> I'm curious why you would: > a) Think ALA readers don't represent a representative sample of the > world's Web designers
As I said before, based on my personal experience interviewing hundreds of web designers, IAs, managers, and developers, and working with clients with deeply-entrenched and insulated design and development teams, I believe that there's an enormous majority of web workers whose familiarity with online professional publications of any kind, much less forward-looking forums like ALA, is practically *zero*. I always ask job interviewees what sites they read to stay up to date, and more than half can't even answer the question at all. ALA is still a niche product. Most in-house development teams have only in the last year or so learned what standards-based coding even means (table-based sites are still the norm for most enterprise sites). SEO companies still make millions recommending seemingly- clever things that ALA readers have known and practiced for half a decade. In my experience, easily a majority of people who are designing pages and writing code never read any web sites about web design and development, never attend conferences, never read blogs. Most people learn everything they know at their jobs. Call me cynical (and I have no basis for this beyond my personal experiences), but you and I and everyone on this list are already part of profoundly exclusive group. For every IA on this mailing list, there are dozens more who make wireframes and flowcharts based only on what their colleagues and predecessors in their office did, and who read web sites and blogs only when their bosses and cleverer colleagues email them links, and who learn new skills only when they are formally trained at their company's expense. So yes, I think it's very safe to assume that the ALA's respondents are not representative of the world's web designers. That said, I think it's safe to assume that the 33,000 respondents are pretty representative of the worlds *good* web designers and developers. Which are the only ones I care about, usually. -Cf Christopher Fahey ____________________________ Behavior biz: http://www.behaviordesign.com me: http://www.graphpaper.com ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://gamma.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://gamma.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://gamma.ixda.org/help
