Hello World! I used to work as the Group Program Manager for Microsoft Expression Web until June 2007.

A few days ago a five year old asked me 'What does a Web Designer do'?

The definition of a Web Designer swirling in my head was far too complex for the five year to understand. I think of a Web Designer as someone who creates engaging experiences on the web. I think of Web Designers as professionals who help clients extend brands into the online world and empower clients to better serve employees or customers via the web.  I didn't dare offer these definitions to the five year old.  

Since I intend to serve Web Designers for the next phase of my life, I realized at that moment that I need to get a more succinct definition of a Web Designer into my head -- not for the sake of the five year old but for my own sake. The best that I have been able to come up with so far is that Web Designers make the web fun and engaging to use. Web Designers are to a web site what a chef is to food.  

But I blurted out to the kid – “A Web Designer makes computers fun and easy to use”.  

I didn’t say ‘A Web Designer makes *websites* fun and easy to use because I didn't think the five year old would have understood the meaning of the word ‘website’ either. I replaced the word ‘website’ with the word computer because I think the web will soon become such an integral part of the computing experience that few will distinguish a computer from the web. This implies that Web Designers will be responsible for the consumer’s entire computing experience – not just the experience of launching a website in a separate browser.  

The first version of Expression Web will be a comprehensive toolkit to build standards based web sites that run in any web browser. But as the boundary between a web browser and the computer’s interface starts to blur, Microsoft Expression will provide a comprehensive toolkit to build end to end computing experiences.

When that happens, Web Designers will become ‘Experience Designers’.