Future of Web Design Recap – Jeffrey Kalmikoff

Jeffrey Kalmikoff SkinnyCorp Community centered design

Jeffrey is the Chief Creative Officer at Threadless and asked the Threadless community to ask questions that he would answer in the session and on the site. They had around 500 questions, chose 25 to answer and based the talk around some of them

1. what are some of the most important design details for a community- based site that are practical and still stimulating?

Use the 3 C’s when designing for community – consistency, clarity and crazy awesomeness.

Consistency – use of colour and expectation of functionality are 2 key bits. Try and keep things simple but find ways for people to know where they are at all the time. basic colour set- green, blue and pint. the point is to keep it simple and obvious to avoid people to get lost. In designing a new area – have to make sure that people still know what they are doing so the threadless kids site, it needs to behave the same way/expectations.

Clarity - thinks about user base. someone who is 13 or 70 needs to be able to navigate. I think about my mom when designing the site. The question I always ask – what does email have in common with gay porn? – when a freshman at college, I was moving from university system (flunking) so needed a new email address. I told her the email address…and she gave to her friends and family. But the mails were bouncing, it was the wrong address. I’d created a hotmail account, she’s told everyone hotmale.com…everything bounced. To my mom, it was not obvious that it was hotmail. It needs to be very clear

Crazy awesomeness – has more to do with ideas. ie removing Flickrs images from a set you get an explosions- it’s fun and crazy awesome keeping things fun will keep your community around, You need to understnad the the value of exceeding expectations within a genre. Have to keep it fun to keep community

2. Can a web designer be an active member of a community and still be great at the job

Yes you have to be an active member. activity leads to awareness. On threadless people were using blogs to post designs before they submitted to the site. We watched how they were using it and then we changed the way the site worked instead of convincing them to change their behaviour. We created the critique section on the blogs to get people to critique the designs….submit before they submit,.

3. Does the community matter of the site managers make the decisions- do the community members make a difference?

Yes and No. You choose to be democratic or you do not. We deal with democracy. A while ago we changed things and the people did not like it and told us. We changed things live until we got a sort of consensus. It’s not something I like but it is what the community decided. We facilitate it, not lead it.

4. What is the biggest surprise you have had?

You’re not as talented as you think you are, that is the biggest surprise. There is an inherent amount of ego involved in being a designer. You need to check your ego. It’s not finished until the community says it has finished Also, you may become more important than you realise- people can become important to others

Rachel Clarke thinks a lot about digital strategy and blogs at behindthebuzz.com and bibrik.com.