“With a foot in the past and a foot in the future, you’re pissing on the present.”
That’s a funny line from Joshua Davis’ talk at the Future of Web Design conference last week and brought a lot of laughs. Yet it served as a great statement for the event. The future of web design is right now and not looking off into what might be. There are a lot of issues that we need to tackle in the here and now and let the future take care of itself. After all, if we don’t address these issues now, we will still be “here” ten years from now.
Aside from that, I did come away with some take-aways from the conference:
Mobile is here.
If you’re not thinking about mobile then you’re not paying attention. There’s a lot that will happen here in this space and understanding how people use the mobile web will be the key for making useful mobile sites. After all, it’s not about taking the desktop web experience to mobile but making a uniquely relevant mobile experience stand on its own.
Content is still king.
Whether it’s images, illustration or text, you should be working with the right content for the project, that includes when doing client comps even when there is no content. Having an idea of what the text is actually going to say helps guide the design process. Lorem ipsum can’t relate the meaning.
We have no name.
Something that Brian and I have talked about a lot lately is that there is no accurate description for what it is we do. Jeffery pondered this problem on stage while talking with Andy Clarke and Josh Williams. It’s nice to see that this is something that more people are thinking about. There is no clear solution yet but the more we tackle this the more we are able to get to an accurate label for who we are and what we do.
CSS3 is awesome, if a long ways off.
In one of the few truly future-oriented talks, Jina Bolton discussed CSS3 on stage, and showed just how wonderful it will be for us designers. Overheard in the audience: “2012 will be a great year, man.” Exactly.
Usable should be a dirty word.
Almost everything is usable no matter how great or poorly its design. Instead we need to look to how useful something is. Its usefulness is the key to how good something is.
We’re problem solvers.
At the end of the day we are problem solvers. We can talk till we are blue in the face about the latest technique but if we can’t solve the problem it won’t matter. Focus on the problem and let the solution guide your design. After all if it’s not fulfilling the users need it won’t matter how pretty you made it.
More on FOWD coming later this week
For more on FOWD, stay tuned, Keith will be posting some thoughts from he and Ryan Sims’ session as well as some links, and examples related to the work they did for the IMDb “project”.
“At the end of the day we are problem solvers. We can talk till we are blue in the face about the latest technique but if we can�t solve the problem it won�t matter.”
Amen! I also think it is important to find the optimal solution. There are many cases where people find a ‘solution’, but in reality it only causes more problems in other areas. It is important to recognize this and plan accordingly.
It was unfortunate that I had to miss this event, but from reading the re-caps it seems like it was an excellent conference.
I am intrigued by the “We have no name” bit. Are you moving away from Design and Development for Web + Mobile and User Experience labels?
If yes, then I too am struggling with the same situation trying to define my business as it grows and becomes more widely known.
Many of us work in multiple channels (web, mobile, internet and more) so a one-sentence service description is very hard to write.