 excited for this next presentation so I have a confession are you ready ready yeah so John has been at my design crush since I started like 16 years ago and I had the opportunity of meeting him in WordPress Orlando for one of our meetups and changed my life so I definitely know that if you're here you're in for a treat and then does anyone know what's happening afterwards yes AMA so buckle in I see you have your notebooks your favorite beverages John are you ready all set all right enjoy guys thank you okay here it's a Saturday morning when I was younger there was this thing called Saturday morning cartoons so you're missing out secondly if you're way far behind there don't worry about getting up and coming here because in a normal situation these are the most expensive seats if you were in like who's ever gone to a New York show before New York show right how much those seats cost in the front right a few thousand in some cases free all free here second thing to note is that in general a speaker will perform better if there are more people in the front so if you ever try to get more value out of the talk sit in the front because it'll increase the pressure on them yeah come on thanks go ahead yeah I really mean it it's like a really great place to sit over here there's four over here it isn't like the aisle seat problem in an airplane yeah go it's okay because people are nice here you can use a bathroom it's all right yeah come on come on back come on it's good and by the way this there's a big gigantic AMA afterwards which means you'd be stuck here which would be terrible so because you're in this place called Miami which I've heard in the music industry is like awesome so I don't want you to be stuck in here so I believe we'll do some stuff we'll take a break do more stuff but we're not gonna take this whole time because the real value thank you right here it's fine too if you'd like right here this is like a ten thousand dollars ten thousand dollars right there thank you go ahead it's okay thank you right there ten thousand dollar seats oh first class more first class everyone thank you yeah okay excellent okay but it really is something for you for all of you who speak or are going to have to speak at some time make sure you ask people to sit in front because it's just so much easier who knows why is it why it's easier where's your head I can hear you but I can also see you so like I look like I can see because some people cannot see but I I can see that like oh so what I'm saying is communicating right if I talk like this like hi how's everybody it's so awesome I know you love what I'm saying cannot it can't see and I didn't realize it because I had this mentor of mine Richard Saul Werman who was the founder of the TED conferences he's not famous because he sold the conference but but he didn't he didn't make a lot of money off of it but he sold it but he was known for being kind of obnoxious like very obnoxious so and there's a code of conduct so I can't repeat things he said or did but one thing I remembered is how every time I invited him to speak at somewhere he would make everyone stand up I mean awkward and come up all in front and I won't do that to you but I will ask you to come in front I think it's valuable and I didn't really get it until one time I was about to talk at a friend's thing and it was in this LA theater who's from Los Angeles Los Angeles Los Angeles it's like very dense in some places in downtown so it was like a movie theater but it was one of those movie theaters LA style you know like off the main so it was like this super narrow box it was like maybe like like five wrote five seats all the way back and everyone was seated like all the way back and it was dark and I was talking to the audience like this and I was like whoa this is awkward I have a new idea if anything I'm saying is communicating so from that moment I realized how important is to have that feedback loop feedback loop is the basis of any good experience design it's because you're actually curious what the other person is experiencing now this may be obvious to many of you who make things but it's not obvious to a lot of people who make things in technology it's because when you make things in technology you assume the position you know the position you hunch down you get the keyboard ready and you have a coffee like you know three fingers away and they've got your screen and you're a neo in the matrix and you're like I've got the entire world at my fingertips and then you ship it like I shipped it and you watch Google Analytics and like oh wow three people click this and I totally understand what they're thinking and I'm gonna optimize I totally get all that person in Alaska I get it you know and so it's kind of a it's a mode of indirect connection to people and this is in every technology company today and why does it pervade it pervades because this model is successful it's a model that produces value it produces shareholder value it produces extreme wealth so who are you to say that it should be done any differently because the numbers are going up why should I get out of my chair and go and talk to someone or or see someone because I have the numbers the numbers of the numbers show this is improving and so this is a kind of a I'll use this sort of a moment as a kind of metaphor for why making technical products requires people in that loop and I refuse to call people users because that's a drug industry phrase I like well let's talk about our users and like what's a user and so I like to say guests or customers in the case that they're paying and in some cases people will push back and they say and saying well they're not they didn't pay anything but in reality everyone is paying with their time now I don't know how now how many of you pay in time to social media but I pay a lot of money in time to social media and so I am a customer and I do expect a high quality experience my time so I don't say user I like to say guest or customer or answer any other word than user because user the idea of user and the drug