ERP And SAP

 

SAP, an acronym for Systeme, Anwendungen und Produkte in der Datenverarbeitung (Systems, Applications, and Products in Data Processing), is a multinational software corporation headquartered in Walldorf, Germany. SAP is widely known for its enterprise resource planning (ERP) software and solutions.

History and Founders:

SAP was founded in 1972 by five former IBM employees: Dietmar Hopp, Hasso Plattner, Claus Wellenreuther, Klaus Tschira, and Hans-Werner Hector. They initially aimed to develop standard software for real-time data processing, focusing on business applications. The company's first product, called SAP R/1 (Real-Time Data Processing System), was released in 1973 and ran on IBM mainframes.

Over the years, SAP experienced significant growth and introduced new versions of its software, such as SAP R/2 and SAP R/3. The introduction of SAP R/3 in 1992 marked a turning point for the company, as it transitioned from a mainframe-based system to a client-server architecture, making it more flexible and adaptable.

What does SAP do?

SAP is primarily known for its ERP software, which integrates various business processes and functions into a single system, providing organizations with a comprehensive view of their operations. ERP systems help streamline and optimize business activities, including finance, human resources, manufacturing, supply chain management, customer relationship management, and more.

SAP's ERP software enables companies to manage their operations efficiently, improve decision-making, and enhance collaboration across departments. It provides a centralized platform where organizations can store and analyze their data, automate processes, and gain actionable insights.

ERP and SAP Modules: Within SAP's ERP software, different modules are designed to address specific functional areas of an organization. These modules can be implemented individually or integrated together based on the specific needs of a company. Some of the commonly known SAP modules include:

1. Financial Accounting (FI): Manages financial transactions, general ledger, accounts payable and receivable, asset accounting, and financial reporting.
2. Controlling (CO): Provides tools for cost accounting, budgeting, profitability analysis, and internal reporting.
3. Sales and Distribution (SD): Handles sales processes, order management, pricing, shipping, and billing.
4. Materials Management (MM): Deals with procurement, inventory management, goods receipt, and material valuation.
5. Production Planning (PP): Controls manufacturing processes, including capacity planning, bill of materials, work orders, and shop floor control.
6. Human Capital Management (HCM): Manages employee data, payroll, time management, recruitment, training, and organizational management.
7. Customer Relationship Management (CRM): Supports customer-centric processes, including sales, marketing, service, and customer analytics.
8. Supply Chain Management (SCM): Optimizes supply chain operations, including demand planning, logistics, warehouse management, and supplier collaboration.

These are just a few examples of SAP modules, and the company offers many more to cater to various industry-specific requirements.

SAP's continuous innovation and expansion into cloud-based solutions have further diversified its product portfolio, offering solutions for analytics, business intelligence, mobility, database management, and more. Today, SAP is one of the world's largest software companies, serving customers across industries and empowering organizations to thrive in the digital age.

I hope this post finds you all in good health and high spirits. Today, I am excited to announce the creation of the SAP Professionals WhatsApp Group, a platform aimed at fostering collaboration, networking, and knowledge sharing within the SAP community.

As the creator of this group, I firmly believe in the power of collective intelligence and the immense value it can bring to individuals and organizations alike. In today's fast-paced world, staying up-to-date with the latest trends, industry insights, and best practices is essential for professionals working with SAP technologies. This group aims to bridge the gap between industry experts, consultants, developers, and enthusiasts, enabling them to connect, learn, and grow together.

So, what makes the SAP Professionals WhatsApp Group unique? Let's explore some key features and benefits:

1. Open to All SAP Professionals: Whether you are an experienced SAP consultant, a skilled developer, a product manager, a business analyst, or an aspiring professional seeking insights into the world of SAP, this group welcomes you. By bringing together a diverse range of individuals, we create a vibrant community that thrives on shared expertise.
2. Knowledge Sharing and Problem Solving: One of the primary objectives of this group is to provide a platform for knowledge sharing. Members can discuss SAP-related topics, seek advice, and share their own experiences. From troubleshooting technical issues to brainstorming innovative solutions, our collective wisdom will help drive success in SAP projects.
3. Networking Opportunities: Networking plays a crucial role in professional growth. By joining the SAP Professionals WhatsApp Group, you gain access to a vast network of like-minded individuals, potential mentors, and industry leaders. Expand your professional connections, exchange ideas, and explore new opportunities.
4. Stay Updated with Industry Trends: The SAP ecosystem is constantly evolving, and staying on top of the latest trends is vital. Group members will benefit from curated updates on SAP news, product releases, upcoming events, and relevant insights. Engage in meaningful discussions around these topics and discover how they impact your work.
5. Exclusive Learning Resources: Learning never stops, and this group aims to foster continuous professional development. Discover and share valuable learning resources such as blogs, articles, tutorials, webinars, and online courses related to SAP technologies. Together, we can enhance our skills and stay ahead in this dynamic field.

To join the SAP Professionals WhatsApp Group, simply follow these steps:

1. Send a direct message to me, stating your interest in joining the group. We as a SAP community will validate your profile and share the group link.
2. Provide a brief introduction, including your professional background and your motivation for joining.
3. Please ensure your LinkedIn profile is up-to-date to help us maintain the quality and professionalism of the group.

A word of caution: This group is for professionals genuinely interested in SAP and committed to contributing positively. It is important to maintain a respectful, inclusive, and supportive environment for everyone.

I am excited about the endless possibilities that this WhatsApp group holds for all of us. Let us embrace this opportunity to connect, collaborate, and share knowledge, ultimately empowering ourselves and the SAP community as a whole.

If you have any questions or suggestions regarding the group, please feel free to reach out. I look forward to welcoming you to the SAP Professionals WhatsApp Group and witnessing the incredible impact we can create together!

Introducing the SAP Professionals WhatsApp Group: Unlocking Collaboration and Knowledge Sharing

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software is used to manage a company's day-to-day operations.

Accounting, human resources (HR), procurement, customer connections (CRM), supply chain, manufacturing, engineering, maintenance, projects, service, and other functions are aided by it. An ERP solution combines the functions listed above into a single piece of software, ensuring that the business runs as efficiently as possible and giving the organization with a single source of truth for better decision-making. In a nutshell, ERP software is a collection of tools that integrates an organization's value chain into a unified environment.

Difference between ERP and SAP

ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planning and it’s a business process management system which automates and integrates all the core business processes of an organization into a shared database in order to streamline processes and information across the organization. SAP (Systems, Applications, and Products in Data Processing) can be referred to as the products offered by the company SAP AG. SAP is one of the largest providers of ERP software in the world.

2023 News:At its annual Sapphire conference, SAP is announcing innovations to modernize ERP. AI plays an important role in this, but what else on the roadmap? In any case, SAP promises that the innovations will give enterprise organizations “the tools they need to tackle the future with confidence.”

