Working with the web
& the future
Sally Jenkinson
@sjenkinson . sally@recordssoundthesame.com

@sjenkinson

@sjenkinson
The internet of 2021

@sjenkinson

youtube.com/watch?v=8p0jmewhXeU @sjenkinson

@sjenkinson

@sjenkinson
What challenges does
the future bring?

@sjenkinson

@sjenkinson
What we plan now may
not be relevant in the
future

@sjenkinson
Our project

@sjenkinson
Our users
Our business
Technology
Wildcards
Our project

@sjenkinson
Disruption will only accelerate
Our existing standards, workflows and
infrastructure won’t hold up
Proprietary solutions will dominate at first
The standards process will be painfully slow.

@sjenkinson
Our choices can become
white elephants

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ed/Klagenfurt_Viktring_Quellenstrasse_Strom-
Verbundnetz_13022010_1580.jpg
@sjenkinson

@sjenkinson
Keeping up vs getting ahead

“It’s all broken!”

“We have to
throw it out and
start again!”

“…be guaranteed to
meet the business
and customer needs
for the next 5-10
years at least…”

@sjenkinson
Keeping up as individuals

@sjenkinson@sjenkinson

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The future is hard!

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The future,
from the past

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@sjenkinson

“Short of figuring out real teleportation,
which would of course be awesome
(someone please do this), the only option
for super fast travel is to build a tube over
or under the ground that contains a special
environment.
!
This is where things get tricky.”
teslamotors.com/blog/hyperloop

@sjenkinson
Telling stories can give
human context to
technology

flickr.com/photos/randar/16862053922 @sjenkinson

goo.gl/8IKgEd @sjenkinson

flickr.com/photos/foam/9248390752/ @sjenkinson

“a work kit useful for
parceling ideas into their
atomic elements”
@sjenkinson

@sjenkinson
Interactions and
interfaces

@sjenkinson

“We’ve seen repeatedly that if an interface
works for an audience, there’s something there
that will work for users.
!
Finding what that thing is and using it for
inspiration in our own work is part of how we can
use these speculative interfaces.”
Make It So (scifiinterfaces.com)

flickr.com/photos/blile59/3547072689 @sjenkinson

flickr.com/photos/frinky/2288705567/ @sjenkinson

@sjenkinson
Using future thinking

1. Better consider our users’ changing needs.
2. Identify opportunities.
3. Aid prioritisation.
4. Define what something is and what it will be.
5. More robust decisions - understand limitations and benefits of
choices.
6. React quickly/better to change by embracing evolution.
7. Make more exciting things and shape the future of the web!
Future benefits
@sjenkinson

@sjenkinson
The future & our work

flickr.com/photos/oflittleinterest/8171299893/ @sjenkinson

Half-life
@sjenkinson

User interfaces & interactions
Features
Digital platform components (CMS, etc)
‘Non-digital’ systems (accountancy, etc)
Browsers
Hosting environment & languages
Third party integrations
Deployment tools
Different elements have different
half-lives
@sjenkinson

Choose technologies and
architect your developments
with half-lives in mind
@sjenkinson

@sjenkinson
Separate concerns, loosely couple
Think in patterns, not pages
Modular CSS
Enhance!

“Zero UI is … taking us away from screens to a
more natural way of interacting with things”
Andy Goodman
@goodmania

Submit
doStuff()

@sjenkinson
A practical approach
to the future

Discovery & planning
Work content
first
Separate content from
display to better cater
for new outputs (visual
or otherwise)
Where screens are involved, remember
to think from very small to very large
Prioritise your
requirements
Create a backlog
and strategic
roadmap & make
these visible
Balance problems now
& of the future
Consider future
usage patterns,
interactions, and
behaviour
Embrace wider
trends (remote
teams etc)
Learn
from the
past
Don’t be
bound by
form
Create a set of high
level principles for
the future
Make no
assumptions
about usage
Stories and
design
thinking
(workshops)

Example principles

@sjenkinson
Frederik Pohl
flickr.com/photos/s-t-r-a-n-g-e/8292748067
“A good science fiction story should be able to
predict not the automobile but the traffic jam”
@sjenkinson

Embrace web
standards, semantics,
open formats
Progressive
enhancement
Create
incrementally,
release often
Track & manage
change
Think atomically
Allocate time to
improve the past and
the future Lifespan of project
components
Separation,
modularity,
loosely-coupled
architectures and
services
Embrace automation Document decisions
(not heavily, but
ensure the past is
captured for future
learning)
Prototype & test
Doing
Responsive design
Leave space for the
future
Draw a line - what do
you support? Why?

Share your
experiences
Specs &
upcoming
technologies
Measure, & use
your data
Better digital
preservation
Play more
Take inspiration
from the world
(watch more sci-
fi!)
Evolving
Accept change. It
doesn’t mean you
failed
Work to educate others,
to facilitate
improvements
Fix problems that
you can see, and
those that might be
Provide support (bleeding edge technology
users often have it rough)

@sjenkinson
Cup of tea?

flickr.com/photos/stevensnodgrass/4011568197 @sjenkinson

“Don’t plan for the future because there is no
future - just now and a series of next nows.”
Jon Gold
@jongold

@sjenkinson
sally@recordssoundthesame.com
recordssoundthesame.com
Thank you!
My slides are mainly blue because according to Make It So, blue is
‘futuristic’ - it’s the most prevalent colour in sci-fi interfaces
flaticon.com/packs/color-startups-and-new-business