Vitaly Friedman

Web design has rarely taken the environment into account. Over the last decade, web pages have become ten times bigger, and up to 80% of the weight of a particular webpage can be waste—content and code that is not required for the page to function. Do web designers and developers simply not care? Vitaly Friedman believes that they do care but that they need better education about accessibility, usability and sustainability.

Vitaly Friedman is one of the nicest and most brilliant people I know. Born in Minsk, Belarus, he studied computer science and mathematics in Germany, and co-founded Smashing Magazine back in 2006, a leading online magazine for designers and developers. His curiosity drove him from interface design to front-end to performance optimization to accessibility and back to user experience over all the years.