connections within local communities. Firmly grounded in the Brooklyn-Curtis Bay (Baybrook) neighborhood, her class�Preserving Places, Making Spaces in Baltimore�teaches social entrepreneurship, civic engagement and environmental justice.

King, an associate professor of American studies, was intrigued when she met Steve Bradley at a visual storytelling workshop several years ago. Bradley, an associate professor of visual arts, had spent time conducting research in Rotterdam. He was struck by the city�s industrial landscape and similarities he saw with some Baltimore neighborhoods.

�I had become interested in thinking more about how people perceive their place through their stories, and that resonated with Nicole,� reflects Bradley. �I didn�t have any idea that I�d become interested in cultural history, but this has been quite rich for me as an artist.�

Bradley and King�s shared interest grew into a teaching collaboration where students connect artistic and historical inquiry to both explore and serve the needs of the Baybrook community. This work led to Mapping Baybrook, a project that uses digital mapping and visualization techniques to document and preserve the area�s history through interactive multimedia formats.

This semester, Bradley�s Imaging Research Center fellows and King�s Preserving Places students have spent countless hours attending community meetings, park cleanups, citizen-on-patrol walks and community gardening events. Their work is fundamentally about building community relationships, but it also has several specific goals related to environmental justice and business development. They have a special focus on the Filbert Street Community Garden, a conservation project, educational space and food farm in Curtis Bay.

�The students are literally getting their hands dirty. A couple of weeks ago, we were in the garden planting fruit trees and working with the community gardeners,� says King. �That space will always be a part of who they are. I think you have a certain investment in a project that is beyond the investment that you would have in a class. It�s not just about skills, it�s about learning how to make things work.�

King and Bradley acknowledge it has taken time to build relationships with the community, but trust is growing between the students and residents. The more the students learn about Baybrook�s vibrant cultural history, the more they understand, respect and value local residents, and the better they can research and relate those residents� experiences.

Here, community engagement isn�t an added chore or unexpected benefit on top of coursework, it is the point of the work. �The students show up to things that they don�t have to show up to all the time,� says King. �They see this as a connection to a larger project.�

This week, WEAA�s The Marc Steiner Show has been sharing the voices of Baybrook and Sparrows Point residents through a powerful radio series. The segments, produced by Bradley and King�s students, examine the processes and impacts of deindustrialization in the greater Baltimore region. Bradley, King, Bill Shewbridge (media and communication studies) and Michelle Stefano (American studies) have played major roles in stewarding the project and mentoring the student producers. The finished product � segments featuring a mosaic of community voices alongside student voices describing the project�s goals and approach � speaks to the value of community engagement in both teaching and research.

King and Bradley�s collaboration is supported by seed money from a Kauffman Faculty Innovation Grant and UMBC�s BreakingGround initiative. The students� semester of work will culminate on May 18 at the �Garden Gala: Bringing the Green Back to Filbert Street.� Through this public fundraising event, they hope to support a dedicated manager for the Filbert Street Community Garden, making a tangible, lasting impact.

�This is really about building community,� says Bradley. �This is a viable place.�

Homepage image: Curtis Avenue mural documenting cultural history, painted by Peggy Ward.
Photo courtesy Steve Bradley.

(05/14/2014)

UMBC will host the annual Summer Horizons program for undergraduate students and others who are interested in learning more about graduate school admission, particularly in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields. The 2.5-hour workshop will feature sessions on the application timeline, GRE, Statement of Purpose, Recommendation Letters, and other topics related to preparing for graduate school.  There will be a panel hosted by current graduate students, and the keynote speaker will be the President of UMBC, Dr. Freeman A. Hrabowski, III.  (Read about Dr. Hrabowski in Time Magazine: 10 Best College Presidents, World’s 100 Most Influential People. See Dr. Hrabowski talk about UMBC on 60 Minutes. Watch Dr. Hrabowski’s  TED Talk 2013.) Summer Horizons is co-sponsored by PROMISE AGEP and the Meyerhoff Graduate Biomedical Fellows Program.

2014 Summer Horizons Program

• Wednesday, July 9, 2014
• The 2014 program will begin at 9:30 AM and will end at 12 noon. (Registration and Seating will begin at 9:00)
• Sports Zone, The Commons 2nd Floor, UMBC (University of Maryland, Baltimore County)
• This event is FREE to the public. 

