Too often, a designer will design and/or judge a piece of communication based on how it looks, on how it pleases his or her design sensibilities. The single-factor measuring stick of style. I’m picturing a horse with blinders who only sees the pretty.
And I surmise that in the PRINT world, this was semi-sustainable. Enter web. With the advent of analytics and TASK measurement, the same way of “looking at things” doesn’t cut the mustard.
The web designers you WANT TO WORK WITH will hand-off a design and withhold judgment until they get feedback on how well it PERFORMS.
And this involves both a commitment to design AND content.
It’s an old and well-worn conversation. But a rehashed conversation that took place in my head while reading this great post:
Writing Microcopy
“The fastest way to improve your interface is to improve your copy-writing.”
Microcopy is small yet powerful copy. It’s fast, light, and deadly. It’s a short sentence, a phrase, a few words. A single word. It’s the small copy that has the biggest impact. Don’t judge it on its size…judge it on its effectiveness.
The layouts, the grids, the fancy background images, and the elegant typography are meaningless without effective messaging and meaning.
So two goals for myself as a designer.
- Push back the demand for style when there is a lack of substance.
- Do a better job of crafting and promoting effective content when opportunities arise.
See also:
eduGuru: Content is more important than design
Zeldman: Content precedes design..
Also see also:
Often times the creation of a site, in a client’s eyes, is about making the juiciest-looking hamburger around, one that customers cannot resist. The conversations in process are about what toppings are going onto this thing, a la sweet javascript functions, glossy buttons and calls-to-action in every nook and cranny. But; and I hesitate to push this metaphor and former Wendy’s slogan too far; where’s the beef? How do you know that what you’re offering your audience even has any value?
June 23rd, 2009 at 1:29 pm
You’ve hit the nail on the head. Many clients will judge a site by the look alone. But you can’t judge a site by it’s cover any more than you can a book. You have to open it up and look inside. But of course, in the case of the Web, one job of the cover is to tell you how to open it up and look inside.
That front page needs to let visitors know they are in the right place–this site offers what they seek; it needs to grab their attention and make them want more; and it needs to clearly guide them to the rest of the content.
Looking at a site onscreen during a presentation, or worse yet printed out on a board is not a way to judge a site’s functionality. It may look shiny and happy, chock full of beautiful photos and all the links the committee wanted, but that isn’t a measure of success. Getting users to come inside, find what they need while also taking an action that serves your own goals is what counts.
For that you need useful, easy to read/view/hear content presented in an easy-to-navigate interface. If you can make that look cool, too, that’s great, but if we focus on the visual appeal first, it may be that our design gets in the way of our usability.
June 23rd, 2009 at 2:05 pm
Visual appeal still matters some, as it makes an impression on the viewer (be it an internal or external customer), as well. Not that you are suggesting otherwise.
I love the post. I like to look at the Web sites of CASE, etc., winners. These are generally visually appealing sites, but sometimes the functionality seems to be lacking. Or is it? Metrics reveal more, but aren’t a criteria in these awards. (The same could be said of winners of print awards…)
June 23rd, 2009 at 2:05 pm
Right on!
You imply, but don’t specifically say, that to be effective, a site should be designed to reach its target audience. So it shouldn’t be about whether a 60-year-old president or a 48-year-old provost “likes” an admissions site, but about whether that site is appealing to and effective with 16 or 17 year-olds, aka “the target audience” for the site.
June 23rd, 2009 at 2:07 pm
Heidi that “storefront” post was epic. I can’t believe I’d forgotten about it.
June 23rd, 2009 at 2:09 pm
Don’t get me started on Awards.