A statement
In my experience, building a web application is like writing a song or a poem. Starting with raw ideas, you proceed to express them in patterns, metaphors and language. You must balance conventionalism with creativity and flourish with simplicity, because the finished product should be revolutionary yet familiar, providing your audience with a vehicle to some fulfillment after convincing them to climb aboard. There are rules that must be followed, technique that must be mastered.
Programming, an aspect of this overall technique, is itself both a computational science and a linguistic art. I have cultivated skills in both elements of the practice: the artistic via my education in literary criticism and interface design, the scientific via my experience as a Drupal module developer. My study of Drupal has given me insight into advanced performance and scalability practices, which I incorporate into my modules. Also, I strive to emulate Drupal’s legendary code usability in my module designs, bearing in mind that in an open source project one’s code will undoubtedly end up being used by others as a tool.
My line of work is about inventing and building tools that people enjoy using while they perform important, complex data-related tasks. Everyone likes a powerful tool, but the power to do a lot of work quickly becomes less valuable if people cannot be convinced to initiate the process – to push the button, or in other words, to engage with the metaphor. Lazy users? No – the fault lies with builders. Poor usability clouds the work of programmers who believe that usability is a mere abstraction, beyond what they should be concerned with – or in object-oriented parlance, a “protected member” in the domain of a different class: the designer. In reality, small technical choices made by programmers often determine what is or isn’t possible at the user interface level. I try to take the time to make the right choices.
Although my main professional role has been in programming, I enjoy design challenges as well. OmniGraffle is one of my favorite tools for diagramming workflows and information architecture. I like to channel information gained about clients’ needs into tools like this, in order to return to them documents and designs that facilitate communication and consensus. I like to write. I make occasional forays into the realm of graphic design (the theme of this website for example).
On this site you will find a bizarre mixture of school projects, self promotion, programming how-to, critical writing and music. If something interests you, feel free to contact me via comment or email (dpolant@gmail.com).
Education
Masters of Information Studies – University of Michigan School of Information (2010)
Bachelor of Arts in English literature – University of Michigan (2007)
Programming Skills
PHP, jQuery/Javascript, HTML, CSS, R, MySQL, JSON/XML services, WordPress/Buddypress API, Drupal 6/7 API, Magento API, Facebook API
Software Skills
Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Cubase, ScreenFlow, OmniGraffle, Git, SVN, Apache configuration, Xdebug
Other
Graphic design, usability testing, wireframing & interaction design