AGENDA:

9:00

• Registration and Seating (Light breakfast refreshments)

9:30 – 9:40

• Welcome & Greetings
  • Justine Johnson, Associate Director, Meyerhoff Graduate Fellows Program
  •  Jesse Fox, Vice President for External Affairs, Executive Board, UMBC Graduate Student Association

9:40 – 10:00

• Information on admissions: “Preparing for Graduate School: Timelines and Choices.”
  • K. Jill Barr, Senior Assistant Dean for Graduate Enrollment Management, The Graduate School
  • Gay Warshaw, Recruitment and Admissions

10:00 – 10:45

• Funding and Elements of the Graduate School Application (GRE, Statement of Purpose, Letters)
  • Renetta G. Tull, Associate Vice Provost for Graduate Student Development & Postdoctoral Affairs, Director of PROMISE: Maryland’s Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP)

10:45 – 11:15

• Graduate School Perspectives: A Panel of current M.S. and Ph.D. scholars
  • Timothy Munuhe  – Mechanical Engineering
  • Brittny Davis – Chemistry
  • Adeboyeaga (Ade) Akinsiku -Human-Centered Computing
  • Tahira Mahdi – Psychology
  • Natasha Wilson – Chemical Engineering

11:15 – 11:45

• Introduction of the Speaker: Dr. Janet C. Rutledge, Vice Provost for Graduate Education and Dean of the Graduate School, Associate Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering

 

• Keynote Address: President Freeman A. Hrabowski

11:45 AM

• Evaluations and Adjourn

12:00 PM

• Lunch

Visit The Graduate School at UMBC on Facebook

Read the Digest for  The Graduate School at UMBC.

The 2014 Summer Horizons program is open to anyone who is interested in learning more about UMBC and the graduate admissions process.  The graduate school preparation material that we will present  is applicable to most U.S. institutions.  Faculty and staff may invite prospective students to this event.  Visitors from out-of-town are welcome to attend.

Invitations are  extended to:

• All UMBC undergraduate students
• As part of the PROMISE Pathways project, undergraduate and master’s students  from schools within the University System of Maryland (USM) have a special invitation to attend
•  Students from all summer programs within the DC/Maryland/Virginia (DMV) region
• Students from NSF programs such as LSAMP, AGEP, NSF ERC, RDE etc., at any school
• McNair programs at any school.
• Students from organizations such as SHPE, SACNAS, NSBE, and AISES at any school in the country are welcome to attend.
• Students from any college or university, who are either local or will travel the distance to learn more about graduate school.
• We also invite professionals who are considering returning to graduate school for an advanced degree.

 

This program is free, but participants must register.

Summer Horizons is co-sponsored by PROMISE: Maryland’s AGEP, The Meyerhoff Graduate Biomedical Fellows Program, and The Graduate School at UMBC.

 

For additional resources, including access to funding opportunities: Please visit the Institute for Broadening Participation’s website,  “Pathways to Science,”  and fill out the form in the left corner:  http://www.pathwaystoscience.org/. The website has information on a variety of opportunities, which include as an example, a wealth of information on funding and internships through NASA:  http://www.pathwaystoscience.org/nasa.aspx. Our student participants have taken advantage of this resource in the past, and several have had offers for great opportunities.

_________________________________________________________________________

Directions and Parking: 

http://about.umbc.edu/visitors-guide/directions/

Metered visitor parking is available in the Commons Garage. To get to the Commons Garage, circle around Hilltop Circle (either direction) until you reach Commons Drive. Take Commons Drive toward the center for campus. The garage will be on your left. Meter fees are $.25 for each 15 minutes, quarters only, maximum time of 5 hours.

_________________________________________________________________________

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• UMBC President Named In Time Magazine’s Top 100 Most Influential People (baltimore.cbslocal.com)
• Reading material: Tull, R. G., Nino, M.  and Ramoutar, N. (2012).  Preparing for Engineering and Other STEM Graduate/Post-Graduate Masters and Doctoral Programs.  [Spanish Version of Section 4 here: Preparación para Programas de Maestría y Doctorado]

_________________________________________________________________________

Partial sponsorship for this program has been provided by the National Science Foundation, Collaborative Research: AGEP – T: PROMISE AGEP Maryland Transformation # 1309290,   PROMISE: Maryland’s Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP).  Read more about PROMISE:  http://promiseagep.wordpress.com/publications/

Related articles

• President Obama Appoints UMBC President as Chair of National Education Commission (baltimore.cbslocal.com)

UMBC will host the annual Summer Horizons program for undergraduate students and others who are interested in learning more about graduate school admission, particularly in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields. The 2.5-hour workshop will feature sessions on the application timeline, GRE, Statement of Purpose, Recommendation Letters, and other topics related to preparing for graduate school.  There will be a panel hosted by current graduate students, and the keynote speaker will be the President of UMBC, Dr. Freeman A. Hrabowski, III.  (Read about Dr. Hrabowski in Time Magazine: 10 Best College Presidents, World’s 100 Most Influential People. See Dr. Hrabowski talk about UMBC on 60 Minutes. Watch Dr. Hrabowski’s  TED Talk 2013.) Summer Horizons is co-sponsored by PROMISE AGEP and the Meyerhoff Graduate Biomedical Fellows Program.

