Designing Value: Stories from Future Insights - Part 1

When is the last time you stopped and acknowledged the value you contribute to others through your work? Your work goes beyond having an aesthetically pleasing app or travelling hundreds of miles to lecture on your expertise.

(mt) sponsors Future Insights, Future of Web Apps and Future of Web Design to stay engaged with people and explore what drives the community to produce work. “Stories from Future Insights” is a snapshot of conversations with Future Insights Live speakers from the Vegas 2013 show. In part’s one and two, we’ll be featuring responses to the question:

What are you doing within your work to bring more value into peoples’ lives?

“What I do is I try to bring some type of harmony to the web design community through photoshop etiquette.”

“There’s a problem with people with disabilities not being able to get jobs. AbilityNet makes website accessibility usable by everybody.”

Dan Rose is the Lead UI designer for WSOL, a web design and development agency. “What I do is I try to bring some type of harmony to the web design community through photoshop etiquette, via talks and written articles.” Dan has written for Smashing Mag and Net Mag. He speaks at conferences such as Future Insights, and Artifact. “My talks are based on the premise that many people feel like they can’t use Photoshop now a days. I set out to make them “ok” with using Photoshop. Hopefully, it brings some type of ease or comfort to what they can contribute without having to rely on producing code to create design. I would like to do more humanitarian work to effect change for the greater good. Hopefully equipping people with strategies to produce design might contribute to that idea in a broader sense.”

Robin Christopherson is the Head of Digital Inclusion at AbilityNet, a tech charity for helping people disabilities.He is an advocate to bring awareness to problems disabled persons face in the workforce, and solutions to those problems. “There’s a problem with people with disabilities not being able to get jobs. AbilityNet makes website accessibility usable by everybody. Robin is also working on a project with The Clear Company, called ClearTalents. It is an online tool that job applicants use to disclose any disabilities or concerns/needs they would have at a job. “The tool makes recommendations to recruiters on how they can make reasonable adjustments.”