Prinicpals of Web Design Part 1

So, reading through The Principals of Web Design by David and Jean Farkas, I've begun to realize how little I actually work like this. The way they describe web design seems so purposeful and structured, whereas the way I actually work is a lot more chaotic, what Steven Krug would call muddling through. For instance, I built a web form that submits information via email yesterday. I'd never done anything like that, so I went through several examples of web forms on the web, borrowed lines of code here and there and basically pasted something together that does what I want it to do. It took about four hours of lots and lots of frustration and change, but I finally got it to work. Now, according to the Farkases, I probably should have taken an hour or so and sat down, mapped out my goals, and systematically figured out how to reach each one of them.

Sure, maybe I did that in my head, but I definitely didn't commit any plans to paper or really consciously make any plans for that matter. I had a vague idea of what I wanted and an even vaguer idea of how I wanted to get there, and with a lot of frustration and an equal amount of perseverance I managed to get where I wanted to go.

Most the web designers I know operate a lot more like this than the Farkases methods. They have ideas about what they want and a vague idea about how to get there, and they just go, rapidly without a lot of planning. Most of the writing they do comes about during the bug fixes when they start making lists of problems, and putting those into hierarchies. I think Krug's examples of the problems found during user testing are a good example of this aftermath.

I kind of had the same problem when I was reading Contextual Design last semester. It's a great idea, it probably is a necessity in a corporate design setting where there are multiple people working on a project, and it is probably a good idea for an individual to take notice of the pre-planning stages, and it would have saved me a lot of work with the project I'm working on now if I worked this way, but it's a lot more fun just to jump in the pool with both feet and not worry about the sharks swimming in the deep end.

The Paradox of Thinking About Not Thinking

Reading through Steve Krug's, Don't Make Me Think has made me realize how much thought and planning goes into an effective website's numbing ease of use. My own tendency to get bored and move on if a page doesn't load fast enough or if information isn't easy enough to find, definitely makes me aware of the need for this kind of design for mass consumption, but the classicist in me rages against it. Let's step out of reality for a moment and look at the ideal. Just because the masses crave simplicity and usability are we as designers, writers, and educators really doing them any favors by pandering to their capitalistic induced desires for expediency and ease of use?

Not thinking and considering the world around us, even the virtual one, is bound to have some long term effects on us as a society. While there aren't any studies on the subject, I find it interesting that rate of ADHD diagnoses has increased significantly over the past few years--3-5% of Amarican children in 1990 to 8% by 2004--as has the increased availability of the internet, and it has been shown that a child's environment is just as likely to be a cause for ADHD as genetic markers or any other as yet unproven causation, and this isn't even taking in to account the equally large numbers of adult ADHD cases diagnosed every year. 1 Now keep in mind I'm just musing on the subject and none of this has been researched specifically, but if we're designing sites, stores, advertisements, and life in general to require as little attention as possible, is it any wonder that we're having so much trouble paying attention as a society?

And yet while the classicist in me rages against the idea, I know that if a company is going to be successful, it must conform and continue to propagate the problem. As Krug points out, if a customer is looking to buy a chainsaw, they want to go to the store and buy it, not get bogged down in aesthetic choices and intellectual musings (51-55). 2 And yet, it is only a certain demographic that would go to a store or website looking to buy a chainsaw, and in this proletariat demographic, a marxist would see a propagation of social hierarchy brought on, not by the nobility, but by the corporate elite.


And speaking of the the subjugation of the masses, what's really interesting is the comments Krug makes about economy of space. He says "Keep the noise down to a dull roar . . . when everything on the page is clamoring for my attention the effect can be overwhelming", and yet the purpose that would cause a company to take this advice and be economical in space is to get a consumer to buy more physical stuff to clamor for attention in their physical space (100). 2 Paul Graham writes, "Unless you're extremely organized, a house full of stuff can be very depressing. A cluttered room saps one's spirits. One reason, obviously, is that there's less room for people in a room full of stuff. But there's more going on than that. I think humans constantly scan their environment to build a mental model of what's around them. And the harder a scene is to parse, the less energy you have left for conscious thoughts. A cluttered room is literally exhausting." 3 So, the principles of web design are based on normal human reactions, and yet these commercial sites are also convincing buyers that somehow the more stuff one has the better life is, and it is in part due to economical design: "they make the experience of buying stuff so pleasant that 'shopping' becomes a leisure activity". 3 And thus create a disastrous cycle for the consumer, "I can escape my overcrowded life of stuff by going to the store or getting online and getting more stuff in a less crowded environment." It's amazing how the powers that be moved from not giving the masses anything, to giving them too much. Brilliantly devious, no?

That's enough ranting for one day . . .