One Hermit’s Review of Web Directions North

I think the last industry conference I went to was SIGGRAPH in 1997. It was about the same time that I was learning the magic of <tables> and 1-pixel gifs. So I’ve been to a conference or two in the distant past, but in recent years I’ve hermited myself away in my own little corner of the internet and done my own thing fairly successfully. When I read that Web Directions North was coming to my hometown of Vancouver I was excited but also trepidacious. None of my local web friends were going and I’m not active in the online design community so I’d basically be flying solo. Some of the listed session topics interested me, but I learn by doing… I wasn’t sure how much I would absorb by sitting in an audience being spoken to. Would I get my $1200 worth?

Now that the conference is over and I’ve had a day to reflect, did I get my money’s worth? A big definitive maybe. I’m still not sure. I left the conference feeling inspired and like I’m ready for a new phase in my design life (that is the good part), but I feel slighted that the session I was most anticipating was cancelled without much explanation (that was the worst). More on that later as I give a brief rundown of each day’s activities:

Tuesday, All Day Workshop with Kelly Goto, The Iterative App

Kelly Goto was the most elegant speaker at the entire conference. She handled the class of 50 with ease moving smoothly from one topic to the next with the overall subject being agile and iterative design processes (agile is measured in weeks, iterative is measured in months). Kelly outlined historical models, like the typical linear waterfall methodology and then compared and contrasted with newer models, like extreme programming and what most developers term as “agile” in the 2.0 slang. We broke into groups of 5 or 6 and ran through a few sample exercises with personal projects to further embed what we learned. Our group produced paper prototypes for “MyTrailMaps” and then guided a few sample customers through usability testing of our lo-fi mockups. This class was a nice refresher for me as I haven’t been involved in any semi-formal or formal UI testing since Amazon. I left with a determination to streamline my work process with clients as well as upgrade my experience testing from the typical informal environment.

The single biggest idea I took from Kelly was that web apps don’t have to be addictive to be sticky and garner high-traffic. They can also simply be ritualistic. Inserting your app into someone’s daily life, every day as a ritual, is almost as good as having them addicted. For example, my wife is addicted to her gossip blog but checking the bank’s web site in the morning is a ritual. She doesn’t love doing it (addiction), she does it out of habit (ritual). So you don’t have to be addictive to be successful.

Wednesday Sessions

The opening talk with Molly E. Holzschlag was fun and entertaining as people in the audience confessed their “crimes against web standards.” My favorite was from one gentleman who had discovered, by unfortunate design, that 10 was the maximum number of nested tables that Netscape could handle. I know I’ve been at least 6 or 7 deep and I think most other designers in the audience over the age of 25 could relate.

The biggest disappointment of the conference was announced immediately following the keynote. The ghostly Douglas Bowman, who hadn’t appeared to speak in public in years, was pronounced still Missing In Action. The Lead Designer for Google was going to give a talk on designing for scalability — exactly my interest — and nary a word was said why it was cancelled. Here is a quote from the organizers in the weeks leading up to the event:

I’m particularly pleased that we have lured Douglas out of his self imposed retirement from speaking. In fact, the other organizers thought we had zero chance of getting him to speak – but through my charm, and threat to release previously unseen photos of Douglas snowboarding in New Zealand, he relented.

So what happened? Did he find a way out of your blackmail? Was he held up at the border? Eaten by a moose? What?

As a last-minute substitution, Tantek Çelik stepped into the slot to give a spiel about microformats. I feared boredom, but Tantek is engaging and microformats were more interesting than I first suspected. On the surface they are a nice way to standardize some of your CSS labels. Underneath, there is an engine of functionality that adds another layer of niceties for browsers and site developers alike. While Tantek focused mainly on the blogging and community aspects of microformats, the e-commerce possibilities kept percolating in my head. I still have to investigate whether shopping carts are getting microformatted yet, but I’d bet they are. As someone who runs price comparison engines, I’m dreaming of the day when all osC, Zen, and Miva carts are microformatted out-of-the-box and I can pull items and prices effortlessly from any store on the web.

Cameron Moll, who shared the time with Tantek, gave a fascinating look into his world as a designer. He ranged on topics from product design to the mobile experience yet still gave a cohesive presentation. The personal work he showed was beautiful and I enjoyed his observations on how some designers love to fix a UI that isn’t broken.

In the afternoon session Andy Clarke teamed up with Aaron Gustafson to tackle the cutting edge of CSS. Their presentation gave me a jolting wake up call that I was still living and coding in the year 2000. When I left my last company to go on my own full time, my growth as a designer stopped in its tracks. Since I’ve taken on the hats of developer as well as SEO, my design skills have stagnated. When Andy pointed out that replacing tables with divs and then nesting them 8 deep is no more productive or organized than an old-school table layout, I knew I had to learn more. I bought his book, Transcending CSS, right after the session and I’ve nearly devoured the book in two sittings. Andy’s simple content-out approach of markup made instant sense to me but I’ve still yet to see if I can take one of my Photoshop mockups into this new style of code faster or with less pain than my traditional table/div translation.

Joe Clark gave the closing keynote but I had to get back to the office with a client “emergency.”

Thursday Sessions

The opening keynote for Thursday starred Kelly Goto. She came prepared as she focused mostly on mobile and designing for lifestyle rather than rehashing the Tuesday workshop. Her point, also espoused by Cameron Moll and others throughout the week, was that mobile IS coming. No matter how often it has been said in the past, the future of the mobile internet is coming soon because mobile devices are now part of our lifestyle. Designing sites from the ground up with open standards makes the transition easier.

I chose “Web Apps” with Paul Hammond and George Oates, of Yahoo! and Flickr respectively, as my first seminar of the day. Both speakers were interesting and gave an inside look at the development and design processes at a true internet giant. I’ve worked on large teams before and it is easy to miss that intense work cycle and huge release that you get with a major launch. Paul gave me a nudge towards integrating a template language and I think I will probably give it a shot with the next project rather than using PHP to output. I also enjoyed his trifle analogy of the layers between design and development. George is responsible for major parts of the Flickr interface, one that I’ve often admired, so seeing some of the comps and iterations was insightful.

Thursday afternoon, the last session of the conference, unfortunately did not go off with a BANG. The session with Dave Shea and Veerle Pieters was the least polished and was, admittedly, hastily put together between timezones. The first part was fluff and photos relating to offices and work environments. While this might be fine if you have all day, we clearly missed some of the more valuable information they had at the end of the talk because too much time was spent at the beginning. This was disappointing because learning business techniques from other independent contractors is a rare treat and not something often discussed. Once Dave and Veerle got into a groove, things progressed and I did glean some good information on their proposal and contract methods. They both had different approaches and they illustrated that with some role playing of a client-designer interaction. It was amusing but low-level. Since Dave seemed to have the more refined approach when dealing with a client I would’ve rather seen him as the mock-designer instead of the mock-client.

I had to take care of more of my own client problems so I said farewell to Web Directions North after the afternoon with Dave and Veerle. It was a fond farewell as I did enjoy myself and I certainly expanded my horizons. I came away with a new approach to markup so that must’ve been worth the price of admission. I’d like to say thanks to the event organizers; besides the Bowman Incident, everything seemed smooth on the surface. The location was excellent and as a Vancouverite, let me welcome you back for WDN08. Initially I debated on whether I would attend another — the price wasn’t pocket change — but waking up to the world of 2007 standards seemed like walking out of my self-imposed design cave that I’ve been successfully holed up in for years.

ps. Yes, I am available for speaking engagements.

Technorati Tags: wd07, wdn07, webdirections, webdirectionsnorth

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