A manifesto – the suggestion that anyone can summarise anything accurately and meaningfully in ten bullet points – has something rather fanatical about it. My knee-jerk reaction to anything with the word “Manifesto” in its title is a skeptical snort. But then, when reading through the succinct, simple, compromise-free list, I tend to drift off into a kind of “if only life were so simple” dream-state, and can’t help imagining living & working in strict adherence to the list.
That of course lasts a few minutes before I return to the regularly scheduled program of earning money however possible and enjoying life as it comes.
Matt Jones, one of the über-smart Matts behind my favourite travel site Dopplr, wrote a web design manifesto back in 2001, and called it WebDOGME 01. His tongue was obviously very firmly in his cheek, but it’s certainly a big serving of food for thought, even almost eight years later.
The designer must code.
If the designer cannot code the design, then he is not the designer.
The code must be produced in a text-editor, not through the distorting filter of a WYSIWYG editor.
What you get is what you type.
The browser must not be violated.
The use of Frames, Flash, dhtml, pop-ups, or any other device in a fashion that would remove the browser back-button’s raison d’etre must not be used.
Time is not yours to control.
It is the user’s to control.
The use of any time-based media should be subservient to the asynchronous nature of the user’s perception of the web.
Presentation is not yours to control.
It is the user’s to control. It is only yours to influence. If design is fundamental to the experience you are creating, then it must be a system, malleable and adaptable to the user’s preferences. Let your design be a conversation.
Your experience must be part of the web, not just a website.
Do not trap people with devices to keep them on your site, and use URLs that will be permanent, clear and distributable.
Never use a graphic when text will do.
Don’t destroy meaning for presentation’s sake.
Temporal and geographical alienation are forbidden.
People will experience what you have created at their leisure and expect it to be relevant, rather than when it is relevant to you. See also point 4. The web is a global medium – while staying true to your content, do not be parochial in your language, symbolism or other conveyance of meaning.
The experience should have meaning.
Content (or functionality) may be self-referential or autobiographical, but the designer must remember they are in conversation with a visitor. Silence from that visitor could be reverence for a monologue, but more likely indifference to a self-obsessed bore. This applies as much to companies and brands, as individuals.
The designer must not be credited.
Pretty forward thinking for 2001, and I agree with almost all of it, although I must admit it took me quite a bit longer to come to these conclusions. And considering how sensible and right this list seems to me, it’s disheartening to think how few of these points most projects in my past have fulfilled. That’s something to aim for in the new year.
So I got back from dConstruct and a nice weekend in London yesterday afternoon. And since Friday evening I’ve been trying to think of a suave way to wriggle out of my promise. There are no new interviews, and damn me if I didn’t come up with anything suave. Although the lectures at dConstruct were as interesting as I’d hoped, the socialising was a bit limited and I just couldn’t bring myself to thrust a camera in anyone’s face without chatting at least 5 minutes beforehand, and there just wasn’t time for much more than that. So if you’ve been waiting to watch some dConstruct attendees, I hope you’ll be satisfied with a summary of the proceedings instead.
“The Urban Web”
I wasn’t quite sure if I should feel totally uncool for having never heard of Steven Johnson, but he’s written a number of books which sound interesting, and judging by his polished, relaxed style, he’s a conference circuit regular. His latest book, “The Ghost Map”, is the story of the London cholera outbreak of 1854, and was the subject of his talk. John Snow, with the help of local vicar Henry Whitehead, proved that cholera was spread through contaminated drinking water with a mix of detective work and innovative mapping. His map is worth a look: the black bars represent deaths, and reveal the pump on Broad Street as a likely suspect. But Johnson placed more emphasis on the social network of which vicar Whitehead was a super-node, enabling the investigation to go deeper and faster than Snow could have ever achieved alone. A gripping story full of info design geekery that put “The Ghost Map” on my wish list.
This led to a demo of Johnson’s new project, outside.in, which gathers regional info from blogs in your city and displays them in a format reminiscent of newspaper sites. He said Brooklyn, where he lives, is the “bloggiest neighbourhood” in America, so I can imagine the attraction for Brooklynites. The “radar” function alerts you via email to news closer to home, like the truck that burst into flames near Johnson’s house while he was on holidays. As much as I liked the idea of outside.in, radar had the feel of a “solution without a problem”, as a friend said. And as someone living outside the U.S. I once again felt terribly left out. Not only do very few Hamburgers (yes yes, Hamburg residents really are called that) or Sydneysiders (yep) I know of blog about their city, but outside.in doesn’t work outside the U.S. One day maybe.
