Safari browser for Windows

One of the problems that any Windows-based web designer faces is how to test any newly created website on an ding (i) the use of cross browser testing websites, for example ; (ii) asking your Apple Mac mates to look at the website; and (iii) ignore the issue if only a small % of your website visitors use Mac/Safari.

You could also take the view that testing in a web standards-based browser like will identify any significant problems...and, as a result, another web standards-based browser like Safari should be fine. I think I have used all these options at various stages!

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authorUrl : http://www.cvwdesign.com/txp/article/224/safari-browser-for-windows
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SEO Centric Web Design

Often, web design theory has got it backwards.

A web site is often conceived as an entity which reflects the company who publishes the web site. A mission statement, given form. The reality is that people don’t care about mission statements, they care about seeing their own reflection. Or “it’s not about you, it’s about me”.

In no environment is this more true than on the web. The web is a two way communication medium, and the control of that communication, unlike, say, a film, rests not with the director, but with the user. The back button is only ever a click away.

For this reason, web design that places too much emphasis on what the publisher wants to say is doomed to irrelevance. The publisher does not have the upper hand when it comes to controlling the flow of web communication, yet a lot of web design theory assumes this as a given, mostly because web design is based on print publishing.

What are the most successful computer applications? Email. Word processing. Spreadsheets, Games. What are the most successful web sites? Amazon, Ebay, Google, MySpace. The history of computing is all about user-centric empowerment.

The way to do web design is to base design around users, specifically their wants and desires. People’s wants and desires should drive the design process, and structures imposed for other reasons will be less successful. This goes beyond usability. Web design should be, fundamentally, about listening to and addressing people’s problems.

This is where SEO-centric web design comes in.

As many SEOs know, people are broadcasting their needs and problems. Every second. They are using keyword queries in search engines to tell the search engine what they need. We can “listen” to these needs by using keyword research tools.

Once we discover the language people are using to describe their needs, we can then build pages, architectures and copy, using their language , and addressing their problems, thereby creating a website that is an accurate reflection of the people who will use the site.

For example, a search engine doesn’t see hierarchy, and most users don’t care about it. Every page is effectively a “home page”. Once people land on a page, they are at the start of the funnel which should quickly and effortlessly lead to desired action, which is the point at which you meet their needs. “Desired action” is often defined in terms of the desires of the publisher, but it’s even more useful to view it in terms of the desires of the visitor.

At this point, some readers will surely be thinking “but people don’t come to my site via search engines”. It doesn’t matter. The site should address people’s problems, and search engines reveal the language people use to do define and frame their problems. Web designers should not ignore this valuable information. Rather, this information should be integrated into the design process.

It is a Google centric web. Google achieved this feat by placing the user first.

SEO should be at the heart of the design process, not something bolted on at the end.

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The CSS working group is irrelevant

Back in March, Google hosted the CSS working group for a three day meeting.

At the time, we were just starting with the HTML working group, and the openness of the WHATWG over the past few years was just starting to be adopted by the HTML working group, after several months of pushing for it in the W3C (mostly in secret, though my own posts on the matter were all public, as were a few others).

One of the things I brought up in the CSS face-to-face meeting was the problem of the CSS working group not being open. Many of the members of the CSS working group have a mentality that view the Web community (such as those who e-mail the www-style mailing list) as a resource, not as potentially equal members of the community. Of the forty or so members of the working group (those subscribed to the secret internal mailing list), only a dozen subscribe to the public list. This actually makes it harder for members of the group to try to be more open — when someone posts a proposal to the public list, there's a good chance that the majority of the members of the working group will miss it. During the meeting, I opined that if the group continued along in this direction, the group ran the risk of becoming irrelevant; two of the other members suggested that the group was already irrelevant. Sadly we were in the minority.

The CSS working group right now is chronically dysfunctional, as most close observers have noticed.

