On Being Known
In collaboration with Tom, I draw a web comic. Just like thousands of others. It’s about interaction design, human-computer interaction (HCI), usability, things like that. Things that most people don’t care about or have even heard of. That’s right, I draw a comic about that.
So it should come as no surprise that in a conference for web geeks, people would actually know my work, right? But call me stupid because I was surprised.
In every circle, there are mini-celebrities. Some of them transcend into other areas. Will Wright and Sid Meier are names some may have heard of even if they don’t play computer games. Ditto Jakob Nielsen or Don Norman even if you don’t practice usability. But while most game developers might know say, Roberta Williams as the King’s Quest designer, people outside won’t know who you’re talking about.
In the world of web designers, there’s a tight knit community that all know each other: jason, andy, hicks, doug, dave. I’m not in that circle because frankly, that’s not what I primarily do. I’m also not in the web standards crowd because it bores me to bits, but I love what they (eric, molly h, simon, dunstan and co) do. Social software, blogware, tagging? Interesting stuff. I love to talk about where they tie in wherever I’m working on projects but I don’t study them in depth like matt, jay, molly s, tantek, or danah.
And that’s why I don’t expect the SxSW group to know what we do. Yet, conversations often went something like this:
“Hi, I’m Kevin”
“Hi, I’m (so and so). So what’s your blog/website/job?”
“I work on a webcomic on interaction design called OK/Cancel?”
“Oh YEAH! I know that, yeah. Cool!”
“(blink blink)”
It’s strange to meet some people and not even know you’re familiar with their work. Stranger still to know they are familiar with yours. Somehow, it doesn’t lessen the intimidation factor though. You still feel like with every introduction, someone’s going to look and you and figure out that you don’t quite belong.
Such was not the case. As narrow and niche as we are, it appears we have broader appeal than I expected. Rock.
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