It's 2012 & I'm Still Writing "Should web designers know how to code?" On All My Checks

I’m Geoﬀ Barnes

Director of User Experience
at Elliance

I’m Geoﬀ Barnes

Director of User Experience
at Elliance

@texburgher on twitter, etc.

It’s 2012 & I’m Still Writing
Should web designers know how to code?
On All My Checks

I want to talk to you about what I think is a very common shared experience for web professionals.

It’s 2012 & I’m Still Writing
On All My Checks :(

I don’t know a single word that adequately expresses this experience, so let me start by taking a few minutes to just
describe it.


First of all, it’s not just when talking about web designers and code that we have this experience.

Why doesn’t my boss understand that we
should be doing responsive design?

What I’m talking about is a certain class of struggle - more like a battle.
We’re trying to advance our ﬁeld - pushing a valuable cause. It’s messy and disruptive.

How can we keep clients from ruining the
work we do for them?
We know the way things should go - or at the very least, we have solid ideas and strong opinions.

How come my neighbors don’t realize that
blasting their country music is oﬀensive?
Chances are, a lot of us in this room are engaged in one of these struggles right now.

And we employ a pretty standard cadre of activities in our persuasive attempts.

We prosthelytize to our coworkers...

Top 10
Reasons
You Should
Write blog post upon blog post

Uninstall Photoshop

Write blog post upon blog post

Attend and present at conferences...

Write memos and emails, hoping to win (the neighbor) over to your point of view...

Read ferociously, scan, distill, and share at a frenetic pace...

And if at ﬁrst, you don’t succeed... (we all know the rejoinder)

Jean-Paul Sartre
And people are stubborn.

Sounds familar, doesn’t it.

Other people,
amirite?

Jean-Paul Sartre
And people are stubborn.

Sounds familar, doesn’t it.

Not So Fast
The Eﬀortless Art of Self-Sabotage

I guess in one way it would be nice if our inability to effect change were this simply attributable.
“Nice,” but not in a meaningful way, right? After all, our point is to effect change.

So then it’s very good news, actually, that our Sisyphean nightmare continues not simply because of others’
resistance to change, but in service of our own.

!

Let’s [SLOW DOWN] take a little closer look at what we’re doing during the persuasive cycle I just described, and see
where things are breaking down. <next build>

Now, obviously, whoever ﬁrst proposed “Web Designers Should Know How To Code” was trying to solve a problem.
<next build>

And the problem was something to this effect. <next slide>

Problem Statement

!


<next build>


Problem Statement

!
There’s a skills chasm between
designers and developers!


<next build>


?

Great, so how do we ﬁx that? <next build>

Brainstorming

?
Should we rearrange our oﬃce?

Great, so how do we ﬁx that? <next build>

Brainstorming

?
Should we hire a “rock star”?

Who knows if “Should Web Designers Know How to Code?” was the ﬁrst idea?

Brainstorming

?
Should we kill the designers?

Maybe it was the best.

Brainstorming

?

Was anyone here there? I wasn’t there. So I don’t know.

.

What we all know at this point <next build>
though, is that it was sufficiently favored that it became the position <next build>
of greatest rhetorical (if not practical) prominence driving search to close the skills chasm between web designers
and developers.

Position Formulation

.

and developers.

Position Formulation

.
Designers probably should learn to code!

and developers.

.

With the position as impetus, we collectively (and many of us individually) went to work developing the supporting
rationale. <next build>
(with the prosthelytizing and the blogging and the demo construction and the infographics and and...)

...and as we got close to having something akin to a solid case for our position, <next build>
we began sharing with our colleagues and friends. And we got feedback - some encouraging, some disheartening,
and with it <next build>

we strengthened our argument. PILED ON THE PERFECTION. Did away with the weaknesses, bolstered the strengths,
getting closer by the iteration to the apparent holy grail of <next build> Rhetorical Impenetrability.

Now, this is the point where, if you’re like me, <next slide>

Build

.





Share

Build

.





Strengthen

Share

Build

.





Strengthen

Share

Build

.

Rhetorical Impenetrability





... you started to get really excited.

Because I’ve watched an awful lot of Law & Order, and I’m pretty sure that STRONG CASES WIN.

.

