lofton.net contains stories and info posted by jim lofton. Since I do user experience research & web design/development, most stuff will probably relate to that, but I have a few other areas of interests and will write about those from time to time as well. This site also gives me a chance to try things out that I might not do for my regular job.

I have a BA in Graphic Design from UIC and a Masters in Human Computer Interaction from Depaul. My web experience goes back to 1996 when I first learned about HTML. Since then, I have learned PERL, PHP, ASP/VBscript, SQL, CSS, XHTML, XML, a smattering of javascript and a whole bunch of other web things. I use software tools like Visio, Morae, ScreenFlow, Omnigraffle, MS-Office, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, BBedit, UltraEdit, jEdit, Fireworks, and Flash. As well as MySQL, MSSQL, Apache, IIS, WinMedia server and other web infrastructure tools.

I have been doing user experience research the last couple years now. This includes heuristic reviews, contextual inquiries, card sorts, and of course usability tests. I am interested in creating and using online low to mid-fidelity prototypes for usability tests rather than paper prototypes. Combined with screen capture software, it really makes turning around findings and creating reports a lot easier, without losing focus on the intent of the user.

Before the web, I worked as a graphic designer, doing a lot of work in Illustrator and Quark. I was pretty much an expert user of Illustrator (lots of technical schematics and an occasional illustration), although I haven’t used it much in the last few years. As a print designer, I worked exclusively on Macs (well before that I used T-square, technical pens and wax gun), but when I first started on the web I was forced to use Windows. Which was a nuisance, but I really wanted to do web stuff. So I Iearned a lot about Windows and can pretty easily switch between the two platforms now.

Actually, it wasn’t that hard to switch to Windows, as I have always had a technical bend along with my artistic abilities. Previously I would help friends use their PCs, and at that time the Mac OS was kind of lagging. Not that Windows was better, but this was in 1996 and Mac OS 7 was 6 years old… and it just didn’t have the appeal of a truly usable OS any longer. In fact, using Windows to do the web was actually easier, as there were a whole lot more HTML editors and I could use Photoshop which was the same on both platforms (as long as you didn’t need to print).

I continued to use Mac at home, but used Windows at work almost exclusively for over 8 years. However, I have to transitioned back to the Mac at work, since the release of OS X. I love being able to run Apache, PHP, MySQL and do all the web related work easily as I could on the PC. My current system is a Macbook Air 13″ with 4GB ram and it is sweet with a Windows partition running in Parallels. Making it the perfect platform to cross develop on and test web sites in all the major browsers. In the end an OS is only a platform, it is the apps that you use to accomplish most tasks. So I switch between Mac and Windows regularly everyday.