October 1997: Chris Edwards

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September 30, 1997

The following article was originally published for the Site Builder Network Workshop (now MSDN Online Web Workshop.)

Chris Edwards, director of design for Art Technology Group , comes from a background in print, where he saw computers play an "increasingly central role in how we produced a design." However, he added, "it wasn't until towards the end of 1991 that I had something of an epiphany; we were using this technology as a production tool, yet it was really much better suited to be the 'medium' itself." Chris looked for a graduate program that combined design with an understanding of emerging technologies, and settled on the Institute of Design, IIT, a direct descendent of the Bauhaus. After graduating in the spring of 1994 with a master's degree in human-centered communication design, Chris moved to Boston and joined Art Technology Group.

SBN: How did you get started in Web design?

Chris Edwards: In graduate school, my thesis project was the design of an online magazine, through which I explored the issues surrounding a networked, and ultimately collaborative, publishing model. This was just before the Web took off, and when I graduated, I started looking around for the perfect job -- and found it at ATG. They were already doing cutting-edge network-based projects, and when the Web evolved into the predominant medium, it was a natural fit.

SBN: What have been some of the highlights of your design career so far?

Chris Edwards: One highlight was being asked to teach at Yale. I teach a couple of graduate-level courses in interactive media design at Yale University, which I find enormously challenging (because it forces me to try and communicate something intelligible about this crazy business we are in) and a constant source of inspiration. Another highlight was the night we launched Dynamo. Dynamo is our development environment, and was our first software offering in the suite of products that we now sell. I'll never forget that night, just a few minutes after midnight, when we ran a script to move the site to a "live" server. I was glued to the access log, watching people pour into the site. Literally seconds later, the first person -- I think they were from Sweden or Denmark, or some other far away place -- registered and downloaded a copy. With a flick of a switch, the fruit of all our labors was selling worldwide. No shrink wrap, no distributor, no middlemen -- just a Web site that allowed us to market, sell, distribute, and support our product.

SBN: What would you consider your latest, greatest Web achievement?

Chris Edwards: Nexsite and World Fiction. ATG was hired by NTT Data Corporation -- the largest ISP in Japan - to create a showpiece of technology and design for the Internet World Expo in Tokyo. The goal of the project, called Nexsite, was to create a dynamic, self-sustaining community, which would grow from a set of tools for community building and collaborative publishing. The project had two parts: the Web site itself, and a world-building application called "World Fiction." World Fiction is an Internet-based world-building application (written as a client-server Java applet) that got its inspiration from the ubiquitous Japanese comic books called Manga. Our goal was to create a dynamic and living "comic book" world that would give its visitors not only the ability to chat, but to create and share interactive stories -- sort of the "Macromedia Director for the Internet."

SBN: What would you say are the keys to good Web design?

Chris Edwards: A deep understanding of your audience, your message, and the medium. A great Web design derives its power from working within the constraints of the design problem. To me, a great Web design uses the fullest potential of the medium. The Internet has this incredible and unique characteristic: It can put millions of people into what I call a "shared connected state." We use Dynamo to build sites that connect people into communities, and at the same time deliver content that is personalized to an individual. I have this dream of the perfect Web site: It is a self-sustaining and self-evolving structure. At some point, the tools just drop away, and the site is wholly the product of the people who inhabit it.

SBN: What thoughts do you have on the balance between design and site performance?

Chris Edwards: In terms of performance, a design has to be appropriate to the audience and the context in which it will be used. The performance criteria are completely different for a financial analysis tool, an online game, or some crazy art piece. I would point out, however, that performance isn't an absolute value; it's a perceived value. It's important to use the design to manage the expectations of your user. They will be much happier about downloading a large file if they understand why they are downloading it and what it will do for them.

SBN: Where do you look for inspiration?

Chris Edwards: In general, I try and look for inspiration outside of the "Web design" world, so my thinking isn't constrained by what has been done before. The things that inspire an innovative design are often what you would least expect: a picture on someone's desk, a word overheard in a conversation, or an article on the communication patterns of honeybees. I also use a technique called user observation, which roughly means immersing yourself in the environment of the person who will ultimately be using your design in order to gain a deep (and ultimately practical) understanding of how they work and how the design might connect with their lives.

SBN: What thoughts do you have on the social or cultural implications of Web design?

Chris Edwards: Much has been said on this topic, but a couple of points keep making themselves clear to me. First, I am constantly amazed at the way the Web can empower tiny organizations with limited capital resources to reach a worldwide audience in an effective manner. Second, I am impressed by the ability of humans to co-opt a technology for their own ends. The Web was originally designed as a publishing system for academics, but now I use it to buy music CDs, talk to people, find vacation rental homes, create interactive stories, buy movie tickets, get the weather report in a city to which I'll be traveling, and so forth.

SBN: What creative tools do you use, and what is your favorite Web design tool?

Chris Edwards: By far, the most valuable creative tool I use is pencil and paper. I spend about 80 percent of my time sketching in my notebook, drawing storyboards, diagrams, site structures, layouts, etc. I end up using [Adobe] Photoshop quite a bit, because it's the fastest way for me to think visually. HTML editing tools are still too cumbersome for the development phase of a design.

SBN: Do you have a preferred screen resolution?

Chris Edwards: I usually try and identify a target screen size that is appropriate to the intended audience, but ultimately the issue is not about designing screens. It's about designing information with some forethought about the way it will be displayed in different situations. We're working on a very interesting "knowledge management" project right now that will have - in addition to a Web interface -- a fax interface, as well as some physical "place-based" interfaces. What's fascinating is that these alternative UIs are not just for output, but also for input. Imagine using your fax machine to post an image on the Web.

SBN: In what ways does cross-browser capability affect the design choices you make?

Chris Edwards: It depends on the audience you are trying to reach, and the context and goals of the design, but for each project I try and identify a range of browsers and platforms that correspond to the mean of the target audience, and then define a least-common denominator. A really smart design will always default gracefully to an appropriate least-common denominator. The separation of content from display is one of the most powerful and useful constructs of the Web, but it does add another layer of complexity to the design problem.

SBN: What advice would you offer to someone interested in a career in Web design?

Chris Edwards: Don't focus on specific technologies. Web designers must learn to design for a medium that is in a state of constant change. Focus instead on learning how to think -- how to bring some meaningful order out of design problems that are often extremely complex and full of ambiguities.

SBN: What do you foresee in the future of Web design and of the Internet itself?

Chris Edwards: Total confusion: a morass of new standards, modes of display, input devices, and so forth -- and this is a good thing. Technologies generally diverge and specialize rather than converge. Right now we are using HTML and HTTP to do things that it was never intended to do. We call the sites that we design at ATG "Internet applications" because they allow for a wide range of communication protocols. They just happen to currently use the Web as their primary delivery mechanism, but we are all looking forward to a more diverse and richer set of ways to reach people, of which the Web is but one.

Photo Credit: Michael Moore/Microsoft Corporate Photographer