Following from yesterday’s post, Jeremy discusses the impact of being deliberately inflammatory…

… on being deliberately provocative

Yeah, this is a problem and it was something exacerbated particularly when Digg was in the ascendant – all you ever wanted to do it seemed was get on the front page of Digg, so for that in itself to be the goal… I would actively not like to be on the front page of Digg because then there’s going to be a whole bunch of people using your site – it’s effectively like having hundreds of people tramp into your living room, piss on all the furniture and then leave again. It doesn’t actually add any value, but people seem to want to ‘get Dugg’ or be on Reddit or these other places that aren’t necessarily the best hubs of good social activity. If that’s your goal, to get a short influx of traffic from one of these big hubs of people, then there are easy tricks to do that and one is to make controversial claims. What you’ll often find is someone will write a post and it will be abrasive and controversial in its tone, but then as the comments go on people will say, ‘well hang on a minute, it’s a bit more nuanced’ and the author will acknowledge that and agree and say, ‘yes, it is a bit more nuanced but I wanted to write it to get people’s attention or to get links’. I’d have actually preferred it if they’d written the nuanced version in the beginning because clearly what they’ve done is miscommunicated. There are some people out there who have good ideas, they’re good thinkers, but they’re not good communicators because they’re thinking ‘how can I make this as confrontational as possible and get the links and traffic’.

… on the circle of life, the righteousness of the young and the pedantry of the old!

It’s often young people that are deliberately inflammatory or derogatory – and that’s always been the case, it’s nothing to do with the web or technology, generally when you’re younger you feel like you have a sense of righteousness, everything’s quite clear and black and white. There’s this idea of ‘kill your heroes’ and ‘don’t have idols’ and that’s absolutely fine, but you can throw the baby out with the bath water when you start rejecting stuff just because it comes from someone who’s been around the web for a longer time, just because you think ‘it’s not good to listen to people from those generations so I’m going to reject whatever they say without actually listening to them’ – killing the messenger, in a way, and that can be a shame. What I’ve discovered is that when you’re young, you’ve got fairly strong opinions, everything’s black and white, but as you get older, things get a bit more grey and you have more nuanced ideas, and as you get older again, you get more conservative and everything is black and white again – except that everything that was black is now white and everything that was white is now black!

I visited Clearleft’s offices at the end of last month and was lucky enough to chat to Jeremy Keith of Clearleft (recently won ‘Agency of the year’ at the 2011 .net magazine awards) about the responsibility of being in the spotlight, controversial conversations and what’s on the horizon in 2012.

Part I covers life as a blogger and speaker and the responsibility that brings…

… on ‘thought leaders’ and getting a balanced diet!

First of all I hate the term ‘Thought Leader’, it’s awful, but I guess you can say ‘people who blog’ maybe? It’s everyone who’s out there, on Twitter, etc. – although I do think more people should be blogging, but that’s another discussion. It’s interesting, because unrelated to the recent post by Divya (Manian – ‘Our Pointless Pursuit of Semantic Value’), which was a good post – she made a good point, although it was a little bit buried – but actually a good few months ago, Divya posted an article on her own blog where she was making the case that we had a generation of ‘thought leaders’, or let’s say people who wrote and spoke and stuff who maybe aren’t the most up to date now, so the people we used to listen to say 5 years ago, maybe we shouldn’t be listening to them now – and then there’s all these up and coming people making cool stuff and we should be paying more attention to them. Which is a good point and it’s absolutely true that there’s a load of really smart young people around, but on a broader level it seems to me that a lot of people have been doing this sort of stuff for a while and when they talk, when they write, they give a long-term perspective and they might not necessarily be talking about the nitty gritty of HTML and JavaScript and CSS – and I think that’s fine. Whereas I think a lot of the younger people who are building really cool stuff, working on HTML5 boiler plate or putting really great projects on GitHub – they are thinking about the nitty gritty ‘how do we get stuff working in the browsers today and here’s a solution you can use and let’s work on this’ and that is also excellent. But I don’t think it’s a zero sum game. I don’t think you need to pay attention exclusively to the people thinking of the long-term big picture, or exclusively to the people thinking short-term, and that actually there’s a balance to be found. That’s reflected in conferences as well – there’s a lot of conferences that are about the nitty gritty – there’ll be one day one track where you just talk about JavaScript or one day one track about mobile and they are excellent, excellent conferences. And you get other conferences where you get speakers who talk about where we’re going in the industry, about design, about the planet and our place and building the future and I think both types of conferences are fine. The trick is again to get the balance, to have a balanced conference diet, the same way we should have a balanced RSS diet of content where one post makes you think about the big picture and the next post or the next conference could be something much more like, ‘here’s something you can take today, here’s some code’ and the thing is that trick of applying the balance.