But here’s the thing. Seen from a psychological perspective rather than a rhetorical one, <next slide>

.
Build

...when we’re building an argument, <next slide>

.
Share

sharing our beliefs, <next slide>

.
Strengthen

and strengthening our case...

Instead of piling on protection, we’re digging ourselves into a pit.

Dialogic Rigidity

.

The stronger we feel our argument to be, the more entrenched we become. And we develop dialogic rigidity.

Now this is a huge problem on a lot of levels.

Rigidity like this decreases the likelihood that we’ll succeed in convincing someone to see things our way.

So, ironically, the better we are at building persuasive arguments, the less likely we are to win people to our side.

Confirmation Bias

To complicate matters, there’s this thing called confirmation bias, whereby once we’ve decided we like a position -
once we’ve made it a belief <next build>

we see evidence of its rightness everywhere.

Evidence of its wrongness could be everywhere, and we don’t even see it.

This is irrational, though! Why would we behave this way?

Reference:
(definition) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
(in politics) http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/30/hope-for-reason/?hp

Confirmation Bias
(noun; real) tendency of people to favor
information that confirms their beliefs or
hypotheses
To complicate matters, there’s this thing called confirmation bias, whereby once we’ve decided we like a position -
once we’ve made it a belief <next build>

we see evidence of its rightness everywhere.

Evidence of its wrongness could be everywhere, and we don’t even see it.

This is irrational, though! Why would we behave this way?

Reference:
(definition) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
(in politics) http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/30/hope-for-reason/?hp

Right vs. Wrong

One reason has to do with our own attitudes about what it means to be wrong.

Raise your hand if you enjoy being wrong.

Who’s read this book by Kathryn Schulz?

If you have, bear with me. If you haven’t, stay with me. There are a few very salient points I want to visit.

http://beingwrongbook.com/

What does being wrong feel like?
http://beingwrongbook.com
First, consider what it feels like to be wrong. Awful? Embarrassing? Shameful? Stupid? Whatever words we use, there’s
a lot of agreement that it’s unpleasant.

The feeling of realizing you’re wrong
Schulz points out that, actually, all those negative feelings are feelings of realizing you’re wrong - not of being
wrong.

The feeling being wrong

The feeling being right
Being wrong, she asserts, feels like being right.

Error Blindness

She calls this “error blindness,” and we’re all affected by it.

We broadly accept that everyone is wrong sometimes, but us? Not that often. And especially not right now, at least
regarding anything that comes to mind.

Being Wrong is Wrong

Consider how readily we paint others’ wrongness as a character ﬂaw. We really, really don’t like being wrong.

Our fear of being wrong is really tragic. Because right up to the moment you realize you’re wrong about something,
there is precisely one possibility - that you’re right. If you’re searching for a solution to an intractable problem, a
world of one possible solution - that isn’t even working - is an awfully bleak prospect.

So, to summarize Ms. Schulz...

Being wrong is common.


We identify negatively with being wrong.


We’re terrible at knowing when we’re wrong.


We’re terrible at knowing when we’re wrong.
Being wrong feels like being right.


Expertise

• We tend to get entrenched in our positions to the detriment of exploration. (passionate)
• We favor information that reinforces existing beliefs over information that informs growth. (well-informed)
• We are terrible knowing, let alone admitting, when we’re wrong. (conﬁdent)

This is what we call Expertise.

Where Are We Going

Since we’re using the question about web designers and code as our case-in-point, let’s revisit it one ﬁnal time.

Where Are We Going
Wrong?
Since we’re using the question about web designers and code as our case-in-point, let’s revisit it one ﬁnal time.

Should Web Designers know how to code?

And let’s consider the potentially unnerving prospect that, at as fundamental an inﬂection point as this, we got
something wrong.

Now, I’m not especially interested in this question - and for our purposes right now, I’m explicitly disinterested in
trying to deﬁnitively answer it.

What interests me about this question are:
1) its origin story, and
2) its performance in the dialogic marketplace


First - the origin story.

While we can only guess at speciﬁcs, we can be pretty sure that this didn’t start life as a question.

Both the asker’s belief and rhetorical intent are made pretty clear here...

Web Designers Should know how to code.

So, it’s not a huge leap to realize we’re dealing with a rhetorical question.

Now this isn’t to say the question is disingenuous, but to point out that it makes some signiﬁcant assumptions,
whether phrased as a question or a statement.

