101 indicators that you “get” the web

If you’re on the management team for a website, then here are some indicators of whether or not you’re in the right spot.

(There aren’t actually 101, but it sounded good in the title)

• You’re not afraid to fail
• You know that design is a hell of a lot more than just making things look pretty
• You use data to drive your decisions
• You know that “web 2.0” is just a phrase
• You understand the difference between content, presentation and behaviour
• You know blogging isn’t just a fad
• You’re on facebook (or deliberately decided not to use it to save what precious time you have left)
• You can detect design by committee from a mile away
• You want to experiment and try new things
• You test things on people
• No one needs to explain to you why web standards are important
• You understand that Google is blind
• You have an unquenchable thirst for finding out what’s new in the websphere
• You’re comfortable that you’ll always be thirsty
• You’re not continually thinking, “what if someone steals my idea”
• You’re continually weighing up whether to optimise what you have, to try something new or to do some more digging
• You seldom know what will work best
• You seek opinions from a wide range of people
• You can dismiss most of the opinions you hear
• Logic and rationale are great, but nothing compares to actual evidence
• You know nothing works equally well in two different situations
• You know that whilst CSS and RSS are listed on the London Stock Exchange, that’s not why they’re important
• Your preferred browser’s initials aren’t vowels
• You don’t hate Mac users just because they make your life difficult
• You’re comfortable making decisions that others see as risky
• You like working with people who know more than you (even if they’re younger than you)
• You can cope with the idea of testing things on your users/customers
• Technology excites you, but nowhere near as much as the weird way that people use it
• You know the five most important metrics for your site
• You don’t try to please everyone
• You are grateful that there are lots of successful small start ups (even if you’re not part of them)
• There’s more to do than you could possibly fit into the next five years
• You don’t bother arguing about the difference between usability and accessibility
• There’s nothing like getting on with it and seeing what the results are
• Except letting someone else get on with it and then helping them understand the results
• Even though you know you can’t predict what will work and what won’t, you always try
• You keep trying to find the best people to work with
• You’ve seen so much change already that nothing seems particularly revolutionary… until the next big thing comes along
• You actually love what you do

Wednesday, August 1st, 2007 at 1:04 pm | Categories: web teams

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.