Looking at what is most important to SAP users right now, we can see that it is whether or not they are upgrading to the more modern ERP S/4HANA. Official recent numbers are not available, however the market indicates that a considerable percentage of users continue to use the older ERP system ECC. However, this method is based on outdated market standards and will be obsolete in a few years. Overall, SAP has lately made two significant advances to make modernization more appealing. First, RISE with SAP, a software package that assists businesses in modernizing their business processes. It includes tools for redesigning and migrating business processes to a modular software environment. It means that your organization creates processes to fulfill the market standards set and built by SAP for your industry. A variety of services to host SAP workloads on the cloud and apply process mining to optimize processes are also included in the bundle.

Following up from RISE with SAP, the ERP behemoth has released GROW with SAP. The distinction lies in the target audience and the services tailored to them; RISE with SAP is intended at enterprise organizations, whilst GROW with SAP is focused at midsize businesses. According to SAPPHIRE news, of these solutions, RISE with SAP will receive enhancements. This is because ERP announcements specifically target very large enterprises.

AI Built for Business

At the dawn of a new AI era, SAP is strengthening its commitment to embed powerful AI capabilities across its portfolio to help customers solve business-critical problems in the flow of work.

Customers can use SAP Business AI with confidence because it is built responsibly. Today, SAP is announcing a raft of advancements to SAP Business AI, including innovations that personalize customer engagement, make procurement more productive and expand organizations’ abilities to find and develop critical talent across their entire workforce.

SAP also draws on the strength of its rich ecosystem to benefit customers. Yesterday SAP announced the next step in its long-standing partnership with Microsoft. The companies will collaborate on integrating SAP SuccessFactors solutions with Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot in Viva Learning as well as with Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service to access powerful language models that analyze and generate natural language. The integrations will enable new experiences designed to improve how organizations attract, retain and skill their people.

Reference from: https://news.sap.com/2023/05/sap-sapphire-future-proofed-business-age-of-ai/

https://news.sap.com/2023/05/sap-sapphire-icertis/

SAP and contract intelligence pioneer Icertis are delivering a new integration that connects AI-driven contract intelligence with SAP S/4HANA in order to enable more profitable and compliant procurement operations.

Icertis Contract Intelligence (ICI) for SAP S/4HANA (purchase side) is the next step in SAP and Icertis' combined product roadmap, as the businesses continue to change contract-driven operations by combining contract intelligence with SAP solutions.

Contract intelligence enables SAP S/4HANA procurement teams to streamline sourcing, negotiate better commercial terms, and increase compliance with regulatory and corporate regulations. By automatically recommending terms based on prior business interactions and tracking commitments to guarantee the goal of all agreements is completely realized, the ICI platform accelerates value and increases savings both pre- and post-signature. Artificial intelligence (AI) built in the ICI platform also reduces risk by detecting deviations from conventional terms, while specified norms and templates further decrease liability via contract self-generation capabilities that enable procurement teams to play a more strategic role in driving business performance.

Benefits and Advantages of ERP Tools

1. Data Security : Data has become a prized possession for businesses because it’s so critical to making the best possible decisions, and ERP software can help protect that asset. The fact that all this data is in one place, rather than spread across multiple systems with varying levels of security, increases the level of protection. It replaces spreadsheets and other documents sitting on employees’ desktops and being passed around via email. With a cloud ERP system, your information is typically distributed across multiple remote servers to establish redundancies and protect against a single point of failure, adding another layer of security. This is especially important if your company handles a lot of sensitive customer data. In another sense, an ERP system can increase data security by limiting who can view and edit data. Most systems have permissions that are easy to control, ensuring employees only see the information they need to and reducing opportunities for fraud or other nefarious activities.
2. Centralized Data : Much of the benefit of ERP can be attributed to the fact that all information from all departments is maintained in a single location. Without such a system, data is frequently dispersed across a business in numerous apps and spreadsheets, making it difficult for personnel to find what they need. Furthermore, this strategy frequently results in duplicate data in inconsistent forms, adding to the difficulties. An ERP system can also help with this by standardizing all of your vital data. Because it's all in one system, everything will be in the same format, so you won't have any problems running reports or analytics. Standardized data enables you to obtain all of the insights you require to make more educated decisions.
3. Compliance : Having accurate, up-to-date records that are easy to find and searchable can really reduce the work required to comply with any regulations your company must adhere to. Customizable reporting tools within the software also make it far easier to track compliance and adjust as necessary. This makes you much more auditable, as well, because all the information an auditor might need to review is easily accessible. Certain ERP systems can even support specific financial standards like GAAP or regulations like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX).
4. Increased Productivity : There are countless ways an ERP system can give a major boost to productivity. One way is that it automates many basic, repetitive tasks, freeing up employees to work on other projects that bring more value to the organization.
5. Visibility : Visibility is another one of the broad, fundamental benefits of ERP — everyone having visibility into various aspects of the business is a powerful thing. It enables faster and better decisions because managers have all relevant context that can assist them. For example, if the purchasing team can see the status of in-transit purchase orders that have not yet reached the warehouse, they can factor that into the orders they’re about to submit to avoid excess or insufficient stock.
6. Collaboration : So many of the benefits we’ve already covered here facilitate collaboration. Visibility into the way other teams work and what information they’re looking at makes it far easier to work hand-in-hand and for staff to reach out proactively when they see an opportunity to help colleagues. No longer are teams operating on an island and using applications that only they have access to and that aren’t integrated with other back-end systems.
7. Accurate Forecasting : Your business can only be prepared for what’s coming if it knows what to expect. That’s where forecasting comes in: it uses a wide range of historical data and sometimes other inputs to predict future demand, revenue, expenses and other numbers. Forecasts are much more accurate once you’re running an ERP system because they’re based on more accurate and comprehensive information, since all that data is now in one place. More accurate forecasts mean you can make the appropriate preparations for what is likely to happen. If sales are expected to climb 30%, you can strategically purchase more inventory or, if you’re a services business, hire more employees with the skills where you expect increased demand.

The Challenges And Rewards Of Teaching Web Design

Just over four years ago, I decided to take a part-time position teaching website design and front-end development at a local university. My time in the classroom has been one of the most challenging as well as one of the most rewarding experiences in my career, and I believe that other Web professionals would greatly benefit from spending some time in an educational setting teaching others their craft.
In this article, we will look at some of the challenges to prepare for if you are considering taking on a teaching position. I will also present some of my personal experiences and insights, including the benefits and rewards I’ve enjoyed as a teacher, to help you consider such a move for your own career.

Challenges

Let’s start by looking at some of those aforementioned challenges as well as the solutions I’ve used to meet them over the years.

Not Everyone Learns The Same Way

Where you teach, as well as the variety of students in your classroom, will have a dramatic impact on your overall experience. Over the years, students from all walks of life, age groups and experience levels have taken my course. The only constant is that every one of them is completely different — which poses quite a challenge when preparing materials and exercises for the class.
Ultimately, your job is to do what you feel would help the students understand the concepts best. Yet, no matter how well you prepare, the reality is that your materials will work great for some students and not so well for others. You will not be able to reach all students equally because everyone learns differently.

