Authors: W: Aarron Walter
Aarron Walter is the lead user experience designer for MailChimp, where he socializes with primates and ponders ways to make interfaces more human. Aarron spent ten glorious years teaching budding web designers at colleges around the US. Today, he channels his passion for education through The Web Standards Project’s InterACT curriculum. He lives with his wife and son in Athens, Georgia, and is a wannabe barista.
Articles By This Author
Personality in Design
Issue 337October 18, 2011
Personality is the mysterious force that attracts us to certain people and repels us from others. Because personality greatly influences our decision-making process, it can be a powerful tool in design. In an exclusive excerpt from his spanking new book Designing For Emotion, Aarron Walter shows us how to create a strong human connection in human-computer interaction by turning our design interactions into conversations, imbuing mechanical "interactions" with distinctively human elements, and using design and language techniques to craft a living personality for your website.
Brighter Horizons for Web Education
Issue 276January 20, 2009
No industry can sustain itself if it doesn’t master the art of cultivating new talent—an art that requires close ties between practitioners and educators. Yet web design education consists mainly of introductory Flash classes and the occasional 90s-style HTML table layout tutorial. How drastic is the web design education gap, and what can be done to close it? Designer, developer, and web design educator Aarron Walter of The Web Standards Project surveys the state of the curricula.
Findability, Orphan of the Web Design Industry
Issue 255March 25, 2008
Findability is to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as "web standards" is to "table layouts." In a web whose vastness exceeds comprehension, sites with findable content win. The good news is that everyone on your team can help make your site findable. Get a taste for this essential discipline from Aarron Walter, author of Building Findable Websites: Web Standards, SEO, and Beyond.