Now, sentence diagramming is one of the better tools for this job, but it’s also not my sharpest tool, so this comes to
us courtesy of my seventh-grade english lab teacher, Mrs. Sitton.

Assumption #1: Web Designers (not developers or project managers or creative or UX directors or any other of the
potentially connective members of a team) are the subject of this declaration.

The declaration, of course, asserting that what Web Designers SHOULD DO is know how to code.

Now that they should know ABOUT code.
Not that they should teach developers (or project managers or creative or UX directors, etc) how to design.
Not that they should act as overseers of the implementation of their design work.

That they should KNOW HOW TO CODE.
That’s Assumption #2.

Assumption #3 is a little harder to spot, and to do so, we have to ask what this assertion here is implying.

Because it’s not just saying that Web Designers should know how to code, it’s saying they don’t know how to.
Now, that may seem pretty benign and obvious, but I think it’s very signiﬁcant, and here’s why.

In making the assertion - that Web Designers should know how to code - the speaker is implying a preceding
conclusion:

That the reason for the *skills chasm* is an insufficiency in the skill sets of Web Designers.

Now, how many of you here right now are comfortable with that inference - that assumption - that the challenges of
taking a web project from design to implementation arise (maybe not wholly, but at least primarily) from an
insufficiency in Web Designers’ skills?

(assume not many hands up)

Not a lot, right? Any?

Yet, by accepting this assertion - even in question form - as a fulcrum of our professional dialog, we have effectively
limited the scope of our search for solutions to those which solve the “problem” of Web Designers not also being
programmers.


So when you consider the question from that perspective, it begins to be less perplexing that a change agenda born
of it might be a little challenging to push.

Yet, here we are. We’ve constrained ourselves to a binary world of one proposed solution, the answer to which is
either YES or NO, and I think we’ve done that quite by accident.

This, I believe, is a big problem.

So the King's Quest, and the reason we've just devoted 20 minutes to a 7-word question is:

HOW CAN WE ASK BETTER QUESTIONS?

Better Questions
How do they work?

Let me recall something I said about the Web Designers question, because it’s important and it’s fundamental for our
quest:

I said I was expressly disinterested in deﬁnitively answering the question, “Should Web Designers know how to code?”
And while at least one reason for that now hopefully seems obvious, I actually extend that disinterest to all of the
questions I ﬂashed on the screen earlier...

They’re not all YES/NO questions, but they all make assumptions that...

...from a persuasive standpoint if not from a logical one, are likely to do more harm than good.

So my disinterest in answering them is deliberate and practiced.


For one more moment, let’s talk about the question, “Should Web Designers Know How To Code?”
-----
And forget whether you’re with me or not regarding problems with the question itself, and consider that any answer
of either “yes” or “no” assumes control over too many variables to be useful.
Does the designer WANT to learn how to code?
Would that encroach on others’ responsibilities?
Is it practical considering constraints?
-----
Really, outside the conﬁnes of the idealism of our own mind, a “yes” or “no” answer here is nonsensical.

A sensible answer is something closer to “depends,” or, because I’m still young enough to shudder at the prospect of
eventually ending up in adult diapers, “maybe.”

I understand how this could be a troubling, if not seemingly absurd, proposition, so I want to tell you a story.

It’s a taoist fable about an old farmer who’d worked his crops for many years.
One day, horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, neighbors came to visit. “Such bad luck,” they said sympathetically.
“Maybe,” replied the farmer.
The next morning, the horse returned, bringing with it three wild horses. “How wonderful,” the neighbors exclaimed.
“Maybe,” replied the farmer.
The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. Again, the
neighbors came to offer their sympathy at the misfortune. “Maybe,” replied the farmer.
The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son’s leg was
broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out.
By now, you already know the farmer’s reply.

Call Me Maybe

Maybe isn’t a cop-out.

Maybe is simply an acceptance of the potential that not only might we not have a monopoly on the correct answer,
but that we might not even be asking the right question.

Nothing counterproductive about Maybe.
In my experience, “Maybe” stimulates productivity by relaxing our egoic grip on “rightness,” and that makes it an
inestimably practical answer to hold.

1. Don’t Be So Sure

Find the difference between “knowing” and “seeking” and plant yourself in opposition to knowing.

