Running on HBO from the summer of 1997 through early 2003, Oz is everyone’s favorite don’t-drop-the-soap opera. Reflecting on the same years in my web design career, I see considerable parallels. Many of the lessons I learned watching Oz and designing websites are too similar to be coincidental.
Learn to thrive within constraints#section2
The first thing new web designers usually figure out is that the web is all about compromise.
If they are coming from a print design background, they are handed a box of 216 crayons, a list of a half dozen available typefaces and a 72 dpi limit on image resolution. When the shock wears off and they get used to working within these web limitations, they encounter page weights, arbitrary standards support and CSS hacks.
If they are programmers, they learn that web servers were built to forget browsers after every single page visit and that many of the form controls they know and love — like combo boxes — aren’t available in HTML.
At last year’s GEL conference, Stuart Butterfield gave a fantastic presentation on constraints and their effects on creativity. He launched the 5k competition in 2000, challenging web developers to create the most innovative and stunning web sites — using files that totaled less than 5,120 bytes.
Butterfield explained that constraints can be found everywhere in music, architecture, poetry and design. Adding constraints to a project motivates artists to come up with more creative solutions to the design problem at hand. Extreme constraints like “48-hour filmmaking,” “three-day novel writing,” “Bush in 30 Seconds” and the 5k contest can lead artists to extreme creations.
Every new web design is the solution to a design problem that can be summed up in a series of constraint questions: Who is my audience? What am I trying to get them to do? How do I want them to feel about this site? What browsers and platforms are we targeting? Can I use Flash?
When Jeffrey Zeldman reviewed the 5k competition in an earlier ALA article, he found that “Limitations are the soil from which creativity grows.”
Fear solitary#section3
When you’re already serving a life sentence with no chance of parole, what else can they take away?
They can threaten to throw you into solitary confinement and strip away all human contact.
The Internet is all about being connected. That “plugged-in” feeling is addictive and panic attacks are what fill those empty spaces between opportunities to check email. For many of the people who spend their lives online blogging, chatting, emailing and building websites, the unwired life is not worth living.
The ultimate punishment is being disconnected.
Play to your own strengths#section4
Every week or two I get email from someone asking me how they can get ahead in the web business. I assume it’s because they’ve already written someone else, but they didn’t get a response quickly enough and some college admissions deadline is looming.
So I tell them this: Cheat. Stack the deck in your favor. Use your own unique skills to compete on the web.
If you’re a shoe salesperson and you want to break into the web game, don’t start out as a novice Java developer competing with expert Java developers. Unless you have some latent mutant ability that will help you scale Java’s steep learning curves, you’ll be crushed. Instead, take on a sales role for a small web shop somewhere and pick the brains of the rest of the team to get up to speed on what can and can’t be done on the web.
Don’t start out on the bottom. Start out as high up as you can and make lateral career moves.
I’ll never be the best artist or the best programmer in a room full of web designers, but I’m pretty well rounded. So if I’m competing with creative people, I try to beat them technically. Likewise, if I’m competing with technical people, I do my best to pound them on the creative side.
In Oz, the people who rose to power were the ones who made the best use of their unique talents and attributes.
Give away free samples until your users are hooked#section5
Whether it’s heroin in Oz or a never-ending parade of CD-ROMs offering 61,034.8 free hours of AOL 9.0, nothing lowers a consumer’s resistance to trying something new like getting a free sample. Not surprisingly, canceling your free trial subscription to an online service usually involves completing a 12-step program.
Microsoft converted a good portion of Netscape’s browser customer base by offering Internet Explorer as a free alternative. When things weren’t moving fast enough for them, they sped up Netscape’s demise by making IE an integral part of their dominant Windows operating system and by signing a deal to make IE the default browser for trillions of AOL users.
Because products like software and email newsletter subscriptions don’t have the same fixed costs to the producer as products in the real world like gasoline or clothing, it is much easier to give out free trial offers or otherwise undercut competition online.