Everyone learns differently, and your responsibility as the teacher is to respond to those different needs. (Image credit: opensourceway)
As you receive feedback from students and realize which ones get it and which ones are lost, you will need to adjust your lesson plans to make sure that you reach all students, not just best and brightest who understood the concepts right away. Of course, part of the challenge is that you must strike a balance here. You’ve spent time carefully considering and building your lesson plans, and you don’t want to blow it up and redo everything because a particular student did not respond well to them. Instead, find ways to get those slower-paced learners up to speed.
I had one student a few years ago who found it difficult to keep up. He was always falling behind, and he felt bad about asking too many questions and holding up the rest of the class — but by asking fewer questions, he fell further behind, and the problem just worsened. Eventually, I suggested that he bring in a digital camera to record the lessons so that he could go over them again later at his own pace. I wasn’t thrilled about the idea of being recorded, but I felt it would help him, so I was open to the idea.
The change was immediate. Watching the recordings at home and going through the lab exercises for a second time at his own pace, he found that the lessons began to make sense and that he was able to keep up in class. His final project ended up being one of the best of the group — a dramatic turnaround from where he started in the course.

Not Everyone Is Cut Out To Be A Web Designer

That being said, the reality is that some students, no matter how much extra attention you give them or how responsive you are to their learning needs, will just never get the material. Unfortunately, I’ve had to drop a number of students from my class over the years. Despite my best efforts, including extra materials developed specifically for these students and extra class time to answer their questions and tutor them, they simply didn’t understand the concepts being taught.
In most cases, these students tried incredibly hard. They put in the effort required, but the results weren’t there and the rest of the class was held up because of their struggle. Having to sit down with those students and explain that I didn’t think they were right for the class is easily the most uncomfortable thing I have had to do as a teacher.

Failing to get through to a student does not necessarily mean that your material or teaching approach is bad. In many cases, it’s not you, it’s the student. (Image credit: D Sharon Pruitt)
If you are going to take on a teaching role, be prepared to make difficult decisions. As uncomfortable as these conversations are, they are sometimes necessary for the good of the class.

Rewriting Lesson Plans

The Web is constantly changing. Lesson plans and exercises that were relevant one semester may be woefully outdated the next. As the Web evolves, so too must your lesson plans.
When I began teaching over four years ago, responsive design hadn’t yet become the best practice it is today. Now, it is one of the most important aspects of my course. Despite all of the work I had put into the class materials, I had to pretty much start from scratch when I decided to introduce responsive Web design into the lessons.
Make sure to teach skills that are relevant to the industry today, revisiting your lessons after each semester and making changes as needed. Most of the time, I need to make only minor changes to course materials; I rarely have to start from scratch. Either way, though, prepare to revise your lesson plans regularly if you hope to keep the course relevant and up to date. Furthermore, understand that your time in the classroom is just a fraction of the time you will have to spend preparing for the class.

The Constraints Of Time

Speaking of time, another challenge is that you have only so much time with the students. So, you need to pick and choose exactly what to present according to what you feel will serve them best. If your classes are like mine and many of your students have no previous experience with Web design, HTML or CSS, then you’ll need to start with the basics. Giving students an understanding of basic design principles and introducing HTML and CSS all the way up to the most current best practices is a tall order. In the end, you have to leave some things out and accept that you can’t teach students everything.
Take support for Internet Explorer (IE) 6. Finding ways to support that old browser has consumed countless hours for those of us who have been in the industry for years, but we don’t struggle with it much these days because use of IE 6 is now so low. Among most of the websites I have worked on lately, IE 6 does not even factor in the user base. Because of this, I have decided not to discuss the challenges of IE 6 because I do not feel it is relevant to the work the students will do once they leave the classroom. If we covered IE 6 support, it would mean we have that much less time to cover something else. The challenge is to decide what is more (and most) important and to make the best use of the time available to present those concepts.
As a side note, websites like Smashing Magazine and other online sources that have built an archive of articles about Web design topics over the years are an invaluable resource for those of us who are teaching the next generation of designers and developers. So much of what we do today is built on the practices of the past. The history of our industry is important, but finding time to present all of that history in the classroom is hard. So, referring students to topics and articles to read is an important strategy for teachers. This is why these archives of articles, which might not seem relevant to today’s best practices, are so important and why decisions to drop thousands of old articles when it resigned its website is such a problem.
As Andy Clarke states in his article “Preserving the History of Web Design,” we need to ensure that new professionals in our industry learn this history, “to learn about the progress we made so they don’t undo it.” Unfortunately, we cannot cover all of that history in the classroom, so the challenge is to figure out how much of it to present and how much to refer them to for review outside of the classroom.

You Represent The Industry

You will be the first Web professional who most of your students have ever met or been able to speak with at length. To them, you represent the industry. The stories you tell and the opinions you share will shape their own understanding and opinions of the industry. That is a pretty big responsibility.

Always keep in mind that you play a major role in shaping your students’ understanding and opinions of the Web industry. (Image credit: Dell Inc.)
We all have bad days, but taking negativity from the office into the classroom will absolutely affect how your students see the industry. You don’t have to present the job as being all rainbows and gumdrops, but be mindful of what you say to students and avoid using the classroom as a place to blow off steam, regardless of how bad your day is or how frustrating an exchange with a client has been. Complaining about clients is never productive or appropriate, and too many in our industry relish the opportunity to share bad stories. Doing this with students gives them the wrong impression and trains them not to respect clients.
You have an opportunity to set these new Web professionals off on the right path. By maintaining a positive outlook and by exposing the students to the best parts of our industry, you can help to cultivate designers and developers who will help our industry continue to grow, instead of hold it back.

You Are Responsible For What You Put Into This World

Building on this theme of responsibility, you are absolutely responsible for what you put into the world. I have heard many Web designers echo this sentiment as they look to do work that has meaning and that makes a difference. The projects and clients we take on and the websites we launch into the world are our responsibility — and that responsibility is multiplied many times over when you decide to become a teacher.
As a teacher, you are at least partially responsible for the work your students will do. When your students go on to do great things, it is awesome. One of my students a few years ago took a position with an important non-profit organization in our area. Seeing her work make a difference for that organization and the people it helps was extremely gratifying.
Unfortunately, not all interactions with former students end as positively as this one did. Other former students of mine have done really bad work as freelancers. I remember one former student contacting me and asking me to look at the most recent website he had designed and developed for a client. There is no way to sugarcoat it — the website was bad. The design was unattractive, the user experience confusing, and the code sloppy and poorly written. This put me in an uncomfortable position.
He was obviously very excited about his work and was asking for feedback, but any feedback I could give would be negative. In the end, I told him that I was happy to see him working on the skills we had covered in class, and I suggested a few improvements to the website. The student thanked me for my input and made a few changes to the website. Since that time, I have followed his work and seen other mediocre websites that he has designed for clients, but he never again asked for my feedback, nor have I offered it.
This experience was not confined to this one student. Over the years, other former students have taken on freelance work and subsequently launched poor websites into the world. I would be lying if I told you I didn’t feel some responsibility for these poorly done websites, but in the end, you cannot police every student once they leave the class. All you can do is give them the best information and show them the right way to design and develop a website. What they do with that information, for better or for worse, is something you have no real control over.

