When proposing new web technologies, it is important to manage expectations. Working with someone that has experience in the web standards process (*gently gestures at self*) can significantly increase the odds of success, but there are no guarantees. That said, I will advise you on odds of success upfront, and if implementation feasibility comes up as an issue, that happens very early in the process so I will help you make an informed decision on whether to invest further.
How can I help?
Given limited availability, I prioritize consulting projects where I can have the greatest impact — typically those that are both challenging and aligned with my expertise.
On a high level, my areas of expertise span product, usability, and web architecture. This includes:
- Web standards and web platform design, especially CSS
- Product design, strategy, and vision for products targeting web developers and designers
- API design for the Web
- Open source software and open standards
- Color science, especially as it relates to web technologies
- Web Components
- Design systems and design tokens, especially around their use for Web UIs
- Qualitative and quantitative research methods
My involvement can take many forms, depending on what fits your needs and budget. For example:
- Short, one-off mentorship sessions
- Design reviews and audits of products or APIs (existing or 0→1)
- Short- or medium-term research projects to explore a specific problem, investigate user needs in a specific area, or drive web standards forwards through developer evangelism
- Coaching sessions
- Joining your company Slack for async help
- On-site or remote sessions or workshops tailored to your team’s needs
- Talks and articles (for conferences, magazines, etc.)
- Fractional positions (technical fellow, product manager, etc) when you need expertise on an ongoing basis but not a full-time hire
These are only examples, and I’m very open to discussing other ways my expertise can add value and help you out. Unusual projects are often the most interesting. Just drop me an email and we can discuss.
Rates do vary by scope, project type, and length, and I do offer a sliding scale for nonprofit organizations, or organizations in low-income countries, and projects with strong social impact or that provide public benefit. Please reach out for more details, and to discuss what’s feasible for your budget.
Who I’ve Worked With
I work with companies across the spectrum of size and maturity, from Fortune 500 companies to tiny startups doing cool work. Some of the companies I’ve worked with include:
1 Hour Mentorship Session
If you have a specific problem you need help with, I can help you out in a one-off mentorship session. You pay $500, get one hour of my time and you can use it as you see fit. We can brainstorm solutions to a specific problem, you can ask me about web standards or a CSS feature you struggle with, or anything else you want to discuss that is relevant to my experience and/or areas of expertise. You can bring only yourself, or your entire team. There are no guarantees or deliverables.
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Web Platform Consulting & Education
Many companies see web technologies (CSS, HTML, etc.) as something handed down from the gods on stone tablets. Or, maybe they understand that that is not the case, but the web standards process seems opaque and intimidating. As a result, they invest so much time and effort working around web platform limitations (or perceived limitations) that it would actually be much cheaper to fix the core problem instead.
Web Platform Consulting
I will listen to your team’s pain points around a specific area and we’ll take it from there, depending on whether a solution already exists, and what its implementation status is if so.
Often, it turns out that better solutions already exist in the web platform and are widely implemented, but the team is not aware of them. This is not a fault with the team; the web platform moves so fast that no development team can keep up with it. In that case, this will turn into an education session, where I will explain the existing solutions, their tradeoffs, and how to utilize them to address your pain points (which is often non-obvious). Often, this is all that is needed.
Other times, solutions do exist, but they are not implemented in all browsers yet. In these cases, there are options:
- Progressive enhancement: Many web features can add value even before they are implemented in all browsers, through progressive enhancement.
- Polyfills can fill the gap for browsers that do not implement the feature yet, and I can help you find or build one that meets your needs.
- Driving implementation: If you are invested in getting these features implemented across browsers, there are two core avenues:
- Driving developer interest to put pressure on browser vendors through evangelism, polyfills, etc. More affordable, but also slower and less certain.
- Funding implementation work directly. Costlier, but faster and more certain. I can help you navigate options for this and interface with the companies doing that kind of work.
Lastly, sometimes there is no existing solution. In that case, I can use my experience to design and propose a solution that meets your needs, and help you drive it forward. Depending on your case, your budget, and level of investment, it can range from a day of work to months of work.
This type of work is essentially a public service, which can be a great PR opportunity, and I can help you frame it appropriately in your public communications. For the same reason, I charge a reduced hourly rate for this type of work, as I consider it an investment in the web platform and the community.
