EvoBloggito

Why Bad Websites Happen to Good Companies, Part 9: Having a Print Designer Design Your Website

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: Sep 9, 2010; Category: Bad Websites/Good Companies, Design/Development, Information Architecture, Usability; Tags: Accessibility, Design/Development; 2 Comments

It’s amazing to me that this still happens with a fair degree of regularity. It would seem obvious that print and the web are two distinct mediums requiring different expertise. But unfortunately, it’s not uncommon. Design-is-design-is-design to many people, and many of them continue to think of web design as “on-screen graphic design.” I’ve discussed this before. It has nothing to do with whether or not print design or web design is “harder” or “better,” but how they are “different.” Asking a print designer to design a website is much like asking an interior designer to redo your landscaping: different expertise and understanding is required. It’s also not the best idea to ask a web designer to design your annual report.

Before I go further, let me say I have worked (and continue to work) with some print designers who understand there are differences and do their best to approach web design differently and accommodate the needs of website visitors. They generally have accepted the fact that web pages must accommodate many different browsers and system settings, and that their work will not display uniformly to everyone who sees it. They recognize that on the web, information is more important than packaging if it comes down to a choice between the two, and they try to avoid ”designing in“ accessibility or usability issues. They take advice about aspects of their design that are problematic from a usability or information architecture perspective. I like working with those designers and in fact, they often push me to do things outside my “comfort zone,” which often leads to me learning something new.

What’s more important: design or information?

Many print designers see the web as a hostile environment for their visual “designs,” which they hold as the most important aspect of web design. It bothers these folks mightily that they cannot absolutely control how their design is rendered in visitors’ browsers. They have little or no understanding of how (or why) to provide for these differences, and often as not, cause usability or accessibility problems trying to control the “user experience,” by which they mean “visual experience.” There are still print designers (in 2010!) who set paragraph or headline text in photoshop and display text as images on their website (how else to make sure that everyone sees your carefully kerned 11.5 point Museo Sans on 18 point leading?).

But while visual design is important (I’m a designer too, and I believe in the power of design to influence thinking and behavior), it’s pointless if the ability for visitors to find, access, or utilize the information is compromised. The fundamental idea of the web is the ability to search and find relevant information. Design that interferes with that is not only a waste of time, but destructive to the purpose of your website. Good web designers understand that and learn techniques and design approaches that preserve and even enhance usability and accessibility.

Should an interior designer design your landscaping?

Even if you really like and trust your interior designer and you love what they can do to a room with color and fabric, do you really think he or she has an understanding of plants, soil, drainage, etc., that will result in a satisfactory landscape? They may love a nice landscape, and relish the challenge of working in a new medium, but the most likely reality is that there are big gaps in their landscape design expertise that you will have to live with in the finished landscape.

As with the example above, rarely do websites designed by print designers live up to expectations of usability, interactivity, search engine-friendliness, or information architecture, regardless of how nice they might look. The understanding of the web and expertise to leverage its ability to communicate, inform, and persuade is simply not present. Good web designers offer these things along with beautiful and functional design.

The above image represents my primary point that, while there is some overlap in knowledge and skills between print and web design, there are large amounts of knowledge and skill required for each discipline that are not common. There are, no doubt, some designers who have mastered both areas, but they are unusual and rare. While I started my design career in print, after focusing on web design for at least a decade, it’s difficult for me to change my perspective back to that required for really good print design; my design mindset no longer supports that perspective. I know from working with print designers that they have similar problems adjusting to a web perspective.

Bottom line: find a good web designer and put them in charge of your website design or redesign. And if your favorite designer is a print designer and you really want him/her to design your website, insist that they find a good web front-end developer to team with. You’ll get better results in how the site serves your visitors, which means your website goals are much more likely to be realized.

Video: Ever Wonder How Those Little Images Appear Next to Comments?

