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Interview with interface designer and entrepreneur Mike — co-founder of 9rules.com

March 2, 2008

Mike is an interface designer and entrepreneur who has been designing for the web since 1996. He is the co-founder of 9rules , a site showcasing great independent content from around the web. Previously he’s done work for a variety of clients including Northrop Grumman, Nike, Mozilla, Fox Corporation, as well as numerous startups and well-known weblogs.  He’s been blogging since 2003 and lives in Raleigh, North Carolina.

 WJ: How would you describe your profession ?
 
Well first that would involve picking a job title, and when you’re on a small team, titles become less meaningful since you have far more responsibilities than a simple job title would suggest.  At 9rules, I do all the design work, so I’m responsible for the visual look and feel of the website.  Beyond just visual design, I figure out the best ways for users to accomplish their goals while at the site, and that typically involves more than just design — it’s a combination of design, usability, and development.  I’d say my profession is still in the realm of crafting the user experience, but it straddles both the design and the programming world.
 
 WJ: How did you get into New Media/Online publishing/Online communications?  Did you see yourself getting into this field early on?  What did you used to do ” in an earlier life ” (prior career, if any) ?
 
I designed and published my first website when I was 13, on a free Tripod account, and then moved up from there.  I didn’t really get into designing and programming for the web until a few years later, and then once I got to college I started learning more specific web technologies like CSS, Javascript, Perl, PHP, Java, XML, and I tried to learn as much as I could.  Before I headed to college I knew I was going to be working on the web in some capacity, either as a designer or developer, and that’s pretty much where I ended up.
 
 WJ: What do you think are the turning points that helped make webmastering/online publishing/online marketing a lucrative business field ?
 
Paying attention to what users want and how you present information to them is a big deal in the user experience and usability fields, but when everyday publishers and marketers started thinking more about those concepts, that’s when I really noticed things taking off.  Good design isn’t just about visual design, it’s about anticipating a user’s movements and giving them what they want, right when they need it.  When this is combined with marketing and user research, you begin to see the larger picture about what people want on the web, and then you’re in a better position to create a business that caters to those needs.
 
 WJ: In your opinion, what is the most exciting recent development in online publishing ?
 
Now that weblogs are ubiquitous, people are really thinking about how to use blogs and micro-publishing to their advantage, rather than just saying, “I’ve got a blog, here it is!” and expecting the money or traffic to pile up.  It’s actually not even fashionable to use the term blog anymore, now what you’ve got is just called a website.  You might have the homepage pull in your latest blog entries, your sidebar has Flickr photos, your footer has Twitter updates, but they all work together to create an overall image of what your website is about.  Online publishing is becoming less about the technology and more about the content (in any way, shape, or form) and that’s a very good thing.
 
 WJ: What do you think are the essential skills to become a successful webmaster ?
 
Off the bat, the term “webmaster” connotes having skills spanning multiple areas of expertise, but exactly what knowledge areas are crucial to being a good webmaster are still up for debate.  In my neck of the woods (the design and development side of the web) people are expected to wear many hats, because creating and maintaining websites isn’t about “just” web design or “just” server administration, it’s about all things that go into producing a website.  If that means designers should be learning solid object-oriented development techniques, or developers learning that every pixel counts in a layout, then that’s how it should be because it helps the industry as a whole.
 
 WJ:  Being a webmaster has gone from being a one-person job to a field that allows specialization. Is that a good thing or a bad thing for your business ?
 
Even though there are now a handful of job titles for the same type of position — e.g. Information Architect, User Experience Designer, Interaction Designer for someone who crafts user interfaces — it’s still valuable to have multiple skills on the web.  This doesn’t mean you should have 70% knowledge in one area, 70% knowledge in another, and 70% knowledge in a third, and call yourself a master of all three, it means you should be hardcore in one aspect of your profession, then learn and become hardcore in other aspects.  If you’re a designer then you should strive to be a great designer, and that means having knowledge about usability, accessibility, business goals, all of which impact the design.  Once you’re proficient as a designer, then you should branch out and learn object-oriented programming methodologies, how relational databases work, how to develop applications with the MVC model.  The reverse is true for developers — put yourself in a designer’s shoes and learn about color theory, typography, etc.  Someone who has 100% of one skill will always be beaten out by someone who has 100% of two or more skills, any day of the week.  Forget specialization, learn all that you can, as much as you can, about everything that surrounds you on the web.  Be hungry to pick up new skills and dive in as much as you can.
 
 WJ:  Do you think the industry is regulated enough?  Have the authorities or the Net’s relevant governing bodies become too restrictive?  Which areas of online activity do you think NEED further regulation ?
 
I think the web and the industry is regulated too much, and absolutely no further regulation is needed.  Net Neutrality is a big deal right now, and it’s extremely important that access to the web remain open for all and not restricted by any corporations.  The telecom companies are upset that they’re providing all this bandwidth but reaping none of the rewards that companies who use their bandwidth are receiving.  Boo hoo, gimme a break.  Like AT&T, Alcatel, and 3M need any more money in their pockets.  The very last thing I want to do is have to pay extra money per month to visit certain websites, and if the companies who oppose Net Neutrality get their way, that is just what will happen.
 
 WJ:  What are the challenges the industry is facing today ?
 
I think the current challenges are more on the business side of the web, specifically within the “Web 2.0″ industry.  Starting a project or a website today is so incredibly cheap, it really borderlines on free if you’re the one designing and coding it.  The problem is that not every one of these projects makes sense to be turned into a company, but because people see gold at the end of the rainbow, that’s just what they do.  They spend months developing a web application that does something interesting and useful, they give it away for free, and then…. there’s nothing left to make money from!  People are building their competitive advantage up then just giving it away to anybody who wants it and hoping to recoup money on the backend by monetizing eyeballs because they see someone holding up a $100k Adsense check from Google.  There are many things wrong with that, and to make matters worse, investors are pouring millions of dollars into these “side project” companies with the same rose-colored glasses as the founders, and now they’re digging the hole even deeper. I have little respect for web companies who raise $5 million, hire a ton of new people, can never manage to make it profitable, and then turn around and raise another $5 million to repeat the process.  I have a great deal of respect for people who bootstrap projects until they’re profitable and then create a business out of it.  Taking millions of dollars in funding and not being able to create a worthwhile business is a catastrophe, no matter how people spin failure as being a learning process.  The greatest challenge facing our industry today is teaching entrepreneurs about the difference between a company and a hobby, between a side project and a piece of software that makes money, and between being frugal with expenses versus blowing millions of dollars of someone else’s money.
 
 WJ:  What would your advice be to someone who is just getting his or her feet wet in online business ?
 
I’d tell them to be everywhere at once.  Be on every social site reading the daily industry news, subscribe to as many good blogs as you can find, say worthwhile things in the comment sections of those blogs as often as you can, and always strive to learn as much as possible.

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