An Event Apart Chicago 2008
I attended An Event Apart Chicago 2008 last week and I was very impressed. The conference was just the right blend of practical and theoretical: roughly about 70/30. There were many pearls of wisdom and practice, especially from Jeffrey Zeldman, Eric Meyer, Jason Santa Maria, Andy Clarke, and Dan Cederholm, but the key takeaway was that communication and empathy are critical to design.
This is not fluff – it’s fact. In my experience, successful design involves influencing and working with people from customers, to product managers, developers to technical writers, sales, and of course executives. And designers must be willing to subject their “favorite” design work to critique, wisely defending what is defensible and surrendering what is not to a better solution, despite the strong feeling of attachment to what they themselves created in isolation and just know to be “perfect”. I have attended several conferences at this point: UPA, IA Summit, IxDA, SXSW, VizThink, DUX, AIGA Gain, and others. AEA is now at the top of my list and I plan to attend again in 2009!
You can view (and subscribe to) my list of upcoming design conferences and workshops at: upcoming.yahoo.com
A great summary, sir. Thank you for sharing it, and thank you so much for attending An Event Apart.
I agree with you Russ, great conference! One of the greatest challenges in this field is learning how to tailor our communication style to our audience. Jason Santa Maria shared a quote that I feel applies to the design process on so many levels:
“The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.”
- Bertrand Russell
Another great presentation was given by Rob Weychert. He presented on the similarities between design and the game of chess- stressing the importance of really thinking ahead and working strategically. Weychert also briefly discussed the fact that many designers work intuitively, meaning that we may come up with something that works really well, but might not be able to immediately define why it works so well. It’s so important for us as designers to be able to defend our work!
Eric Meyer’s session “debug / reboot” was incredibly informative and helpful as well- there were so many great presentations (I could go on and on!). This is by far one of the best design conferences I’ve been to. Definitely planning to attend again next year!!