WebVisions 2007

It’s hard to beat a relatively cheap, local conference. Last year, I attended with the design team from Pop Art and was suprised at the A-List names they had speaking. This year, I went back, but it was a lot more hit-or-miss. Only a couple names a recognized on the roster, and none as big as last year. The workshop I attended was great, as were the keynotes, but the individual sessions were largely average quality, and there were a few real bad ones. Somewhat disappointing, but everyone has off days (or years, in this case). I’ll definitely be going back next year.

Improving Interface Design - Garrett Dimon of Geniant

Garrett’s workshop was the shining centerpiece of WebVisions07 for me. I really came out feeling like I had learned a lot, not to mention I had taken two full pages of notes. I’ll try to summarize it here, but it would be worth your time to go download the PDF of his slides and read the notes and follow the links to the example stories. Better yet, go see him speak (though it sounds like he’s taking a bit of time off from speaking to work on another project).

To begin with, Garrett quoted Steve Jobs and Jeff Veen to point out that design is not about decoration, it’s about communication and problem solving. As an example, he pointed out an OXO soap dispenser, which is weighted on the bottom so that it can be effectively used with one hand. He discussed the difficulty in getting coworkers and clients to recognize this simple distinction.

Next he spoke about the difficulties of simply identifying the problem you’re trying to solve. To illustrate this, he shared the story of Abraham Wald, a Hungarian mathematician who undertook a study with the British Air Ministry in WWII. He studied bullet holes in the planes that returned, produced a chart showing where most of the bullet holes were, and then showed it to the Ministry. Their suggestion was to put armor on those areas. Wald pointed out that they were missing the point - they should put the armor on the areas with fewer bullet holes, because the data base only based on the planes that came back - suggesting that even a single bullet hole in those empty areas on the chart could be fatal, while the places with the most bullet holes were capable of withstanding the damage. As Garrett summarized, if the question is wrong, the answer is irrelevant.

Next, he suggested that we ignore users - or rather, that we ignore what users say. Citing the cartoon about building a tree swing, he pointed out that what users say they do and what they really do are two different things. For example, most people surveyed say that they don’t like scrolling on web pages - but all the data we have shows that in practice, people don’t really mind it. He briefly touched on the idea that documentation for documentation’s sake is horrible, and that we should really only be writing documentation for things that need it or have quantifiable actions. The problem is that people write documentation like specs before doing user testing, so sometimes the documentation ends up detailing things that aren’t really needed, or are the wrong way to go about it.

Following all this, he dove into the idea of iterative design as a way to avoid most of these problems. Using iterative design encourages an approach where the non-essential features get cut, and the team can really focus on the basics and the few features that are really important. Plus, since we’re working digitally, it’s not like product design where iterations can be slow. We can iterate fast, fail fast, learn from our mistakes fast.

As an example of this fast iterative approach, he talked about a pottery class where one half of the class was told they would be graded on quality, and the other on quantity. The quality team quickly got bogged down in endless discussion of what made the perfect pot, while the quantity team just started cracking away - and naturally ended up with quality results by the end of the class because they had been learning from their mistakes the whole time the quality team was debating.

“The whole goal is to help users kick ass.”
– Kathy Sierra

The Secrets of Effective Communication - Monne Smith, relationship councilor

Frankly, this session was disappointing at best and outright offensive at worst. Turns out that Mrs. Smith is the mother of Brad Smith, the executive director of WebVisions. I came to this expecting the session to be focused on business communication, such as with clients and coworkers. Instead, I got the most basic 101-level therapy-talk. I learned that emotions are important, and that men are not as good as women at expressing emotions. The one worthwhile tidbit I took from this session was the statistic that only 25% of a message comes through in electronic form - 75% is nonverbal. Which explains why face-to-face meetings are less likely to result in the kind of silly miscommunication you can get from email and IM.

The Secret to Project Management for the Creative Agency - Daniel Shutzmith of NYC School of Visual Arts

Daniel really came at project management from an interesting perspective. He’s not a PMI, and he’s a trained web designer who ended up in project management almost by accident. His emphasis was that project management isn’t nearly as complicated as people try to make it. What it boils down to is making sure a project is completed within a defined scope, time, and cost. Just like the classic triangle, a project can be cheap, fast, or good - pick two. He encouraged having reviews and postmortems after a project to analyze what went well and what went poorly, and to keep a playbook of these things for future reference. He advised staying highly organized with records of everything, and that you should always underpromise and overdeliver.

