The Adventures of Cindy Li

Refresh 2006 Conference: Paul Boag on Pragmatic Web Design

November 16 , 2006

Keynote speaker: Paul Boag

Pragmatic Web Design: Paul Boag

Deciding where to draw the line. Whenever I come to conferences the keynote is the most boring bit.
Draw everything together and it is a bit wishy washy and not get into specifics.
Look at application you never learn new things.
What i want to do.. how does it translate into the whole world.
Web 2.0 stuff.. how do you apply it to real world?
to real projects what do you leave out?
I’m going to talk about things that are intentionally controversial.

I feel a bit of a fraud being here..

Paul who?
I haven’t written a book
Don’t work for Google, Apple or Yahoo
Never developed a CSS hack
Don’t run a web 2.0 company
Haven’t worked on a world famous site
I do have a weekly podcast on websites
I just build websites
(like you)

I have to make the same decisions you make on a daily basis.
Briefs, all the different criteria that you have to balance.
I’m a web designer
And it’s gotten a lot more complicated
Web design used to be simple
back in 1994 first website
It was so much easier.
One browser to work with and you had to make complicated decisions..
white or gray background?
Do I align my text light, center?
It was fun.. I got paid for doing it. It was ridiculously easy
Then it got complicated.
We’ve been expected to adapt at an amazing rate.
Then tables came in…
Then multiple browsers
Then server side applications
Then that annoying man.. talked about usability ;)
Then ranked on search engines
Then portals
Then stagnated for a while and now we see things begin to build momentum again.
XML, CSS, DOM scripting, semantic, mobile web.
So difficult to strike the balance in all of this
To try and simply things a little bit and see where are at

5 areas

Accessibility, Design, Technology, Usability, Visibility
The 5 pillars to support a building.
A constant battle we go through for basic needs.
Elements of web design and clash with each other
Not only are there decisions of technology and techniques to make indiv decisions
Usability or not?
Accessibility or not?
there are shades of gray… levels of ?
In the process of dev websites
Conferences make it worse!
You come to this for things that are profound.
Another thing I have to look at and fit into my process
Overwhelming

Client briefs are often just wish lists

A Santa wish list…
Leave the client to educate them and don’t rely on the client to solve the problem
Where do you stop?
How do you make the decision?
Do you put everything in it?
When to stop and when to keep going?

Influencing factors

What to implement?
Personal:
Stuff that excites us, what we want
User centric designers, put the user first at the heart of everything we do
How that works out in practice
Influencing factors:
the “business”

Personal motivations:

personal “ethics” and the cool factor
It’s good to experiment
Mentos/coke combine… explosive :)
Its not a bad thing that kind of experimentation is where we innovate where we move things forward. Why the industry is inspiring.
It’s how we innovate and move forward

A bad technology fit…

Crowbar in it
No one has worked out commercial application.
We find a piece of technology and fit it in
IT’s not necessary for technology in every circumstance

Evangelist or Fanatic?

It’s interesting that we talk about accessibility evangelists, ruby on rails evangelists
It’s a religious
We get passionate about
Why doesn’t every adopt web standards and we get angry.
We are very bad at this.
How far do you go in your obsession over certain technology and certain techniques?

User needs/Personal motivation

If the personal motivation says everything you have to build has to be web standards. There is a danger.. toward ...
try and justify that user benefit and we use the user benefits to use the technology because we like it. Make sure it benefits users needs.

Get to know your users
That is a major user factor
What motivates them and what lip service…
how much can you try and get into their user?

Personas:

write up a description of a user
a lot of detail about them
get to know this person
touch point to keep going back to if you can always go back to that…
how would “Anakin” respond to that
How much do you take the time step by step?
Personas are very useful if what pretentious
One fundamental mistake that every person makes
user-centric design
“know user’s technical skills” we always over estimate
So fundamental that kind of knowledge should have a fundamental influence
Let’s say you want ajax.. shopping cart drag and drop that is intuitive. Sounds cool but people get into ruts. They know ultimately it will work. They are so used to it because it is familiar. There is a balance. We have to implement new technology but users do not use it the same way we do. They perceive it as the enemy.
They hate floating to see stuff. It’s cause of our passion we are on the opposite spectrum and it needs to influence the user.

Test before its too late to turns.

We need to be testing up front. It’s more complicated before.
With applications its hard to test that
Testing is pushed back we are committed to that approach
User centric is important but when we should always bow down in all circumstances. I don’t believe the users needs are paramount.

I believe that user-centric design is only part of your objectives.

Business objective > user needs> personal motivation
They can make the purchase and help the objectives and forget the user needs.
We have to be careful we keep the relationship right. The user needs are important.
Remember the hierarchy.
I’m a standards evangelist I work on a higher plane. How much time?
Business objectives should trombone the tester..

Business: corporate, public academic, charity
You need to know that context

Clients don’t know what’s good for them.
We like to treat them like a small child and that is fundamentally wrong
I think we do that as an industry and some of us are good at hiding them.
The client doesn’t get it.

A different way of seeing things

Just because the client sees things in a different way.. doesn’t mean its wrong
We need to be able to talk in a way they understand
The language of business/return on investment

We don’t explain in a way that the client grasps, it is our failing not theirs.
We need to start thinking the way they think.
Ultimately that is what this is about. They don’t hire us to make pretty sites.
How does this benefit the business?
The key to talking the language of business is return on investment
ROI(return on investment):More than money
So an increase the users on the msg they want to communicate
Raise awareness on return of the investment
Spreading the word on a particular investment
We talk about standards to having ROI
ROI: Short and long term
If you talk to them about benefits on maintenance costs
if they want a short term win then that long term argument isn’t going to win.
We’re perfectionists.. sometimes dev time is longer.
Biz wants a quick win… the site has to be up… if there is no site then
Just because it is a botched solution
This should be influencing your techniques

Maximizing return:
Car expensive
Coffee not expensive
Microformats

Such a low cost of implementation for the minimal amount of work to do
Kind of needs to use the context.

Keep it simple stupid!

Not every problem needs a technical solution
Guys on segway with helmets
These people struggle to use the web
We can insure the right things are being used..

We need to stop making things over complicated
Wherever possible..
The levels make it harder to manage

Stopping scope creep

(guy put on 150 tshirts.. ) can’t move
You need a reference point up front
Success criteria: layout together the success client
How is it going to be measured?
Every technique needs to be measured.
That success technique criteria is measurable and specific
But it needs to be realistic (clients get kind of crazy sometimes)
We want to see 200% increase after the website is designed and launched
Campaign marketing.. and whatever else.

Web design principles:

bruce lawson…
it is quite an interesting concept
Success criteria how to measure a websites success.
Accessibility should be our primary goal
What defines the site?
Look at the constitution.
Planning up front is worth doing.
Those principles are good up front.
It’s not for your consumption but for clients consumption too.
Hey wouldn’t it be cool if this flying thing?
You agreed up front no stupid shit..
Esp if you work on big projects and a lot of people are in the decision process
Clients will understand that design is second to function.
The user is paramount..
whatever principles you go with they can grasp with. It will help them understand the thought process.
Need to make sure that this is not technical.
The client doesn’t understand this.

Conclusions:

watch your conclusion?
user centric design only takes you so far?
always put business needs first
consider return on investment
know your success criteria in advance
outline your approach as a set of principles
and finally…
good practice doesn’t always equal good business