2014 Summer Horizons Program

• Wednesday, July 9, 2014
• The 2014 program will begin at 9:30 AM and will end at 12 noon. (Registration and Seating will begin at 9:00)
• Sports Zone, The Commons 2nd Floor, UMBC (University of Maryland, Baltimore County)
• This event is FREE to the public. 

AGENDA:

9:00

• Registration and Seating (Light breakfast refreshments)

9:30 – 9:40

• Welcome & Greetings
  • Justine Johnson, Associate Director, Meyerhoff Graduate Fellows Program
  •  Jesse Fox, Vice President for External Affairs, Executive Board, UMBC Graduate Student Association

9:40 – 10:00

• Information on admissions: “Preparing for Graduate School: Timelines and Choices.”
  • K. Jill Barr, Senior Assistant Dean for Graduate Enrollment Management, The Graduate School
  • Gay Warshaw, Recruitment and Admissions

10:00 – 10:45

• Funding and Elements of the Graduate School Application (GRE, Statement of Purpose, Letters)
  • Renetta G. Tull, Associate Vice Provost for Graduate Student Development & Postdoctoral Affairs, Director of PROMISE: Maryland’s Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP)

10:45 – 11:15

• Graduate School Perspectives: A Panel of current M.S. and Ph.D. scholars
  • Timothy Munuhe  – Mechanical Engineering
  • Brittny Davis – Chemistry
  • Adeboyeaga (Ade) Akinsiku -Human-Centered Computing
  • Tahira Mahdi – Psychology
  • Natasha Wilson – Chemical Engineering

11:15 – 11:45

• Introduction of the Speaker: Dr. Janet C. Rutledge, Vice Provost for Graduate Education and Dean of the Graduate School, Associate Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering

 

• Keynote Address: President Freeman A. Hrabowski

11:45 AM

• Evaluations and Adjourn

12:00 PM

• Lunch

Visit The Graduate School at UMBC on Facebook

Read the Digest for  The Graduate School at UMBC.

The 2014 Summer Horizons program is open to anyone who is interested in learning more about UMBC and the graduate admissions process.  The graduate school preparation material that we will present  is applicable to most U.S. institutions.  Faculty and staff may invite prospective students to this event.  Visitors from out-of-town are welcome to attend.

Invitations are  extended to:

• All UMBC undergraduate students
• As part of the PROMISE Pathways project, undergraduate and master’s students  from schools within the University System of Maryland (USM) have a special invitation to attend
•  Students from all summer programs within the DC/Maryland/Virginia (DMV) region
• Students from NSF programs such as LSAMP, AGEP, NSF ERC, RDE etc., at any school
• McNair programs at any school.
• Students from organizations such as SHPE, SACNAS, NSBE, and AISES at any school in the country are welcome to attend.
• Students from any college or university, who are either local or will travel the distance to learn more about graduate school.
• We also invite professionals who are considering returning to graduate school for an advanced degree.

 

This program is free, but participants must register.

Summer Horizons is co-sponsored by PROMISE: Maryland’s AGEP, The Meyerhoff Graduate Biomedical Fellows Program, and The Graduate School at UMBC.

 

For additional resources, including access to funding opportunities: Please visit the Institute for Broadening Participation’s website,  “Pathways to Science,”  and fill out the form in the left corner:  http://www.pathwaystoscience.org/. The website has information on a variety of opportunities, which include as an example, a wealth of information on funding and internships through NASA:  http://www.pathwaystoscience.org/nasa.aspx. Our student participants have taken advantage of this resource in the past, and several have had offers for great opportunities.

_________________________________________________________________________

Directions and Parking: 

http://about.umbc.edu/visitors-guide/directions/

Metered visitor parking is available in the Commons Garage. To get to the Commons Garage, circle around Hilltop Circle (either direction) until you reach Commons Drive. Take Commons Drive toward the center for campus. The garage will be on your left. Meter fees are $.25 for each 15 minutes, quarters only, maximum time of 5 hours.

