Started the Web Visions day with a workshop on Improving Interface Design with Garrett Dimon. Garrett presented a clean and well-structured talk on best practices in interface design. He started making sure everyone understood what design is. Pulling from quotes he shared, design is not decoration but the experience crafted. It is how things work.
There was not a lot of discussion in this workshop. I’m not sure why this is, perhaps it was due to “speaking to the choir” syndrome. The information was understood and agreed upon by the audience, so perhaps not a lot of room for questions. No controversial issues.
I hope this doesn’t seem critical, the workshop was successful. There were times during his talk that made me think about issues at work and how we are addressing them. To me this makes it more than successful. I also truly enjoyed the stylistic slides in his presentation and they also contain numerous quotes and places that I want to reflect on further.
Thanks for the comments. I’m glad you found some value in it. I definitely agree with the preaching to the choir aspect. However, in my eperience, while everybody realizes it and understand once someone articulates it, few of us—myself included—actually make a consistent proactive effort to change our environment. Most everybody reads and follows the research and reports, but sometimes it’s just so hard to recognize where our real challenges are, or that there’s even a way to change and affect those challenges.
Thanks again. It’s always good to know that it was valuable.