First off, kudos to the people who put this event together for understanding that people will bring laptops and they will be much happier conference goers if they have a place to charge them!
So Abe Lincoln use to joke about his height and the height of his wife during his campaign - he was really tall and she was really short. They would stand on the back of a train together when he was giving his speeches and when they left, he would end with "and that's the long and the short of it". Not so different from Meyer and Zeldman ;-)
Ok, on to the presentation:
- What do web designers need the most? Empathy. The ability to put yourself in another person's shoes.
- There are two competing wishes driving the website and the business. One part of the company is totally dedicated to giving away a free product. The other part of the company is dedicated to making money by selling the upgraded player. The users are the victims of their internal marketing war.
- Links don't have to be blue and underlined, but there does need to be consistency between what is clickable and what isn't. Real has trouble with this on their site.
- An alternative to Consumer Reports. All the good stuff is deep inside the website where no one will ever look. The irony of the site is that its dedicated to making your life better but its completely non-user friendly.
- They never bothered to figure out how to make the page sexy. They also failed to anticipate how users discover a website. Their website is very confusing to navigate for new users.
- Being a web designer is tough because there are very few in-house training programs and almost no educational programs. You have to be very motivated to keep learning.
- Good information is hard to find. The main source of information is from companies who make products.
- "Teaching Excel is not the same as teaching business." Learning software is not the same as learning web design. Generally educational programs teach you software and not strategy.
- Only half the people said that their education was relevant to working on the web.
- The more money you make, the less your education matters.
- The older you are, the more money you make (if you're 50, you didn't study web design in college)
- If you're a webmaster, your education is less relevant. If you're a graphic designer, your education is more relevant.
- The perception of what we do is ironic and disturbing.
- Over the past 30 years, the agent of change in the world has been the Internet and we do that stuff.
- Part of the problem is that there is no standardization of titles. They vary by organization and type of organization.
- Universities have a more traditional (old school) view of what we do than startups do. Webmasters vs. Creative directors. They do the exact same thing but one organization about tradition and one is progressive.
- You own your blog or your personal site.
- Even if you work on a site in house, you don't own it.
- Usually, there is no web division. Either IT or Marketing is in charged.
- Creative people are at work but are being beaten down. The result is an inferior product.
- Web designers don't get paid very well. It's not a get rich quick.
- Judges for awards are usually being who have achieved a certain level in their firm, but are not necessarily people who build the things they are judging.
- Competition awards certain kind of work and perpetuates certain kinds of work. The work is not necessarily about users.
We have to overcome the "guitar solo" approach to design - how much stuff can we fit into one design?
- It's about the character of the content, not of the designer.
- Use "empathetic web design" versus "user center web design"
Read posts about other day 1 presentations »
1 comment:
"You have to be very motivated to keep learning." - I completely agree with this. There is not one web class that I have seen that teaches web standards. It's been a struggle for me to keep learning without instruction.
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