Artemisphere

We’ve just recently launched a very large website redesign for CATA. I was thinking how this site truly showcases the differences between visual eye candy design and useful informative web site design. While CATA’s makeover is still visually appealing the quality of the design comes from a underlying thought process of what information should be displayed and where as well as what users will need to do with it. The information architecture forms this foundation and the design is merely there to support that. In fact the best designs for the web are the ones where the user doesn’t even notice the design, it just falls to the background and the purpose and content rise to the surface. They simply and intuitively know where to go and how to get there because the design guides them and doesn’t distract them from doing what they need to do. While I’ve done many heavily branded and thematic designs as a web designer where the visual treatments are weighed heavier it’s important to not allow the artistic elements to outweigh it’s usability. Your website still has a purpose and relevant information to provide to it’s users. Your web audience is an inpatient group so the quicker you guide them to the info the better. If you put that as your main focus you’ll find a clean effective appealing design will naturally follow. Everything else is just window dressing.

I finally got my phone and DSL service switched over from TDS to AT&T today. Besides all the acronyms to remember, the switch took nearly 2 weeks and was probably one of the worse experiences I’ve had in getting a service up and running. Their customer support phone system passed me from department to department and person to person never actually letting me talk to the final person that could actually get the problems fixed. Automated computer voices asking me the same questions over and over again didn’t help either. By the way someone out their needs to redesign customer support systems. Apple you hearing me?

AT&T has become the giant monster of smaller telephone companies it’s devoured over the past few years promising better service but under delivering. It’s for all intents and purposes a Monopoly. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. You know what causes a company to no longer have great service and great products? It’s when there’s no true competition left and they just don’t care anymore…because well they don’t have to. There’s no passion left and no sense of urgency. It becomes a well feed pet whose every needs are already being met and it gets lazy, bloated, and bogged down in it’s own bureaucracy.

I find the most exciting companies are one’s facing their own tough challenges and outside competition. It’s about the people keeping the business pushing forward, innovating and not resting on the fence. Knowing that you might not be in 1st place right now but that you’re doing a good job for your customers and you know you can do better. This keeps you humble and keeps you motivated to improve. When everyone is contributing and has a passion to see the company succeed they are a part of that success and not just a nameless worker. A successful company is one that still has that hunger to fight the good fight. Sure, not everyone can get the silver race car but it’s even worse to be the thimble and there’s no one else playing.

Clever design to watch your toast get toasted. check out all the other great toaster designs.

In the wake following the release of Photosynth, many bloggers noted its lack of support for a non-Windows OS and self-deprecating humor.

I’m actually quite fond of this alert box for IE6 users:

But what does this imply for web developers, if anything? Is Microsoft setting precedent to stop supporting IE6? We certainly hope so. It’s nothing but a nightmare of legacy support for those of us who want to build web app UIs in 2008. And they’re not the only ones. 37signals is also phasing out IE6 across all their products.

So is it time for us to follow suit?

Internet Explorer 6 is by far the worst browser on the mainstream market today. It’s finally showing serious decline in recent days, but for small and local business, we’ve found the stats to remain steady and strong. The answer to my question is still “not yet” at this point. We’ve certainly made compromises and restrained some UI effects and application features from being available for IE6 users, but we haven’t completely phased it out of our testing environment.

Maybe one day we will, and I’ll actually thank Microsoft for taking one big step in moving us along.

It occured to me the other day that sometimes clients really don’t know what the heck we’re talking about as designers and programmers. You might as well be speaking Klingon. That’s not a slam on the client’s intelligence (or on Klingons.) It’s more of a failure on our part in effective communication. If a doctor starts talking medical terms, I have no clue what he’s talking about either. But a reputable doctor will have a good bedside manner to compliment their medical knowledge. Their ability to relate the information to the patient in a clear and friendly way really helps distinguish them from other professionals in their field. I think designers and programmers can take a lesson from this. Sometimes we get so wrapped up in our little world of technology buzzwords and designer lingo we forget that our clients aren’t apart of that same crazy world. You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a acronym in our business.  Here’s an example of a typical conversation.

“We’ll be taking your XHTML and .ASP files along with your css and image directories and uploading those up to your host domain through a FTP program. It’s behind our a secure firewall so it may take a while. Shouldn’t be a problem though.”

All the client heard was “blah blah blah.  Shouldn’t be a problem though.” 