Rewards And Benefits

So far, we’ve looked only at the challenges of teaching in this industry. Those challenges are real and substantial, but if you can meet them, then you’ll also find a number of rewards and benefits from taking on this responsibility. Let’s now turn to some of those rewards.

Helping Others

Helping others can be a powerful experience. Spending time in the classroom to teach others your craft is one way to use the knowledge you have gained to improve the lives of others.
Many of the students I teach are unemployed or underemployed. Their tuition for my class is paid for by a grant set up to give them skills relevant to today’s workforce. Helping these unemployed individuals to better themselves and learn new skills is important work, and seeing students go on to find good entry-level jobs in the industry is incredibly rewarding. Hearing from those students later on that the lessons and conversations in the class helped to prepare them for success really makes all of my hard work worthwhile.
I have always loved the giving, collaborative nature of the Web industry. Teaching students is one way to contribute to the Web community while having a real impact on the lives of others.

Learning By Teaching

One of the best ways to truly understand something is by teaching it to others. While my time in the classroom is dedicated to teaching website design, I would be lying if I said that I didn’t learn quite a bit from the experience as well.
Try to explain the CSS box model or the difference between relative and absolute positioning to a new student, and I guarantee you will understand the concept better than before. This greater understanding and the experience of explaining these technical concepts to students will also help you speak with clients.

Teaching forces you to find ways to explain concepts in a way that others who do not have the benefit of your experience will grasp. (Image credit: opensourceway)
Being able to communicate with clients without being too technical or intimidating, and in a way that helps them to grasp the concepts enough to be able to make informed decisions about their business and their website, is an important skill. The lessons you prepare and your conversations with students can and will equip you for these client interactions and make you better at what you do.

Generating Business

Speaking of clients, I wouldn’t have expected this when I began teaching, but my time in the classroom has led to a number of projects outside of the classroom. Multiple students have passed along solid leads to me because they could not handle the projects themselves with their level of experience. Former students have also invited the agency I work for to bid on projects initiated by the organizations they’ve joined.
Over the years, a number of people have asked me whether I realize that, by being a teacher, I am training professionals who will one day replace me or, at the very least, take work away from me. I’ve honestly never felt that way. I’ve always felt that there is more than enough work to go around. And, as my experience shows, being a teacher and making a positive impression on your students will not only not lose you clients, but could actually generate business for you and your agency.

How Do I Get Started?

Hopefully, this article has given you some points to think about as you consider whether a teaching position is right for you at this point in your career. If you’d like to explore this possibility, how should you begin?
My opportunity came when I began telling others of my desire to speak more about our industry and the work that I do. A fellow Web developer who had taught at the university for many years heard me one day and, knowing of an opening at the school, referred me. Within a few weeks, I was in front of my first group of students.
While my experience might not be typical, there is a lesson in it. Spreading the word about your interest in a teaching position could open doors. Do not be shy to let others know that you’d like to explore this move.
Other strategies are to contact your local universities, colleges, and business centers to see whether they have any openings. Sometimes, a little outreach turns up an amazing opportunity.
If you can’t find an opening at an institution of higher education or you feel you are not yet ready for that level and would like to start smaller, consider giving small workshops or classes at a local library or even as a private tutor.
Whatever path you choose to get started, consider what you can offer to students who are interested in learning more about our industry. I assure you that the students will not be the only ones who get something positive from the experience.

Teach Them How To Hit The Ground Running And Faceplant At The Same Time?

Quick Wins Full Of Traps

“Quick tutorials for beginners” are killing our craft. Instead of pointing to existing documentation and keeping it up to date (in the case of the wiki-based docs out there) every new developer turned to an author wanting the fame for themselves. And a lot of online magazines cater to these to achieve “new” content and thus visitors. We measure our success by the number of hits, the traffic, the comments and retweets. And to get all of that, we want to become known as someone who wrote that “very simple article that allowed me to do that complex thing in a matter of minutes”.

Image credit: Opensourceway.
Instead of teaching the underlying technology, we tend to show a quick, beautiful implementation and put a lot of effort into it. We teach a “create something amazing in 5 minutes” and hope people will care enough afterwards and look at learning the underlying technologies. We aim to whet their appetite whilst giving them full solutions. The reason is that this is exactly what we wished we had had when we learned that thing in the first place. Sadly, this is not how teaching and learning works.

Road Safety Begins In A Classroom

At this moment, let me go back in time a bit. Growing up in a small village having a driving license and subsequently a car was a vital part of your social life and also your work options. Therefore, I couldn’t wait to get mine.
Now, what you want to do is to learn driving. You want to get into the car, go vroom-vroom and be off. The reality of getting a driving license though (at least in Germany where there are no speed limits on the motorway and therefore it is taken very seriously) is that you spend quite a lot of evenings in a boring classroom before you get behind the wheel. You learn about the code of the street, the different signs and what to do in all kind of situations in a car. You even learn about the different parts of the car and what they do.
The reason is that it scales better — you need to learn all that stuff and it is much easier to pack 40 students in a room to teach the basics before you try to make up a schedule where all of them can drive out on the road. As a driving school, instead of 40 cars you can get by with 5. And students who already know what they should not do and where things are in a car are less likely to crash them.

Educators Learning From Bad Experiences?

This is frustrating and annoying, the same way learning things at school without being told what they are good for is surely annoying. On the Web, we want to be different. We want to make learning fun and we are tempted to put in as much as possible for beginners so they can get past the basics very quickly and build the awesome of tomorrow instead. The author actually mentions that in the comments:

“I think teaching people to do things is very complicated, doubly so over the internet. If I were teaching a university class I would take a very different approach.”

Yes, teaching is hard. That’s why not every gifted developer is also good at explaining or a good trainer.
While it is a very good idea in our heads to give people quick solutions with real results instead of step-by-step basics, we forget how we actually got there. Once we reached the level in a skill to be educators in it, we went through a lot of trial and error using the skill. By avoiding this, we strip others of the chance to learn a skill on their own terms and with their own obstacles to overcome.

How About Writing Beginner Tutorials Covering Beginner Tasks?

So, I think it is safe to assume that there are two needs/aims battling when we want to write a beginner tutorial, i.e. we want to teach people good practices and we want to get them as far as possible with the least effort. A lot of times these don’t go well together.
jQuery is a poster child of great “new” Web development. “Write less, achieve more” is the mantra and I love that we have it. jQuery achieved this by replacing JavaScript and the unwieldy DOM with a clever and fast API and a totally new syntax: chaining. This is great. This is how to do it. jQuery abstracts the annoyances and complexities out into its core and lets developers write code. You cannot just take this approach and mantra and apply it to any technology without providing a simpler API/platform that abstracts the dangers and annoyances.

