Ben Menoza

SXSW 2009 is approaching fast, and around this time, potential presenters collect their thoughts and come up with panels that would make for interesting discussion during the day. In true democratic fashion, the (registered) public votes on submitted panel ideas through the Interactive Panel Picker. Each panel idea falls under one category. The focus for this post will be Web/Interface Design.

Since I already picked out my panel submission for JavaScript in the Programming Category, I can safely ignore what’s listed in this one. Now I can focus on actual design, whether it’s visual, interaction or otherwise.

Something that has yet to be worked out (at least, for me) is how agile methodologies can be applied to design disciplines. Design, in and of itself, is already an iterative process, but how easy and effective is it to include this in the project lifecycle? And, more importantly, how dangerous is it to make it even more iterative?

Related to that, how has the role of the designer for the web changed with the introduction and maturity of software development methodologies and presentation-layer technologies and logic, like RIAs and AJAX? Because motion and interaction are huge aspects of web applications, do more designers spend as much time coding in Eclipse or TextMate as they have been in PhotoShop and Illustrator?

Thankfully for me, I already picked the four panels out of the bunch in which I was interested before I started this post:

• Design in a Scrum-y World with Lombardi Software’s Craig Moser
• More than Pantones: Today’s Web Designer with Microsoft’s Nishant Kothary
• Being a UX Team of One with Adaptive Path’s Leah Buley
• Designing for Sign-Up with Bokardo Design’s Joshua Porter