Vijay Mathews (@vijaymathews) is a co-founder of W&Co., an interactive design & development agency based in New York. In the last few years, he’s built mobile apps and websites for a variety of clients, focusing on the education, non-profit, retail, and government sectors.
This conversation discusses running a multidisciplinary firm, the workflow and roles at W&Co., and the trouble with de facto standards in the design biz.
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Show Notes & Links
- W&Co. does Design AND Development, and has since the beginning
- Chris Auyeung, Vijay’s co-founder at W&Co.
- Josh Miles discussed the growth of his firm on a previous podcast episode
- They now “do the kind of work they want to do”
- They’ve stayed nimble so they can “keep the overhead low but still provide the quality of work they wanted to provide.”
“We didn't have the mindset to say no to work; we were just getting started.”
—Vijay Mathews
- Designers should “know and understand the capabilities and limitations” of software and devices
- Zeitgeist, En Vogue … can you tell Prescott went to art school?
- The Polymath aka The Renaissance Man
- Vijay and his team have moved away from mobile applications toward broader digital/web projects
“Maintaining native applications across a wide variety of platforms and devices was impossible.”
—Vijay Mathews
- 80% Websites, 20% Apps
- HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript
- “Do you need an app?” A question for webmasters and podcasters
- Candy Crush
- W&Co. applications on the iTunes store
- How The Sausage Gets Made
- Another reference to “The Museum in Minneapolis” (throwback to Episode 30 with Michael Bierut)
- Ask yourself “What could it be?”
- Websites that haven’t updated since 1997
“Should you be using a photo-editing tool for web mockups?”
—Vijay Mathews
- Word Processor Wars of the 1980s and The Browser Wars of the 1990s
- XKCD Comic on competing standards
- Previous episode on Project Management Apps with Bryan Orr
- Lingua Franca
- The Story of QuarkXPress
- Prescott New Year’s Resolution for 2008: “Never use Quark again!”
- Eisenhower Methodology, again
- Remember The Milk
Tools
- Adobe Creative Cloud
- Jira for bug-tracking (and modified for project management)
- Agile development
Techniques
- Consider longevity in the marketplace (shorter-life projects can be more avant garde)
- Don’t be too conservative during the ideation phase
- Play to your strengths in your roles (designer, IA, etc.) but join forces as well to have multidisciplinary crossover
- Utilise Master Pages in InDesign
Habits
- Have a daily scrum meeting
- Examine your calendar the night before
- 30-45 minute run early in the morning to clear the head
- Arrive before the staff to sort email and admin
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