Events

Design to Scale

Web Directions North Vancouver, BC

Note: I unfortunately had to cancel my talk and attendance at Web Directions North because of an acute back injury. My sincere regrets and apologies to all those who got to attend. I missed you.

My current role has me thinking a bit about scale. Different aspects of scale; small and large, micro and mega. Can we design for audiences that vary in size, interest, and diversity? What considerations do we make when designing a site or application where we expect 100 users? What about 10,000 users? 10 million users?

The Web reaches close to one billion people now, and that reach grows every day. Should our design change when we can predict or note measurable increases in number of visitors? And how do we build flexibility into our designs to allow scaling upwards and outwards, welcoming throngs of users who show up as the Web grows? As we look at examples of scale and design from the real world, we can draw parallels with design on the Web and hopefully spot a few lessons to be learned.