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: Jul 28, 2009; Category: Communication, Marketing, Usability; Tags: Communication, Usability; No Comments

Make your comments on blogs and community websites more personal with your Globally Recognized Avatar: GRAVATAR. Many sites enable gravatars, which means yours will automatically appear next to your comment when you use the email address to which it’s attached. You will rarely have to even think about it. When you want to change it, just upload a new image: it replaces the one you were using everywhere it appears.

To get a gravatar, visit www.gravatar.com.

Web Designer, Web Developer: What’s the Difference?

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: Jun 18, 2009; Category: CSS, Design/Development, Usability; Tags: CSS, Design/Development; No Comments

The terms "web designer" and "web developer" can mean just about anything, depending on who’s using them and why. I’m going to make a case for definitions that indicate two different skill sets, with each offering different services (perhaps with some minor overlap on occasion). Hopefully, there will eventually be widespread agreement about the differences and areas of overlap in the designations. In the meantime, there’s a comment form at the end of this post that begs for your disagreement with (or support for) my opinions about these terms.

Web Designer

Web designers are first, and foremost, designers. They might be able to tinker with javascript to make an existing jQuery plugin look or behave the way they want, and they might be able to copy and paste and rework some minor php, but they’re unable to write their own functions. And databases? Fugeddaboudit!

However, web designers are experts at CSS, Photoshop, and XHTML. Given half a chance, they can bore you to death with discussions about how to clear floats or when (or if) it’s appropriate to use tables. They understand web typography, color, spacing of elements, navigation, directing eye-path, enhancing user experience and accessibility, and have at least a working knowledge of information architecture.

Assuming they’re good at what they do, when they complete a website, it looks good, it’s easy to navigate, the information is readable, and the site’s look and feel supports and enhances the content. Web designers are sometimes referred to as "front-end developers," but in my mind this term indicates some expertise in javascript.

Web Developer

Web developers offer significant programming services and database development in whichever flavors they have chosen to master. At a personal level, they may or may not also be web designers, but usually not. Few people are competent at both design and programming (I don’t know a single expert programmer I would hire as a designer).

I’ve also found that the term "programmer" means different things to different people ("designer" is subject to interpretation also: everyone who owns a copy of Dreamweaver or InDesign calls themselves a designer). Some people who press buttons in .NET call themselves programmers, even though they are unable to write even the simplest functions. As a result, when they’re part of a web team, the rest of the team adapts to the needs of the software, instead of having the programmer adapt to achieve the desired result.

At a company level, a web development company may be comprised of people who, individually, could not offer both design and programming at professional levels of competence. I consider myself a web designer. My company is a web development company because my business partner has very strong complementary skill sets in programming and database development. We’ve always joked that, while we can accomplish a lot together, individually we’re kind of pathetic. At least I think she was joking…

Web Design is Not Just Graphic Design for the Web

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: Jun 14, 2009; Category: Communication, Design/Development, Usability; Tags: Design/Development; 14 Comments

I started my design career as a print designer. At that time, there was no Internet, and no such thing as a website. In fact, computers were not something designers used, or thought they ever would use. About a decade later, Macintosh, Aldus Pagemaker, and Photoshop changed all that, and print design, or at least print production, became something we did onscreen. Frankly, I was glad to not to risk my fingers to X-acto knives any more.

A few years later, in the early ’90s, websites appeared. Most designers, myself included, did not immediately grasp the differences between print design and web design (my first homepage layout was vertical, with a huge image). After all, we’d been doing print onscreen, so what was the big deal?

Eventually, those of us who had gravitated toward web design began to understand there are fundamental differences, some of which are so profound that trying to do both print and web design can leave a designer feeling schizophrenic jumping back and forth. It’s not just a matter of using different tools, or the same tools in different ways, or even understanding the specific technical requirements differently (e.g., color, font-sizing, etc.): the mindsets of successful print and web designers are very different. As a result, only a small percentage of designers are truly competent in both disciplines, and even fewer are brilliant in both.

