Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the world wide web, talking to the BBC:
If we don't have the ability to understand the web as it's now emerging, we will end up with things that are very bad.
Studying these forces and the way they're affected by the underlying technology is one of the things that we think is really important... When you look at university courses, web science isn't there - it seems to fall through the cracks.
All kinds of disciplines are going to have to converge. People with all kinds of skills are going to have to work together to build a new web which is going to be even better.
We're hearing complaints from companies when they need people that really understand the medium from both the technological and social side.
God bless you Sir Tim, I couldn't have said it better myself.
You wouldn't expect a bricklayer to be an expert in plumbing or electrics. They could probably do the job but not as well or as effectively as a plumber or an electrician. And yet the traditional approach to web and multimedia design has seen creatives crossing disciplines to deliver projects that suffer as a result.
As the web evolves, so does our understanding of how best to approach briefs and how to provide the best value end product for the client. Specialist disciplines and the knowledge and insight that they bring to the table can often be the making or breaking of a project.
The Freestyle creative team has grown and evolved significantly in the past year. These changes have been driven by the appointment of Creative Director Daniel Birch and his vision of an integrated creative team and a more 'grown up' approach to projects.
Designing and developing for the digital space is now more complex than ever before.
When you put this into context with Sir Tim's point about the absence of 'web science' and the lack of understanding of this emerging space you start to appreciate the challenge.
Many new skills are needed to make sure that your business is moving forward in its approach and importantly learning from its specialist roles like interface developers, interface architects and content authors alongside the traditional design and multimedia skills.
People obviously have to work together. Most importantly, specialists need to learn to talk in a common language, people need to share and use each others knowledge.
You don't always have the luxury of these new specialist roles and you start to see disciplines converging and multi-skilled roles being created. However who can hire these people at the moment? If you've got them, make sure you keep them.
The balance between specialist and generalist team members is greatly influenced by project type and business size, but the bigger you are the more you can justify the more specialist roles that can make a difference and provide insight and innovation.
Specialist roles can also cause challenges. You can end up with an 'over the fence' scenario where a BA hands over to an IA and they hand the project on to the designer and so on. This silo mentality presents areas of excellence but often flawed solutions, as one part hasn't really talked or debated with another.
This brings us around to explaining why we need to take 'an integrated approach' and the real issue of providing a framework for these people to work together. Ultimately, this means taking ownership of the way you deliver projects and working with the projects teams to make the change.
As a Creative Director I am responsible for the delivery aspect of our business - the front end integration of creative specialists (already talked about) and the delivery role of project manager's knitting together these skills in a commercial way.
Simple things like putting the specialist skill sets in one team, sharing their knowledge through team meetings, having a comparable career structures and establishing genuine project teams also help.
Historically, like all companies, Freestyle has not always had this integrated approach, but slowly but surely we are getting there. All the steps are in place - now it is about changing the culture and belief around this way of working and seeing the results.
We're already starting to see the benefits of working this way and so are our clients. Having specialist input into a project at all stages gives clients the confidence that what we're doing is backed up by knowledge and understanding as well as looking great.
Send us your opinion on this by email to: ideas@fsnm.co.uk.