Web Development Principles - one weird trick

The truth is, there is no one trick BUT creating a framework of design and development principles provides a toolkit with which to tackle our challenges and can making a big difference in delivering great experiences to the web...

What your principles are will depend on the context of how you work, who your clients are and what you wish to achieve but for me four core principles lay a good foundation across design, development and engineering teams:
- Standards
- Progressive Enhancement
- Performance
- Agility

Transcript

1. This one weird trick to great web experiences. (Core Design, Development and Engineering Principles)
2. WTF?!?!!**ӣ!!!11111
3. • Dictate more rules • Create more standards • Write more documentation • Create more hoops to jump through • Enforce with force by force Nope
4. • Mindset – power up the thought process • A high level proposition for a framework of values • User focussed • Contextual • Cross Discipline Yup • Empower all of us to deliver better experiences • Articulate benefits to clients • Technical implementations defined by SME’s
5. Why? • Because great experiences are what we’re trying to deliver • In an effective way, across disciplines, growing designer/developer base. • Make it easier for ourselves and better for users. • Lightweight, flexible, not a blocker • We’re all a part of the process and responsible. • We can sell this – with clearer standards PM’s and Marketing can pitch this… why… • …because it actually matters – these things really impact what and how we deliver. • There is no one weird trick so make life easier for ourselves, but… • A framework of principles provides a toolkit to tackle our challenges
6. P to the mutha frickin rinciples
7. BEHOLD Excitement builds…
8. 4 Principles: Standards Progressive Enhancement Performance Agility Pause for applause
9. Standards
10. • Web standards: HTML, CSS, EcmaScript, WAI, Semantics etc • Design patterns, programming paradigms – Loose coupling – OO • Encompass best practices and philosophies across disciplines – PHP, SASS, .Net, SQL • Owned by relevant teams / SME’s • Standards/best practices are moving targets and evolving solutions to emerging problems. Standards and best practices
11. Standards and best practices • Why? – They provide a stable baseline we can agree on – I know what to expect when looking/working on other code. I can validate and verify and we can communicate with a common vocabulary – A culmination of lessons learned.
12. Enhance Progressively!
13. …apologies
14. Progressive Enhancement • Ground Up • Content Centric • Inclusive • Accessible • Holistic approach that is cross discipline • Not prescribing a baseline – just that you consider this approach. • Does not mean holding back. • Is more than ‘javascript off’. (architecture/css) • BTW it also plays nice with: – Agile, Mobile first, Lo fi Prototyping, Lean UX
15. Performance – FTW!
19. • Our objective is the end users perceived performance of a site/app/experience. • We should be thinking about performance targets/budgets • Memory leaks • DB tuning • Hardware / load balancing / architectures • Performance is a powerful sales story. Poor performance = £££ • Guess what: – An iterative, progressively enhanced approach enables us to make better decisions around performance e.g will this animation be detrimental to overall page load… Performance
20. Bob and weave!
21. Agility • 4 tenets to agility… – Find out where you are – Take a small step towards your goal – Adjust your understanding based on what you learned – Repeat
22. Agility • Focus on iteration and learning. • Build, learn, enhance/improve. • Can work with our other principles to deliver the biggest rewards for the least effort. • Our implementation of this is through Agile with Scrum/Kanban methodologies
23. Every little step I make…
24. Next steps • Peer review • Banner waving • Tooling to support • Mentoring • Exploring • Push back in projects if required • Get involved 
25. Get all up in this
26. Own this – get involved • Feedback, ideas, suggestions. • Talk to each other – share knowledge – mentor new starters – ask for opinions. • Use your teams to develop best practices, standards and guidelines that make your life easier. • Sell our principles to clients – be clear on the advantages. • Make informed decisions. • ‘Has my chain of reasoning considered the principles?’
27. Questions / Comments / Beer donations / P45