That whole philosophy reminds me of the episode of Star Trek TNG where they rescue Scotty from the original series. Hanging out in the engine room, Scotty overhears Captain Picard ask Geordi for something, and Geordi tells him how long it will take. After the captain leaves, Scotty asks how long it will really take.

Scotty: “Starfleet captains are like children. They want everything right now and they want it their way. But the secret is to give them only what they need, not what they want.”
Geordi: “Yeah, well, I told the captain I’d have this analysis done in an hour.”
Scotty: “How long will it really take?”
Geordi: “An hour.”
Scotty: “You didn’t tell him now long it would really take, did you?”
Geordi: “Of course I did.”
Scotty: “Laddie, you got a lot to learn if you want people to think of you as a miracle worker!”

Creating Sexy Stylesheets - Jina Bolton of Apple

What should have been a great session was ruined for me by two things. First of all, while warning everyone not to over-comment their stylesheets, Jina picked on Dan Rubin’s CSS file, in particular, making fun of the fact that he listed his URL multiple times. What she didn’t realize is that all the comments at the top of his file are standard lines that are included for WordPress’ template system. He didn’t just randomly decide to put those in, they’re there for a reason, so he filled them out with logical values - even if that meant duplicating the URL. Worse than that, however, was that this was Jina’s first time speaking, and it showed. The slides were intelligent, and clearly put together with a lot of care, but she didn’t seem to give any thought to what she would say or how she would say it. She came dressed in ripped jeans and a tight t-shirt, spent a great deal of time fumbling with her computer, and was giggling like a schoolgirl and apologizing through the whole presentation. Now, I’m inclined to cut a person a lot of slack, especially for something as intimidating as your first time public speaking, but this was really incredibly bad. A great deal of what went wrong could have been avoided by having a simple dress rehearsal to some friends or coworkers before the real deal, which would have given her more experience dealing with her computer, and more confident in her own material.

I don’t mean to pick on Jina, because this a problem that is endemic in our industry. One of my coworkers, who is a very intelligent guy and really knows his stuff, can’t speak to save his life. He stammers and circles around his point, never quite managing to say what he is trying to say. Public speaking is a skill, and if you’re not prepared, your audience will have a hard time accepting your information. If Jina had been selling a product, I certainly wouldn’t have bought it. As was, I agreed with 90% of what she said, but I walked out feeling like it was a waste of my time.

Obviously, if it’s your first time speaking, you’re going to be nervous, and no one will fault you for that. But showing up unprepared, without having rehearsed or even dressed appropriately, just shows disrespect for your audience and comes off unprofessional.

Web Application Page Hierarchy - Luke Wroblewski of Yahoo

Unfortunately, this was right after lunch, and I kept falling asleep during this presentation, but I did grab this quote on how to draw attention to something.

“If you can’t make it big, make it bold. If you can’t make it bold, make it red. Golden rule of design.”
– Luke Wroblewski

Supporting Standards Through Process - Kimberly Blessing of PayPal

In order to successfully implement standards in an organization, there needs to be a cultural shift. One way to accomplish this is using her “Circle of Standards” method, where one person or team starts documenting standards, and then communicating and training those standards to the rest of the organization. Once people are trained and aware of the standards, they need to be made part of the project approval and review process. She points out that standards do not maintain themselves, someone needs to be put in charge of them, and that standards can’t be created or applied in a vacuum. You need a process to loop standards into project work.

“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”
– Mahatma Gandhi

Ask a Ninja Keynote - Kent Nichols and Douglas Sarine

Doug and Kent talked about how they got started in the online video space, and how they were inspired by Homestar Runner and Red vs Blue. The basic theme of their presentation was that if you want to be successful in your space, it helps to evaluate what the leaders in your field are doing right and wrong. In their case, they found that the combination of a frequent release schedule, multiple income streams, and a strong community-driving site were what they needed.

“There’s no shortage of boobs on the internet.”
– Doug from Ask a Ninja, in reference to FrenchMaidTV

“Basically, I just want to avoid ever having a real job again.”
– Kent from Ask a Ninja