Teaching Non-Live Code On The Web?

The discussion that happened in the comments of the aforementioned article was mostly about security and the inability of implementing the code discussed in it in a real environment. And yes, they are very much valid. The code is good as an exercise but awful as a live example. Putting it on an live server means you are open to any kind of attacks and scripts looking for zombies to infect — not to mention how a botnet would have a field day with it!
And the author knows this. This is why a lot of the article is dedicated to explaining that this is not live code:

“Please notice that this article was written for beginners who already grasp HTML and CSS, know a bit of PHP and have seen phpMyAdmin before. I will not go into best practices, safety and all the rest of it; let’s just have fun with this one!”

And later on — as a response to some feedback, even more “don’t do this” was added:

“Note that this is meant as a beginner’s exercise. The code you see here will give you the intended result, but a lot of it is not safe for production websites. It lacks a lot of safeguards, such as data validation, salts for passwords (for better security), htaccess rules and so on. The goal of this article is to let beginners forget about all of these things and just concentrate on building something nice.
Neither does this article promote best practices. You may find yourself adopting different methods later on, or I may write in another article that we shouldn’t do something you see here. The article is intended as a fun little example for beginners to spice up their boring theory sessions. I believe that the best way to learn is through increasingly difficult examples.
That said, I encourage you to try all of this out and play around with it at home or on your servers. If you put this on a live server, I recommend using an account that has only this website on it (or only test websites). I also recommend using passwords for user accounts that are not the same as your other passwords.”

This, actually very much is against the very idea of a beginner tutorial. A beginner tutorial gets people on the way, i.e. it teaches them the first steps and what one can do with it. As these quotes show, teaching people PHP by starting with SQL and writing a login system and file uploader is obviously the wrong way.
Out of a sudden, the simple beginner tutorial is “intended as a fun little example for beginners to spice up their boring theory sessions” (cited). What boring theory sessions? I thought we are building something from scratch here?

Piling On Too Much

The article tries to teach four things at once: SQL with PHP, login and session control, file uploads and how to build a beautiful Web interface powered by PHP. The login system and the file upload is where it gets very dangerous in terms of security. This is not a beginner tutorial — it is giving beginners the wrong impression that everything is easy and everybody else probably just does it wrong and cares far too much about boring details.
We should not teach new developers that they can do things in a few lines of code and keep quiet about the bad effects this has. This is condescending and based on an assumption that people learn only from successes on the Web. The author mentions that in the comments:

“I don’t think beginners need to concern themselves with SQL injection attacks. The point here is to start to learn something, not to learn everything at once. When someone understands SQL at all, then teach them about the problems, not before.”

This is very dangerous thinking — if you teach how to do something, also make people aware of the consequences it has. I totally agree that the point is to learn something. Defining the “something” is the skill of a good tutorial writer or educator. We focus far too much on the final product to be built, rather than the components we use to get there.
This is where using a complex example like a “Christmas Wishlist” that needs a login, uses a database and has an upload feature for any file is a bad choice. There is no way to keep this “simple” unless you teach people how to write code exclusively for their own localhost.

Let’s Not Assume That People Read And Care As Much As We Think They Do

One comment was quite interesting as a summary, as it very much sums up some of the comments and assumes good on the side of the readers:

“Good stuff just to have some fun and help the super beginners get a quick footing. I think a lot of the people commenting here are either A) Too seasoned to look this far back, and not doing things the “proper” way just irks them, or B) I’d be willing to bet some are just flexing their programmer’s ego a bit.
I think assuming that people will take this as serious programming and build from it, building the wrong way, is a bit too much of a stretch. Anyone who can read and who cares about doing things the right way will take the author’s disclaimer to heart. If not, odds are they’re looking for the easy route. If that’s the case, you can’t really stop them. This article isn’t ending the world.”

I agree, it is not. But it also brings nothing new to the table. When I learned PHP coming from Perl in around 2000, I read thickbook.com and — except for the CSS styles — it had similar examples. Over the years we learned to protect our systems more. I think the assumption that readers will care much about the “this is not live code” doesn’t cover one main use case of “beginner tutorials”, i.e. that people will most probably find the article via a Google search and simply use the code example in a live environment without reading the tutorial or the comments. All they wanted was a quick, simple to understand example after all and beginner tutorials have those, right?

Image credit: Opensourceway.
Want proof of that? Look at the success of W3Schools.com. The Web is full of materials to learn the same things. The quick “here’s the solution — don’t worry about how it works right now” are the most successful ones. We also have a Web full of systems that lack very basic quality and security features and we spend months educating hires in companies what developing production code means when you protect the data of our users.
I think it is time to stop chasing the hollow success of creating a “quick tutorial” that is actually a “bad implementation with quick, sloppy code” in disguise and start curating what is already on the Web. We can then concentrate on the next level tutorials.
I think Web-based education will be a big thing in the near future, and creating a new generation of Web makers should be on all of our agendas. We do this with tools, great documentation and frameworks, and not with a “write this, it is awesome” approach.

Dear Web Design Community, Where Have You Gone?

As Web craftsmen, we are living in exciting times today. The frenetic pace of evolution in our industry has created remarkable opportunities for our work. Our established set of design and coding practices is more comprehensive than it has ever been before. Our designs are becoming more usable, our code more scalable, our layouts more responsive. In fact, just by comparing our design processes to those from a decade ago, it’s remarkable to observe how quickly we’ve developed and honed our craft over all these years.
However, the maturity of our industry is far from being complete. While producing a myriad of technological advancements, we have outpaced other developments along the way. These developments aren’t related to the lack of cross-browser standards support or technical downsides of the tools we are using. No, they have a different nature. They have emerged within our design community — a community which is now so fertile and diverse that it is becoming increasingly difficult to ensure its professional maturity.
In fact, there are many issues that require a thorough, profound discussion within our industry, yet they are not properly discussed for one reason or the other. This article is based on my recent, often unrelated, observations of our community. It features my personal opinion on the problems we need to tackle and conversations we need to start to ensure its healthy evolution.

Where Did The Community Spirit Go?