Why?

There is precisely one precursor to discovery, and that is a lack of knowledge. The longer you can not know
something, the more you’ll explore.

Suspend judgment. Discovery is a process during which judgment effectively kills.

Picasso and light paintings.

That’s the worst damn music I’ve ever heard
in my entire life!

Rephrase judgements as introspective questions.

Why do I react so strongly to my neighbor’s
choice of music?

Rephrase judgements as introspective questions.

Seek out and nourish relationships with challenging colleagues. These are your friends.
Build arguments with them. Have a point system. Score importance of things.

2. Play

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VShmtsLhkQg

In a breathtakingly good presentation about creativity, John Cleese discusses at length what it means to play.

A mood, not a skill.

Of approaching the world as one of possibilities, not as one of good and bad ideas.

Not a skill that you either have or you don’t.
It’s a mood. A way of operating.

Open, not closed.

Wherein the mind is open, vs. closed.

Open, not closed.

That’s more than the bumper-sticker version of open-mindedness.

Open, not closed.

It’s being open minded to being thrown entirely off course for the sake of exploration, of play.

Open, not closed.

Unconcerned whether the play is “good” or “bad,” or whether you might get hurt or embarrassed.

Open, not closed.

Think of Picasso suspending judgment.

For adults, it’s rare that play just happens like for kids.
So as “adults,” one of our jobs is to create the conditions for play.

What are the conditions?

Conditions for Play



Conditions for Play
Space



Conditions for Play
Space
Time



Conditions for Play
Space
Time
Confidence



Conditions for Play
Space
Time
Confidence
Humor


Artistic Play
Exquisite Corpse drawing

Artistic Play
Chain-of-consciousness writing

Artistic Play
Free-style rap contest in the break room

Artistic Play
Free-style rap contest in the break room
Interpretive dance

Heady Play
Subvert everything for humor.

Heady Play
Be ridiculous on purpose.

Heady Play
Take literally everything literally.

Heady Play
Take literally everything literally.
Literally.

Routine is the death of

I have no idea if this is true.

Routine is the death of poutine?

I have no idea if this is true.

Even small variations matter. Notice what you notice along the way. Out loud, for that matter.

There is a mind-boggling array of routes you can take from any point A to practically any point B.

This means it’ll sometimes take you twice as long to get to work.
Make the time.

Learn a musical instrument.
Learn a musical instrument

or a new language.

or a new language.

or a new language.
ou une nouvelle langue.

Don’t buy into the idea that only kids can learn new languages. it’s not true.

or a new language.
o un nuevo idioma.
You have the neuroplasticity to learn new languages until quite late in life. As many as you want.

or a new language.
o un nuevo idioma.
atau bahasa baru.
And you’re not limited to romance or germanic languages.
The more foreign the language, the more it expands your existing schemas.

Dancing makes a lot of people uncomfortable. Maybe learn to dance.

If dancing doesn’t take you out of your comfort zone, try cross-dressing or nude modeling or public speaking.

If you’re a designer, learn to program.

If you’re techier than that, take up art.

Make out with your shadow.

Jungian concept.

Make out with your shadow.

Jungian concept. Explain + what is its therapeutic value?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_(psychology)

4. Reframe

Understand problems more fully by forcing yourself outside of your existing vocabulary, patterns, and habits.

In the world of common lore, three illustrative stories come immediately to mind.

The first, of course, involves a truck, the driver of which has attempted to drive it under a bridge that affords ALMOST
- but not quite - enough clearance. So the truck gets stuck.

At first, the driver tries to give it more gas, accepting that his truck will be damaged, but hoping to squeak through.
No luck. Then he tries to back up, but it’s no use. He’s stuck.

So he flags down passers by and asks them to climb up on the truck’s hood and attempt to weigh it down so he can
back it up. No luck.

Police arrive and so does a tow-truck. Hook up winch and try to drag him out. No luck.

Finally, kid in back seat her parents car as it sits in the opposite lane waiting for the police to flag them through, rolls

And of course we’ve all heard about the million-dollar space pen developed by NASA, and how the Russians bested
the Americans by using a 10-cent pencil. But how many of us know that story is apocryphal?

