Here's an annoyingly unhelpful teaser of a new Pownce-related thing I've been working on with a few friends lately. It's the first piece of really original design I've done in a while, which has been refreshing. After working on iterating and refining the same two projects (Digg + Pownce) for the last few years, it's nice to sink my teeth into a fresh, untouched problem! I can't wait to see this project breathe in the next couple of weeks (hopefully!).

Joshua Porter, aka Bokardo, has just announced the publication of his book Designing for the Social Web. I finally met Josh in person at SXSW when we were speaking on a panel together about this very subject. He's obviously got fantastic insight into the subject of design for social sites and it was very interesting to bat around ideas with him and, in particular, to hear his critiques of design choices on sites I've been working on like Digg and Pownce. I'm really looking forward to getting my hands on a copy of the book... turning on tracking for my Amazon shipment!

Also check out Mark Trammell's latest collaborative effort entitled Adapting to Web Standards: CSS and Ajax for Big Sites . It looks like Trammell (who works with me at Digg) and I will likely be doing a workshop at dConstruct this coming September in Brighton, England. He'll be discussing many of the topics from the book.

Why not come back from a months-long writing hiatus with a somewhat off-the-cuff rant that's been building for just about as long as I've been away from posting on my weblog?

I've been going through dozens of applications for design positions over the past few months as we hire at Digg. I've also been through plenty of resumés and portfolios at silverorange and I'm sure I'll be sifting through more with Pownce at some point in the not-too-distant future. An application and portfolio are generally fairly easy to do well (though they're seldom incredible) but there are a few common and easy-to-fix issues that I've seen again and again. A few things that cause me to pause on anyone's application:

Include your portfolio

Nothing matters more than your portfolio. Sure, your education and prior experience are useful knowledge, but I want to see your actual work immediately. I'm continually surprised how many applications are a straight up resumé with no link to a portfolio. A web-based portfolio is always preferable, but if you can't include current work online at least include well-described screenshots.

Lightboxes in portfolios can die a speedy death

This issue precipitated this blog post over any other. Ever since the Lightbox effect was created, there's been a surge of designers implementing it in their portfolios. Click on a thumbnail of a project in a portfolio and there's about a fifty percent chance you'll end up seeing a downsampled image of the relevant site. The Lightbox thing is easy to implement and has been used effectively in lots of places. Your web design portfolio is not one of those places (unless you're featuring your photos). Seriously. At best, I want to see your work in full functioning order. Bar that, a static html/css page would great. That won't work either? Well at least provide a full-size screenshot.

Link to actual live sites

If you can, link to an actual live website that you've designed. Sure, you might've handed off the work to your client six months ago and now they've gone and changed some stuff, but that's all part of the design process. Showing something that lives and breathes in the real-world even when you've let go of the reigns is a great sign of confidence. Even better, describe what's changed since you handed off the project and how that's been positive or negative. If you're unable to show live work because of NDA concerns, find some way to describe the project in general terms or share particular parts of the UI that don't give the game away.

Describe your role in a project

If you worked as part of a team, especially a big team, describe which parts of the project most reflect your input. Just linking to your work is good, but it's all the better if you're able to describe the politics of decisions, the process to achieving the final goal, and how you were able to produce something to proud of.

And now I shall return to my current stack of applications, with a deep sigh that I got that off my chest...

A few weeks ago, I got the chance to present at the Future of Web Apps conference in London, England. I was talking about interpreting user feedback on websites like Digg and Pownce. Thanks a lot to Ryan, Mel, and the rest of the Carson team for having me!

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If you haven't tried Slideshare before, you should totally check it out. The service is amazingly useful for sharing your presentations and slides. And, Rashmi (one of the founders) was a great presenter at FOWA and she's awfully nice to boot!

British podcaster Paul Boag had me on his show for a nice little interview the other day. We discussed the user interface of Digg, enabling people to participate in a community site, developing for the iPhone, and lots of other interesting bits of interface design. He's very good at putting his subjects at ease, so it was a fun interview to participate in.

Thankfully, Paul includes full transcripts of his shows on his site. Aside from the obvious advantages for accessibility and searchability, it has the added benefit that I could read the entire thing this morning in a cafe without headphones. Very nice. I wish more podcasters had the patience to do so. Even with typing errors and some hilarious misinterpretations (Ben Goodger came out as Van Gudgers!!) it's extremely useful. I'd be curious to know if he uses an automated system.

The one problem with the transcripts is that you can count the times I say "you know". Erg, what a terrible oral crutch. I'll have to work on that.

We've been trying to balance both privacy and user discoverability on Pownce to varying degrees of success since we launched the site three weeks ago. I just wrote a longish post over on the Pownce blog explaining our thoughts on this equilibrium. Thanks for everyone who gave us feedback on this subject.