At the wedding, my sister basically asked me if I made MySpace layouts. “Like, with that code you have to put into the header? You can make that code?”

I think I just had an idea for a Viget side business…

When it’s someone in the grandparent-or-older age bracket, I just hold up a newspaper and tell them that what I do is kind of like that, except I make it pretty.:-)

I’ve run into this situation a few times! Normally if someone w/ no concept of the internet asks what I do, I just tell them that I work w/ computers. If they have a bit more knowledge, I’ll add that I work w/ computers to make websites look cool and so on.

I’ve found that the less detail I give, the more it saves me from spending countless hours explaining and going crazy.

More and more I find myself repeating an explanation I heard from someone else: “I make the Internet.”

I get weird faces all the time when I talk about web DESIGN because I think lots of people just think it’s the same as going into the Blogger settings to change some colors (can’t anyone “design” a website?)

This answer seems to work for most people: “I’m like an architect and interior designer. I plan and implement the way a web ‘home’ is built and laid out, and then I arrange the ‘living space’ to be most efficient for the people who will use it. Then I hand it off to a ‘contractor’ (or developer) to implement my plans.”

I basically told my grandmother that websites were like her favorite gardening magazines. The table of contents lets you go to different parts of the site, without having to flip a bunch of pages to get to it.

I don’t know if it worked, but she looked slightly less confused than before she asked - slightly.

I like to tell people “I make the internet pretty” or “I make the internet work” even though I’m not a designer, both are somewhat applicable I think because as a front-end developer you’re taking what someone has made in Photoshop [or Fireworks, though why anyone uses it for layouts is beyond me] and actually make it into something that is usable to a bajillion and a half people.

If they ask more I tell them that I’m the person who makes a pretty picture into something you click on and see things happen.

PS - this is a beautiful blog :) Love the author headshots.

You know, I think we’re looking at the problem wrong:  I find lately I have less and less trouble explaining the web/internet to folks because in many ways it is not different from traditional media.  We’ve had “blogs” for many decades now, only we used to call them “columns” and you could read them once a week in your local paper.  So I tell people I’m a publisher and designer—the fact that the web is the medium is essentially an unnecessary aside, since the basic principles of those disciplines are the same regardless.  Problem solved.

You may also enjoy some more thoughts on the matter.

Don’t bother with the specifics, just tell them you work in an office with interesting people an how your cube-mate is learning to solve the rubiks cube.

They’re probably too old too give a shite anyway ;)

I’ve explained my mother with newspaper example. And some TV as well. Showed the layout and typography of newspaper’s page, put there some screen sizes of TV and explained a little about different TVs (browsers). So together I think it was pretty clear.

I don’t konw,It’s so far for me.maybe!

Good article. It’s a good thing that parents are exploring the internet. But I’m always the one who has to fix the problems.

Well, You got of easy, as I’m in a 3rd world country trying to explain to one generation older what is that I do, they still think I’m just playing around because they see the internet and computers as a unfolded mystery.

I’m in computers.

As a software engineer/programmer/developer… I simply tell them “I’m the guy behind the scenes that teaches computers to actually do the stuff you want it to.”

At 41, as an “old enough to be a grandma” web designer and developer, I found this article to be annoyingly condescending.  Perhaps it’s because my 24 year old friend, who recently graduated from design school, just emailed me asking yet another question about how to fix a problem with a site she’s working on.  She could have looked up the answer on the internets, as I’ve had to do so many times… but why bother lifting a finger to research something when you have a friend who knows CSS inside and out?

My daughter is 17, has had numerous computer classes, but still hasn’t progressed past Facebook.  My friends in the “outside world” have no clue about how to build a website, regardless of their age.  To them, what I do is dark and mystical. 

When I was in high school, I learned BASIC on a TRS-80.  Look that up if you don’t know what I’m talking about.  My SO, who is also 41, has been writing software since he was in high school.  Most of our computer-literate friends and co-workers are over 35.  I guess we had to really learn how to do this, because Dreamweaver didn’t exist “back then”.

As I get older, I get more sensitive to young people laughing at us “old people” because they’re so much smarter than we are.  I don’t think there’s anything a young person could try to talk to me about that I couldn’t understand, unless it’s mainstream radio.  I only listen to indie.  I have to say I can’t understand why people listen to Beyonce.

@Michelle

My post was written from my own personal experiences, I would LOVE LOVE LOVE it, if the family I refer to in this post had an interest in the web like you do. I wrote the post because I have shared my personal accounts with others and bonded over similar experiences.

It must be fantastic that you can talk with your daughter about the web, even if it is just Facebook..  which I still can not even chat with my mother about. On that note… I recently spoke to a group of college-age students who also seemed to only relate when I brought up the word “Facebook”. My post is targeted more at Web Designers than just “any young person”.

Thanks for your response, I really enjoy hearing from different perspectives!

My mom is a doctor and she works at a hospital, so in order to explain where a website is hosted I explain her how works a server and I had to compare every floor and areas of the hospital to hardrives, folders, user accounts etc. Then to explain how the computer works for me I explain how every doctor instrument (or whatever) works for her.

It took a while but it works and also was funny to do.

Wow, I got the opposite problem. I’m a graphic designer with a focus on print. When I’m looking for jobs, however, well-meaning friends and family always send me links for a “UI-Developer”, “Web Designer”, or “Java"-something. I try to tell them I don’t know web code, and I don’t design for the web, but it’s hard for them to grasp, especially because I am on the computer all day long and everything that has to do with design and computers at the same time must equal web, right? :)

PS- My parents, who are in their 60’s now, were programmers 30-40 years ago, so in reality they probably know more about coding than I do. “Remeber when monitors were invented? Har har har!”

I should photograph people’s expressions when I tell them what I do at university. Regardless of age everyone seems stumped when I say ‘design for interactive media’. I always have to quickly add that it’s a form of web design.

When that doesn’t suffice I tell them that I conceptualise and design spaces created to encourage communication and interaction.

I think Natalie’s comment up there is spot on. I sometimes call web design ‘furnishing’ a digital space as well.

I’m nearly 60 years old and have been designing/developing websites now for 12 years.  I taught my father how to use the internet, and he had fun with it right up until his death at 80 a couple of years ago. My husband is nearly 70, and although he doesn’t always know the precise terminology, he definitely understands how the internet works. In fact, I’ve never had any trouble at all explaining what I do for a living.  People may not understand all the technology, but they seem to understand the reality of the web/internet just fine.

Just last week I attended a major web conference in Montreal, and I would venture to say that at least 50% of the web professionals I saw there were well over 45.  I think it is entirely possibly that all you 20-somethings are underestimating the understanding and participation of us older folks.  :>)

My worse experience some time ago was an under 40 client who wanted a web searchable database but didn’t know what the “web” was, nor the concept of searchable and neither the idea of a database as she asked me if she had a database before her when I sent her the first homepage image.

I think that it actually depends on people to understand the concepts and the ideas of the internet. Some, who are more open minded, disregarding age, will grab it at the very first go while others will have to plod through it to understand… or not.

Affiliate marketing doesn’t depend on the web - you can just say that you market other people’s products and take a cut for any you sell.

To explain the internet part, I guess I’d go back to basics and say something along the lines that I design multi-page documents detailing companies, with buttons to do things like buy products and forms to do things like contact the company, that people can find on their computer much like they use the yellow pages.  The documents are colourful and graphical such that they look kind of like ads.