_________________________________________________________________________

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• UMBC President Named In Time Magazine’s Top 100 Most Influential People (baltimore.cbslocal.com)
• Reading material: Tull, R. G., Nino, M.  and Ramoutar, N. (2012).  Preparing for Engineering and Other STEM Graduate/Post-Graduate Masters and Doctoral Programs.  [Spanish Version of Section 4 here: Preparación para Programas de Maestría y Doctorado]

_________________________________________________________________________

Partial sponsorship for this program has been provided by the National Science Foundation, Collaborative Research: AGEP – T: PROMISE AGEP Maryland Transformation # 1309290,   PROMISE: Maryland’s Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP).  Read more about PROMISE:  https://promiseagep.wordpress.com/publications/

Related articles

• President Obama Appoints UMBC President as Chair of National Education Commission (baltimore.cbslocal.com)

PROMISE AGEP: Maryland Transformation (An NSF AGEP-T), is proud to announce the opening round of applications for the new University System of Maryland’s STEM Postdoctoral Fellowship program.

This NSF funded program is designed to promote faculty diversity by preparing diverse, talented postdoctoral trainees with the career skills needed to succeed in STEM academic research.  Fellows will propose research projects at a home institution of: University of Maryland, University of Maryland-Baltimore, or University of Maryland-Baltimore County, the three research institutions within the twelve-campus University System of Maryland.   Additionally, fellows will design opportunities for research, teaching and mentoring rotations at one or two other System institutions. In addition to an innovative research experience, fellows will receive career development guidance, participate in a community of scholarship, create new collaborations and cultivate employment opportunities. Fellows will receive a stipend plus benefits.    The fellowship period is one year.  Awards will be made to 1-2 scholars per year.

Timeline:

• Applications Due: 6/15/2014
• Application Review: 6/15/2014 – 7/15/2014
• Decision Announcement: 8/1/2014
• Postdoctoral Appointment begins: 9/1/2014

The information above is also provided in the flier below. A downloadable PDF can be found here:

USM STEM Postdoctoral Fellowship to Promote Faculty Diversity 05122014

The application deadline for positions beginning in the fall of 2014 is June 15. Applicants must be U.S. citizens or permanent residents with a PhD in a STEM field. Commitment to the goals of the program, strong academic and research credentials and an interest in teaching and mentoring will be important criteria used in the selection process.

The application will include:

• Proposal of research (limit 1 page),
• Statement of plans to advocate for diversity in the professoriate including teaching and mentoring philosophy (limit 1 page),
• Selection of 3-5 potential mentors and a brief overview of interest in each lab (limit 1 page total)
• Letters of Reference (limit 2)
• Curriculum Vitae

Submit application materials to: PROMISEMD@umaryland.edu

UPDATE, June 2014: Please note that the submission address is PROMISEMD@umaryland.edu. Please do not send applications to PROMISE@umaryland.edu. The MD must be part of the email address. 

PROMISE AGEP: Maryland Transformation (An NSF AGEP-T), is proud to announce the opening round of applications for the new University System of Maryland’s STEM Postdoctoral Fellowship program.

This NSF funded program is designed to promote faculty diversity by preparing diverse, talented postdoctoral trainees with the career skills needed to succeed in STEM academic research.  Fellows will propose research projects at a home institution of: University of Maryland, University of Maryland-Baltimore, or University of Maryland-Baltimore County, the three research institutions within the twelve-campus University System of Maryland.   Additionally, fellows will design opportunities for research, teaching and mentoring rotations at one or two other System institutions. In addition to an innovative research experience, fellows will receive career development guidance, participate in a community of scholarship, create new collaborations and cultivate employment opportunities. Fellows will receive a stipend plus benefits.    The fellowship period is one year.  Awards will be made to 1-2 scholars per year.

Timeline:

• Applications Due: 6/15/2014
• Application Review: 6/15/2014 – 7/15/2014
• Decision Announcement: 8/1/2014
• Postdoctoral Appointment begins: 9/1/2014

The information above is also provided in the flier below. A downloadable PDF can be found here:

USM STEM Postdoctoral Fellowship to Promote Faculty Diversity 05122014

The application deadline for positions beginning in the fall of 2014 is June 15. Applicants must be U.S. citizens or permanent residents with a PhD in a STEM field. Commitment to the goals of the program, strong academic and research credentials and an interest in teaching and mentoring will be important criteria used in the selection process.