A great example of this is the difference in how the WHATWG got a blog and how the CSS working group set one up. In the WHATWG, the idea was floated for a while, and then one day someone volunteered to run it, and the blog was up and running within hours. Anyone (literally anyone) can post to the WHATWG blog (there's a moderation step that we added to deal with the spammers, but all it takes now is to get onto IRC and ask for the post you wrote to be published). The CSS working group, on the other hand, has been discussing how to set up a blog, and what the first entry should say, and what tool to use, for over two months! Nearly every phone call (the group has weekly teleconferences) for the past nine weeks has had the blog discussed at some point.

The blog was finally made available last week. To post, you have to be a group member. The first post can be summarised as follows: the CSS working group members don't want to bother going out of their way to get feedback on their specs; instead, people should post their comments on CSS to the public CSS mailing list (despite the fact that most CSS working group members aren't subscribed to this list). The blog post then goes on to apologise for the blog's existence, and claims that the blog's aim is to reach the people who won't subscribe to the public mailing list (the working group itself, maybe?). The post doesn't make it clear how the blog is expected to reach this wider audience, since the blog has no comment feature.

Another example of the problems of the CSS group is visible on the W3C's Technical Reports page. The group's primary deliverables are specifications. The last candidate recommendation published by the group was published in 2004. That was the Basic UI module, which was Tantek's baby (he has since left the group). Meanwhile, drafts like the Backgrounds and Borders draft, which has had big parts implemented by Safari for months, and small parts implemented by Mozilla for years, have iterated several times but make no public process (the backgrounds and borders draft was published in 2005, but the internal draft was last modified in February of this year).

Meanwhile, CSS2.1, the working group's most important deliverable, keeps getting tied up, with the group discussing irrelevant details and some members repeatedly reopening old resolved issues. The W3C process doesn't help much here either; the group actually tried taking CSS 2.1 to Candidate Recommendation stage recently, but was blocked by the W3C management over an issue which was already present in CSS2. (In all fairness to Tim, the issue he raised is one which was already raised by several other people, but which the group had dismissed. I actually agree with him that it should be resolved. The group has since resolved to change the spec in a way that continues to leave the issue undefined, but at least it no longer contradicts what Web browsers do.)

The group is also supposed to work on test suites. I had volunteered to work on the CSS 2.1 test suite, but due to lack of time, I bailed on that last year (Google mainly employs me to work on HTML5; any test work that I do is done in my free time, which is mostly spent near aquariums now). Since then basically nothing has happened.

Being public would expose a lot of these problems, forcing the working group to act more responsibly. It would also allow people to contribute — as specification editors, as test suite editors, as reviewers, as community leaders, and in other roles.

But to be honest, the problems go even further than what I've described above.

The CSS specs show their age; they come from a time where specifications were much vaguer than those of the modern day. Someone really needs to do to CSS what the WHATWG has been doing to HTML, defining everything in detail, explicitly, with strict and clear normative conformance criteria, taking implementations into account, defining things like quirks mode. (The WHATWG community refers to such a hypothetical project as "CSS 5", as a reference to the way the current WHATWG specs define HTML5, XHTML5, and DOM5 HTML.)

The CSS working group also doesn't really have the nimbleness needed to respond to threats to the Web platform like Silverlight. We need things like flowing-to-shapes, automatic declarative transition animations, gradients, filters, styling of form controls, and so on. (The WHATWG is already handling some related, non-presentational, things, like client-side SQL databases, video, and rich controls.) We need these things this year, in enough detail that they can be implemented. An open group can iterate much faster than a closed group. With an open group we can get test implementations, feedback, tests, and discussion straight away, instead of waiting months and then pulling back the curtain and presenting a fait accompli, at which points comments are perceived more as a pain than a help.

One way to address this would be for the WHATWG to start a "subproject" to address CSS, while we wait for the W3C CSS group to learn from the W3C HTML group and become open. The biggest problem would be finding editors who would be willing and capable of doing the incredible work of rewriting CSS from scratch.