“Playing the Web”
The day’s prize for most energetic talk definitely goes to Aleks Krotoski. She’s an academic, avid gamer and writer at the Guardian, and gave her talk with much running back and forth, arm waving and the occasional dance step or two, which all sounds maybe a little spastic, but I’m not doing her justice. It was utterly charming. She wondered why the games industry and web industry share so little. Games-makers understand stickiness so well, and we webby folk are so deep into community and openness, isn’t it obvious that we could and should learn from one another? She asked how many games-makers were in the crowd, and the number of hands—ten, tops—proved her point.
After establishing that gamers and webbers don’t actually share, she went through many things we can learn from one another. For lack of detailed notes, I’ll summarise: game people understand play, rich world creation and guidance, web folk get community and have a more fundamental, analytic understanding of interfaces. Far too short a description for a talk so full of energy and exciting ideas. With any luck her presentation will appear on her Slideshare page soon. In the break Kars Alfrink, who knows the games scene far better than I, confirmed Aleks’ concern, said that it’s been coming up on both sides of the fence alot lately, and said she illustrated and analysed it better than he’d ever heard before.
Favourite (inexact) quote: “The term ‘experience economy’ is a phenomenal way to make fun boring.”
Question: what games conferences would you recommend?
“Leveraging Cognitive Bias in Social Design”
For my dollar, Joshua Porter gave the most hands-on useful talk of the day. He took the psychological research evident in his book “Designing for the Social Web” further, and dove into cognitive bias and how we can use it to improve our interfaces.
We all use mental short-cuts, or heuristics, to make decisions when we don’t have enough info. Keeping some typical heuristics in mind can help us make interface paths clearer and motivate users. Some examples:
The ‘bandwagon effect’: we tend to follow others, so showing activity and lots of users helps convince new users to sign up.
The charmingly named ‘Lake Wobegon effect’: everyone tends to think that they’re above average (I’m sure Joshua wasn’t trying to say that I’m not).
Loss aversion: “losses loom larger than gains.” He demonstrated this by asking who’d go for a 50/50 chance to lose/gain £100 pounds. Even when raised to lose £100/gain £300 no more than half of the audience raised their hands.
There was quite a lot more meat in the talk, and plenty of web examples of cognitive biases in use—I’m seriously hoping Joshua’s planning on slidesharing his presentation soon, though it sounded like the start of another book, so maybe he’s playing this stuff closer to the chest. And I guess it had to come: after the talk someone asked “isn’t all of this evil?” Of course it’s good to think about the ethical consequences of what we’re doing, but is it evil to make a button big and red because we know that our brains register larger, brightly coloured objects before others?
On a personal note, I’d gone all fanboi and brought a copy of Joshua’s book with me to Brighton for a signing, but never had a chance to corner him. And then, purely by coincidence, I ran into him at the Tate Modern in London on Sunday. Short chat, due to my bad mood and him sitting down to eat, but he seemed a friendly guy. Didn’t have the book with me though, so no autograph.
“Designing for interaction”
When Daniel Burka, creative director of digg, and co-founder of Pownce, took the stage I was sinking into a concentration low. But what I took away was a list of challenges to designing systems to help huge numbers of people do similar things together.
Getting signups
Encouraging positive behaviours
Allowing flexible participation
His suggestions for solutions to these challenges were of course taken from his learnings at digg and Pownce, such as streamlined registration, avoid king of the hill contests (lesson hard learned from digg) and my favourite, “pave the cow paths”, i.e. instead of forcing users through pre-defined paths, watch where they naturally go and pave the groove they wear in your site.
“Social Network Portability”
My low led to nodding, which has nothing to do with Tantek Çelik’s talk, and plenty to do with the comfortable, warm darkness of the auditorium and the pre party thrown by the chi.mps the night before. This was the only real tech talk of the day, full of Microformats and code snippets. As far as the ideas go, it all sounded pretty familiar, so no “aha!” moments. In my groggy state the code would’ve been like a rubber mallet to the back of the head, so I ducked out for a coffee. Sorry Tantek, no hard feelings.
“Designing for the Coral Reef”
Lunch! I’m awake again! The votes are in, and the Matts Jones & Biddulph from dopplr get best talk of the conference. As the only speakers to take advantage of the on-stage couch (and if I’m not mistaken, Matt Jones presented in bright blue and white striped socks) they certainly get the “most relaxed” trophy.