The application will include:

• Proposal of research (limit 1 page),
• Statement of plans to advocate for diversity in the professoriate including teaching and mentoring philosophy (limit 1 page),
• Selection of 3-5 potential mentors and a brief overview of interest in each lab (limit 1 page total)
• Letters of Reference (limit 2)
• Curriculum Vitae

Submit application materials to: PROMISEMD@umaryland.edu

UPDATE, June 2014: Please note that the submission address is PROMISEMD@umaryland.edu. Please do not send applications to PROMISE@umaryland.edu. The MD must be part of the email address. 

On Monday, we published an article on Picturefill 2.0, a perfect polyfill for responsive images. Today’s article complements Tim Wright’s article and explains exactly how we can use the upcoming <picture> element and srcset, with simple fallbacks for legacy browsers. There is no reason to wait for responsive images; we can actually have them very, very soon. — Ed.

“Everything I’ve said so far could be summarized as: make pages which are adaptable.… Designing adaptable pages is designing accessible pages. And perhaps the great promise of the web, far from fulfilled as yet, is accessibility, regardless of difficulties, to information.”

– John Allsopp, A Dao of Web Design

Images are some of the most important pieces of information on the web, but over the web’s 25-year history, they haven’t been very adaptable at all. Everything about them has been stubbornly fixed: their size, format and crop, all set in stone by a single src.

HTML authors began to really feel these limitations when high-resolution screens and responsive layouts hit the web like a one-two punch. Authors — wanting their images to look crisp in huge layouts and on high-resolution screens — began sending larger and larger sources to everyone; the average size of an image file ballooned; very smart people called responsive web design “unworkably slow“.

Images have been the number one obstacle to implementing truly adaptable and performant responsive pages — pages that scale both up and down, efficiently tailoring themselves to both the constraints and the affordances of the browsing context at hand.

That is about to change.

The latest specification of the <picture> element is the result of years (years!) of debate on how to make images adapt. It gives authors semantic ways to group multiple versions of the same image, each version having technical characteristics that make it more or less suitable for a particular user. The new specification has achieved broad consensus and is being implemented in Chrome, Opera and Firefox (maybe even Internet Explorer!) as I type.

The time to start learning this stuff is now!

Before we get to any of the (shiny! new!) markup, let’s look at the relevant ways in which browsing environments vary, i.e. the ways in which we want our images to adapt.

1. Our images need to be able to render crisply at different device-pixel-ratios. We want high-resolution screens to get high-resolution images, but we don’t want to send those images to users who wouldn’t see all of those extra pixels. Let’s call this the device-pixel-ratio use case.
2. If our layout is fluid (i.e. responsive), then our images will need to squish and stretch to fit it. We’ll call this fluid-image use case.
3. Note that these two use cases are closely related: To solve both, we’ll want our images to be available in multiple resolutions so that they scale efficiently. We’ll call tackling both problems simultaneously the variable-sized-image use case
4. Sometimes we’ll want to adapt our images in ways that go beyond simple scaling. We might want to crop the images or even subtly alter their content. We’ll call this the art-direction use case.
5. Finally, different browsers support different image formats. We might want to send a fancy new format such as WebP to browsers that can render it, and fall back to trusty old JPEGs in browsers that don’t. We’ll call this the type-switching use case.

The new <picture> specification includes features for all of these cases. Let’s look at them one by one.

Rearranging images across various resolutions is relatively easy, however, loading different images (and only them) depending on the user’s resolution is quite difficult. Well, not any more. (Image credit)

The device-pixel-ratio Use Case

Let’s start simply, with a fixed-width image that we want to adapt to varying device-pixel-ratios. To do this, we’ll use the first tool that the new specification gives us for grouping and describing image sources: the srcset attribute.

Say we have two versions of an image:

• small.jpg (320 × 240 pixels)
• large.jpg (640 × 480 pixels)

We want to send large.jpg only to users with high-resolution screens. Using srcset, we’d mark up our image like so:

<img srcset="small.jpg 1x, large.jpg 2x"
       src="small.jpg"
       alt="A rad wolf" />
    

The srcset attribute takes a comma-separated list of image URLs, each with an x descriptor stating the device-pixel-ratio that that file is intended for.

The src is there for browsers that don’t understand srcset. The alt, of course, is included for browsers that don’t render images at all. One element and three attributes gets us an image that looks crisp on high-resolution devices and efficiently degrades all the way down to text. Not too shabby!

The Fluid- And Variable-Sized-Image Use Cases

What that markup won’t do is efficiently squish and stretch our image in a fluid layout. Before addressing this fluid-image use case, we need a little background on how browsers work.