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Interesting: Apple’s Website Redesign

I actually found the various design upgrades to Apple’s website as interesting as the WWDC Keynote. Someone’s been hard at work over there.

One of the slickest items is how the search bar in the upper right corner behaves much like OS X’s Spotlight. It’s also live updating, so as you type strings in the field, the results change in a drop down, complete with thumbnail images.

Several pages have a static image, horizontal scroll treatment, kind of like Cover Flow but without all the crazy animations. It does present the subjects covered in the page in a nice visual manner. Note the slight transparent reflection, as if the products were photographed on a glass table.

The sidebars are made up of collapsing areas to minimize the amount of information on the page. A click has the titles slide away to reveal the contents. Nice idea, and the animation adds a touch of class.

Clicking on thumbnails brings up a larger image, not unlike the JavaScript “Lightbox” plugin used on many sites. But what’s really slick is the large image size takes your browser window size is taken into account. There’s also a diffuse shadow around the large image, really making it seem like it’s hovering over the page.

All in all, cool stuff, and possibly an even better redesign than the other Web 2.0 ones I’ve seen recently. I might actually say Safari wasn’t the only thing Apple updated to 3.0.

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authorUrl : http://www.webomatica.com/wordpress/2007/06/12/interesting-apples-website-redesign/
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SEO - Should search engines matter in your campaign?

Today, I had a small epiphany related to SEO/SEM/Internet Marketing. Whatever you call ithigh as possible in the SERPs. The theory is a little offbeat but please bear with me. I’m sure many SEO purists will flame this, but hey, it’s only a theory. (I’ll call it SEO from here-on in), I mean in terms of getting as

The Theory

OK, here goes. When going about your next SEO campaign do something radical. Imagine, if you will, that Search Engines don’t exist. Just think of your Users’ experiences. Bizarre and suicidal are words which may be in your mind at this moment. Take the following statements into account, though.

The Search Engine’s primary function is to serve useful and relevant results to the user. The results that deliver satisfaction.

The website in question has a similar primary function: To give the User the information they are seeking. To satisfy the user.

These two statements are very similar, showing that the Search Engine and the User have similar goals. In essence, the Search engine is trying to deliver usable websites to the User. Anything else is simply wasted space. So wouldn’t it be interesting if Search Engines jiggled their algorithm and highly weighted usability/satisfaction.

Doesn’t SEO Cloud This?

So, back to SEO. With a highly demanding SEO campaign it is very easy to slip into the mentality of tailoring the website for Search Engines. Biasing the website a lot towards Search Engines will essentially mean that you are driving a wedge between the two statements above. All the hard work you think you are doing could be putting a strain on the User’s satisfaction. A loss of site satisfaction and who knows, a loss in SERPs placements.

But Search Engines don’t really detect usability at the moment

OK, this is up for debate. But I believe that Search Engines place most of their efforts into ranking websites based upon statistics - essentially their algorithm. I cannot see a way (besides mass user testing and feedback - costly) that the Search Engine giants can measure Usability and Satisfaction at this time. (Any ideas on this are more than welcome.)

So you could say that at this time, the theory doesn’t lend any solutions to the SEO company.

So how could we use this theory today then?

Using similar principles to the above and a fresh mentality, one could use the following questions to improve SEO and usability at the same time.

Is the new feature/code/idea beneficial for the user?

Will it help my SEO campaign?

If the answer to (1) is No, then go onto something else. If it’s Yes for (1) and (2), get it going!

Think of the effects

OK, not all SEO companies think solely about a website in terms of SEO. It would be farcical to claim this. The good companies focus on SEO but take into account the fact that websites cannot be over-optimised and the experience cannot be made poorer to accommodate SEO.

But imagine if all websites were made using the theory of usable sites encourage SEO instead of Let’s SEO it with regards to nothing else. Websites, and the Internet as a whole, would fast become a more enjoyable, satisfying experience regardless of whether it helped in the SERPs. Only good can come out of it.

