A FRONTEND2010 Retrospective
FRONTEND 2010 is over and and for the first even of its kind in Norway, it’s been a success and raised some interesting issues for the both the audience and organizers.
Responsibility and honesty are two values that came back again in the presentation and the informal conversations at the conference. This was the thread underlying the reason why such a conference is important, why our jobs are important.
The Power
It is our responsibility as web designer to shape the future, starting today. Kwame Nyanning in his talk “Heat – The caper movie archetype and its relationship to the design process” went as far as connecting the 2008 economical crisis to the designer’s responsibility. In his provocative talk, the traders are not (the only one) to blame, but the system, which has been designed in such a way that the flow of information could not be treated properly. This resonated widely with my sentiment that everything is interlaced, and the way I designed the smallest web pages, will actually impact someone’s life even in the slightest. As Aral Balkan (@aral) put it in the first speak of the conference “The Art of Emotional Design: A story of pleasure, joy, and delight.” We are creating for humans.
Without you (I’m nothing)
The human factor must never go out of sight. People (us, you, anyone) will use a web app, a service and will feel about it. Our job is to ensure that the experience doesn’t creates frustration. Again, it is our responsibility to bring back the human factor into the fold. Paul Boag (@boagworld) was no less assertive about the role of the designer / project leaders in the sign-off process. If “your design sucks” that’s your own faults. To deliver a product that is a success with the customers as well as the clients, one must have a methodology, create credibility and set expectations. Why is that? Because we are dealing with people to create something for other people. Matthew Smith (@squaredeye) in “Designing the business experience” put it simply as “knowing who you are”.
Can’t con an honest John
It’s being honest, nothing else. Honest with ourselves about how good we can be, and bad we’d like not to become. I won’t say it enough, but our design affect people, and to reach the audience in a manner that matters (be it to sale a pair of reinforced steel shoe or the engage user in a social network) we need to “Design with Empathy” as Daniel Burka ( and Rob Goodlatte demonstrated in their presentation “The first 15 minutes – Creating great new user experiences”.
Alexander Arnesen from Sprell.no, keeps that human factor at the center of his business model, “the customer sets the standard, it’s the driving force”. What could be described as great audience analysis, I would use see it as empathy. Recognizing it and taking the steps necessary to build a service that serves an idea.
This was once again echoed by Christian Heilmann (@codepo8) in the closing speech of Frontend2010 “Enjoying The full stack”. We has developer / coder, must use the technology to go beyond patches and hacks: we have the responsibility to come up with “solutions”.
An End has a Start
I guess my point was made without me trying to hard, someone once said “with great powers comes great responsibility” (yes it an imaginary comic book character but that’s just great storytelling if you ask me), and I believe it was the role of a conference like Frontend2010 to bring all those talents together to challenge our daily perceptions. We can make a difference.
ps: Since I’m working for IXD, who has organized the event, It’s my responsibility and above all a pleasure to thank all the excellents speakers we had over the two day: Jina Bolton, Brian Fling, Paul Irish, Matthew Smith, Rob Goodlatte, Daniel Burka, Tove Blomgren, Lisa Lindström, Paul Boag, Nick La, Elliot Jay Stocks, Christian Heilmann, Dan Rubin, Meagan Fisher, Kwame Nyanning, Molly Holzschlag, Jonas Follesø, Alexander Arnesen, Per Martinsen AKA Tied Revolverman, Aral Balkan, Anders Norås, Nils Petter Nordskar.
ps2: It’s also our responsibility to go out of our way for frontend2011 to creates and exciting and trustworthy conference.
ps3: You can read a norwegian version of this post on kuttisme.no
