Closing keynote at the HOW Interactive Design Conference (Boston, 2015). Millions of apps solving tens of simple problems. Development schools churning out thousands of graduates with the promise of $100k salaries, but only teaching them how to use tools. Enough computing power in the everyday person's home to launch a rocket to the Moon, used for microblogging and cat videos. In an age where practically anything is possible, why are we aiming so low? GoldBean CTO Husani S. Oakley presents his sometimes-contrarian viewpoint on what we're doing wrong -- and what we can do to fix it.

1. Figure out what sucks.
Don’t do that.
Full-stack Thinking
and the New Auteur
Thinking

2. It’s 2015.

3. 3,100,000
 "

4. 2,931
#

5. 10,476
$

6. 51,365


7. 110,796
&

9. Storage and
computation
outsourced to
a mysterious
and powerful
“cloud”.

10. Devices
that can do
anything.
In (almost)
everyone’s pocket.

11. Scaffolding
and
frameworks
for anything
you
need.

12. What a time to
be alive.

14. “…what you will
observe is a vast
wasteland.”
Newton N. Minow
act1

15. USER
YOUTUBE
' +
( +
) +
*
+ +
, +
 +
.

18. GPS
SCHEDULING
/ +
0 +
1 +
2
 +
2 +
3 +
.

20.  +
4 +
5

22. What a time to
be alive?

23. “Figure out what
sucks. Don’t do
that.”
AGENCY.COM
act2

24. It’s 1998.

25. Server costs that
blew through
already-small
budgets.

26. What the
heck is this?

27. Everything
built from
scratch.
Everything.

28. What a time to
be alive.

30. Do good work.
RULE:

31. Figure out
what sucks.
Don’t do that.
PROCESS:

32. What is
good work?
QUESTION:

34. YOU ARE AN
ARTIST.

35. YOU ARE A
DESIGNER.

36. DESIGN IS THE
CONSCIOUS
CREATION
OF AN
EXPERIENCE.

37. YOU CREATE
EXPERIENCES.

38. “Specialization is
for insects.”
Robert Heinlein
act3

39. HOW we make it
WHAT we make

40. WHAT we make

42. HOW we make it
WHAT we make

43. HOW we make it

44. NODE.JS IO.JSANGULAR EMBERPHOTOSHOP SKETCHVS

45. HOW we make it
WHAT we make

46. tools != how
tools != what

47. That’s his version
of Angular.

50. User experience
Performance
Marketing
touchpoints
Color palette
Customer
support
Packaging

51. PERFORMANCE
Server
response
times
Browser/device
render times
Software
OSS
Application
Architecture
CDN
Database
Middleware
Database
DesignMongoDB?
Postgres?
MySQL?
Oracle?
Node.js?
io.js?
Ruby?
PHP?
Python?
Your code
Packages
You (and/or
your team)
Sleep?
Food?
Family?
Web
Native App
Vanilla?
Angular?
Bootstrap?
iOS?
Android?
Both?
Presentation-layer
Architecture

52. YOURCODE
Vanilla?
Based on
framework?
Naming
conventions
Package
selection
Integration
with middleware
Package
customization
Integration with
front-end logic
Code style
Methods
LoopsObjects
Framework
selection

53. User experience
Marketing
touchpoints
Color palette
Customer
support
Packaging
Performance

54. turtles
all
the
way
down

55. HOW DO YOU
SEPARATE
IMPORTANT
DETAILS FROM
BULL$**T?

56. DETAILS THAT
MATTER HAVE A
DIRECT IMPACT ON
YOUR VISION.

57. Wearing a
black
turtleneck
does not
turn you
into Steve.

58. YOU MUST DECIDE
WHICH DETAILS
MATTER.

59. “[The artist] must
be, sometimes,
God and,
sometimes, his
creature.”
Francois Truffaut
act4

60. FRONT END BACK END
HCI SGML OOP Node.js MongoDBAtom
Fixfix Atom JavaScript Node.js MongoDBAtom
User Experience HTML JavaScript Ruby MongoDBCSS

61. DESIGN FRONT END BACK END
Photography Wireframing SGML OOP Lang. Details IndexingSASS
Layout Architecture DOM DOM Lang. Basics Table DesignDOM
Visual Design User Experience HTML JavaScript Middleware DatabaseCSS
Color theory Closures File I/O ShardsLESS

62. still
turtles
all
the
way
down

63. A FULL STACK
THINKER KNOWS
WHEN TO STOP
THINKING.

64. SEE.
FULLY.

65. YOU ARE AN
ARTIST.

66. YOU ARE A
DESIGNER.

67. YOUR JOB IS TO
EXPRESS YOUR
VISION.

68. FEEL.

69. THE
DETAILS

70. a full-stack
thinker
stops here.
(not here.)

71. “It’ll happen again
if we don’t fix it.”
Lt. Montgomery Scott
USS Enterprise
fin

72. IDEAS NOT TACTICS
VISION

73. IDEAS NOT CODE
IDEAS

74. IDEAS NOT SAME
DIFFERENT

75. IDEAS NOT MAPSCOMPASSES

76. Thanks for listening.
Tell me somethin’ good:
@husanioakley

77. CREDITS
Video and Photography
https://flic.kr/p/8h1NW
https://flic.kr/p/gTDnHn
https://archive.org/details/MuhammadAliVsSonnyListon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tool_use_by_animals
http://www.tiadeleon.com/#/telltaleheart/
https://flic.kr/p/phE16P
https://flic.kr/p/cr95YQ
Iconography
http://fontawesome.io/icons/
http://www.unocha.org
http://www.freepik.com
Statistics
http://www.internetlivestats.com/one-second
http://www.statista.com/statistics/276623/number-of-apps-
available-in-leading-app-stores/