… on the responsibility of being someone people listen to

I think it depends on what you’re saying. If what you’re saying is you’re going to come down 100% on one particular technique, like ‘everyone should use this particular technique cos it’s great’ then yeah you have a responsibility there, you’d better be pretty sure it is the best technique and it is something good that you’re evangelising about. But if it’s an opinion, and you state very clearly that ‘this is an opinion’, then I think it’s fine to say ‘hey, here’s what I like’. It can be difficult on the web sometimes because you’ll put something out there as an opinion and people will take issue with it. Like saying ‘I like Italian food’ and people will take issue with that and say ‘what have you got against Chinese food?’ and again, it’s not a zero sum game, it’s OK for you to like Chinese food and for me to like Italian food, we can like multiple foods! So it’s tricky… but personally when I’m writing on my blog I don’t think about anyone reading it other than someone who’s out there who’s just like me. They’re basically ‘notes to self’ and I use my own blog and link section to search through it myself and think ‘Oh I remember writing something about this and I want to look it up now’ – and that’s why I write a blog post or link to something – it’s so that I can find it! And when I’m writing I’m not thinking ‘will this title make sense to a lot of people?’ Or ‘is this the clearest way to write it for this audience?’. I’m just thinking if there was someone out there who was just like me who didn’t know about this thing, how would I tell them about it? So it’s basically for myself and it’s a nice bonus if other people happen to like it. What I’ve discovered is that’s OK on my personal site – and I’ve made it pretty clear that’s my personal site – but on Twitter I probably have to watch myself a bit more, and the problem is with Twitter of course it’s so easy just to write something and hit submit and then maybe the next day think ‘hmm I wish I’d not written that, I’ve got all these responses that’s making things worse, it wasn’t constructive, why did I write that?’ So I’m trying to restrain myself a lot more on Twitter. On my own site I feel I can say what I want because I’m not really thinking about anyone else reading it other than someone like me.

More insights from Jeremy in part II.

Jeremy discusses the benefits of knowledge sharing in part III.

Find out what’s next in 2012 for Jeremy and dConstruct in part IV.

UX London (http://2011.uxlondon.com/), now in its third year, has always been popular with those already working in the industry. Bringing industry leaders such as Don Norman, Jared Spool, Alan Cooper, and Jesse James Garrett to London to share their wisdom and passion by combining inspiration talks with practical, hands-on workshops that give attendees skills they can use every day, and share with their colleagues and clients.

Organisers, Clearleft, know that three day conferences aren’t cheap, and are often unaffordable for students. They care about the future of interaction design and helping the next generation of talent is an excellent way of ensuring that it’s in safe hands. They’re offering three students a free conference pass, worth £995. If you’re interested, send an email or video explaining why coming to UX London would be useful to you and your future career. Make sure to include your contact details, what course you’re on and where you’re studying and they’ll choose the three most inspiring. Please send your entries in to sophie@clearleft.com by Friday 25 February.

We had a stand at the conference to demonstrate IE9 and as the whole stand was made of whiteboards we asked for comments and feedback . We’ll be replying to questions and comments that came out of @Media on Underbelly, so watch this space (apologies for the cheesy expression!).

While you’re here, just to let you know the SVG No Bit, Sherlock contest closes this Friday 18th June – you can win a Sony Vaio Notebook or and Xbox 360 – plus the kudos of winning of course! – so it’s worth entering. All you need to do is create a progress bar or a button and the most creative wins the top prize (don’t worry there are runners up!)

Earlier this week I was lucky enough to meet Andy Budd, MD of Clearleft – and a thoroughly friendly, helpful bloke he is, I might add. We chatted about Andy’s passions – his company, the community, education and jetting off around the world to absorb the culture of as many countries as possible!

