As I write this Full Code Press is taking place in Sydney. The Woman of Words is participating for the Australian team as copywriter/editor.

You can check out the progresss on Flickr and YouTube.

I refer to myself as a designer but day in day out I find myself doing less of what most people would consider design. Nowadays most of the design I do is with lead pencils and scrap pieces of A4 or even with a word processor.

“But isn’t design about presentation?”

It sure is! But its also much more than that. For instance, when someone designs a toaster they don’t just consider how it will look on your bench top. They have to:

• Ensure it can withstand large amounts of heat without melting.
• Make sure it does not pop up too fast and throw your toasty friends onto the floor. Butter side down of course!
• Think about how the toaster can be cleaned easily and safely.
• Meet design and safety standards in whichever country the toaster will be sold in.
• Be able to source the materials and manufacture them at a reasonable price.

The above points are problems that need solutions and therefore design at a pure level. Most of this happens before Photoshop is opened.

So next time someone tells you they are a Designer or are studying Design what they actually do might surprise you.

Last weekend myself and around 4,000,000 other Victorians who are eligible to vote made our way to 100s of polling stations around the state. We were deciding who should rule.

We waited patiently in line and dodged the stares of the party faithful handing out how to vote cards. Our names were ticked off, we numbered our ballot papers 1 to 5 and popped them in the ballot box. A man was standing there to make sure I did it correctly. We then left to carry on with the rest of the day.

The question I have is why can’t I do this online? I have no problem with voting. I understand how important every vote is, however I have more important things to do than wait in line on a Saturday afternoon… Like watching the cricket or playing with the cat. More important than waiting in line anyway.

Voting online would be so easy.

• I could do it whenever I want (within a given time-frame of say 5 days)
• My vote could go straight into the tally system meaning no manual counting of ballot papers
• Results would be evident in real time
• Authentication would not be a problem. There is essentially no authentication when you vote in the flesh. They don’t actually ask you to prove your identity. At least online you would need to know your name and address. I never get asked to both when I vote
• Absentee voting would be so much easier
• We would save a huge amount of paper. This is good for the environment and our hip pocket
• We would save a lot of labour, which is also good for our hip pocket.

I can pay my bills, apply for a home-load, buy airline tickets and purchase just about anything else under the sun online so why is casting a vote any different? I don’t know.

Tim Berners-Lee on what what the web is, what the web isn’t and what the web should/could be.

“One of the fundamental properties of the Web is the fact that it is just one space, and its a consensual space. It should be independent of the hardware you use. It should be independent of the software you use or the operating system its running on. It should also be independent of what culture you’re in, or whether your’e writing a wonderful, carefully edited document, or whether youre scribbling something on the back of the proverbial envelope. And it should be independent of what language you’re using, what character set, whether your letters go up and down, left to right, or right to left. Also, people should be able to access that information even if they have disabilities. At W3C we call this concept one Web for anyone, everywhere, on anything.”

Tim Berners-Lee