After going to the annual Web Visions conference here in Portland, I started thinking about the future of interactive design as a discipline. Who are we and what are we doing?

Things have changed so much since I created my first web page in 1996 back when I hand-coded everything using emacs. Now there’s real design on the web. Sure, there’s a lot of “bad” design out there, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the smorgasbord of animated GIFs, blinking text, and ugly background textures that made up the entirety of your web experience a decade ago.

Today, the hubbub is Web 2.0, tagging, and design patterns. The pendulum sure has swung far from the helter-skelter world of amateur design — and let’s face it, some amateurs are pretty good designers! Now the focus is on user experience, accessibility, and standards. So much so that many “design” conferences are really for developers and not designers.

And this is what got me wondering what it means to be an interactive designer anymore. Design tracks at some conferences are more about code than visual design. User experience sessions are really about accessibility and usability. Usability workshops are actually focused on design patterns used in Yahoo! Mail. So what does all this mean? Do I need to go to the AIGA and HOW design conferences to get a little visual design in my presentation diet?

To me, it means the industry is still growing up and learning how to define design in a field where nearly everyone is some kind of designer. We have a lot more tools now than we used to, more practitioners, more clients, and more applications for the web than we ever thought possible. It also means that designers — the visual designers — need to stand up and be counted and make sure we don’t get lost in the fray, reduced to little more than decorators. We need to learn about development, usability, design patterns, interaction design; all those things that inform visual design decisions.

However, we also need to be represented at interactive conferences. We need to step-up professionally and offer something back to the community. But where to start? Well, I’m starting by talking to local colleges about teaching interactive design classes. And I’m going to talk to professional organizations about conferences and presentations, give my feedback, see if I can influence the programming for future conferences.

That’s the piece I think is missing from interactive design as a discipline; professional participation. And if the interactive designers of the world are going to have much of a future, we need to get on the bus before it runs us over and we find that we’re just pixel pushers relegated to making things pretty instead of making meaningful communications and experiences.

Tagged as conferences, design, Using technology + Categorized as Ideas & Theories, Doing business, Ideas & Theories, Ideas & Theories, Teaching & Learning