I was very lucky to have experienced the development of the Web design community from its early days on. As a passionate newcomer to the industry, I was captivated by the sense of enthusiasm that seemed to be flourishing everywhere and spurring everyone. It was a strong and genuine feeling that was sparkled among dozens of sites and magazines and fueled by the motivation of experienced and non-experienced designers. The community was reasonably small and therefore very welcoming and supportive, so everybody was perfectly fine with asking lengthy questions and providing detailed answers.
I clearly remember in-depth discussions with hundreds of meaningful, engaged comments, in which designers would thoroughly analyze the techniques presented and suggest improvements or alternatives. I remember having experienced print and digital designers writing articles and teaching inexperienced designers the obscure details of and practical tips about the new craft. I remember vivid debates spreading from one site to another, connecting designers and building professional relationships in the community.
These discussions still take place today. There are many more designers and developers out there encouraging these discussions. The remarkable work of people like Paul Boag, Dan Mall, Jeffrey Zeldman, Francisco Inchauste, Chris Coyier, Simon Collison, Andy Clarke, Paul Irish, Chris Heilmann, Jeffrey Way, Trent Walton and many others is a vivid manifestation of the tremendous care and dedication of designers and developers to our industry. There are literally thousands of talented folks out there who are writing articles and releasing wonderful new tools and resources for all of us to use. That’s great. That’s great because all of these contributions bring our community much further.
However, every now and again I can’t help but realize that the number of active contributors with knowledge and experience hasn’t increased proportionally to the overall magnitude of our growing community. Way too often I find it extremely difficult to find meaningful debates spanning over the whole community — debates that would create a strong echo and prompt us all to revise, extend or adjust our practices and hence become better professionals.

The recent hashbang debate is an excellent example of community-wide discussions that our community could use.
Way too often do I come to the conclusion that this remarkable, inspiring enthusiasm we once had is now gone. What remained are stranded cliques of passionate designers who lead design discussions privately and separately, often unnoticed by the vast majority of the community.
The tragic irony is that although we are probably one of the most connected professional communities out there, it seems that we are increasingly not connecting. It’s not that we’ve become just a bit too comfortable with the processes we’ve developed over the years nor that we don’t care about improving our design and coding skills. In dialogue with our readers and colleagues at conferences or even online, I’ve become confident that this development has entirely different roots.

Finding Time to Contribute

Since there is so much going on the Web these days, it seems only reasonable that many of us might experience difficulties finding time to actively engage in professional discussions. Personally, I am just as guilty as the next guy, as I find it extremely difficult to read more than 5–7 design pieces a day — not to mention commenting on any of them. I’m trying to challenge myself to be more responsive and engaging. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but I have firmly committed to this change and maybe — just maybe — so could you.
I believe that the lack of time is one of the reasons for our changed behavior online. Our emails have become shorter, and so are our blog posts and comments. Our interest has become much more difficult to enrapture, and so we’ve become more passive and less critical. We way too easily consume and accept ideas, designs, concepts out there, sometimes without even questioning their validity and correctness. Instead of debating, we agree; instead of criticizing, we accept — or simply click away and ignore the discussion altogether. And this is the reason why many conversations in the community do not get a critical mass of interest.

Web design discussions on Quora and StackExchange sites are wonderful examples of websites that we have already started using to exchange ideas, ask questions and conduct valuable design discussions.
The worrying part is that the number of the less experienced active contributors has increased exponentially. Due to that, I am afraid that the community is not led in the right direction. The true leaders — professional, knowledgeable designers and coders — are busy. Busy with their work or perhaps they feel that it’s no longer worthwhile for them to spend much time contributing. I hope this attitude can change. We need more professionals to find time to contribute and help to teach others. After all, so many of us are self-taught. And where would we be today without the contributions of others?
We need more meaningful and helpful discussions within our community. Finding time is difficult, but we don’t have to jump into writing or commenting with both feet. An occasional comment, tweet, reply or short blog post about whatever it is we’ve learned or thought would already help; it might just as well invoke thought-provoking discussions by other members of the community. As artisans of the Web, we love to discuss things that are important to us — be it design, coding, writing or anything else. We might have no time for profound writing, but we certainly have enough time to suggest an idea and encourage our friends to join in the discussions. Taking just a couple of minutes every day to think about the craft we love will bring us further and accumulate the wisdom within our community.
Francisco Inchauste summarized this point nicely in one of our recent conversations: “Everyone has a perspective and experience to share. Without more perspectives, we’ll become limited in our growth. The community is only as strong as our weakest people. To improve, we need to lift others up by helping to educate and guide.”

We Need to Curate Valuable, Meaningful Resources

Probably the easiest way to jump into design discussions would be by observing and replying to the tweets marked with the hashtag #design. Well, that’s what I thought before adding the #design column on my Tweetdeck a couple of weeks ago. After a couple of days of occasional scanning of tweets in that stream, I did find a couple of interesting discussions; however, more often than not I stumbled upon loud, inaccurate and promotional tweets which led to tutorials, freebies or inspirational websites.
Don’t get me wrong: I have nothing against these resources per se, but I don’t quite understand why we, multi-talented, versatile craftsmen of the Web, are restricting the use of such a powerful medium as Twitter primarily to these resources. Why don’t we use it for meaningful discussions as well? Have we somehow become blindfolded by pure eye-candy or tremendous technological opportunities we have now with jQuery, CSS3 and HTML5? We are experimenting with visual and interactive enhancements in our tutorials and our designs, yet we tend to forget about the fundamentals of our work — our design principles, the quality of our processes and the integrity of our creations. We could all benefit from writing and talking about the ways we work, the decisions we make and the solutions we come up with.
Just compare finding a jQuery slideshow plugin against finding a practical resource on UX design patterns. Or finding a social media icon set against finding detailed case-studies written by experienced designers. Valuable, useful resources are becoming rarities and unfortunately many of them just do not get the attention they well deserve.
We need to support and curate the creators of thought-provoking and valuable resources and help them maintain and support these resources. We need to support them because they are the ones that raise questions and seek for answers; they are the ones that support the maturity of our profession; they are the ones that are not afraid to question status quo and encourage experimentation, sharing and innovation — the so needed attributes of our exploding industry.

HTML5 Boilerplate is a remarkable example of a cooperation of dozens of Web designers who share their thoughts and insights to create something useful for all of us to use. Unfortunately, many useful projects on Github do not manage to get such strong community-wide support.
We can use our communication channels wisely and invite our colleagues and friends to join in the discussions, sharing opinions and spreading the word about those of us who truly dedicate their time and effort to produce useful, valuable resources. I am certain that by doing so, we’ll be able to unleash the remarkable potential for a strong and supportive exchange of ideas and expertise.
The emerging conferences like Fronteers, Brooklyn Beta and New Adventures in Web Design show very well which benefits a strong community has: it is inspiring, helpful, forward-thinking, challenging. I will never forget the moment when I was sitting among the attendees during one of the conference’s talks and my neighbor turned to her colleague and whispered, almost mindlessly: “I feel that these talks are going to change my views of design forever”. I’d love to experience this feeling in our online discussions, too.

