A little of what we’ve been up to.

Yesterday at Happy Cog, Mark, Abby, and I had an intro call with a tech team for a client who will be implementing our templates into their CMS, which, in this case, is ExpressionEngine.

When I joined Happy Cog there were whispers about the elusive holy grail called monthly billing. It was hardly a new concept, but it was new to us. In theory, monthly billing would keep a regimented stream of cash coming in the front doors, and steady cash flow is almost more important to running a business than overall revenue. But we’d never made the move. We structured contracts so that our deliverable-based invoicing occurred at reasonable intervals, but if deadlines shifted, our payments did too.

This week’s Cognition article is brought to you by two fantastic interns here at Happy Cog, Chelsea Myers & Courtney Sabo.

The holiday break is one stretch of time during the year when I completely remove myself from the business of building the web. Stepping outside our community to engage with old friends and family members provides a much-needed recharge and change of perspective.

Choosing a type palette goes beyond considering aesthetics, legibility, browser support, and performance. For fonts to truly be appropriate for your project, they must also be technically and financially sound solutions. No one wants to be surprised by the outrageous cost of a font package after all designs have been delivered.

It’s easy to forget your company values when you move through your day-to-day responsibilities and rush to forecast and plan for your next business milestones. But, discarding (if only for a moment) the values that make your company what it is can lead to dissatisfaction within your team. Preserving your values is an everyday task, and it should extend across other aspects of your business: growth planning, hiring practices, and how you communicate with your team.

I don’t attend a ton of large conferences each year. I attend local events, but when I dedicate a few consecutive days to a larger event, I want to make it count. You may do the same—feeling like you only get one shot to attend a conference and learn all you can. Here are some tips I’ve learned for how to make the most out of these unique opportunities.

The Digital Project Management (DPM) community is experiencing something for the first time that has become old hat for the web design and development communities – open dialogue and the sharing of ideas. In the past couple years we’ve been able to tap into a growing number of open forums and online DPM communities (check out this article by the illustrious Brett Harned).

2014 has been a year of big change for Happy Cog. We’ve had more than a year’s worth of adventures packed into a short 12 months. One thing that remains a constant, however, is our team’s continual quest to explore and hone our roles; process; project structure; and approach to clients, partners, and coworkers. Cognition serves as our way of documenting and sharing our thoughts and discoveries with the world.

As the year winds down it’s time to take stock of 2014. Turning over a new year provides us with the opportunity to reflect and look forward. The web is an ever-evolving platform with new technology, techniques, and paradigms taking hold all the time. I’m excited about the direction the web has taken in 2014 and have learned a lot over the past year. That said, here are some highlights of these developments in the past year.

A few months ago I was asked to assist leading some moderated qualitative usability testing sessions. I’ll be honest: I had little-to-no experience speaking with users, so at the start of the project I didn’t feel like I was fully equipped for the task. The idea of being in a room with someone I didn’t know for an hour and guiding them through a handful of scenarios to validate our design didn’t sound as good as one of my typical design days. However, I knew it would be a good learning experience and said I’d help out.

On almost all projects at Happy Cog, there is usually one design lead who oversees the work from the initial concept to the QA’d, browser-tested, final product. Other designers may step in to help with production or provide guidance, but for the most part, one designer owns it.