John Cady Career interests
 
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In the next twenty years, we will achieve a world of improvement in the communication of ideas. This is my belief. My interests lie in being a part of that effort.

Since college, my career aspirations have revolved around the increasingly effective communication of information via various media. I began with the print media, developing writing and editing skills in literary, humor, and trade publications. As the modern World Wide Web began forming in 1994, I turned my focus to Web publishing design, concentrating on the larger process of publication and information systems development.

Since that time, I have engaged in the development and maintenance of a variety of informational, promotional, and entertainment-oriented Web sites. In the past few years, my focus has narrowed specifically to issues of information architecture and Web usability.

Give the People What They Want

I am firmly user-centric in my design thinking. Too much Web development is done with the assumption that one knows what one's users want, yet there is no way to know until you ask actual users. And visitors to different Web sites can have very different needs.

My experience in continual development of sites over time has taught me invaluable lessons which I could not have learned had I not stayed through successive design cycles. Usability testing throughout that time has disproven many of my assumptions and borne out many others. Though I am constantly learning, I feel that I have now a much improved sense about what people want from this new media. I try to apply this understanding through subleties which make the difference in users' experiences.

The Delicate Balance of Tried and New

The nature of a new medium such as this is that the technology and techniques are shifting frequently. The challenge is to apply what we've learned about Web publishing best practices to the renewing landscape. This is not to say that we need to adopt and integrate every new technology; we must implement new features purposefully, with an eye toward what each can provide the user and what might be sacrificed. Armed with our preconceptions, we need to experiment and refine, continuing to infuse user feedback into the process. Areas ripening for consideration include:

  • the graphic presentation ideas of Richard Saul Wurman and Edward Tufte
  • the information architecture concepts of Argus Associates and Jennifer Fleming
  • the growing usability wisdom of the likes of Jakob Nielsen and Keith Instone
  • existing research on personality and learning theories
  • the speed presentation implications of technologies like the Cornix Reader
  • interactive multimedia and information sifting advances provided by Shockwave, VRML, XML, DHTML, and others just emerging

Evolution No. 9

The transformation that this process will generate is very exciting to me. To think that in the near future we will become so efficient at conveying our ideas to one another that learning will become much simpler, that communication can become much more complex and interesting, that we will begin to tap more than the 20% of brain capacity that we now access. We needn't accept our current limitations. We can be a part of this historic step forward. And not from an ivory tower, but in the world of actual sites. Those who dare to push their communications to new limits will reap more benefits than improved profits or more satisfied visitors. This movement is what I hope to help provide.