Web design thoughts.

October 17, 2002 | 0 Comments

Go read Beauty is Only Screen Deep by Sarah Horton. It’s ok, this will be here when you get back - it’s a good read, and she makes some solid points.

I realized, after reading that, that I don’t “get” the Web. I think that is a good thing. I mean, I think design is important. Heck it’s unavoidable. I think in many cases visual Web design is absolutely needed to convey a message, express a theme or communicate to an audience. Producing usable sites should be the product or by-product of a good design - an unusable design for something that needs to be used is usually a bad design, that much is obvious and goes without saying. So why did I just say it? Heck I don’t know…

ANYway. My first thought was that designing something for the Web to look nice was a waste of time in Sarah’s eyes, that you don’t “get” the Web if you design for any other reason then usability. Maybe I was missing the point of what Sarah was saying, or maybe it was so obvious she didn’t need to say it.

I mean, I do think there is usually a need on the Web to design your pages. You also need to make them usable. I think usability is a fuction of good design. These things go hand in hand. You can make things usable by design. And sometimes there is a need to make them pretty as well - really.

The Web is many things, to many people. (You’ll see above I used the word pages - the Web is much more than pages - kind of proves the point I’m about to make.) We hear “content is king” - the fact of the matter is that, yes it is king - but content can be many different things. As with any sort of design - it’s all about you audience, or your message. The Web is a vehicle with which you can deliver content - what that content is and how it’s designed depends on many different factors.

Content isn’t always words - text (or pages! aha) - sometimes it’s a game, a picture, a map, a form, or what have you. A Web site can be in itself content. Does every single Web site need to be held to a certain usability standard? Hell no, content doesn’t always need to be usable. In fact - sometimes content could be purposefully unusable, a puzzle for instance.

The root of my argument lies in the simple fact that every site (page, application, mess of content, message) is different, has something different to offer, has a different audience, etc. It’s finding the message and tuning that to your audience that is important. As I said before, usability is a function of design - and I mean any kind of Design - and the words “Web design” are not a catch all for things Web. I think it’s high time we start to acknowledge that.

Maybe I’m stating the obvious here, but it seems like I hear the kind of sentiment Sarah is talking about all too often. Her points (which I admit - I might be missing) are valid for many types of Web sites (pages) - but the fact is - if we were to take that to heart for every site you do and all things Web, we’d be missing the mark. The Web is much to big, to diverse and too many people use it in too many ways for someone to just sort of “get” it.

I guess what I’m trying to say here in this rambling rant is this - if you think you “get” the Web - you might want to think again.

Filed under: Web Design