The truth is that, initially, both the Americans and the Russians used pencils in space, but they were expensive
because they had to be constructed of special ﬁbers and they were bad for missions because they shed graphite dust
and graphite dust, as you might intuit, isn’t something you want inside your space instruments.

The space pen was invented by Fisher speciﬁcally because of this problem, and sold to NASA (and the Russians) for a
modest $1.98 apiece.

So, where did this hooey about the Russians’ low-tech ingenuity come from? Certainly reeks of Soviet propaganda,
but its effectiveness lies in how beautifully it illustrates the power of reframing.

source
http://io9.com/5838635/the-million-dollar-space-pen-hoax

IN SOVIET RUSSIA
PENCIL USES YOU

So, where did this hooey about the Russians’ low-tech ingenuity come from? Certainly reeks of Soviet propaganda,
but its effectiveness lies in how beautifully it illustrates the power of reframing.

source
http://io9.com/5838635/the-million-dollar-space-pen-hoax

Finally, there’s the story I’m sure everyone’s heard about the priest who ignored warnings and refused evacuation
assistance as a monster storm engulfed his community...

(tell)

Brilliant example of reframing.

All good reframing does the same thing. Take our idea seedling from earlier...

...and lets put it in perspective. Literally, just get clear about our point of view.

Reframing is how we can change our perspective on the thing, revealing often hidden aspects of it.

A lot of times, when we’re stuck on something, our problem is as simple as being too close to it. Reframing helps us
get much-needed distance, to let broader contexts come into view.

Through this practice, we will ﬁnd it easier to prioritize inputs, to better separate situational signal from noise.

and through transforming our perspective on the world we thought we knew, we quite literally transform our world.

Paris is the Paris of things that other things
are the thing of.
- Dan Wineman
@dwineman

Simplify.

Remember Einstein who said, “If you can’t explain a thing simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”

Draw and write with pencils and paper.

Technology is great or whatever I’m supposed to say, but there’s no beating plain old pencil and paper when it’s time
to cozy up to your thoughts.

Utilize the least embellished linguistic
constructs required to effectively make your
point.

Avoid lingo and terms of art. You don’t have to “pack” and “unpack” clear and simple concepts.

Utilize the least embellished linguistic
constructs required to effectively make your
point.

The Einstein test is pretty easy to administer in my household. I just trap one of my children in a chair, set a mental
timer for 30 seconds (because that’s the most I’m going to get), and explain my idea.

Use plain language.

The Einstein test is pretty easy to administer in my household. I just trap one of my children in a chair, set a mental
timer for 30 seconds (because that’s the most I’m going to get), and explain my idea.

The PASS/FAIL result is instantaneous.

Identify
your user, boss, prospect, or client.

Get to know

Relate to

Express gratitude to

Love

Wait, I think I already forgot what you just
said.

Okay, so that’s a lot of things. Maybe more than six things.
But at a high level, it’s just a simple list of six strategies we can apply in daily life, in the pursuit of asking clearer,
more creative questions.

Wait, I think I already forgot what you just
said.
- half the room
including me

Okay, so that’s a lot of things. Maybe more than six things.
But at a high level, it’s just a simple list of six strategies we can apply in daily life, in the pursuit of asking clearer,
more creative questions.

Now these are six good bits of advice!
But we’re not exactly in short supply of advice.
What matters about stuff like this is how you apply it.

1. Don’t be so sure


2. Play


2. Play
3. Get Uncomfortable


2. Play
4. Reframe


2. Play
4. Reframe
5. Don’t Be Fancy


2. Play
4. Reframe
5. Don’t Be Fancy
6. Love, Love, Love

Finally

Our profession is ﬁlled with some of the brightest people most of us will ever meet.
A fair number of the people who inspire me every day are in this very auditorium.

My hope, in sharing what I prepared for today, is on one count ridiculously utopian and, on the other, shamelessly
selﬁsh.

No McFly ever amounted to anything in the history
of Hill Valley.

Yeah, well, history is gonna change.

Simply put, I want you amazing colleagues to challenge and nurture one another - to challenge and nurture me - as
vigorously as you possibly can.
Because we truly are in the business of changing futures. And we’re all in it together.

And the more rigorous our questions, the braver our actions, the freer our hearts to dream,
the brighter the future we’ll create.

It's 2012 & I'm Still Writing "Should web designers know how to code?" On All My Checks

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