This article on the feminization of design and attendant restructuring of “web design” into “front-end development” is an absolutely essential read.
If you’ve been following my letters for any period of time, you’ll find some parallels between what’s happening here and the shift from design to “product” that has happened over the past decade. For almost its entire history, the tech industry has involved women getting into a field, that field being proven to show value, and men taking over that field. This happened to programming itself in the 50s & 60s.
There is materially no energetic difference between what happened then and what is happening to design now. Or how support has turned into customer experience. Take note.
This week, for paid members
- We held our monthly office hours, talking about all things value-based design. Grateful for our community!
- Our weekly lesson is about full-bleed image galleries. They’re “in” right now, and for good reason – so how do you implement them well?
- Our design of the week shows a product detail page that might be a little… redundant.
- And our fortnightly teardown is for newly redesigned clothing retailer Evan Kinori. What changed, and how does it matter to his customers?
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Links
- I don’t have much fluency in transitions myself, so I’m always looking for good resources on the topic. (Send ‘em!) This guide gives a nice start.
- Today in design generating business value, part 328904571239782365.
- An extremely brief summary of PDP design issues, covering the good, the bad, and the ugly. Essential read.