Crossposted at mattluongo.com.

In web development, not every project scope includes a designer or user experience expert. Despite this, the move toward more interactive and complete experiences on the web has raised users’ expectations. In the startup world- in some of the leanest business situations imaginable- the dream team once consisted of a developer and a marketer. Today, the team has shifted toward development and UX. Though this shift begs the question, “Why don’t we all have a design budget?”, it also exposes an opportunity. Team members who can serve a secondary role in UX stand to seriously benefit projects tight on design dollars.

Finding a developer with design abilities is tough. In the office, we’ve informally begun to call these people “hybrids”- and we keep an eye out for their resumes. Not only is there a need to be filled, but it’s a fun, safe career choice to have a foot in both camps. I’ve been interested in learning more about UX and design for these reasons and because, well, it’s kind of cool. Needless to say, the developer/designer track split at Web Directions left me with some tough decisions to make.

Web Directions, which just finished up this weekend, is a conference focused on the future of the web. The conference caters to a wide range of professionals and interests, including web design, front-end development, user experience, and everything in between.

I’d like to tell you a bit about talks from the first day of the conference, sharing my experience as a developer who decided to take the design route.

Learning to Love Humans: Emotional Interface Design
Bow Down to the Machine No Longer!

Aarron Walter (@aarron) of Atlanta’s own MailChimp gave the first design-track presentation. Aarron used an adapted version of Maslow’s famous pyramid to frame a discussion on taking interface design to the next level.

He argued that functionality, reliability, and usability in product design are just stepping stones to a more ambitious goal- providing a pleasurable user experience. In comparing usability to edibility, Aarron points out that great chefs aim for something far beyond edible- and that one of the key ingredients to a pleasurable user experience is personality.

Check out my blog over the few days for a more detailed treatment of Aarron's talk over the next few days.

Creativity, Design and Interaction with HTML5 and CSS3

Dan Rubin’s (@danrubin) talk was a disconnected experience for me. While the other design presentations were about what I expected- higher-level, occasionally zooming in on important lessons speakers had learned and wanted to share- Dan’s talk was primarily mean to excite designers about the slew of new design techniques that HTML5 and CSS3 enable.

The talk focused on different aspects of the same technical topics web developers deal with every day. Instead of going on about the wonders of HTML5, and what it can do to foster web app interactivity, Dan- and the audience- were more excited about CSS3.

In a nutshell, CSS3 is going to allow web design to catch up to print media in a number of ways, and further exceed its capabilities in others. The really exciting part about CSS3 - especially compared to HTML5 - is that we can start using many of these techniques today. Many features can be made to work on browsers old and new alike, with the right tool. Dan suggests that we begin to progressively enhance interfaces with many of new these features- today.

Check out my blog over the next few days for more details about Dan's talk and the promise of CSS3.

Balancing Data-Driven and Genius Design

Ever since Doug Bowman left Google for Twitter, the data vs design debate has fascinated me. Ryan Freitas (@ryanchris), confounder of about.me, gave a great talk targeting that curiosity perfectly.

Data-driven design is a relatively new idea. Its darling buzzword, A/B testing, drives most Google design decisions. A/B testing is the process of creating two versions of a page. The pages might vary in simple ways- the color of a button, or a bit of copy- or be structurally dissimilar. Visitors to a page are split into groups (A/B) and shown different versions of the page. Whichever page fares better in certain metrics- sign up rates, ad clicks, etc- becomes the default.

Ryan explains that genius design is like film’s auteur theory- one designer is responsible for building something beautiful. The genius design process is all about taste, and is what most people traditionally think of as design. While data-driven design aims for good and unoriginal, genius aims for good and original; it risks being both bad and unoriginal.

When data-driven design is mistaken for good design- instead of informing the design process- it can pose real problems. The different explanations Jeff Atwood and and Ryan maintain are a great example of developer and designer perspectives tackling the same issue. Atwood says that "You can achieve a shallow local maximum with A/B testing -- but you'll never win hearts and minds." Typically, the guy with the developer background compares the effectiveness of a technique with a mathematical function. Ryan seems to agree with Atwood, but much more quotably: “You can’t iterate your way to an elegant design.”

I have to agree.

Check out my blog over the next few days for further analysis of Ryan's talk and the rest of the conference. Interested in seeing this year's presentations? I highly recommend it! The podcasts from Web Directions North 2010 are still in production - watch http://webdirections.org/blog or follow @webdirections for updates.

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