Beyond Best Practice - Figaro 21/04/2009

Yesterday I gave a short presentation to the guests of Figaro Digital at their Design & Build, UCD conference. People often use the term best practice when speaking about UXD but other people often use it to stifle creativity. I wanted to leave the delegates with a little clarification and inspiration around best practice.

The idea of the talk was inspired by two things:

1) Our own experience over the years on how are own hugely talented User Experience team have worked in conjunction with our edgy, look-to-the-stars creative department. We work in a collaborative manner and as such we’re constantly evolving our methods, techniques to creatively solve our clients’ problems.
2) This particular blog post by Chris Clarke, our CCO and his feelings for best practice

I ended up racing through the presentation at break neck speed so didn’t dwell on any particular points - although many could be expanded upon. In short, best practice is useful, but not the b-all & end-all. Use it to get started, to help out - but make sure you dream, lead with an idea and embrace failure.

The presentation can downloaded here. PDF [12MB]

A few notes when reading it:

- All the examples demonstrate great work. Some fly in the face of best practice and deliver amazing results, some extend it.
- The evolving examples are drawn from the Webby Awards - check them out and how they have assessed best practice.
- Some of the work has been removed as I’m not in a position to share it with everybody yet
- The Pattern Language is the original book (ok so it the 2nd in a series of 3 for the pedants) by Christopher Alexander. Well worth a read especially if you are interested in architecture.

This was the preamble - judge for yourselves if the presentation measures up.

Getting past best practice: being creative, staying usable

The supposed conflict between creativity and best practice still manages to influence nearly everything we do online. For many best practice is actually worst practice, being nothing more than an excuse for mediocrity. For others it’s the bible from which to preach and something not to be deviated from – at any cost.

This talk will take a refreshing look at recent web standards and provide thought provoking examples that both challenge and reinforce them. It will bust open a number of myths around best practice and show how creativity can flourish without sending usability specialists into mild cardiac arrest.