Community-Wide Discussions and Polls

There is so much content out there so that our focus is distributed among dozens of resources and discussions every day; it’s not easy to see how exactly we could lead large community-wide discussions. A blog’s audience is usually limited by its RSS-subscribers, random visitors and social reach of the blog owner. Spreading the word in social circles outside this audience might work to some extent, but it usually won’t help reach the vast majority of the community, especially if the blog is relatively small or obscure.
We need to have some sort of a mechanism that would connect like-minded designers and developers which are not already connected via other media. Twitter’s hashtags are a good example of ways how we are already trying to solidify exchange of ideas and thoughts. But we can make it better.
So what if we had a consistent standard in place? We could strengthen these exchanges through hashtags by developing and having the community adapt some common tags to use en mass. For instance, #design_type, #design_layout, #design_js and others. We could even conduct community-wide polls (#design_poll) that could be easily recognized and retweeted by users with smaller as well as larger followship, thus spreading the word and strengthening the active participation within the community. We could have a website tracking these hashtags, presenting the most popular discussions and filtering spam and other malicious activities.
The same mechanism could be used for supporting valuable design resources and their creators as well as passionate designers who write insightful articles or produce useful resources. When elaborated properly, this approach will make it easier for us to connect and participate in large, community-wide discussions. These discussions might even spread beyond the limits of our community, providing a different perspective on our conversations by professionals from other industries.

[Editor's note: Have you already got your copy of the Smashing Book #2? The book shares valuable practical insight into design, usability and coding. Have a look at the contents.]

So What Exactly Should We Be Discussing?

As Web designers, we’ve come a long way. We’ve shaped a new, strong industry and developed professional design processes. We also have learned a lot on our journey — be it some bits of psychology, copywriting, marketing or other related disciplines. If you think about it, that’s already a massive achievement, and so we have a damn good reason to be proud of what we have contributed to all these years altogether.
However, like in any other industry, we need to permanently revise our practices, innovate and improve our design processes. In fact, there are a number of things that might need to be extended and reconsidered. Let’s cover the not-so-obvious ones.

Our Professional Vocabulary

As mentioned above, when it comes to Web design, there are always so many different disciplines and professions involved, that it is becoming increasingly difficult to make sure that everybody involved is on the same page in terms of vocabulary used in our discussions.
Misunderstandings between designers, developers and stakeholders are the running joke in our community. And there is a reason behind it: the vocabulary we are using has dramatically evolved over years — it was primarily expanded, sometimes with abbreviations and concept titles which are counter-intuitive or misleading. We have applied terms from print design to Web design; we have coined new terms for new concepts and methodologies; we have introduced terms that might have become outdated today (think of the outdated floppy disk symbol for the “Save” icon). The result is a quite sloppy and inconsistent vocabulary — we often have various terms describing one concept, or one term describing various concepts.

Unsuck It explains terrible business jargon in plain words. Hopefully, we won’t need something like this for the design community as well.
For instance, there are design attributes that we call ‘responsive’, ‘adaptive’ or ‘flexible’, but what exactly do we mean when we apply them? Different designers might even have a different idea on what they mean with the word “design”; is it visual design, design as a concept or maybe UX design? And what is UX exactly anyway? The same problem occurs when we discuss terms such as “HTML5″, “page”, “fold”, “navigation” and others. Just imagine how devastating the results would be if any other professional industry, e.g. medicine, wouldn’t have a common vocabulary for its technical terms?
At the New Adventures in Web Design Conference last month, Dan Rubin talked about this very issue, saying that the industry as a whole needs a common grammar and vocabulary. He asserts that the ones we have now, were perhaps somewhat hastily chosen. And that with some careful thought and planning, we can design a much more accurate vocabulary to help avoid the confusion which can stem from the existing one.
We could use more precise and intuitive terms which would be based on certain concepts that are familiar to us and other professionals. As Dan noticed, “responsive design”, coined by Ethan Marcotte, is an excellent example of such a term. It derived from the concept of “responsive architecture” which explores how physical spaces can respond to the presence of people passing through them. So instead of creating unchanging spaces that define a particular experience, they create spaces in which inhabitants and structure can — and should — mutually influence each other.
Applied to Web design, it means that we could treat our designs (very much like these spaces) as facets of the same experience. The concept can be easily explained and understood. It’s not too technical, it’s not too abstract and it’s not chosen randomly. It is rational, visual and memorable which are all excellent qualities for a term describing a new design approach.
Perhaps we could create a standardized design language which would accumulate our vocabulary and provide us and our stakeholders with a consistent and unambiguous terminology for our discussions. Finding a common vocabulary is a challenging task and it’s an ongoing process that would need permanent revisions and updates.

Our Design and Coding Practices

Actually, we need to refine more than our design vocabulary: our design and coding practices require regular revisions as well. Faced with new design requirements in our regular work, we keep conquering design problems and exploring appropriate solutions for them. These activities are the driving force behind learning; they heavily influence the decisions we make once we approach similar design problems in the future. This is what makes us experienced professionals.

Method and Craft is an excellent website where professional designers and developers are sharing tips about their workflow and design processes. This is a goldmine for newcomers to the industry.
We learn something new every single day. We discover a new CSS trick or a new UX tweak. An obscure Photoshop technique or a beautiful font pairing. Our convenient coding techniques are gradually dating as browsers become more capable and so we discover that certain browser hacks are no longer necessary. We find new ways of how certain common conventions could or should be adjusted. All these small things we discover in our daily routine help us improve our skills and workflow. Actively exchanging thoughts and methodologies with your colleagues will mutually benefit and improve the overall design and coding practices.
We shouldn’t be afraid of asking challenging questions or posing bold statements. If you feel that we should all stop using CAPTCHAs, then say so and explain your rationale behind the argument. If you think that there is a way to reinvent scrollbar, say so and explain how exactly you imagine this technique to work and why it’s better. And if you are struggling with a personal problem and would like to hear how the community members managed to solve it, say it, too — it’s very likely that other members of the community have had similar problems and will be glad to join the discussion and help out.

Our Professional Ethics

Saying “no” can be extremely difficult sometimes, especially when personal or financial incentives are at play. However, as professionals, we owe it to ourselves and to our projects to not get enticed by offers and suggestions that do not wholeheartedly coincide with our intentions and objectives. The former can bring temporary benefits, but if applied consistently, the latter will bring long-term benefits.
We need to become more aware of the ethics that we should be following while designing, coding, writing, editing and publishing on the Web. The times when soulless copy-pasted press releases were used “as-is” across online publications are long gone, so let’s stop doing that. Cheap generic stock photos neither visualize nor support the article, so let’s stop using them, too. Professional publications often use “nofollow” attribute to block link-droppers from gaining Google’s link juice; and most users will not click on links titled “Milestone Professional Web Design Agency”, so let’s stop doing it as well. There are many similar examples which we can use to adapt, and optimize our online behavior accordingly.

