Responsive Design is a Victory, but the Campaign 
Must Go Farther Than Ourselves My keynote address at the New England HighEdWeb conference on 25th April, 2014.

1. Jason Pamental | @jpamental
http://hwdesignco.com
HighEdWeb New England
25th April, 2014
The Battle Is Not The War
Responsive Design is a Victory, but the Campaign
Must Go Farther Than Ourselves

2. hwdesignco.com | @jpamental | HighEdWeb NE | #hewebne
About Me
+ JasonPamental
principal,co-founderofh+wdesign
+ Lovetolearn&share
+ Canbefound@jpamentalinmostplaces
+ Postthoughts,work,instigations&pics
onInstagr.am&hwdesignco.com
+ Fixedwidths&Arialmakemesad

3. hwdesignco.com | @jpamental | HighEdWeb NE | #hewebne
Why Are We Here?
+ Talk purpose of design
+ Talk how & why it’s still broken
+ We’ll try & understand the battlefield
+ & remind ourselves we have not yet begun to fight

4. hwdesignco.com | @jpamental | HighEdWeb NE | #hewebne
What do we mean by ‘design’?
+ Design is a commercial endeavor.
To be successful it must:
• Communicate an idea
• Influence behavior
+ Relies upon artistic principles, cognitive science & psychology

5. hwdesignco.com | @jpamental | HighEdWeb NE | #hewebne
Popular Archeology, September 2011
Big Game Travel Advertising

6. hwdesignco.com | @jpamental | HighEdWeb NE | #hewebne
Page from a manuscript from Al-Andalus, 12 century BC – Wikipedia
Do this,
don’t do that

7. hwdesignco.com | @jpamental | HighEdWeb NE | #hewebne
Map of the World by Abraham Ortelius – Wikipedia
Here
there be
monsters

8. hwdesignco.com | @jpamental | HighEdWeb NE | #hewebne
Designer as Profession

9. hwdesignco.com | @jpamental | HighEdWeb NE | #hewebne
Words Divide, Images Unite

10. hwdesignco.com | @jpamental | HighEdWeb NE | #hewebne
Ideas that Influence
+ Visual representations of ideas that influence behavior
• Find food here
• Don’t go there
• Use this toilet, not that one
+ Dealt with known constraints of size, material & media
+ And then along came the web

11. hwdesignco.com | @jpamental | HighEdWeb NE | #hewebne
Interaction
It’s not just about the web

12. hwdesignco.com | @jpamental | HighEdWeb NE | #hewebne
Package Design
http://bit.ly/guitar1711

13. hwdesignco.com | @jpamental | HighEdWeb NE | #hewebne
Billboards: Seven Words

14. hwdesignco.com | @jpamental | HighEdWeb NE | #hewebne
Ad Placement

15. hwdesignco.com | @jpamental | HighEdWeb NE | #hewebne
Design Has Always Been About
User Experience

16. hwdesignco.com | @jpamental | HighEdWeb NE | #hewebne
But we got lazy.

17. hwdesignco.com | @jpamental | HighEdWeb NE | #hewebne
20 Years In & Design Is Still Broken
+ Trying the same techniques to solve design challenges
+ But the medium is different
• and so is its use
+ Technology amplifies the differences
• and provides new solutions

18. hwdesignco.com | @jpamental | HighEdWeb NE | #hewebne
What’s so different about web design?

19. hwdesignco.com | @jpamental | HighEdWeb NE | #hewebne
You're dealing with the attention
span of reading a billboard while
trying to convey the depth of
information in an annual report

20. hwdesignco.com | @jpamental | HighEdWeb NE | #hewebne
It’s not what we don’t know
that’ll kill us
It’s what we willfully ignore

21. hwdesignco.com | @jpamental | HighEdWeb NE | #hewebne
A Long Road to a Make-Believe Place
+ We prop up our vision of the world with tricks & misconceptions
960px

22. hwdesignco.com | @jpamental | HighEdWeb NE | #hewebne
A Long Road to a Make-Believe Place
+ We prop up our vision of the world with tricks & misconceptions

23. hwdesignco.com | @jpamental | HighEdWeb NE | #hewebne
A Long Road to a Make-Believe Place
+ We prop up our vision of the world with tricks & misconceptions
“A page is not a valuable concept
even for someone who wants to
read a book.”
Jeff Eaton (@eaton)

24. hwdesignco.com | @jpamental | HighEdWeb NE | #hewebne
This is how we should work.
RWD is a good idea.

25. hwdesignco.com | @jpamental | HighEdWeb NE | #hewebne
We’re too close

26. hwdesignco.com | @jpamental | HighEdWeb NE | #hewebne
Still too normal:
+ <table> != layout
+ Position: absolute
+ ‘It has to be in Arial’
+ Schools:
• optional to teach design students about the web
• fail to teach how to apply problem solving skills to a new medium

27. hwdesignco.com | @jpamental | HighEdWeb NE | #hewebne
Web Standards Battle Won
+ Based on conference content - everyone knows
+ Sites like Disney, MS, E!, Martha Stewart are responsive
+ We have books, tutorials, workshops galore
+ We have new standards, by the community - being ratified

28. hwdesignco.com | @jpamental | HighEdWeb NE | #hewebne
But The War is Far From Over

29. hwdesignco.com | @jpamental | HighEdWeb NE | #hewebne
We work in an Accidental Profession

30. hwdesignco.com | @jpamental | HighEdWeb NE | #hewebne
We Must Act With Intent
+ If schools aren’t succeeding, change the schools
+ If alternatives don’t exist - make them
+ If alternate models show promise, promote them
(http://bit.ly/sparkapprentice)
+ Without intent, there’s only mythology

31. hwdesignco.com | @jpamental | HighEdWeb NE | #hewebne
The Term ‘Unicorn’ Sucks*
* the term, not the concept!

32. hwdesignco.com | @jpamental | HighEdWeb NE | #hewebne
Why?
+ Because it implies pixie dust & magic
+ Because it undermines the efforts we undertake to learn,
invent, understand & grow
+ Because it presents a set of qualities as something that will
never be the norm

33. hwdesignco.com | @jpamental | HighEdWeb NE | #hewebne
Yes, Understanding Design & Tech Is Hard
+ It’s not for everyone
+ It takes a lot of effort
+ But without it we have no leadership, we have only
fragmentation

34. hwdesignco.com | @jpamental | HighEdWeb NE | #hewebne
Why Should We Care?
+ Because we’ve been making it up as we go
+ Because the work will never slow
+ Because knowledge shared means lives bettered
+ Because we can change the world
+ and we could do more…

35. hwdesignco.com | @jpamental | HighEdWeb NE | #hewebne
We must accept our true
manifest destiny

36. hwdesignco.com | @jpamental | HighEdWeb NE | #hewebne
Let’s win the war.

37. hwdesignco.com | @jpamental | HighEdWeb NE | #hewebne
Let’s Make it an
Intentional Profession

38. Jason Pamental | @jpamental
http://hwdesignco.com
Thank You!
Jason Pamental (@jpamental)
jason@hwdesignco.com
Slides here: http://bit.ly/jphewebne