Future of Web Design Conference
November 10, 2008Tuesday, November 4th, I attended the Future of Web Design conference at the Roseland Ballroom in New York City. Registration was from 8am - 9am so naturally I wanted to get there first. I woke up at 5am to catch the 6:24 train into Penn Station. I arrived in the city at 7:22 and strolled down 8th Ave to 52nd Street. It was an awesome 1.3 mile walk. The weather was warmer than usual.
I found the ballroom and as I entered, security asked me if I was working or attending the event. I thought for a second, what if I said working. But, I was a good boy and said “attending”. They asked me to please wait outside until 8am… I had 10 minutes.
8am, doors open. I’m the second one in as I approach the registration tables. I pick up my awesome flare for the day which was adorned with my name, my developer status and the company I work for - D2 Creative. I now had an hour to kill before the conference started. I mingled with a few people and fingered through the pamphlet.
I walked around the venue to get acquainted with how I was going to be spending the next 9 hours there. 9am approached and I took my seat. The lights dimmed and Ryan Carson took the stage to give us a big, warm welcome.
The future of web app interface design
Ryan Singer (of 37signals) was up first and his presentation was mostly about how design makes its way to development. It was stuff I already had a good handle on since I’ve had experience in the business. One of his examples dealt with how back-end programmers (in my case .NET programmers) use controllers and plug them into my front-end code.
The Experience Layer: Using Flash, JavaScript, and other technologies to engage users
Dan Mall (from Happy Cog) had a nice lecture on how to use Flash to enhance your web design. There’s a fine line between too much Flash and just enough. It really depends on the project at hand. I liked how he broke down CSS, JavaScript and Flash. CSS is the style, JavaScript is the behavior and Flash is the experience.
AM break. My legs needed it from sitting down for so long in those chairs. I checked out the Microsoft Surface table that was on display. It’s really cool.
Lights dimming again.
Educating clients to say yes
Paul Boag (from Headscape Ltd) educated us on how to make clients say YES. Here’s an example. Many times a client will come to you with “I’d like the header of my site to look like this.” Even though you may be against it, you shouldn’t say “No, we can’t do that for you.” Instead, ask them what their intentions are for this change. Why do they want the logo to be on the left side now instead of the right? Instead of saying NO, engage them in more conversation about it so you can get a better understanding.
How to take advantage of jQuery and other JavaScript libraries for your design
Fusionary Media’s Karl Swedberg was up next with a lot of information on JavaScript libraries. In his top 5 were 3 libraries that I use the most: jQuery, prototype and mootools. Most of his presentation I already knew about.
Whatever happened to the Art in Design?
Mike Kus (from Carsonified) presented “Whatever happened to the Art in Design?” Even though I’m not a big designer, I still found it very interesting to see things from a designer’s standpoint. Mike basically talked about how web design should be seen as works of art. When you go to an art museum, you see these beautiful works of art hanging on the wall. We should be able to do the same for web designs. Print it out and hang it on a wall. Web designs ARE works of art.
Lunch break. I met up with my brother at Joe Allen’s on 46th for a burger.
Web Design Fundamentals: Learning from the past to better the future
Harvard University’s Patrick Haney was up next with a session on “Web Design Fundamentals: Learning from the past to better the future“. He started off with the on-going battle of ‘why is css better than tables’. A few years ago, people designed web pages with tables. They are absolute. They allow you to position things easily. However, tables are not good for accessibility reasons. Patrick showed us a screenshot of his current website with CSS loaded, and then without. Basically, you have to make sure that when styles are unloaded, your website can read like a book.
Charting Daily Data: Nicholas Felton and Daytum.com
This session surprised me. Why? I didn’t expect to be hearing from a guy who charted out and data mined everything he did in his life. He started with his report from 2006. These reports had statistics like how much tea he drank everyday, how much television he watched, what streets in NYC he walked. Tons and tons of stats. He then creates an annual report based on these facts. There is a website, Daytum.com, where you can sign up and make your own.
The future of community and crowd-sourced design
Derek Powazak (from Powazek Productions) had an interesting presentation. To sum it up as simple as possible, crowdsourcing is allowing your site visitors to do the work for you. A good example of this is wikipedia. However, when doing this you need to make sure you respect your users and not take advantage of them. Derek used Yahoo! as an example. Yahoo! put together a Wii network and used its Flickr user’s images tagged with Wii on the homepage. They did this without notifying the Flickr community (even though it states in the Flickr terms that they have every right to use images uploaded to the site). What did the people do? They started uploading random photos and tagged them with “wii” to prove a point. Even though Yahoo! had the right to post the photos, they should have notified their users out of respect.
PM break. I stretched out my legs and took a walk.
Finding Inspiration from your Environment
Nick La from ndesign-studio gave a presentation on where he gets his design inspiration from. He uses Illustrator and Photoshop. I’ve been following Nick’s work on his website webdesignerwall.com for months and I was excited to see he was speaking at this event. It’s amazing where he finds his inspiration… book stores, walking down the streets of Toronto (his home town)… anywhere. He takes photos of intricate patterns and then makes them his own.
The last session was a panel that I was very interested in attending.
Designers and developers, why can’t we all just get along?
Joe Stump (digg), Liz Danzico (bobulate), Chris Lea (Media Temple) and Ryan Sims (Virb) joined Daniel Burka (Digg & Pownce) to discuss the relationship between designers and developers, a subject that has often been a point of conflict. Both sides often stereotype their counterparts and create an adversarial environment.
There were 2 developers and 2 designers and for an hour they discussed working with their counterparts. To sum it all up, the developers said that in order to have a developer work on your design you have to tap their interest. If the developer doesn’t see it as interesting or useful, they won’t pour their heart into the work.
Joe Stump brought up a good point that I always thought about… developers should be brought into the design mix sooner. Designers need the developers point of view. Daniel Burka said that when his designs go to Joe Stump, he expects that 80% of the design will not be pushed because of limitations. That’s when the developer and designer has to sit down and discuss it further.
The panel came to an end around 5:45PM and I had to catch my train so I jetted out of there. It was an experience I’ll never forget and I was able to see web design from these professional’s point of view.