Image preloading is, according to Steve Souders, “the single biggest performance improvement browsers have ever made.” Images are often the heaviest elements on a page; loading them ASAP is in everyone’s best interest. Thus, the first thing a browser will do with a page is scan the HTML for image URLs and begin loading them. The browser does this long before it has constructed a DOM, loaded external CSS or painted a layout. Solving the fluid-image use case is tricky, then; we need the browser to pick a source before it knows the image’s rendered size.

What a browser does know at all times is the environment it’s rendering in: the size of the viewport, the resolution of the user’s screen, that sort of thing. We use this information when we use media queries, which tailor our layouts to fit particular browsing environments.

Thus, to get around the preloading problem, the first proposals for fluid-image features suggested attaching media queries to sources. We would base our source-picking mechanism on the size of the viewport, which the browser knows at picking-time, not on the final rendered size of the image, which it doesn’t.

Dealing with responsive images turned out to be quite a nightmare. A better way to provide the browser with details about its environment is by simply telling the browser the rendered size of the image. Kind of obvious, really. (Image credit)

As it turns out, that’s a bad idea. While it’s technically workable, calculating the media queries needed is tedious and error-prone. A better idea is to simply tell the browser the rendered size of the image!

Once we tell the browser how many pixels it needs (via a new attribute, sizes) and how many pixels each of the sources has (via w descriptors in srcset), picking a source becomes trivial. The browser picks the smallest source that will still look reasonably crisp within its container.

Let’s make this concrete by developing our previous example. Suppose we now have three versions of our image:

• large.jpg (1024 × 768 pixels)
• medium.jpg (640 × 480 pixels)
• small.jpg (320 × 240 pixels)

And we want to place these in a flexible grid — a grid that starts out as a single column but switches to three columns in larger viewports, like this:

A responsive grid example. (See the demo)

Here’s how we’d mark it up:

<img srcset="large.jpg  1024w,
          medium.jpg 640w,
          small.jpg  320w"
       sizes="(min-width: 36em) 33.3vw,
          100vw"
       src="small.jpg"
       alt="A rad wolf" />
    

We’re using srcset again, but instead of x descriptors, we’re attaching w descriptors to our sources. These describe the actual width, in pixels, of the referenced file. So, if you “Save for Web…” at 1024 × 768 pixels, then mark up that source in srcset as 1024w.

You’ll note that we’re specifying only image widths. Why not heights, too? The images in our layout are width-constrained; their widths are set explicitly by the CSS, but their heights are not. The vast majority of responsive images in the wild are width-constrained, too, so the specification keeps things simple by dealing only in widths. There are some good reasons for including heights, too — but not yet.

So, that’s w in srcset, which describes how many pixels each of our sources has. Next up, the sizes attribute. The sizes attribute tells the browser how many pixels it needs by describing the final rendered width of our image. Think of sizes as a way to give the browser a bit of information about the page’s layout a little ahead of time, so that it can pick a source before it has parsed or rendered any of the page’s CSS.

We do this by passing the browser a CSS length that describes the image’s rendered width. CSS lengths can be either absolute (for example, 99px or 16em) or relative to the viewport (33.3vw, as in our example). That “relative to the viewport” part is what enables images to flex.

If our image occupies a third of the viewport, then our sizes attribute should look like this:

sizes="33.3vw"
    

Our example isn’t quite so simple. Our layout has a breakpoint at 36 ems. When the viewport is narrower than 36 ems, the layout changes. Below that breakpoint, the image will fill 100% of the viewport’s width. How do we encode that information in our sizes attribute?

We do it by pairing media queries with lengths:

sizes="(min-width: 36em) 33.3vw,
       100vw"
    

This is its format:

sizes="[media query] [length],
       [media query] [length],
       etc…
       [default length]"
    

The browser goes over each media query until it finds one that matches and then uses the matching query’s paired length. If no media queries match, then the browser uses the “default” length, i.e. any length it comes across that doesn’t have a paired query.

With both a sizes length and a set of sources with w descriptors in srcset to choose from, the browser has everything it needs to efficiently load an image in a fluid, responsive layout.

Wonderfully, sizes and w in srcset also give the browser enough information to adapt the image to varying device-pixel-ratios. Converting the CSS length, we give it in sizes to CSS pixels; and, multiplying that by the user’s device-pixel-ratio, the browser knows the number of device pixels it needs to fill — no matter what the user’s device-pixel-ratio is.

So, while the example in our device-pixel-ratio use case works only for fixed-width images and covers only 1x and 2x screens, this srcset and sizes example not only covers the fluid-image use case, but also adapts to arbitrary screen densities.