Here are some of the major differences:

Control vs. Lack of Control Over the End Result

Print designers who do not obsess over every minor detail of a print job aren’t doing their job. Font selection, color selection, paper color and weight, color separations, press checks, etc.: it’s all about controlling what the end user sees or holds in their hand. Web designers, on the other hand, know they have much less control over what the end user sees. Differences in browsers, platforms, monitors, and even user-defined style sheets limit web designer control. It used to be considered OK for a web designer to use image-based typography and tables for more print design-like control, until it was commonly understood that accessibility was critical for users with disabilities. Good web designers accept that they have, at best, "conditional" control of what the end user sees, and focus on website design that is both accessible to users with disabilities, and looks good to visitors using common browsers. When the print design obsession for control is brought to web design, usually accessibility is the first casualty.

Orderly vs. Random Access to Information

When a print designer creates a product brochure, they have a reasonable expectation that people will start on the front cover and proceed through it from front to back, or maybe flip directly from the front to the back to find product specs or contact information. But they’re going to start on page one most of the time, and if there is a message there, they will at least make note of it. And if for some reason, they pick up an already opened brochure, they can see clearly they’re in the middle of the publication, and decide where to turn from there. Thanks to search engines and links from other websites, visitors can arrive directly on any page on a website. Web designers cannot assume that someone will arrive on a page having already seen another page (aside from checkout processes and similar cases). Visitors often don’t even view the homepage, because they know that it’s usually not full of particularly useful information. Information design and navigation design (not just how they look, but how they function in helping people find information) become critical in creating a usable, well-designed website. The print design mindset is still in evidence on the majority of corporate and business websites in the "front cover" approach to the homepage.

Project Completed vs. Project Never Completed

Print designers complete a project, then they take it to the printer, and it’s done. Yes, they might make changes and reprint it, but there is a definite point at which they can say, "I’m done with that project!" Web designers rarely get that warm, fuzzy, self-congratulatory moment. Unless we get fired or fire a client, we’re never done with a website. It’s like birthing a baby: you can’t just bring it to life and ignore it. Sooner or later it will spit up or need a diaper change, and it will always be hungry for content. Even if a website includes a content management system so clients can add and update their own content, there are always things that need to be added, changed, or reorganized in ways that are beyond the technical skills of our clients, or beyond the capabilities of the CMS. And that’s a good thing! The worst thing that can happen is that a client thinks of their website as an online brochure, and it becomes a set-it-and-forget-it site.

Outside-In Design for More Usable, User-focused Websites

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: Feb 8, 2009; Category: Design/Development, Marketing, Usability; Tags: Design/Development, Information Architecture, Usability; No Comments

There are few things more difficult than setting aside your own knowledge and assumptions to look at things from someone else’s perspective. (If that were not the case, political "discussion" would be far more productive…but I digress.) It’s critical to the success of a website that it serve the needs of its audiences, but too often website information architecture (IA) is approached from an inside-out perspective (what we want to tell people), rather than from an outside-in perspective (what people want to find on our website).

It’s human nature to assume our own point-of-view is shared by most people, especially if they are smart (like us). But it’s a poor framework from which to design a usable website that engages site visitors. Who among us has not heard a business owner proclaim that he is the best representative of his website’s audience? If he likes it and gets it, he insists, his site visitors will like it and get it. However, people outside a company do not view the company’s information or message in the same way as people inside the company. They don’t know what company insiders know, and often they’re encountering the information for the first time.

Consulting web/IA designers may have an advantage over in-house designers in incorporating the outside-in perspective, because as outsiders, they carry fewer assumptions about a company’s message and information into the design/IA process. However, few designers are completely immune to making assumptions that don’t serve a particular audience’s needs.

So how do you ensure outside-in design and information architecture? Talk to people in the website’s audience: by formal interview, by online discussion, by engaging them in blog posts, by twittering, however you have to do it. Listen carefully. Be open to what they say about your website and messages, especially when it makes you uncomfortable. Compliments are nice to hear, but complaints will help you make your website better, if you take them seriously.

Find enough complaints from people outside the company, and you’ll find the keys to making a more usable, visitor-focused website.