Other than website design, I love reading about how our simple industry of designing and developing websites is advancing. It becomes even more exciting to find out that our progression is almost on the same level as the development of new website programming languages.
Previously while reading UX Magazine, I discovered such an article by David Armano. He shares his view of what’s happening to designers today and what would be happening in future looking at the trend of how designers are required to evolve today.
David talks about how the designers mind is now sharpened to do more than solve creative problems but to also develop a “New Creative Mindset” as he calls it. This creative mindset involves Analytical, Expressive, Curious and Sensual qualities in their thinking process. I like the way he phrased these new qualities.
The result is a holistic approach to creativity that is effective across multiple touch points and experiences.
In the article you’ll find an illustration and detailed explanation of what the qualities mean. In addition, he even produced a diagram to illustrate on how designers and developers are collaborating today in order to achieve that ‘holistic’ result. You should definitely take a look at his T-Shaped Creativity.
When David said this in his article; Creativity 2.E
..we’re not talking about a “jack of all trades†here. “Creativity 2.E†is not about doing everything and learning every application under the sun. It’s about being curious, empathetic, analytical, insightful and expressive all at the same time. It’s about being willing to do anything to get into the heads of your customer/user. It’s about adopting new tools, techniques and artifacts to help make your case for creating the right kinds of communications, interactions and experiences.
That is why I believe though you can be a Jack of all trades but specialized in none it won’t benefit the user experience you try to create.
And lastly, I wish I could tell my customers what David said at the end of his article.
Participate in the emerging media. Start a blog, update your site or if you don’t have one – set it up. Dive into the digital social communities and be willing to do what your customers do. Try methodology that you might not ordinarily consider. PowerPoint isn’t just for presentations. Flash isn’t just for motion. Move past boxes, arrows, colors, layouts, charts, funnels, and metrics.
Technology advances and the human mind continues to evolve. The saying, “if it’s not broken, why fix it?” is getting obsolete in this age of the Internet.
So it’s either you adapt or you lose out in this world of technology.
End said, are you evolving?
This is a no brainer… if one have been doing online publishing, one would realize, the only constant is change, and once you stop changing you are out…
and I have been using Powerpoint for web design for sometime, but I find the new office 2007 drawing tools to be too advance and lost some of the flexiblity control of the old version used to have. also, I can’t easily do stripes with PPT 2007 now, need to put in some creativity here. with PPT 2003,it was a breeze to come up with a simple and nice strips design..
Hey kew, thanks for coming by my blog.
When you say you use PowerPoint for web design, I assume you mean you develop Flash like presentations with it right?
Another question, do clients actually hire you to produce them? o.0
Oh no, i dont use them for flash like presentations, I layout my design with it and also use it to make headers, etc, there are loads of drawing tools at PPT that is easy to use, there are features for you to create gradients, transparency, etc and its up to one’s creativity…. PPT 2007 is much more advance and can create 3D drawings, etc, but the texture control seams to be taking a step back and worst than 2003.
I am not a professional web designer, I am just an hobbyist. I am not in the market..
Ahh, I get you. :)
Thanks for being honest, kew. And hope to see you around here more often.
If you’ve got something you’d like to know about websites, I’ll try my best to answer them.