We’ve solved both problems at once. In the parlance set out at the beginning of this article, w in srcset and sizes covers the variable-sized-image use case.

Even more wonderfully, this markup also gives the browser some wiggle room. Attaching specific browsing conditions to sources means that the browser does its picking based on a strict set of conditions. “If the screen is high-resolution,” we say to the browser, “then you must use this source.” By simply describing the resources’ dimensions with w in srcset and the area they’ll be occupying with sizes, we enable the browser to apply its wealth of additional knowledge about a given user’s environment to the source-picking problem. The specification allows browsers to, say, optionally load smaller sources when bandwidth is slow or expensive.

One more thing. In our example, the size of the image is always a simple percentage of the viewport’s width. What if our layout combined both absolute and relative lengths by, say, adding a fixed 12-em sidebar to the three-column layout, like this?

A layout combines absolute and relative lengths. (See the demo)

We’d use the surprisingly well-supported calc() function in our sizes attribute.

sizes="(min-width: 36em) calc(.333 * (100vw - 12em)),
       100vw"
    

And… done!

The Art-Direction Use Case

Now we’re cooking with gas! We’ve learned how to mark up varible-sized images that scale up and down efficiently, rendering crisply on any and all layouts, viewports and screens.

But what if we wanted to go further? What if we wanted to adapt more?

When Apple introduced the iPad Air last year, its website featured a huge image of the device. This might sound rather unremarkable, unless you — as web design geeks are wont to do — compulsively resized your browser window. When the viewport was short enough, the iPad did a remarkable thing: it rotated to better fit the viewport!

We call this sort of thing “art direction.”

Apple art-directed its image by abusing HTML and CSS: marking up its image — which was clearly content — as an empty div and switching its background-image with CSS. The new <picture> specification allows authors to do this sort of breakpoint-based art direction entirely in HTML.

The specification facilitates this by layering another method of source grouping on top of srcset: <picture> and source.

Let’s get back to our example. Suppose that instead of letting our image fill the full width of the viewport on small screens, we crop the image square, zooming in on the most important part of the subject, and present that small square crop at a fixed size floated off to the left, leaving a lot of space for descriptive text, like this:

An example with images combined with descriptive text. (See the demo)

To achieve this, we’ll need a couple of additional image sources:

• cropped-small.jpg (96 × 96 pixels)
• cropped-large.jpg (192 × 192 pixels)
• small.jpg (320 × 240 pixels)
• medium.jpg (640 × 480 pixels)
• large.jpg (1024 × 768 pixels)

How do we mark them up? Like so:

<picture>
       <source media="(min-width: 36em)"
          srcset="large.jpg  1024w,
             medium.jpg 640w,
             small.jpg  320w"
          sizes="33.3vw" />
       <source srcset="cropped-large.jpg 2x,
             cropped-small.jpg 1x" />
       <img src="small.jpg" alt="A rad wolf" />
    </picture>
    

This example is as complex as it gets, using every feature that we’ve covered so far. Let’s break it down.

The <picture> element contains two sources and an img. The sources represent the two separate art-directed versions of the image (the square crop and the full crop). The (required) img serves as our fallback. As we’ll soon discover, it does much of the actual work behind the scenes.

First, let’s take a close look at that first source:

<source media="(min-width: 36em)"
       srcset="large.jpg  1024w,
          medium.jpg 640w,
          small.jpg  320w"
       sizes="33.3vw" />
    

This source represents the full uncropped version of our image. We want to show the full image only in the three-column layout — that is, when the viewport is wider than 36 ems. The first attribute here, media="(min-width: 36em)", makes that happen. If a query in a media attribute evaluates to true, then the browser must use that source; otherwise, it’s skipped.

The source’s other two attributes — srcset and sizes — are mostly copied from our previous variable-sized-image example. One difference: Because this source will be chosen only for the three-column layout, our sizes attribute only needs a single length, 33.3vw.

When the viewport is narrower than 36 ems, the first source’s media query will evaluate to false, and we’d proceed to the second:

<source srcset="square-large.jpg 2x,
                    square-small.jpg 1x" />
    

This represents our small square crop. This version is displayed at a fixed width, but we still want it to render crisply on high-resolution screens. Thus, we’ve supplied both 1x and 2x versions and marked them up with simple x descriptors.

Lastly, we come to the surprisingly important (indeed, required!) img.