And over to you

I’d really love to hear your thoughts on the above. Do you agree with the ideas put forward? Is this merely a hypothetical world?

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authorUrl : http://fadtastic.net/?p=391&akst_action=share-this
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Top-down web product design

One thing I’ve explored often is how many web-based applications fail because of a lack of proper planning. One thing that I haven’t stressed enough though, is that proper planning doesn’t always mean spending months on end thinking about every single detail, but actually thinking about things in the right order.

Traditional feature-centric design

Usually developers start planning applications by thinking of everything they want it to do - and let’s face it, it’s pretty easy to get excited: since you’re getting some functionality in, you might as well do all the other hundred cool things too, right? Well, wrong.

Getting excited is great, but it may just as well hinder the application development process. Focus slips, pretty soon you’re trying to solve all the world’s problems. You may have heard of scope creep - this is just the same, but it’s your fault, and is definitely avoidable.

Top-down product design

The solution is actually quite easy although it may seem odd if you haven’t done it before: design interface first, then underlying code. Result: no functional slippery slope - you know exactly what you need to build to accommodate the UI functionality. As a side benefit, you get to have something you can experiment with as a prototype sooner, which means you can get more input sooner and iterate over it.

Give it a try on your next project - your developers will love knowing exactly what they need to build, and your designers will love not having to design that new page for the brand new functionality that just crossed your mind.

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authorUrl : http://blog.webreakstuff.com/2007/06/top-down-web-apps/
To read more articles on: developers, functional, experiment, development, Traditional feature

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Web Design Workflow and Process Comparison

This blog is intended as a resource for professionals that are responsible for the long-term planning of a website (How to find out if you a at your company). While not a Web Design blog, web strategists need to make decisions, dictate budget, or approve web design projects. A client recently asked me for some resources for Web redesign for their website, well actually, they wanted to know of some firms that do this, I have started a voluntary list, but realize there’s quite a few steps that occur before and after dealing with a web design services company.

A Comparison of various Web Design Processes:
It’s interesting to note the differences in Web Design process (which is arguably different from from a variety of different industries and focuses.

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authorUrl : http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2007/03/19/web-design-and-worflow-process-comparison/
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Apple and Intuitive Design

I noticed the other day that Apple has released an for thewhich regulates the sleep light so that it does not shine as brightly at night as it does during the day. Now, I don’t have an iMac, but I do have a PowerBook. However, I recently moved my desk into my room, and was shocked to discover that when closed, the sleep light on my machine is bright enough to make it hard to fall asleep. After a bit of experimentation, I realized that the sleep light shines about 3 times more brightly when the is closed than when it is put to sleep with the screen open. This is the kind of intuitive design that Apple is known for, and a huge reason why I am so devoted to them as a brand. What are some of your favorite little things in Apple products?

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authorUrl : http://theappleblog.com/2005/07/25/apple-and-intuitive-design/
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6 Tools for Web Design

Today I came across an article with a few ‘tools’ for web design and frankly, I thought it pretty lame and unexciting. There were 2 things on there that I felt were actually good information, Color Schemer and Typetester. The other, information was either lame (a “handy dandy” notebook) or untrue (”Mountain Dew“).

So, here are 6 tools that I find to actually be useful. A few of these apply to web design as a whole, while others are more mac related.

w3Schools.com - I’m still shocked on a daily basis by the number of people that don’t know what the w3 is or have ever heard of w3schools.com. The w3 is basically the governing body of web standards. They are the people that define what is XHTML and CSS. Now, what is w3Schools? It’s free, complete documentation for all things web. If you don’t know your

subversion - Subversion is amazing, to say the least. Once you go “version control system” you can’t go back. Basically, subversion is a way to keep all of your sites (or your blog theme, etc) backed up and versioned. You install subversion server on your computer or a remote server, and then check in your site to the server. Then you can checkout your site to your webserver and always have an updatedable, but also revertable site. If you break your design, roll it back to the last time you checked it in. Want to move webhosts? It’s as easy as 1 command. And want to update your site to that new design you’ve been working on, “svn up” and your good-to-go. For a great tutorial on installing subversion, check out this great tutorial from Hivelogic.

