An Event Apart San Francisco, Day 2

Designing to Scale by Doug Bowman

Doug Bowman's been kind of quiet in the blogosphere of late, but that hasn't diminished the respect he gets from web professionals for his work in pushing web standards at a corporate level. As the lead of visual design at Google, you figure he still has a lot to say. His presentation was more inspirational than practical — you'd figure as much since most of his work at Google is probably sealed away behind an NDA. Still, it was very good.

He started his presentation with a quote by Malcolm X: "The future belongs to those who prepare for it today." The upshot: organizations that design to scale well now will be those that succeed tomorrow. Describing an organization that has grown tremendously in the past 50 years, he asked the audience to identify it. I felt kind of smug as the first person with the correct answer: "McDonald's." He also cited IKEA as an example, noting that their efficiently-packed products save warehouse space, thus scaling very well.

He went on to address web-specific challenges: growth (Gmail's invitation system as an example of controlling it), flexibility, speed, and universal appeal, especially in relation to internationalization. That last one rung true for me, as I recalled the challenge I had at Intel adapting a design for nearly two dozen locales worldwide (I still tell people how hard it is to convert a US English design to Thai, which has no spaces between words).

The best part of his presentation was describing his strategy to quickly and objectively evaluate design decisions. Since "everyone has an opinion on visual design," he set up a system where designs were checked against clusters of desired brand attributes. They were also compared with brand attributes that his team would want to avoid. Smart, simple, but effective.

Interface Cosmetology by Jina Bolton

I was definitely looking forward to this presentation, since I have great respect for Jina Bolton's work, both on her personal site and her work at Apple. After starting with a self-deprecating jab at her famous headshot ("That's me — airbrushing does wonders."), she went on to break down design into many of its key components: layout, composition, typography, and imagery, illustrating with lots of screenshots and quotes — but not much else. Perhaps I came in with the wrong expectation: I was hoping she would touch on more specifics, maybe even walk through some of the design decisions she made on a past piece. Although I did like some of the quotes she picked, and especially liked her tips on getting inspired, overall I was kind of disappointed. Jina is a great designer, and I'd really hoped to learn more about how great designers like her think.

As a counterpoint to my impression, Jennie thought it was an inspiring presentation, and even felt some camaraderie with Jina— it was as if she was listening to someone who thought and designed just like she did. That was pretty cool.

Standards in the Enterprise by Kimberly Blessing

I have Kimberly's name written down in my notes with the title "professional standards evangelist," which she earned after leading a massive push for standards at AOL. Yowsers!

I'm showing my ignorance by saying this, but I'm not really sure what "the enterprise" is. Does the term refer to large corporations? It seemed that way, as her talk seemed to be addressed to those who work in environments with a lot of people and a lot of bureaucracy— it reminded me of some of my time at Intel. Bureaucracy isn't necessarily a bad thing— done right, it's helpful for standardizing processes and ensuring knowledge doesn't become tribal— but I had trouble relating to the talk as I now work at a medium-sized organization.

That actually got me thinking that it might be nice for a future conference to address "Standards in Small to Medium-Sized Organizations." Web standards seems to have been adopted at small startups and design firms on one end and large corporations on the other end, but I wonder if that mature understanding of web development today has penetrated "non-webby" organizations somewhere in the middle. Doing some quick math, I figured that around 36% of the people who responded to A List Apart's 2007 Web Design Survey work for organizations that have between 11 and 750 employees— that's nearly half the people who answered the question on organization size. I'd be really curious to see what their experiences as "standards evangelists" has been.

The State of CSS in an IE7 World by Eric Meyer

This was a fun talk that made the CSS nerd in me salivate a little. Finally being able to use fixed positioning, attribute selectors, child selectors, and alpha channels in PNGs without browser-specific hacks is like being handed power tools after building houses for years with just hammers, screwdrivers, and a little dental floss.

They were actually giving away books on the second day to anyone who asked questions, so I had two up my sleeve, but they were answered before I got my chance.

First question: do other modern browsers support these selectors? A quick Google search answered in the affirmative.

Second question: Well, what about backwards-compatibility with IE6? Eric answered that one: Use Dean Edwards' IE7 library, which I'd heard of but never used. Now with an Eric Meyer endorsement, I'll definitely give it a shot.

Attribute selectors, here I come!

Learning to Love Forms by Aaron Gustafson

Aaron was another unfamiliar name to me, but now I'm definitely interested in taking a look at his book. Another great presentation, he showed he really knows his stuff when it comes to styles and semantic markup in forms. The presentation covered a lot of ground, though, and I felt like I missed a lot of the golden tips he threw out while I frantically tried to keep up my note-taking. Hopefully the presentation slides will reveal something.

Selling Design by Jeffrey Zeldman

Memorable quote: "Sell ideas, not pixels."

This last talk was an inspiring send-off. Noting that client relationships are a lot like other relationships, Zeldman suggested that we should approach working with clients as we would approach dating. For example, a first meeting with a client should be treated like a blind date: if you're feeling "bad date vibes," it's probably not a client worth the trouble. I suspect this is a good instinct to have on during job interviews, too. If you make it past that stage, the next step is to build trust.

With those principles established, he went into the specifics of the process, showing how he worked through his relationship with past clients. The examples were memorable, including his work on Amnesty International and the Kansas City Chiefs.

Zeldman is a really nice guy, too. I remember going up to him after the presentation with a question, and not wanting to blurt out an incoherent "omigosh-you-are-such-an-inspiration-can-i-have-your-autograph." He'd had a long two days, but stuck around to answer my question and many others.

Thank you, Jeffrey, Eric, and everyone else that made AEA San Francisco a reality. I'm definitely planning on being there when you come back to the Bay next year.