industry goes to the very heart and core of all technology based experiences which are based on the science of addiction there's a great book on addiction that goes not to the technology industry but to one of our most famous institutions gambling there's a wonderful book called design by addiction it isn't a design book it's a social scientists experience living for three years in Las Vegas to understand how does addiction occur and her observations around how the simple idea of the near miss near miss I could have got it I could have won is wired in a rain in such a way that once you catch on that you're hooked and a lot of technology companies love this idea of what's called the super perfect engagement loop and getting hooked so we have to ask this a question ask anyone if they're guilty about this I'm asking us to sort of think about it because it's an important question for designing anything today now I just released something called design and tech report and I'm not used to projecting things in four by three so I'm trying to understand I've just changed my computer to 1024 by 768 which I haven't done for a long time but it appears the proportions are slightly strange but we'll figure this out okay so and this report is live on the network this is a local running copy and it's a bridge version and you can visit anytime you just search for design in tech report I released this last week at South by Southwest it is not accessible it is not mobile it has a variety of flaws in it I had to release it and I did it in a new way I did it all using CSS and Java script and all kind of things I always wanted to like figure out again so that's why it's a bit dangerous but don't worry I won't destroy your computer but it is not finished okay so this word design how many of you are designers in this room to design things okay yeah so since it began to design in tech report I like to frame three kinds of designs because the word design is a terribly designed it means all kind of things like I love the design of your hair I love the design of your shirt I love the design of your glasses you know it can mean so many types of things and so I like to frame one kind of design that we all know really well which is classical design classical design is a kind of design that is taught in art and design departments art design schools who is a classical designer classical designer okay so you were trained to be a classical designer who also is trained to be a classical designer over here right so classical designer so a classical designer has to make it the right way there's a right way did you look at this and this and this and why I think it's too small or it's too big or it's there's a it's this kind of machine intelligence like a guild that says what is good and what is bad and it's always moving with the zeitgeist it's the culture it's changing but it's subjective it's it's highly subjective and because it's subjective it's interesting because it involves how people experience things because who thinks people are easy to get along with look okay unanimous it's like I can get along with anybody you know like no I don't think so because people react to things and depending upon what they ate you know I just discovered this thing called avocado toast I had no idea that the high-fat content can make me less grumpy by 11 a.m. I had no idea those of you don't know about this you have to get in on this I've been eating regular toast for so long I get grumpy at 11 a.m. so check it out anyways how we react is always different so and when I when I joined automatic which is a company that is founded by one of the co-founders of the WordPress open source project Matt Mullinweg Matt asked me to bring design into the WordPress ecosystem in automatic and just in general see what's possible and so I've been spending like a year over a year now basically studying every little bit of WordPress learning as much as I can about WordPress the most importantly about the people and I've been narrowly focusing targeting how to make WordPress more relevant to more people because if you haven't noticed there's this thing called social media I mentioned it you know there was a day when nobody could put anything on the internet who remembers those times member FTP yeah it's like oh yeah it's like only I can put stuff on the internet because I can like type-to-commands and I know what Apache is it's not you know it's bad all it's all these names actually get the question every technology word by the way but anyways it was a way to distribute information that I could because I was a privileged technology person you know not not not I'm a bad person I just ended up in a situation where I was front first in line and I could do this and it was amazing and WordPress was one of the first systems that allowed generally more people to be able to publish on the internet again for those who are younger there was a time when there was no Facebook I know it's hard to imagine there was no way to tell anybody what you what you were doing it was like I'm just doing stuff and wake up in the morning and drink coffee is like I don't know what's so so thinking I have no idea I'm just gonna yeah I'm gonna pick up a magazine oh my gosh that's what Rihanna from 20 years ago was doing that's amazing you know star you know now you like not now so that didn't exist so putting stuff on internet was hard WordPress solved it for a lot of people and a lot more people but and also it was before the smartphone era so I think that for those of you who are in the WordPress ecosystem looking back to the year 2007 who was here in the WordPress ecosystem 2007 I mean it was a great time it was a time more like there was very little competition it was the rising platform and nothing could stop it because there wasn't all this other stuff out there happening there was stuff happening Facebook etc but then this thing came out this thing here and I should be know what this is this thing came out and this thing changed everything because it meant that everyone could use the internet everyone