Written by Harry Roberts on CSS Wizardry.
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Last week I launched in:focus, and it got an amazing reception. I thought I’d write up a quick case study on the idea, the process and the project’s future…
I love the web, seriously love it. I have a burning desire to always be creating things. Nothing groundbreaking like Dribbble, but just things. I also love tinkering with code and UIs and all manner of stuff. I get an idea, I build it, I abandon it, I move onto the next one. I’d say less than 10% of the things I ever work on ever see the light of day.
in:focus, thankfully, was different. I had the idea, I started building, I got Oliver on board, I launched.
The idea was had when I was a little drunk. Me and Dan were at a bar when I had a whimsical idea for an interview project. Nothing more; just a site that hosted interviews with cool and interesting people. That night I got in and started merrily (tipsily) designing straight into the browser. Three hours later and in:focus’ design and build was done.
I decided that I needed to approach someone to interview first, and that this person would make or break in:focus. I have some really really cool followers on Twitter so I decided to source someone from there. Oliver and I have been following each other for a while now so I dropped him a DM and he said yes right away.
Oliver was an absolutely spot-on choice. Anyone who knows him, or has read the interview, will know that he’s a very interesting and inspirational guy, and he really made the first publication an instant hit.
I decided for sake of ease to port in:focus over to WordPress. This took about twenty minutes with a further hour or so ironing out any rough spots. I purposely hurried the entire process so as to a) not let the idea go stale, as so many tend to do and b) for the sheer self-imposed pressure. I love working under pressure.
I sent Oliver the questions (edited in part by Dan), he answered them, Suzanna proofed it, I put it live and you lot seemed to love it.
The moral I guess is have ideas and build. A few hours of work on my part, and time generously donated by others, and I have a project live that a lot of people seems to really enjoy. It was fun, I’m proud of the results and I’m looking forward to continuing it.
in:focus’ next steps are to simply interview more people. Over the next few months I aim to approach and interview more individuals and publish on a semi-regular basis. If anyone has any ideas as to people they like to see interviewed then just let me know!
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