Don’t get too attached to anyone because they might not be around next week#section6
I learned this one when I was working as a CTO in the twilight of the dot com years and our vendor contacts were changing almost daily.
When business was good, web developers would jump from company to company getting raise after raise. When business was bad, they would be pushed.
Luckily in Oz — and in real life — there has been a core group of characters that were all considered too important to be killed off.
Sleep with everyone you meet so you have something to talk about at lunch#section7
Oh wait — I learned that one watching Sex and the City and it doesn’t have much to do with web design. My mistake.
Working as an in-house web developer at a large beaurocratic government corporation, Brazil is the only choice for me. Perhaps blended in with a bit of The Office, and a bit of MacGyver while we’re at it.
You develop your skills within the rules to win.
How limitations push creativity.
A nice article.
The panel represents the clients, the standards… the obstacles and constraints.
Idea after idea step up and are presents to the panel, just to be slammed. Then when you least expect it, out rolls a jewel that makes everybody smile!:)
“…
A graphic investigation into parallel indentity crises.
A world where time is dangerously out of control.
…”
I like the term parameters for a project (or a programming function), but Oz doesn’t give inmates “parameters”. They get constraints. 😉
Also, in the business world there is the “Theory of Constraints” which is a tool for managing complex systems: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_constraints
because ‘doh!
I guess if I were to give a real example it would still be the simpsons and other animated cartoons, because just looking at the cartoon you can see how you can develop creative ideas from simple designs that are persistant. Like the yellow skin, or the overbite on all the characters, or the loud colors for the backgrounds. Simple yet effective. I try to make my sites simple and effective too.
I know it’s a movie but if others can do it, then so can I …
Why you ask?
If you have ever seen that movie then you know the kind of place I work for. Not to mention the fact thatwe as developers seem to be cannon fodder for lack of a better term.
‘Corporate Acconts Receivable, Nina speaking … Just a moment’ … Repeat
We’re isolated from the real world, are barely scraping by, and people keep getting “voted off the island.” Also, I have learned that if I do really well in the challenges we’re faced with, the next one gone is not likely to be me.
What’s “Bush in 30 Seconds”?
<< What's "Bush in 30 Seconds"? >>
http://www.bushin30seconds.org/ is a “a political advertising contest sponsored by the MoveOn.org Voter Fund.”
(Not to be confused with http://www.bushinthirtyseconds.org/ which redirects people to a conservative anti-abortion, anti-porn, anti-Web and anti-MoveOn.org site.)
Cause everything takes 2 months to happen and it is utterly meaningless
Perhaps because – not unlike Richard Chamberlain – sometimes you have to embrace things that are repugnant to you.
…because sometimes I feel like hunting Marlon Brando (the problem) in a hostile place (my office) whit a group of freaks (my co-workers) in a bad boat (my terrible PC). And during the journey to accomplish my mission I become a monster due to stress.
Awsome.
All the evil web designers have goatees.
That reminds me of the first time I met Jeffrey Zeldman for lunch.
We had never met in person so he asked me, “You’re not one of those Web designers who wears all black and has a goatee, are you?”
I assured him that I wasn’t.
When I got to the restaurant, I found out that he had a goatee and wore all black.
However, we get cameos at my place 🙂 [radio station]
The article is inspiring and I’d wish I could always get an update on the topic.
I pretend my boss is Tony Danza.
Being self employed I’d have to say that it is – The Lone Ranger.
Where’s Tonto when you need him?
Because it has a high coolness factor, but it takes forever to get to the coolness.
First, I loved the article and the show as well. Second, the web industry may not be as fast paced as it once was but I believe it is making a rebound (I chant that to myself as I try and sleep at night). I think that a real push of creativity and usability in design will get us all the raises we deserve.