could not just people who had a computer you have to remember that 20 years ago people had computers were ostracized it was embarrassing you'd cover it up when there were parties you have a computer nerd right now like everyone has one of these like everyone's a nerd you know it's like back then like oh I see your computer a fissionado questionable you know we'll like mark this person off our friend list that was the way things work so now everyone has a computer and because everyone has a computer it means that everyone has different tastes everyone is bringing different tastes and sensibility and so if you think about it the way things were you know desktop computer and a 17-inch screen 1024768 you know maybe you have an XGA it's like amazing you know better keyboard whatever it's like this world here is no longer as valid as the regular world of quote-unquote more people that are less tech savvy and so I think that change has happened and my interest is how to really open up the wonderful thing I've gotten to see in the WordPress world which is all of you all of you are here on a Saturday and everyone who's doing this is a volunteer this is interesting it's interesting because it means that is it's kind of a movement against something and the against something is rising the against something is a world where you really can't trust everything that's out there you need something to believe in some of you have known this for a while it's been articulated differently some of you are newer to it and you're kind of like what is this you know I'll check this check this ride in the carnival of life out what is it and so in order to activate that I'm very interested in design of all types so for instance just this is yesterday maybe what is March 15th could be like before March 15th whenever that was two days ago I think I just got back to final hats so I've been I've been messing around in WordPress merchandise world you may have seen some of the stuff we put out last year WordPress University the reason why we put that out is because I noticed that so many people learn how to code in WordPress and maybe someone don't have a college degree in computer science but in many senses they believe this is their university so it's kind of an alumni shirt also released different sort of modernist interpretations of WordPress.org you may see a black Helvetica it is a horizontal and a vertical you may have also seen the Gutenberg shirt it's kind of like this is like colorful it's a very sort of like a colorful pattern of hand-drawn strokes and I've seen some of you have it on the back there's a little smile and the smile is a Wapu those of you are new to Wapu. Wapu is like the Pikachu of WordPress and so you know made like a Cheshire cat version of Wapu like what is that what is that smiling at me well that's Wapu and also many of you who have lived with Wapu for so long don't know it looks kind of weird it's like what is that a little bit shocking you know but after I like I kind of love this it's good you know and so I began taking a page from the playbook of the Nantucket black dog brand or it's like a silhouette like what is it and so I've been looking to for the right silhouette and so just recently came out with this silhouette here it's a Wapu silhouette which the average person looks at like what is that what is that so because of they're gonna ask you what is it and you can tell them what it is that's the idea however whenever you whenever you put something out people hate it I put this out there and and and this is the new Wapu shirt you see that with the Cheshire Wapu that anyways so this is an example of please stop making stuff with this thing it's just lazy I wish you design it you know we're like I don't really believe in embroidery technologists will say that I think I like this other technology better or like I agree this we're not this isn't Mickey Mouse another one looks horrendous who posts things on social media and gets responses like this raise your hand it's always interesting you know and you listen I don't I don't mute people I mute the terrible terrible people because they do exist the people who have like an opinion I'm like okay I totally get that so I respond on internet to it so this is my response hi I designed them it wasn't as easy as you think it's pretty hard to get a and also you can't see but it's a it's a metallic thread so it's silver gold white black it's a shines in the light so it's a little subtle thing getting the right hat the right you know like I don't like these kind of hats I don't wear these kind of hats I want to be like you know loose enough for my heck and it's kind of like a amorphous it's a great to know people who love them and also know people who dislike them because whenever you make something for the consumer world you're gonna have both so I'm really happy that some people actually loved it and some people don't like it and that's totally okay it's because I believe in this idea that WordPress is good design for all and if WordPress is good design for all it has to cover a wide territory and so you'll see different experiments like this some of you you're not gonna like and if you don't like it just tell me because I'm really curious why I don't like it I'll also notice that people do like it and like why do you like it you know a simple example of a weird test is anything I designed in the past my daughters hate it's just not gonna take it I designed these hats and they're all gone now I was like why'd you take that these are these are not teenagers like adult people type of they said oh it's just interesting so just one signal and so I urge you to to look at these things so they come out they're they're low-risk items and I'm using it to sort of get data to hear what fits and doesn't fit now I knew this man his name is Bill Mulgridge he was the co-founder of a company called IDO and IDO five minutes left IDO is a design firm that really kind of catalyzed this idea of design thinking who's are design thinking design thinking design thinking design thinking it was on