I had a great time today at Future of Web Design. There were a bunch of great speakers, great conversation, and great visuals. I was very pleased with the content presented and will surely take more than a few things away and use these gems with my work. Now i’d like to draw conclusions. I’m not going to review each individual speaker’s content, but instead I’d like to just outline the themes, concepts, and quotes which stuck out to me*.
From Dan Cederholm’s talk on Progressive Enhancement with CSS3:
- None of it matters if it’s not there. – Make stuff beautiful for Safari and FF users, if people in IE can’t see it, it doesn’t matter.
- Also from Dan’s talk I think i’ve come to the conclusion that transforms in CSS3 are amazing, if used in moderation.
From Daniel Burka’s talk on Feedback:
- Feedback isn’t always easy to get.
- Read between the lines, users who complain don’t usually want a solution but are simply helping you to identify a possible problem.
- Negative feedback = Passion!
From Mike Kus’ 3-D Thinking Talk:
- Design happens at any time.
- Ban boring trends.
- “Progress and innovation in design requires exploration”.
From Elliot Jay Stocks’ Designing for Modern Web:
- Visually appealing is better User Experience.
- Good design on the web is Important!
- The nicer something looks, the longer visitors stay, and the more stuff visitors will read.
- “Validation is irrelevant.”
- Validation does not equal conformity to web standards.
- Plan for degradation.
From Joshua Davis’ Keynote on the topic of “Space”:
- “Clients are the problem.”
- “If M.C. Escher was alive, he’d be a f**kin’ programmer.”
- Drastic changes are not required for drastic results.
- Through not knowing, trying will ALWAYS cause you to learn.
- If you don’t ask, the answer is always “no”.
- “If I’m not making mistakes, I’m not learning.”
*Stuck with me, and the ones I had notes from in my notebook.