The talk itself was a rambling journey through dopplr being a social physics engine (by way of a model of space/time), coral reefs as infrastructure and animal, slippy maps, streaming info in and avoiding “please wait” states, respecting privacy, data portability, building sites no one needs to visit, and plenty more. If it sounds chaotic, well, it was more a thoroughly entertaining information performance than a typical conference talk. Y’had to be there I guess.
The high point of the whole talk was the idea of a “delighter”, an unnecessary feature created purely to delight the user. Dopplr’s best example of a delighter is the personal velocity display. My personal velocity, 5.59 km/h, is about the same as a duck apparently.
And a few announcements: you can add trips by tweeting @dopplr, there are now dopplr groups, with more functionality coming soon, and when you share a specific trip, you’ll soon be able to generate a QR code for it. Unfortunately their hoped for live demo—iPhoners should shoot the QR code on the screen and see a trip—failed due to uncooperative light conditions.
Best quote (although they packed in many worth remembering): “Google Maps is like looking at a blue whale through a letter box.”
Best gimmick: the dopplr colours, which if you haven’t noticed yet change in the logo and the favicon as you enter trips. And the delighter of the conf were the city stickers the Matts handed out at the post-party, which were traded like baseball cards by giddy geeks all night. And as of five minutes ago, you can generate your own city stickers with the dopplr/moo mash-up mooplr!
“The System Of The World”
I’d heard from many what a good presenter Jeremy Keith is, so I was looking forward to this. Since he describes himself as “stuck-up”, I guess I don’t have to fear insulting him: after 10 minutes I thought nothing of his talk other than “what a load of pretentious über-nerdery”. After the Matts, it was like dropping from 5th gear in a sunny-day convertible into 1st gear and drizzle. He read from a verbose academic style paper (admittedly accompanied by a lovely slideshow) and jumped from quoted pop-psych book to dropped name at a dizzying pace, and I waited patiently for it to make some sort of sense.
But, after asking myself at least ten times, “what the hell’s his point?” Jeremy started to get a laugh or two. His text and style lightened up a little. He said more, and quoted less. And I realised he’d been building a complex (and perhaps unnecessarily baroque) foundation for a point that was indeed pretty impressive and inspiring. What was it? Don’t ask me to even attempt to repeat it—just go read his talk (bring some time with you) or enjoy the version with the pretty pictures, or wait ‘til the podcast is online.
First and foremost thanks as I write this goes to Alastair Campbell who took insanely detailed notes and propped up my mushy memory. And other than that the Clearlefties and others who organised dConstruct, the excellent speakers and the chi.mps and backstage.bbc folks who threw the pre and post parties respectively. If I can afford to get over the pond (two ponds, actually) next year, I’ll see you in Brighton.
Just before Stowe Boyd asked me to blog on /messagelast week, he sent me this tweet:
hey bro. Nice Tumblr template. I am interested in a reworking of my /Message typepad stuff. Ideas? Costs?
Stowe and I met, very briefly, last year at Reboot. I was impressed by his talk and we exchanged a few words. I doubt he even remembered me. So as two perfect strangers, we connected and sealed the deal with a few tweets. The briefing came in an email. Questions were asked and answered in a free-flowing mix of chat, email and tweets. He was in the U.S. at the time, and I’m in Hamburg Germany.
Since I knew we’d both be at reboot this year, I set myself that as a deadline for the first screens. I’m happy to say that we got to know each other much better, and he liked the design.
As a soon-to-be-freelance designer who’ll be living on the other side of the world as of October, this was perhaps the best possible test of a way of working I hope to practice in the future, and what for the increasing numbers of freelance knowledge workers (is there a term for us that wanks less?) will be the daily grind. Here are my thoughts and what I’ve learned so far:
It works. I honestly wasn’t sure it would. I’m sure it varies from client to client, and Stowe and I are both pretty open, flexible, and used to digital communication, but I don’t see why it can’t work with many other clients too.
Tele-working can improve the process. I’m used to clients that can’t talk before 2 p.m. the day after tomorrow, which wastes a lot of time. Despite the time difference, Stowe and I answered each other’s queries within six hours. At no point did I have to stop working and wait for anything.
Flow beats meetings hands down. Because we were constantly in contact, we didn’t overload each other with masses of information all at once, and didn’t make any decisions which couldn’t be discussed an hour or two later if needed. In a meeting once a month, the pressure to decide is high, and the cost of changing decisions is higher.
Online reputation matters. Stowe’s a bit of a rock-star in the online world, and I’m relatively unknown. He liked my own site’s design and how I write, and asked me to blog and design for him based only on that.