the cover of Harvard Business Review last year which means jump the shark which means like everyone's like okay design thinking it was Bill was a visionary and he passed away a few years ago he was also the director of the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum and Bill had a saying about design that it's very simple there's a easy design principle that binds everything together it's about starting with the people so when you think about design challenges for WordPress I see dolls people challenge people in this room people outside this room how do we think about design differently gosh so yesterday I was I just arrived and I like Uber and Lyft by the way on Austin ride too but I was picked up by this person Muriel Muriel picked me up I was like oh okay cool so our eyes up it's Muriel Muriel's having a bad day I'm having a bad day so I get in the car and Muriel saying like I just got a ticket three hours ago that's why I called you ahead of time like okay not happy and I heard this whole story about how bad it's been all day long because of this complexity and this licensing and it's $12 here and whatever and so I kind of felt it's like using WordPress sometimes where you get in the car and say oh posts and pages are different or like I don't actually do it this way instead that's actually a plug-in thing or it's a theme thing you know but and so what I what I realized is like this thing of friction isn't good for the maker and isn't good for the customer either and I found it so the reason why I brought this up is because right now at automatic the design team is working on a design language called Muriel isn't that I thought like a weird moment a called Muriel which is primarily a language for communicating about design within automatic and also open sourcing to the WordPress ecosystem to use to help get past this difficult thing that I've noticed exists in a lot of technology companies and the technology ecosystems is that design is believed to be the shiny part of the thing you know it's like just finish this thing banged out this code MVP works now it's time for design to polish it up this is common and it's very common in the WordPress ecosystem because of it it's preventing the ability to build experiences that feel great why it's because the car is built the machine is built and the knobs are shiny and that is not good design that's design the old way that's design from my hat world that's what design was much more objective much much more subjective much more super superfluous so designing actually is very simple design involves understanding the entire experience and the fact that WordPress is so distributed you can be like in the go tie you can be in Paris there's also a language barrier across automatic across WordPress world and so what I'm trying to produce for the team is a common language a common standard a common sort of way that design is talked about used in WordPress this will take maybe three years if it's successful to really permeate but mural is what's going to be driving I hope an improvement in design in this world that I know a lot of you care about because it came here on a Saturday and everything yeah oh time is up so I didn't even get my presentation sorry about that okay so I have something that I developed which is a way to talk to introverts so I have that this is my phone so if you can just text me I can get your question because as you know the problem with the Q&A is there a few people with a good blah blah blah and it can go long so I like to optimize Q&A sessions so this is my number so just text me questions and then I will field them as we're going to go along and I will stop because there are a few things I want to show you about design but I want to get to your questions why do I want your questions it's because it's a way to create value to understand you because I don't really understand what you came here for and so by fielding your questions I can know what to do okay so I'll wait here okay thank you and I will call out your error code I won't read your phone number so it's totally privacy compliant okay so three kinds of design GIF or someone's asking that classical nerd question GIF or GIF I say GIF okay classical design design thinking computational design so classical design is the old way of designing it's about taste-making it's about rich people basically design thinking is about culture building building consensus innovating getting out of the box why does the box exist it's because the box is controlled by people oftentimes the most important person controls that box and doesn't let you in who knows what I'm talking about there thank you right they're like yeah you want to get us out of the box no it's in my box and and what happens is innovation doesn't occur so design thinking is a process to say okay boss let's involve everyone and let's think laterally and the boss might wait a second I think this is a good way to fake and then suddenly this idea over here that was developed together the boss is I think that's my idea I think I'll let this let this happen and then this idea bubbles to the top and so design thinking is a way to break out of this kind of a centralized thinking leveraging people computational design is a kind of design that Mary was talking about design involving code Mary who is here just before me design involving code involving any kind of digital computational thinking involving analytics this is where the majority of value has been produced in the last decade computational design this is a lot of value being produced by strategy companies and this is designed by the classical industry just making people who make things okay what's a computational designer they don't have the code but they have to understand the idea of code the idea of code being a way to represent information that isn't the way we represent it normally in the language of the computer they think critically about technology they're curious about the implications of it you know I noticed that there's this there's a new sort of hashtag trend of hashtag