Any child of an audio or video element that isn’t a source is treated as fallback content and hidden in supporting browsers. You might, therefore, assume the same thing about the img here. Wrong! Users actually see the img element when we use <picture>. Without img, there’s no image; <picture> and all of its sources are just there to feed it a source.

Why? One of the main complaints about the first <picture> specification was that it reinvented the wheel, propsing an entirely new HTML media element, along the lines of audio and video, that mostly duplicated the functionality of img. Duplicated functionality means duplicated implementation and maintenance work — work that browser vendors weren’t keen to undertake.

Thus, the new specification’s reuse of img. The <picture> itself is invisible, a bit like a magical span. Its sources are just there for the browser to draw alternate versions of the image from. Once a source URL is chosen, that URL is fed to the img. Practically speaking, this means that any styles that you want to apply to your rendered image (like, say, max-width: 100%) need to be applied to img, not to <picture>.

OK, on to our last feature.

The Type-Switching Use Case

Let’s say that, instead of doing all of this squishing, stretching and adapting to myriad viewport conditions, we simply want to give a new file format a spin and provide a fallback for non-supporting browsers. For this, we follow the pattern established by audio and video: source type.

<picture>
       <source type="image/svg" src="logo.svg" />
       <source type="image/png" src="logo.png" />
       <img src="logo.gif" alt="RadWolf, Inc." />
    </picture>
    

If the browser doesn’t understand the image/svg media type, then it skips the first source; if it can’t make heads or tails of image/png, then it falls back to img and the GIF.

During the extremely painful GIF-to-PNG transition period, web designers would have killed for such a feature. The <picture> element gives it to us, setting the stage for new image formats to be easily adopted in the years to come.

That’s It!

That’s everything: every feature in the new <picture> specification and the rationale behind each. All in all, srcset, x, w, sizes, <picture>, source, media and type give us a rich set of tools with which to make images truly adaptable — images that can (finally!) flow efficiently in flexible layouts and a wide range of devices.

The specification is not yet final. The first implementations are in progress and are being staged behind experimental flags; its implementors and authors are working together to hash out the specification’s finer details on a daily basis. All of this is happening under the umbrella of the Responsive Images Community Group. If you’re interested in following along, join the group, drop in on the IRC channel, weigh in on a GitHub issue or file a new one, sign up for the newsletter, or follow the RICG on Twitter.

(il, al)

The post Responsive Images Done Right: A Guide To <picture> And srcset appeared first on Smashing Magazine.

We are proud of our alums and their constant achievements. Recently, three of UMBC’s alumni, in particular, have made it in the news and we thought you should know!

Lafayette Gilchrist ’92, Africana Studies, recently released his new solo album, titled The View From Here, which was featured on NPR’s “Fresh Air.”

“For someone who came to piano rather late, at 17, Gilchrist has dug deep into its history… Despite his old-timey tremolos and thundering bass figures, he doesn’t really sound like the old masters; something different is going on in his timing and pile-driving left hand.”

Read more of NPR’s review of The View From Here.

Valerie Hawkins ’82, Africana Studies, received the K-12 Promotion of Education Award at the 2013 Women of Color Stem Conference. Hawkins, a teacher in the Baltimore County Public School System, has been involved in Project Lead the Way/Gateway to Technology, which offers students hands-on experiences in the STEM fields.

“One of the many goals of the Women of Color STEM Conference is to provide employers with a unique opportunity to recognize those women within their ranks who are already successful, thus sending a clear message that there is room for many others who choose to follow.” Read more.

Dr. Kaye Whitehead, ’09, language, literacy, and culture, was the keynote speaker at UMBC’s first Language, Literacy and Culture graduate student conference, called “Rethinking Intellectual Activism.” Her speech was titled, In Search of Your Magis: Taking a Moment to ReThink, ReEvaluate, and ReDiscover Intellectual Activism. Whitehead is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at Loyola University, Maryland. Read more about the event here.

The Maryland State Arts Council (MSAC) named its Individual Artist Award Recipients for 2014 and we’re proud to say that two UMBC alumnae were selected: Sandy Lacy ’76, psychology and Heather Moss ’07, English.

“The MSAC’s annual Individual Artist Award (IAA) recognizes the importance of artists and their works of excellence to the cultural vibrancy of Maryland. Each year, awards of $1,000, $3,000 or $6,000 go to Artists from across Maryland who are selected by a blind, out-of-state jury on the basis of artistic merit alone.” Congratulations, Sandy and Heather!

Want to know more about the MSAC and other award recipients? Find out here!

Do you have an achievement of your own to share?

Tell us about it in a class note!