Not wanting to be rude, but there are lots of design and UX agencies out there. What makes Clearleft different from the rest?

“Well, our fifth birthday is coming up, so we’re still a relatively young company. However myself, Jeremy Keith and Richard Rutter who founded Clearleft were all reasonably well known in the industry. We’d written books, spoken at conferences and had fairly popular blogs. As such we started with a strong background.

We all had a passion for good quality front-end development, but no matter how well a site is built, if it’s not meeting customer’s needs then the effort is wasted. The key is to improve the usefulness of websites. I come from a user background. I saw the trend in the US on usability, information architecture and user experience back in 2000/2001. At that stage in the UK the focus was on just getting content online, people weren’t really thinking about the end user, so the idea of usability testing intrigued me. I started focusing on asking questions like ‘can people actually use the site and find the information they’re looking for? How can usability testing be integrated into the design process?’ So when we started we were one of the first dedicated UX companies in the UK.

No-one really knew the term in those days, so we spent a lot of time educating clients and the community. We’re not only one of the first proponents of UX but we also have lots of experience! Some other usability companies come from an academic background whereas we’re pragmatic, which feeds into our idea of conducting user testing in coffee shops or other accessible places rather than labs.

We also have a heritage. We’re a small team of between 12 and 14 people – this is deliberate so we maintain quality. We only hire the best people – everyone on the team has 10+ years of experience, and we empower them to make decisions, we trust everyone on the team implicitly and know they’ll do a good job. We’re obsessed with quality which does limit our size as we wouldn’t be able to control our output so well if we had a larger team. We believe in doing a job well, rather than quickly or cheaply.

Finally, we really engage deeply with the community. I travel the world speaking at events, so thought leadership and the idea of setting the agenda are key. We’ve published quite a few books, the latest of which is ‘Undercover User Experience’, about Guerilla UX techniques. The fact we have quite a high profile works in our favour as I’m sure there are plenty of people out there doing something similar, but we do lots of training, conferences, outreach and education which ensures we’re engaged with the community. I feel very lucky – I’m doing something I love and I want to give something back, which is why I want the industry to grow and improve. That’s what motivates us as a company. Clearleft was recently named .Net magazine agency of the year as well as being listed in Wired magazine’s top 100 digital influencers, so our efforts are being recognised – which is great to see!”

You mention something called Skillswap on your website. What is it?

“Back in 2001/2002 I came across the BNM list (Brighton New Media mailing list) which was a local forum for designers and developers talking about what’s important to them. They all seemed to be very open and keen to help each other and that’s what I’ve found ever since – people in the industry love to share and help others. The BNM gave me an idea – if they’re keen to help others, would they be keen to actually teach others?

Every 4-6 weeks we hold an event where 1 or 2 people talk about something that interests them, whether it’s an introduction to flash, or high-level object oriented PHP and everything in between. It’s a small, local event and we were one of the first community meet-ups in the UK. There are lots of similar events around the country now, but when we first started it was all pretty new.  It’s a real win-win situation – you give up your time to talk to others about what you know and then you get the time back when you find someone else giving a talk about a topic you want to learn about. So it’s a skill swap! It was the first experience I had of public speaking and lead to me speaking at South by Southwest, so it has the potential to be real springboard. It’s also where the idea of dConstruct came from. We started off with 100 people in 2005 and now get 750 people and sell out each year. We really want to keep it the size it is to make sure it stays personal.”

I’ve heard you love to travel – what’s the most interesting place (or places) you’ve visited?

“I did my degree in aeronautical engineering with the vague idea I wanted to be a pilot – just so I could travel. The degree wasn’t right for me though, so I decided to go backpacking! I was a diving instructor so would work in one place for about 6 months and then move on. I visited some amazing places in South East Asia, like Thailand and Indonesia. I went diving on active underwater volcano’s and with schools of 100 hammerhead sharks – I really had some amazing experiences over a six year period.

It was while I was away that I discovered the web. Before that I used to stay in touch with people by leaving cards behind hostel receptions! Someone introduced me to the web and hotmail – plus I met lots of people who were working on the web. I met someone who had started a web diary (this was about 95/96) and it really sparked my interest.

I still do a lot of conference speaking, partly because I love to visit new places – I can’t tear around the world like I used to when I had no responsibilities, but at least the speaking satisfies some of the wanderlust!