Manhattan project it's like yeah this is like the Manhattan project of whatever it's awesome you know this is this is just like the Manhattan project you know it's kind of like this is the Uber for whatever or the Airbnb forever for whatever that problem though with the Manhattan project is it produced the nuclear bomb that killed like lots of people do you see that it's again I'm not putting down science because I was from the science world but it's a question of like what you make affects people so I think that everyone in this room cares about the word press ecosystem so they're thinking critically about why they chose to come here on a weekend they want to be a part of something that stands for something as a technical person a computational designer uses all three kinds of design so that means that they use classical design and they use design thinking they think organizationally they think classically about taste issues and they think about computation thank you Eric code 239 and 561 I'll get to you thank you and lastly a competition designer loves new things and if you are a computational designer right now you are actively learning artificial intelligence so who here in this room is a computational designer by this definition raise your hand very good okay for those who aren't I invite you to do so the one of the big barriers is the artificial intelligence one which I'll show you how easy it is to become artificially intelligent compliant that's okay good all right first your questions here very good okay area code whoa thank you here we go Eric code 561 ask what is the first thing to consider and think about when it comes to food design for a new website on WordPress correction good design thank you Eric code 561 I was thinking what the food design thing I was like that's a new kind of question I could go there what's the first thing to consider in designing any website today is performance if you do not think about performance you are designing a poor website number one if you not think about how it behaves on mobile it is a bad website which is a surprise to many people who design websites like I wanted to have a beautiful hero image and I wanted to like go on a 4k screen and no because all statistics show and I have a I think I have a page on that and it's in the report if you don't see it in this presentation but the average person will leave your site if it hasn't appeared in three seconds so that's why performance matters a lot which is a hard piece of medicine for people who love to design websites the old way to swallow but once you look at the data it's like oh okay well this is a constraint how do I design for this constraint how fun not that thought is a thing I care code 561 erico 239 is wordpress slash automatic focusing on any zero interface tools well first of all the wordpress ecosystem is vast so you can like Google anything like wordpress quiz and art I know it's gonna show up but food design will show up for sure but like anything like it like wordpress is like this cheese or a cracker or this it goes with everything so definitely there's anything out there also on speech interfaces too is automatic doing anything in that nope but I'm curious about it and you'll see you'll see some of the information I've gathered in the report that points to how easy it is to go zero interface if you want to anyone can do zero interface zero interface meaning no keyboard no nothing just okay erico 561 as a developer how would you recommend improving design skills very simple there is a book out from Ellen Lupton it is I'm also we have a saying automatic we are frugal because we're not Google it's a very cheap it's a $12 book paperback book Ellen Lupton it's called design is storytelling it's it's it's for those of you who remember programming in C in the early era of the 1980s there was a book called the courting and Richie version of C it was only this thick it was like that thing there was a book to learn a language like that thick before it was awesome the year and a half later it was like this thick you know but Ellen's book is very thin paperback and the nice thing is that all profits go to a non-profit so it's a great little investment to make what does this book teach you it teaches you that design isn't about just how it looks it's what it does for someone it's very accessible and I recommended everywhere I go okay Erica 305 ADA has a lot of interpretations which is best to protect my company design great question Erica 305 you know depending upon what you read today and I'm not a lawyer but I almost became a lawyer by accident but anyways ADA websites have to be ADA compliant if you are a government contractor which is really interesting and actually really great because this kind of legislation will change how websites are made what does that mean it means that your site has to be accessible to people who who don't have all the sim abilities as the majority of people in this room so I would say it's gonna change a lot but people can't see it very well that's why a lot of my work advocating for interesting design problems is about designing for older people because older people are the largest growing segment of consumers next to Millennials and because of medical science they're not dying as much so a huge market to tap into those of you who are so though how many of you in a restaurant a dark lit restaurant use this as a flashlight raise your hand come on okay look at that okay all of you looking at us is gonna be you next because it's just the first thing to go is your eyes and so then you start asking questions around design and like you know I love my 6.5 point type looks so good on that super white spade I think I'll make it light no I'll make it ultra light so good so by the time you're my age you're like what is it something there flashlight like a camera magnifying zoom oh there's type there so a quick accessibility thing is that yes oh time will stop okay our time is in folks sorry for going over time but I appreciate your attention and I hope you enjoy the rest of your day thank you