Demystifying the web standards process
Additionally, many companies whose livelihood depends on the web platform in some way want to get involved in web standards, but the process seems opaque and intimidating. I can help you navigate it and train your team on how to get involved in the future. Through a series of sessions, I can demystify the process with a bias towards action: explain how web standards work, what makes a proposal effective and increases its odds of success, how to get involved, and how to evaluate tradeoffs for your involvement to ensure you get the most bang for your buck.
Understanding how the standards process works and what drives implementations is not only valuable for proposing new features, but also for evaluating the current state of the web platform and strategic planning. I will teach you how to tell the difference between web platform features that are just about to become Baseline and those that are years away.
Co-designing the web platform
If you are interested in both of the above, this is the perfect combination. After the demystification sessions, we can work on designing new web platform features that address your team’s pain points and writing up proposals for them together, which can serve as an excellent hands-on case study so your team can get first-hand practical experience with how the web sausage is made.
“Aren’t web standards only for MAANGs that can play the long game?”
When looking at web standards timelines from the outside, it often seems like the process is slow. However, in most cases, work stalls because no-one is driving it forward, not because of inherent resistance or dysfunction.
There are many success stories of major web technologies going from conception to baseline in less than two years (e.g. CSS Cascade Layers), and smaller features in a matter of months. This is shorter than many product development cycles!
Additionally, web standards work delivers a lot of short-term value too:
- Progressive enhancement: Many web features can add value even before they are implemented in all browsers, through polyfills and/or progressive enhancement.
- Strategy: Knowing what the web platform landscape will look like in the near-future can help you make better product decisions today, and give you a leg up over competitors.
- PR: This type of work is a public service, which can be a great PR opportunity.
Usability Research & Product Consulting
I have deep experience in product and API design, and specialize in:
- Creative products, especially those that facilitate web design and development, either for professional web developers and designers, as well as products democratizing it and making it accessible to a wider audience.
- API Design, especially for the Web
With my unique combination of usability/product and deep software engineering expertise, I can help you design user interfaces and/or APIs that users love, while using my deep technical expertise to prioritize directions that maximize Impact/Effort.
My involvement can range from async design reviews / audits, to mentorship sessions with your team, and even hands-on research work.
What is a design review?
Broadly speaking, a design review is a structured process where an expert evaluates a product or API against usability principles and best practices, identifying potential issues and areas for improvement. The deliverable is a report that outlines the findings, including specific usability issues, potential solutions, and recommendations for improvement.
A good design review can uncover several usability issues, saving your company hours of user testing and development time. It can also be completed much faster than user testing (typically 1-3 weeks), as it does not require recruiting participants, scheduling sessions, and analyzing results. It is not a substitute for user testing, but rather a way to make the most of it, by getting a good chunk of usability issues out of the way before that stage.
Design reviews can be conducted at all stages in the design cycle, provided that there is a prototype with sufficient detail. Since they are based on inspection, as opposed to actual use by a real user, they can be used to evaluate much more abstract or scoped down versions of a user interface that would be hard or impossible to test with participants, e.g. a set of specifications, an isolated segment of a design, such as a single dialog box, or a microinteraction.
What about APIs?
API Design is UI Design, but doing user research of these types of UIs does require a very specific type of expertise. In addition to design reviews, interviews, or surveys, I am one of the few usability researchers that have run user studies where the UI being tested was purely textual (e.g. a programming language or API), and I can help you do the same.
Hands-on Product Development
While we do not typically undertake freelance web design & development or graphic design projects (e.g. “I need a website for my business”), there are a few cases where I’m open to doing hands-on implementation work, especially in conjunction with other types of consulting. Some examples of such projects include developing…
- Prototypes and proofs-of-concept
- Polyfills
- Web components
- Flexible, maintainable CSS solutions to specific problems
- Adding a new feature to any of my open source projects
- Web Platform Tests
- Tooling to facilitate all of the above
What else?
If it sounds like I might be the perfect person to help, but you’re not quite sure how, or your project doesn’t fit any of the categories above, don’t hesitate to reach out. I love unusual, challenging projects and am very comfortable with ambiguity.
As an example, a consulting project I remember very fondly, was when O’Reilly Media (one of the biggest tech publishers) asked me to design a print book layout in HTML and CSS which they used as a sample of what can be achieved with such a pipeline. Nothing like this had been done with CSS before, and I loved exploring (and pushing) the boundaries of what is possible.