The website Ethics and Web Design is a valuable resource which covers the fundamentals of professional ethics in our industry.
As content creators, we often depend on advertising, and that’s sometimes the necessary evil that we need to accept to be able to monetize our dedicated writing efforts. And there is nothing wrong about it. However, we need to set clear limits to how the advertising can and how it cannot be presented on our websites. For example, text link advertising and sponsored posts should always be clearly marked as such. We should have a strict separation between content and advertising. Each of us could design a set of personal principles for his or her websites (publishing policy), publish these rules online and stick to them no matter what. This way the readers will respect you and appreciate the simple fact that you are strongly committed to quality work.
We could benefit from being more critical about our content and the way we present it online. It means paying more attention to copy, consistency of our writing style, quality of images and image captions, design of code snippets etc. These details give our writing a different tone; they empower our thoughts and make the content more trustworthy and reliable. Why don’t we make our work more challenging by trying to make every article we publish at least a tiny bit better than the previous one? We could try not to just “put stuff out there”, but curate our delicate ramblings, making sure that every published article has the highest level of quality that we can afford for it. A style guide can be helpful in this case, especially for larger websites.

Photoshop Etiquette Manifesto is a website listing helpful and subtle suggestions to organize your Photoshop documents — making the transfer of them less painful.
In Web design it means to stop using anti-patterns — design patterns which are created specifically to trick our users. Instead, we should respect and advocate for our audience and protect their interests. Think about building loyal, honest, authentic user base for your own project or your client’s brand and think about the quality of relationships you create with each user.
Not only should our designs be usable for our visitors, but also our code should be maintainable for developers. Just like with content, you could come up with your set of standards which you’d like to follow in your work, make it public and stick to it. Make it your final checklist item before you hit that “Publish” or “Commit” button. That’s what will make people look up to you and respect your work.
Bottom line: we should strive for responsible Web design that not only embraces best design and coding practices, but also respects our publishing policies, protects the interests of our users and supports the professional work of our colleagues.

Our View of Web Design Trends

As professionals who care about producing beautiful, top-notch products for the Web, we love to explore innovative design and coding techniques. We love to take them apart and put them together again, learning about their potential during the process. We love to discuss them with our colleagues and keep them in mind for upcoming projects. The more other designers use these techniques, the more important they become to us. Among ourselves, we start to respectfully call them trends.
Nevertheless, trends can be dangerous and misleading beasts. They give us an exciting feeling of having a valuable insight that most of our colleagues don’t have yet. We feel fortunate to have discovered one early enough to use it effectively before it becomes common practice. Trends are precursors of the “next big thing,” and so we pay attention to them.
I can’t help but think that trends seem to be spectacularly overrated in our industry. Often they are regarded as bulletproof solutions, respected and universally accepted for the simple reason that they are innovative and widely used (think of drop shadows or text shadows, for example). I believe that we tend to adopt trends too quickly, often getting carried away by their originality rather than understanding their purpose. This should not be the case. Trends are not a panacea for all of the problems we encounter, and often they don’t even provide an optimal solution for the situation in which they were used in the first place.
Not to say that trends are unimportant, though. They are important, especially when they foster innovation and make us reconsider our design decisions. They can challenge us to be more effective and more thoughtful in our designs. Yet they inevitably fail in one particular regard.

We can learn a lot simply by examining obscure websites out there, such as Mospromstroy, the website of an industrial construction company in Moscow. The code is far from optimal, but the website itself reveals some interesting design decisions.
One thing I’ve learned to love over the last year is thoroughly examining unfamiliar foreign websites; Russian and Korean websites, to be specific. I feel inspired and empowered just going through them, creating wireframes from them, exploring their interaction patterns and analyzing the source code. I love wondering about the decisions that the designers must have made and the rationales behind those decisions. However, I can only speculate about them; ultimately, I cannot know the context in which these decisions were made.
This lack of context is the main reason why design trends should be approached cautiously. If we don’t know why a certain technique was used, then we need to properly test and validate it before applying it into our own designs. This is the part of the process that I find is often missing in discussions about trends.
We should observe and analyze trends but not consider them as finished “off the shelf” solutions. Instead of following them, we should be confronting them, improving on them and replacing them with our own. Adding elements to our designs merely for the sake of visual or functional interest is counter-productive. We should rather aim for designs that serve their purpose independent of volatile trends. Why not focus on approaching trends responsibly; building on them when they add meaning to a design and ignoring them when they do not fit the contextual scope of the design problem. This would make our websites original, well-formed and timeless.

Learning From The Past

While trends tell us what designers are doing now, we could expand our skills by drawing on our heritage, too. As designers, we are essentially problem-solvers. We analyze existing problems, learn the given objectives and requirements and then start searching for meaningful solutions. However, initially, it is not a clever visual nor technical approach that we are looking for. We are looking for an idea.
At this stage, what helps us most is our experience and creative thinking. And this is exactly where our rich history of visual communication is particularly useful. By studying lessons from the past, we can better understand how ideas and techniques have emerged and evolved over time. We can learn what approaches other professionals have taken to solve the problems facing them — problems that we still might be struggling with today or will in the near future.

Websites like Design Is History, Smart History and Graphics Atlas are all excellent resources on the history of graphic design, visual communication and the evolution of design processes. We can learn a lot about our craft by exploring them thoroughly.
Andy Clarke’s talk at the New Adventures in Web Design conference was intriguing and pointed out the need for designers to learn about the importance of storytelling in Web design. Andy shared a unique perspective in his presentation, saying that we can shape how users not only interact with content, but consume it in general. He drew a comparison to comic books and Western movies from the 1960s, which used various techniques to dictate the pace of how their information was consumed — be it through a stretch of silence in a movie or the shapes of panels in comic strips.
We could use this technique in our designs to keep readers in the grip of our content just a little longer. Instead of letting users not have to think, we could do the opposite and engage as well as intrigue them (a good example would be of the Ben the Bodyguard website).

Ben The Bodyguard keeps you on the site longer than you expect.
We shouldn’t hesitate to apply concepts from other time periods or other media into our designs. The concepts actually don’t even have to be design-related. Instead of thinking in terms of shadows, gradients and rounded corners, maybe we should be thinking in terms of tension, timing and narrative.
Next time you’re looking for an idea, pick up that book you’ve always enjoyed reading and read it with a different perspective. Then, search for any unusual points of view that might be worth bringing to the forefront in your next project. Once you’ve found one, grasp this moment, as this is the very second when a unique, innovative design is born.

In Conclusion

As our industry matures, so will our practices and the quality of our work. We may have successfully solved many important problems in our short history, yet there is still much to be done. Writing and talking about the ways we work, the decisions we make and the solutions we come up with will benefit each of us. We could explore the connections between our discipline and other established industries as well as revise and reinforce our professional vocabulary and our ethics.
Perhaps we could all dedicate 10 to 15 minutes of our time to the community every day. We could (and should) make this a firm personal commitment and encourage each other to take part. Find some time to leave a meaningful comment, support a valuable resource, write a short article about what you’ve learned. All of these contributions matter and will prompt meaningful and inspiring discussions. For starters, we could start raising awareness of our commitments by using the hash tag #wdcommunity.
I strongly believe that if we keep doing this every single day, we’ll wake up one day marvelling at how remarkable our community has become. I, for one, am eagerly looking forward to this day.