October 8th, 2007
Interactive design: the next step for the CSS guru?
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about how “traditional” web roles fit into rich Internet applications. One of the things that make browser-based web applications and RIAs so great is that the very nature of the web lends itself to being a jack of all trades. As a result, anyone can jump in and build pretty much anything. As the applications have gotten more sophisticated however, a division of labor has occurred and we see specialization for designers and developers. But what about the interactive designer? The interactive designer is kind of a cross between developer and designer. They’ve got to understand how things should be laid out from an aesthetic point of view but also understand how the application is supposed to flow and move between states. They shouldn’t be doing back end coding, but I think most interactive designers will be expected to be familiar with code and understand the development behind the UI. Tools like Thermo and Blend cater to the interactive designer, but in the RIA world there is a huge lack of interaction design talent. So where are we going to get it? I think CSS experts are going to fill the void.
I can remember spending a ton of time on sites like CSS Zen garden. The designs they created were great and it wasn’t until I took the HTML/CSS and tried to create my own that I realized how difficult it is to create good-looking CSS. You have to know the CSS tricks, be able to hand code (and essentially debug) HTML and CSS. But you also have to have an eye for how it all fits together. CSS has been great for the web and it’s been a popular outlet for technically-minded designers who want to move their inspiration online. These people are the perfect fit for the interactive designer mold in RIAs. They’ve got a great design sense but also have the skills to work in code and (most importantly) work within the UI constraints of the developer to create something awesome.
They’re used to working with web developers, so they understand the designer-developer issues better than most people. Give them tools like Thermo and Blend and I think they’ll really be able to grow into the role of creating applications as opposed to static pages. Undoubtedly part of the appeal of CSS is that it’s all based on web standards and many of the luminaries in the community are committed to that. But RIAs are becoming more open and more standards based, so I think interactive design is a natural next step for the CSS ninjas out there. They can focus on the challenges of user experience design instead of the challenges of different browsers rendering CSS incorrectly. They’ve got the knowledge, the design sense and the technical skills. Now the question is how do we encourage more of them to jump into RIAs.
Ryan Stewart, a Rich Internet Application developer and industry analyst, recently joined Adobe's Platform Team as a Rich Internet Application Evangelist. full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
Subscribe to The Universal Desktop via Email alerts or RSS.
