You can’t be in the design or development world for very long without running into lynda.com. If you don’t find the Web site, surely you will run across a reference to one of Lynda Weinman’s books, a video clip, an interview. It’s not that Lynda is everywhere —she is just everywhere that designers and developers go.

Lynda Weinman is a brand of her own, having developed a reputation as one of the century’s “graphics greats.” With a unique blend of humor, sharp business acumen, a love of teaching and a deep understanding of design, Lynda now runs the leading subscription-based training program in the world of design. A noted promoter and pundit, Lynda — and her staff of nearly 100 — helps tens of thousands of customers around the world increase their technical knowledge and do better work. 

In conversation with Lynda, she resists the idea that she has helped shaped the history of desktop and Web design. Rather, she claims that she simply learned new technology as it cropped up over the last 25 years and made it easy for others to understand. Lynda took a few minutes from her firm’s headquarters in Ventura, Calif., to answer a few questions:

Q. With the proliferation of rich Internet applications (RIAs), what kind of shifts are you seeing in training design and development professionals?

A. There is a keen interest in Adobe AIR™, Flex, Flash, as well as Microsoft Silverlight and ancillary technologies such as CSS, AJAX, XML, JavaScript and DHTML. But whatever the technology, I always encourage people to get good at what they love, because it’s a lot easier to excel at what you like doing.

We’re still such a young industry, and so much of what’s been done so far has been kludged together with inadequate tools and underdeveloped technologies. Now, the tools are getting fantastic, the development environments are more stable and extensible, and developers are getting more and more savvy. When (and if!) all the tools and technologies settle down, we’ll still be left with the same age-old questions of what to say and how to say it.

Q. When it comes to building user interfaces, there’s a trend toward increased collaboration among designers and developers. What’s your take on the crossover?

A. Over the years, I’ve met a lot of artists who wonder if they should learn about programming and programmers who wonder if they should learn about design. Never before has this been such good thinking.

The new creative who can wear multiple hats and embrace design and  programming is of premium value these days. The more hats you wear the more valuable you are, especially during down-market times. The crossover breed is getting less and less rare, while more and more valuable. I encourage people to retool continuously, and to be as ambidextrous as they can between coding and designing.

Q. You’ve been in the business since the term “graphical user interface” (GUI) was invented. How do you think people will interface with devices in the future differently than they do now? And what kind of training will that necessitate?

A. I think the types of devices will continue to morph and cross over in online and offline environments. New interfaces that are triggered by physics, such as movement, voice and touch are going to be more and more prevalent. The same types of disciplines will still be needed, however; information design, information architect, user interface designer, usability and user testing, but will simply be applied to new devices and interfaces.

Q. As an award-winning rich Internet application, lynda.com has lived on the Web since 1995. Do you see it migrating to the desktop or anywhere else?

A. Funny you should ask. Yes!

Currently, we have CD-ROM products that have better interfaces and more features than our Web courses, simply because of the inherent constraints of Web delivery. Rather than ship CDs, we have plans to enhance the learning experience with a custom media player that will be deployed to the desktop with Adobe AIR™. Users will be able to download the player, access content from lynda.com and interact with learning materials in an offline environment. Because we will have more control developing a desktop player than we would a Web application, the new application will have a richer user interface, a better overall look and feel, and will provide more features than possible on lynda.com.

Q. As an executive and thought leader responsible for your customers’ experiences, how do RIAs contribute to your brand’s success? How will that customer experience evolve in the near future to keep you on top of the game?

A. I don’t think RIAs have yet hit the mainstream; it’s just the early adopters so far. As our awareness grows and adoption moves farther and farther away from thinking that the Internet and a Web browser are synonymous, the need will become greater and greater for RIAs. In other words, it will take some new devices and some great proof of concepts to get the mainstream behind this movement. It’s inevitable!

About Lynda Weinman

Lynda is founder and CEO of lynda.com, an award-winning software education company that’s been online since 1995. Weinman taught digital design, interactive design, Web design and computer animation at Art Center College of Design, UCLA, American Film Institute, and San Francisco State Multimedia Studies program. Lynda has written and/or produced dozens of best-selling books on creative uses of software, including the first book on Web design (Designing Web Graphics, first published in 1996), and has headlined at conferences and seminars in the U.S. and around the world. She is the co-founder of the first and largest Flash conference in the world: Flashforward.