Trust is essential. Stowe didn’t have much to lose by asking me, but I could’ve wasted a lot of time if he turned out to be a jerk. I trusted him due to his reputation, and my trust was well-placed. Face to face client relationships can work (badly) with a lack of trust, online it becomes essential.
Face-time is important. Yeah, we’re both hyperconnected and can do almost everything online, but after reboot Stowe and I know one another better, have some shared meatspace memories, and trust each other more, which can only improve the online relationship.
So what’s come of it? Well, the design’s still in the fine-tuning phase, but the basics are there. Stowe wanted a simple, minimal design which would accomodate the group of bloggers he’s gathering around /message. At the moment it’s looking like this. Keep in mind it’s only an image, you can’t click anything and it only scrolls so far. What do you think?
And do you have any experience working with clients in far away lands? How’d it go?
Who could possibly know more than Disney about guiding, exciting and entertaining people? Interface designers can learn a lot from “Mickey’s 10 Commandments”, developed by Walt Disney Imagineering President, Marty Sklar. (commandments in bold, my comments beneath)
Know your audience The first link in the chain. Be aware of who your users are, what they like & dislike.
Wear your guest’s shoes Put yourself in your user’s shoes, visit what you make regularly and try and see what it’s like for your visitors. Watch them and what they do.
Organize the flow of people and ideas Know where you want to lead people and offer clear pathways to help them find the goals.
Create a “Weenie” Like a hotdog on a stick, draw people on by offering clear visual attractions.
Communicate with visual literacy Use the basics of form, colour, typography, etc. to get your message across clearly.
Avoid overload Don’t confuse users by pulling them in too many directions at once.
Tell one story at a time Think in stories, and make sure you’re only telling one at a time. A well-told story has far more impact than an info-dump.
Avoid contradiction Be consistent in each experience you design, create a little world which is believable.
An ounce of treatment, a tonne of treat Sometimes users will have to work their way through the experience. Offer them a treat at the end, a reward which makes the work worth it and leaves them feeling good about it.
Maintain it Peeling paint gives a feeling of dysfunction. Spend time on upkeep: fix broken links, update content, remove or update outdated info.
Listening to Marty Sklar explain these made me think that there’s one commandment missing. When you hear his voice, it’s clear that he likes the people who visit Disney parks—“guests” in Disney-speak—and really wants to give them an enjoyable visit. Sometimes we interface designers develop an arrogant attitude, and look down on users who are too stupid to understand our genius. “The button’s right there you fool!” We need to remember that we’re trying to help people navigate through complicated functions and information. I’d add “Learn to like your users” between commandment 1 and 2.
The most enthusiastic, positive, funny web-guy I know was interviewed at RailsConf about the being a designer who can write code, and “touching the magic wand”, which isn’t nearly as pornographic as it sounds. Have a listen.
And this is me showing off my new Flip camcorder to Ryan, and his silly little dance, complete with my belly chuckle wobbles.
Discouraging Design Decay
If you’ve ever designed a site which someone else will be maintaining, you know design decay: the little tasteless changes that slowly but surely turn your masterpiece into a piece of trash. Jina Bolton’s written a good guide to laying down the law with a style guide, and pushing back the forces of entropy as long as possible.
My two cents: Jina’s right in everything, except the choice she offers at the end: print or HTML. Don’t make the mistake of creating a printed or PDF styleguide. If you’re working on a project that’s really big enough to need a detailed styleguide, then the odds are that your guide will land in 20 different pairs of hands—various client departments, various content providers, and different agencies working for your client. I’ve seen this happen more than once. By the time they all have a copy, you’ll have changed it, and the annoying distribution cycle begins again. Make your styleguide in HTML, so there’s only one copy, and changes are instantly visible to all. If someone insists on hanging it on their wall, they can print it themselves. For extra credit: make your styleguide a living example of the rules it explains.
Skip the Shop
This just popped up in my reader: “Why We Skip Photoshop” from the 37signals blog, where Jason lays out 7 good reasons to skip Photoshop and jump right into HTML & CSS. I’ve been having quite a few talks with people in my company about this lately, so it’s pretty timely for me.
There’s already a pretty lively conversation going on over there, and I ‘m hoping someone from 37 answers Jeff Croft’s questions, especially:
Is it possible that your no-Photoshop workflow has actually influenced your design style?
I think that’s a big “yes”, but either way, even though I’m a glorified Photoshop-jockey, I’m eager to try skip the Photoshop phase in a project and see what happens. Update: Jeff’s written his own response over at the Blue Flavour blog.