I’m new to owning my own web design business and this article was very helpful, especially the part about playing your strenths. Know that you may note be the absolute best but you do have something special. Very inspirational in a weird OZ kind of way. Thanks Brian.
Mine is Seinfeld, cuz my web career is nothing.
OZ – such a great show and a fine analogy
I am tempted to list “The Pretender” for various reasons appropos.
I will instead remain HBO-centric and offer “Deadwood” as befitting annotation of any alleged association entangling myself and development of the web
I’m stuck. And I can’t seem to get out of this rot. Web business is killingly slow right now.
Wizard of Oz – the Technicolor Horse keeps changing colors, the “Bosses” are evil (but unfortunately DON’T melt w/ a suitable application of hydrogen-hydroxide), the manager hides behind a curtain, depends upon incomprehensible technology to provide him w/ powers he DOESN’T really have, and can’t really help us (it’s all really inside us).
The Exorcist – er, WE seem to be the priest in this one, and the customer has his/her head spinning ’round, spitting out pea soup. We deal with an age-old evil, and we’re never really quite sure if we’re going to triumph before the end of the movie. Unfortunately, we DON’T have a killer soundtrack.
Cool World/ Who Framed Roger Rabbit – we have a hard time w/ members slipping into a strangely drawn dark fantasy world, where the bad guys are amazingly elastic and never quite stay… “dead”. Most folks who would BE in a possition to help are ridiculously silly, or reduced to cartoonish Sysiphusian tasks, oblivious to the “real” world around them/us.
Whew. Now I need coffee.
My web career is like that show because when I first started I was excited and bright eyed and thought I would learn a lot. Reality is I, like Al Bundy, am in a dead end job with no support to learn the new cool things, or get promoted. When I try more advanced designs, they get shot down. Heaven forbid I use Flash. My only option is get out of web design.
A lot of very weird people and just as many weird things happening…but a great show at the same time! The town is in slow motion..just like my company. Also, Joel is stuck in a place where he doesn’t want to be…but just seems to stay there anyways..hmmm…very similar to my career the more I think about it.
I like the comment by na about X-Files. That’s what I think too.
Regarding Oz, I can only say I like your sense of humour. As it’s mostly humour, isn’t it? Though we all know that there’s no smoke without fire :))
Learning through experience. Sometimes tough, sometimes funny…
Hi everyone…
I think web design reminds me of the movie 28 days later, because in that movie a small team is struggling to survive in a world taken over by a malicious virus. This virus turns humans into walking dead – kinda like Resident Evil…
The paralells are the struggling – the competition for web designers is so hard (the other web designers are the undead guys =)) so you have to put up a really good fight and results in order to survive.
It’s going ok for me here in Sweden, Malmö right now… Gonna design the whole school’s web site (1300 students =)) hehe… Not too bad! It’ll include server-scripting, design and management. I also teach a small web design group at the school. Have a look at the site, which desperately is in need of server-scripts to include the old-fashioned table layout to every page… (actually I’ve updated it to CSS2 now, but it takes too long to start the FTP client =)) – http://www.henrik-f.tk
Feel free to send me an email, and hope ya all survive out there…
/Henke
I guess the video channel. ( The blank blue or black screen also known as AUX or Input ) I tend to blankly sare at things like that letting my wander and find things. Every once in a while the screen will flicker or maybe have some snow and that will spur a new creative hook in my mind.
Let’s see, I started out waxing clipart for camera shoots in a local newspaper and somehow I wound up making clipart for e-zines.
I rode the wave from 1993 until now. The best description for the e-world… “By the time you take the time to describe what it can do, it’s defunct.”
I can NEVER learn everything about it. That’s why both love it and hate it. So the show best like it? The Office (Britcom), you hate it but you can’t stop torturing yourself and watch it every weekend. Like a sliver you keep tweaking….
I have white hair now, but it was red when I started and I’m NOT past 40 yet!! WebDev can be detrimental to your hair!
LOL
Great Article!
MV