Las Vegas is both fascinating and grotesque. It’s great if you’re into Ethnography (the study of human society and culture) – watching people pouring their kids college fund into the slot machine is fascinating, in a voyeuristic way.

Another place I’ve been to recently is Tokyo. I spoke there last year at a 3 day conference called Web Directions East run by my friend John Allsop. We were treated like honoured guests throughout the whole trip – we were taken to crazy restaurants where they ate delicacies like cow’s uterus! As a vegetarian that in particular didn’t appeal… but they were so kind, fantastic hosts and really appreciated us being there. All the sessions were translated live and everyone came up to speak to me afterwards, they are so passionate to learn, just like the UK was 5/6 years ago.

For a geek, going to Japan is a fantastic experience. It’s this really fun, crazy, intense, Blade Runner style city so it was great to totally immerse myself in it. We even visited Kyoto, the old capital of Japan, which was totally different again – beautiful temples and monasteries and we stayed in a Ryokan (traditional  Japanese Inn). The whole experience in Japan was awesome.”

I read your post on the lack of good web design courses in the UK – it’s obvious you’re very passionate on this subject!

“Yeah! There are plenty of training opportunities for web designers, but the problem is the quality. Technology gets out of date so quickly, yet many of the tutors aren’t always the right people to be putting the courses together. They’re either academics who are detached from the industry, or their knowledge is so out of date it’s irrelevant.

We run an internship at Clearleft and our interns often tell us they know more than their lecturer. At 19, you’re told you have to go to college to be a successful designer, but you don’t learn what you need to know. Students then tend to either drop out or feel like they wasted 3 years of their life learning something they can’t use. It’s endemic of a larger problem – lots of people think web design is technology based, or tool based. Students get told they have to use Dreamweaver, but it’s just not true.

To really learn web design you need a deeper understanding of the fundamentals of design, like typography, colour, how to design to create meaning, plus learning about human psychology and behaviour so you can design to satisfy those human desires. However lots of people focus on tools because it’s easy. The result is a lot of under skilled people finding it difficult to get work. We’re at risk of creating an underclass of low paid designers. There’s almost a glass ceiling now. Students are often not even being taught the business side of web design, which would really help them join or start their own business.

I thought these problems were endemic of all degrees, but it’s not the case. I saw some work by product design graduates and they’d created sophisticated, promotional material, thought of pricing, the whole business strategy. If 21 year old product design grads can think like that then web design grads can too.

My friend runs the Interaction MFA at the SVA – the School of Visual Arts – in New York. She gets the top people in the industry to give lectures – and this is what needs to be done to teach web design. We need staff who are involved in the industry now. It needs a forward thinking university and 1 very well-respected designer to put together a programme and kick off some real learning.”

At UX London you’re presenting a workshop on Guerilla Usability Testing – it sounds like a quick and dirty option! Is it?

“Ah yes – well we created an application called Silverback because we basically wanted to democratise usability testing. Usability Testing is a tool and needs to be easy to use. Developers test as they go, and we think it should be easy to do the same in web design, for example:

- Design

- Test

- Does it work?

- If no – find out why and go back and change it!

It’s $50 to buy Silverback and it’s used by NASA, Yahoo, Apple and the Obama campaign sites, although it’s only Mac based at the moment. Guerilla Usability Testing means you can test in your local coffee shop – even if you only test on 3 people, that knowledge is better than nothing. Usability testing is not about opinion, it’s about behaviour. Opinion is subjective – whereas I want to know what people actually do.

In general, the minimum number of people you need are 5 test subjects – this will give you about 80% of the easy to spot usability problems. However, the variation could be 50-90%, so to get close to 99% of issues you need to test between 20 and 30 people. However, I always maintain that it’s better to test 5 people and find most of the problems with your site than not at all. The trick is to test early and test often!

We run the equivalent of Pair Programming at Clearleft. Pair Programming is where you have one person programming and another watching and discussing, commenting and inputting ideas. We find this is a very beneficial for design – the job gets done quicker and it’s more likely problems will be identified. It tends to happen more in the early stages than in production, but we find it can be a very economical practice as tasks can take half the time.”

Thanks Andy, it was great to meet you!