So let’s say that in some terms they can better relate to.

“We’re about ready to launch yourname.com once we upload the files to your website. We’ll have it live on Wednesday by 5pm so your customers can get  started visiting it then.”

There, done and to the point. The client doesn’t need to hear how you did everything or your fancy technical terms. What they do need to know is how it’s affecting their business in clear concise words and what the next step is in the process. You are also not talking down to them and if they want to know the nitty gritty details, you can help guide them through those as needed. Remember they can teach you just as much about their business as you can teach them about yours. Great business relationships are a team effort so make that client apart of your team. Save the Klingon talk for the next Trek convention. 

OK you do need SEO and usability. But find out why you really need to invest in a good writer.

Chris and I were chatting and he threw me this comment today:

Nobody reads anything from usability experts. Especially programmers. Some day our field will be taken more seriously. For now, it’s an after-thought.

On the contrary, I think usability and beautiful design have gained momentum recently, and web firms are taking these things much more seriously than they were five or six years ago. What we really need to shift our focus to is content. No, I don’t mean Information Architecture. Leave that in the SEO & Usability camp, too. I’m talking about writing. Usability adoption and understanding still has a long way to go, but now we need to go adopt its orphaned cousin, content writing, and bring it along for the ride.

The fact of the matter is: If your content is good enough, people will take the time to learn how to use your shitty site to read more of it.

Example: www.sheldonbrown.com is the most popular web site for bicycle information among bicycle enthusiasts worldwide. Look at the web site. It has terrible design, a poor structure and inconsistent navigation menus. It truly lacks all the essentials to what we in the web industry would judge as esthetically pleasing design and architecture.

The late Sheldon Brown didn’t buy Adwords campaigns. He didn’t have PPC (pay-per-click) accounts. He didn’t know a damn thing about Search Engine Optimization. He never hired a web designer, an SEO consultant or a marketing agency.

Sheldon Brown knew about bikes, which makes his web site the best resource for cyclists at any difficultly level.

Don’t buy into the tricks and promises of SEO work alone. You can fool Google and Yahoo into listing you at the top, but you’ll never fool people. Machines recognize patterns and play along to the rules of an algorithm (which, remember, is written and rewritten daily to emulate human behavior). But people are emotional, irrational and impulsive. People have short attention spans. Humans still need an interesting headline. They don’t care about your keyword density.

If you can’t write something people actually want to read, all your SEO, usability studies, information architecture and beautiful design flies right out the window.

Start with a good headline. What was true in print design on newspapers hundreds of years ago is still true today. You have to grab the reader in the first sentence. Regardless of how well you did on Google, people still have to be intrigued by your title.

Write with conversational tone. Business2Business, Business2Customer. It doesn’t matter. Write with a natural voice in human language that common people understand. Don’t overdo it with technical words and exceptional vocabulary. Send your content around the office. If most people get stuck on the words, make them simpler, smaller and use less of them.

Poke a little fun at yourself. Don’t be afraid to inject some humor and playfulness into your writing. It makes your content easier to digest and can get people feeling good about contacting you for business.

Invest in the community, not just campaigns and charts. Google analytics and PPC charts and graphs can never teach you what your customers can. Start a conversation with them, find out what they think about this or that, find ways for them to get involved and show you what you’ve missed.

Write about things you care about because they matter to you, too. Don’t pick topics that are trendy, cool, or because you can “monetize” them (worst new word in the web industry, by the way). If you stay engaged in the things that are important to you, what you have passion for, you will attract more people like you. You will get more customers who are like you.

Business doesn’t have to be just about money. Of course, revenue and profit are important. But business can revolve around things you genuinely care about, too. Think about how you can have fun and do what you love now, rather than putting it off until retirement. Thanks to the age of the internet, there’s all sorts of ways that you can turn what you love into a profitable business and have some great conversations with people.

There is no easy over-night answer. You can’t flip a switch and magically get countless people visiting your site over and over again. You have to participate, engage and inspire others in your community. You’ll have to make comments on other blogs and forums, appear at public events, speaking engagements and conferences. But this means you’ll attract others who are like you and care about your business, too.

This is in contrast to haplessly attracting mindless internet searchers who will take the first decent result they see. Of course, you want to get them, too. And you will, but this time with much better content that keeps them coming back for more.

Write for humans and hire a good HTML developer who can code for machines.