19.04.07
Matt
What the FOWD!
It was the Future of Web Design conference yesterday and I wondered whether the ubiquitous question would be answered. What is the future of web design? Well the answer, it seems, all depends on who the speaker was.
The sponsors’ version
To the conference sponsors it was their products. Adobe and Microsoft the main corporate sponsors, and both were there showing off their latest projects. Adobe were first up on stage and Mike Downey, Senior Product Manager was there to show us Apollo. This is Adobe’s desktop runtime that allows web-enabled applications to run on your desktop. A bit like ultra Dashboard Widgets (or Vista Gadgets if that’s your thing). So Adobe’s future of web design is something that joins your local world to your online world. A good example of this was shown in finetune.com. Try out their Apollo app at www.finetune.com/desktop.
Microsoft on the other hand seemed a little behind the times only able to talk mostly about their new design packages. However, one thing that seemed a little more interesting was Silverlight. A cross platform plug-in for delivering rich interactive applications. However this did give us another acronym - XAML. So the future will still offer those.
The huge globals’ version
Well the future belongs to them - if you take their word for it. There is always an element of this at every conference where you get the feeling that someone is in it for themselves (or their company) rather than for the benefit of the attendees. But if you ignore the corporate showreels and the thinly veiled recruitment ad a couple of things stood out. One being a quote from Rei Inamoto, Global Creative Director of AKQA saying;
26% of people remember what they hear
43% of people remember what they see
67% of people remember what they experience
The standards evangelist’s version
Andy Clarke’s was by far the most entertaining session to the point of engaging people to shout out agreements and disagreements at his web cool wall, inspired by Top Gear’s automotive version. “Microsoft cooler than Yahoo! Come on!” was heard from behind me. It’s easy for me to be biased as my beliefs are so aligned to Andy’s, but his vision of the future seemed the one of the least egocentric. His suggestions for a simplified prototyping process seems a win-win situation for designer, business owner and client alike. However it also made clear that the future of web design (according to Andy), or at least a large chunk of it belongs to the multi-skilled ones (creaTechs) amongst us that appreciate quality mark-up as much as quality visuals.
So what is the future?
Well the answer is pretty obvious. Nobody knows! And who would want to know? That’s what keeps things exciting for the online industry. Not knowing what you or anyone else might come up with next week, but knowing that, whatever it is, it’s going to be groundbreaking at some level. So much passion and inspiration is out there and it shows no sign of dying down.
Like Brendan Dawes said right at the start, “When getting from A to B it’s the bit in the middle, the journey, that’s the important bit” and that holds true for the future of web design. It’s our experiences along the way that will shape that future.
