Derren Wilson

Senior Lecturer

My profile

Biography

I have had an interest in design for a long time but it was only with the coming of the web that I could put my interest in technology and design together. Luckily I was part of the first wave of web people who taught themselves and taught others at the same time. My interests include design (print, web, furniture, architecture), typography, drawing and music.

I also help out in my partner’s flower shop doing the occasional delivery, so I’m well aware of how imperfectly the digital world models the real one.

Words of wisdom

If you’re looking for the […] honest, truthful answer to pretty much any question on web design and usability, here it is:
It depends.

— Jeremy Keith

Academic and professional qualifications

I gained a BA at the University of Adelaide, studying the classical world, music, anthropology, media studies and history. I then continued studying archaeology at Adelaide and Flinders Universities, graduating with a Graduate Diploma in Archaeology. This was all before there was such a thing as the internet.

I have a PGCLTHE teaching qualification from Manchester Met and am working towards a PhD.

Languages

HTML, Javascript, Cascading Style Sheets (including SASS). I also enjoy using processing.

Government and industry links

  • Most improved member of the Under 11 Australian Rules football team, St Paul’s Lutheran School, Adelaide

Editorial Board membership

  • Innovative Practice in Higher Education

Get in touch

0161 247 3498
5.12 Grosvenor East Building

Teaching

Why do I teach?

I teach because the best way to learn a new skill is to explain it to someone else. If you can do that clearly and with insight into the context of that skill, then you have understood it. I have benefitted from the contributions that hundreds of other people have made in order to understand how the web and its technologies work, so it’s time to add my contributions as well.

How I’ll teach you

It’s the web, so we’ll all be learning at the same time. I will try and steer you away from all the mistakes I’ve made in the past, and I will show you the best people to learn from in our industry. I’ll introduce you to the big changes that have happened as a result of the new devices we use to connect to the internet, and show how doing a bit of thinking before you start designing can make your life easier. I will encourage you to design however you like but decide in the browser. We’ll look at the never ending tension between how we want users and browsers to behave versus the way they actually do. We can investigate the ways knowledge is created and transmitted between designers, developers, clients and users, and think about what the history of the web can tell us about possible futures.

Why study…

If you like things to stay the same, don’t do web. The devices keep changing, the technologies keep changing, the styles of design keep changing, and the current cool way of writing JavaScript seems to change hour by hour…

For me the technology is only one part of what web people do - they manage projects, other collaborators (including the client), they continually develop their own skills, and look for relevant ideas from other disciplines that they can use or experiment with online. There’s also an increasing recognition that web work has a moral and ethical dimension that can’t be ignored.

There’s very few areas of human life now that aren’t defined by, need, or work on the internet. And if you understand how it works it will be a rewarding career in the future.

Subject areas

Web design and front-end development

Research outputs

I am working on a PhD that is looking at the way change happens for web coding practices: specifically for the change to Responsive Web Design that occurred around 2010-2015 as a result of new sizes of internet-enabled devices. I’m also interested in the socio-technical creation of infrastructure, the relationship between web and print design, how software and code is used to create design, and using web archiving to examine aspects of these.

I’ve presented work in progress at RESAW conferences in 2019 and 2021.

  • Reports

    Brügger, N., Winter, J., Schafer, V. (2020) Perspectives on web archive studies: Taking stock, new ideas, next steps. https://cc.au.dk/en/warcnet/about/.

  • Conference papers

    Wilson, D. (2021) 'Planting the seed: propagating and defining web design through the CSS Zen Garden.' In 4th RESAW Conference: Mainstream vs marginal content in Web history and Web archives. Online, 17/6/2021 - 18/6/2021.

    Sheen, K.A., Griffiths, J., Wilson, D., Cunningham, S. (2021) 'A Novel Pandemic Delivery Pattern for a New Digital User Experience Degree Apprenticeship.' In International Conference on Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics. 276. New York City (online), 25/7/2021 - 29/7/2021. Springer,

    Wilson, D. (2020) 'Overwhelmed by Code.' In WARCnet Kickoff meeting 2020. Aarhus (online), 5/5/2020 - 7/5/2020.

    Wilson, D., Nawaz, R., Kayas, O., Dancey, D., Welch, K. (2018) ''The web is not print’: tracing historical influences on changing web coding practices.' In 3rd Research Infrastructure for the Study of Archived Web Materials conference. Amsterdam, 19/6/2019 - 21/6/2019.