Everyone has a visual
Each person comes in with a mental picture of what it should look like. Very rarely does that mental image look the same as someone else’s. So each person tries to tweak the design more and more towards their mental image. That means each team member (even if they are dedicated to the team) is essentially working against the others.

Web designers (should) know best
The site doesn’t always look like the comp. Once a developer puts it on the web, there are media queries and different font renderings and screen sizes and accessibility concerns. The web designer is paid to think about all of these issues and should have a good idea of what his design will look like on the web.

Content is hard enough
Getting the content assembled correctly is a hard enough job for the rest of the people. Although they should have already had most of the content ready before the designer comes in, they should be finalizing and organizing that content to keep them busy.

Consistency is easier
One person can keep a design consistent. When all parties weigh in, then that consistency starts to fade away, often along with your user’s experience.

Assigning blame
Why give yourself multiple fail points? If your sites design goes live and the feedback is terrible, then at least you can eliminate pointing fingers at each other’s design input. Put that burden on one person and the team can avoid pointing fingers at each other.

Groups aren’t creative
Big corporations fail to innovate. There are exceptions but a readily observable fact is that big groups of people compromise or maintain the status quo almost every time. Individuals can be creative.

Chapter 1

• Is Jonah a historical fact or a parable? What evidences are there for either?
• What is a modern day parallel to what God asked Jonah to do?
• What is casting lots? Is it biblical or a pagan practice?
• What are some biblical examples of situations where God does not allowed people to remain in their sin? What about examples where he does allow them to remain in sin?
• Why did Jonah not jump overboard?
• Why did God send a fish instead of something like a piece of wood to float on?
• Have you ever had a situation where a non-believer called you out on sinful actions?
• What is your first reaction when you feel called to something?
• How do you get away from guilt?
• Have you ever had a situation where you feel like you did the opposite of what God was calling you to?

Chapter 2

• Did Jonah say this prayer inside the fish or later on?
• What is Sheol?
• Who does Jonah blame for his predicament?
• Can a believer be “driven away from (God’s) sight”?
• What does “I shall again look upon your holy temple” mean?
• What does “Salvation belongs to the Lord” mean?
• What does this chapter teach us about God’s character?
• How does Jonah compare to the mariners in chapter 1?
• What is God calling Jonah to sacrifice? What has he called you to sacrifice?

Chapter 3

• Why does God give Jonah a second chance?
• Why is it repeated that Nineveh is a “great city”?
• What are a few potential outcomes of Jonah’s proclamation to Nineveh and what effect would each have on Jonah?
• Given the size of Nineveh, how would Jonah go about getting his message out?
• Why the sackcloth?
• Why do you think Jonah’s message was so effective?
• How does God reveal sin in your life?
• Is God paying non-believers back for good works? How is this reconciled with Hebrews 11:6?
• If God is unchanging (Num 23:19), then why does he change his mind here?

Chapter 4

• Why would Jonah desire the destruction of another nation? Why is the desire for the destruction of Israel’s enemies so prevalent in the Psalms?
• Contrasting Jonah’s attitude with Paul’s in Romans 9:1-3. Where do you typically find yourself when it comes to compassion for non-believers?
• What attributes of God can be frustrating to you?
• Why does Jonah leave the city?
• What is God’s lesson to Jonah?
• Why did Jonah not move into the city when the wind and heat came?
• What are some of God’s reasons for sparing Nineveh?
• Why does God mention saving the cattle but kills the plant?
• Why are we left without Jonah’s response? What do you believe it was?
• Has your opinion of Jonah changed from this study?
• What do you think God’s primary lesson was from the book of Jonah?

What will I be doing?
I think my official title is either Lead Web Designer or Lead Front End Developer. Basically, Moroch has a long history in print and TV advertising, but are looking to make a big impact with interactive advertising. That’s where I come in. I’ll be part of a small team (at first) helping them grow their web presence and offerings. It is going to give me a great opportunity to really focus on what I love to do.

What about Family Legacy?
I have started a campaign for Family Legacy to help them raise money to pay their staff salaries in the future. It is a difficult challenge since paying an American staff member is not as sexy as donating to feed an orphan. However if they want to be able to feed all of the one million orphans in Zambia, they need to be able to hire and retain the best talent to help do that. Keepfolks.com is the website I have created to tell my story and why it is so necessary for non-profits to be able to have operational funds.

I used a few inset graphics as design elements to help balance out the content. the banner image of the door went through several different looks and sizes before I settled on this one. I wanted to feature it on the home page, but I didn’t want it to take up so much vertical space that you had to scroll to get to actual content. Unfortunately the trade off there was that it couldn’t stretch the width of the site.

One of the things I recommended and they agreed was to keep unclear language out of your navigation. For example, the small groups at our church are called Gospel Communities. We didn’t want to use that as the text for the navigation because if someone comes to the site looking to get involved in a small group, they have to guess what a gospel community is since there would be no link for the more commonly-known term — small group. Could someone figure this out on their own? Probably, but forcing your users to guess is never a good usability decision.

The site is still a work in progress when it comes to content as you can see by the small groups page. They are working on a few more things to add. The important things are present and I think/hope well-placed. My most important rule for designing a church website is to make sure the worship service times and directions are prominent and clearly explained. After all, that’s why the majority of people visit a church’s website site.

Check out The Door Church’s Site

The header is from a picture taken by one of our ambassadors in 2010. I love the colors and it represents the overall feel of camp: Americans working with Zambian partners to minister to children. I had the idea to extend the picture infinitely by repeating a blank portion of the wall. It took quite a bit of Photoshop tweaking in order to make it not entirely obvious that it was the same thing over and over. It does still need a little bit of work as you can see under the F.

There are a ton of icons used throughout the application to highlight and break up the sections. The main reason is because people don’t read. The icons tend to draw people’s eyes to the text which explains the next section. Even with this, we have still had people run into problems that are plainly explained.

The application is pretty long so it’s split into four steps. There is a home page that you go back to after each step in order to see your progress. This page actually is the same page that you see after your application is approved, except it looks completely different. The page is a monster and takes quite a while just to re-acquaint myself with each year. The php document is 1106 lines according to BBEdit.

This is the the video you see on the final submission page. The application can take quite a while especially for a family of five or more. This is their reward…besides a week in Africa this summer working with orphans of course. See the application at camplife.familylegacy.com.

Without prompting Lucy started saying something that sounds like Aggie today. A good sign for opening day against SMU!