Neatly Sliced

An Event Apart 2008, Day 2, 3:45pm – 4:45pm

Read the previous talk in this series, The Arts & Crafts of Web Design – or What Would William Do? by Curt Cloninger, or view An Event Apart’s Table of Contents

Designing the Next Generation of Web Apps

Jeff Veen

• He’s going through the history of computers, how he liked Pong when he was six, and how it progressed.
• Jeff left Google about 5 months ago (today is October 14, 2008). 
• “When I’m feeling dumb, it’s usually not my fault. It’s usually someone not communicating something, [etc.]”
• Cholera – John Snow used design and the sanitation maps to show that a pump was causing the cholera, not the air. Took the map, drew all the deaths at each address, then used design by taking out everything that wasn’t proving his point.
• This is visual design oriented, not technical design. That’s why my notes here are sparse.
• Inspiration comes from all different places. If having difficulty, stop looking for a bit.
• Use the visual to help make statistics more real - The MegaPenny Project. (screens)
• Try to find the story in the data, and how to be a good data visualization designer?
• assign different visual cues to each dimension of the data. Maybe black marks next to each address, bullet points like an Indiana Jones global flight, whathaveyou.
• Remove everything that isn’t telling the story. Journalists already follow this.
• Learn to give up control, and that helps you on your way to be a good interactive designer. In can show up in any context, and that’s ok.
• CSS Zen Garden is a perfect example of giving up design.
• Jeremy Keith makes it clear that you can choose your style. My content can show up anywhere.
• An aggregator, so you don’t see any of the design. Relinquish control. 
• A braille browser. Letting go.
• Tons of data visualization analysis and examples. No links given out. New York Times Casualties of War. I wish he gave out links.
• Storytelling -> discovery. Allow them to discover their own stories.
• A huge percentage of Google’s audience was coming from outside the USA.
• 1) Start with the user 2) Know yourself, then an option #3, Then understand the user
• User research is important, but those two are so key. Put research into the context of what you know.
• “Everything I’ve built has come from the frustration that it didn’t yet exist.” - Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress
• Everywhere you look, inspiration can come from…. (he ends with screenshot of Pong from the beginning)

Skip to An Event Apart’s Table of Contents

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