Locations
I spent the first part of this week at An Event Apart, which is billed as “the design conference for people who make websites.” While I’m not a designer, I do make websites (like this one), and the speakers included a number of people I hugely admire, so I was thrilled to be able to go. After two days packed with presentations, great people, and good food, my head felt ready to burst with design, code, content, and interaction ideas. I came away feeling personally challenged to do better work—and with a few major takeaways for all of us who work to engage with customers online in one way or another:
- R-E-S-P-E-C-T: find out what it means to…well, everyone. Respect your colleagues, your users, your readers, and your clients. The strength of the presentations themselves came from these presenters’ obvious respect for each other and for us as their audience. But they also preached respect: Jeffrey Zeldman talked about the importance of recognizing when clients are a good fit (and how to part ways gracefully if they’re not), while Luke Wroblewski and Kristina Halvorson discussed the need to respect users’ time and attention by keeping content to-the-point.
- Engage on your customers’ terms. Luke Wroblewski pointed out that this increasingly means meeting them on their mobile phones, but Ethan Marcotte’s “Dao of Flexibility” presentation offered ways to get a great experience on the biggest screens as well as the smallest. MailChimp’s Aaron Walter talked about playful, humorous design, but also highlighted the need to make straightforward, serious communication available if that’s what customers need. And of course, nearly everyone talked about the need to be aware of what browsers and devices visitors are using and to make their experience positive.
- Be nice—but first get out of your customers’ way. Playful brand identities and emotionally appealing interfaces are great (and important!), but websites and applications have to stand on a solid foundation of usability and clarity. Nicole Sullivan’s suggestions for faster websites and Jared Spool’s emphasis on truly user-centric design underscored how important it is to keep in mind that “engagement” should never mean “entanglement.” (See the difference between this concept of ‘engagement’ and this one, which was quite successful).
I left impressed and inspired. These people care about the internet and its users in a way that should inspire all of us to engage genuinely and humanely online. What’s more, they provided direct ways to start doing just that—my to-do list grew with every presentation. In fact, I’d better get to work on that!