There’s currently a disconnect between the topics we’re discussing as designers and the advances that will be available to us in the future. We’ve come a long way in terms of web technologies. Only a decade ago, the World Wide Web was starting to take off, led by the internet giants AOL and Yahoo!. Today, the internet is part of our every day lives, being accessed from an endless number of different devices. We’re now able to stand in front of essentially a webcam and control a video game character using our body movements. This aggressive trend of technological advancement means that we’re now able to communicate with the entire world on a completely different scale, using methods never dreamed of. And yet if we browse through design forums and blogs, it seems that the most important topics of today are about “flat design vs skeumorphic” or “parallax scrolling vs video backgrounds”. …
Most of my friends are not designers. In their minds, a designer takes an ugly website and “prettifies” it. When I take the time to try and explain concepts of user experience to them, I mostly receive blank stares, usually followed by a soft mutter of “Well, that’s common sense.” It’s hard to come back from that, because in my mind, designers do practice common sense with every project we’re given. That is our single greatest weapon as we tackle any project. Regardless of the nature of the problem standing in our way, it is our job as designers to introduce a solution that is not only most efficient for our desired outcome, but also in a way that will delight the user. …
About
