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Myth #30: If you are an expert, you don’t need to test your design

uxmyths:

When it comes to evaluating the usability of an interface, user testing is often considered unnecessary if an expert has already reviewed it. Since people rarely behave the way you expect, an expert can find major usability problems, but usability tests always reveal surprising issues.

Usability testing and expert reviews are both useful and tend to have different findings, therefore it’s usually recommended to combine the two in order to get the most comprehensive analysis of the interface.

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Image resizing in PHP with a command-line tool

Smashing Mag posted yesterday a link on Twitter to a (yet another) PHP image resizer class, which is nothing new, there have always been and there will always be similar classes on the shelves.

But let me show you the linux command convert. It’s a command-line tool for ImageMagick, and basically it knows everything you need if you have to resize an image in PHP (or in Python, Perl, etc.)

Your job only is to get to know the parameters (and there are a tons of them, trust me).

Here is an example:

$result = exec("convert ".$inputfile." -verbose -density 72 -resize x90 -crop 120x90+0+0 ".$outputfile);

This takes the $inputfile, resize it to 90px height, then crop the first 120px from top left, saves it to $outputfile, then return with result text. (So this way it doesn’t matter what’s the input file’s resolution, you’ll get exactly a 120x90px size result)

-resize x90 means that after resizing the result can be wide, but it’s height will be exactly 90 px. Therefore the opposite of this, -resize 120x will set the width to 120px, and the height could be anything (but proportional, of course).

In order to use this tool, you have to install ImageMagick on your environment, but there’s a big chance that it’s already there. And one more thing: keep in mind that lot of times you don’t the privilege to use exec (ask your sysop for further information).

And why would you use ImageMagick instead of a class? Because it’s smart, it can crop, put an effect on the picture and so on, but mostly because it’s lightning fast!

Okay, the learning curve is a bit slow, you have to make a lot of experiments, but it’s worthy, and after all you get a powerful command-line tool and you can forget the resizer classes.

When you really want that job, do something special

Like Ann Goliak, the lucky person who got hired at 37signals. The guys over there must have been thrilled when they checked out the (sort of) “cover letter” Ann made especially for them (click on the link, now).

What could we learn from this case?

1. Write valuable information about yourself
2. Don’t settle with an average solution
3. Emphasize what have you done before, and what are you capable of
4. Tell stories - a little insight to your daily work might help. A negative story could be handy either, but only if you wrote down what have you learned from that failure.
5. And most importantly: Distinguish yourself! Doesn’t matter how, but don’t be a grey applicant, instead of this try to figure out something clever way to reach the interest of your future boss.

Being creative means being brave. So be it.