Textmate - Put down Dreamweaver and step away from the handholding. Seriously people, it’s really not that hard, and you’ll make so much nicer sites because of it. Textmate is a god send for web site designers. Yes, you’ll have to code by hand, but you can also post to your blog, get live updating previews of your code, and use the aforementioned subvesrion, straight from inside Textmate. And, with code competion and bundles, a well experienced ‘mater can type 2 or 3 characters and complete entire lines of code.

Firefox - Ok, this one seems like low-hanging fruit, but if you add Firebug, Web Developer, and Colorzilla to Firefox 2, you have one sweet testing/debuging environment. Firebug is like sending Firefox to medical school, seriously slice and dice capabilities. Web Developer extesion is like buying one of those nice big red Snap On tool chests full of tools, and shoe horning it into your browser and Colorzilla is just that, a color picker as powerful as Godzilla. I can’t imagine doing webdesign with out these great little pieces of kit.

Safari from O’Reilly Publishing - Safari from O’Reilly is amazing, that’s about all I can say. If you can’t tell, I’m big on documentation, and Safari is like having a bookstore in your computer. You can search through hundreads of REALLY REALLY great books (sorry about the caps, Safari gets me hot). My favorites on there are Bulletproof Web Design, The Zen of CSS, and Eric Meyer on CSS.

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authorUrl : http://theappleblog.com/2007/02/27/6-tools-for-web-design/
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The Professional's Guide to Link Building

40 pages, text and images, available in MS Word, OpenOffice & HTML format. This complete guide to link building includes the basics of evaluating link quality and value along with over 50 unique strategies for link development. These are the same strategies SEOmoz employs with our clients to attract high quality links to boost rankings at the search engines and relevant, direct traffic.

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authorUrl : http://www.seomoz.org/articles
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Social Media Marketing Tactics

Jane Copland walks through 30 major social media websites and how marketers can leverage these for links, branding and control of search results. Naturally, she supplies her sharp Kiwi wit and deft sarcasm to help make the journey of reading the piece even more enjoyable.

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authorUrl :http://www.seomoz.org/articles
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8 Web Design Tactics to Help You When You're Stuck

Web design can be incredibly frustrating. You'd think that with the infinite possibilities of what-goes-where it'd be pretty easy to land a design that works, yet somehow we've all been stuck before: working hour after hour on a design that refuses to look right. Throwing away pixels like they're going out of style.

These 8 tactics are what I use to get out of that sticky spot.

Design from the inside out
This is some of the best advice anyone ever gave me about web design. A lot of designers start off a design by focusing on the header. Often times what's inside the page is what makes it look good; the header is supplementary. Try leaving the header alone for awhile and working on some elements in the body, you'll be surprised at how much easier it is to design a page once you've got a solid body going. The next time you're designing a header with no body imagine yourself adjusting a tie in front of the mirror, but being completely nude. (yikes)

Sketch something
My whiteboard is my salvation. Pencil and paper works too. I read an article years ago by a designer who would draw dozens of little 2x3" mockups in his spiral notebook before even opening up a graphic design program. It helped him identify where elements were going to be placed and what options looked best . The best part of creating mockups this way is the speed at which you can burn through possible layout ideas. Sketch something, scribble it out. Sketch something else, scribble it out. Do this ten times and you've probably got a fairly decent idea of how to the page should come together. I've used a few wireframe applications like but I've still found myself to be my most efficient while bathed in the saucy aroma of whiteboard markers.

Seek inspiration offline
If you've paid attention to anything design related in the past two years then you've no doubt seen a few of the countless CSS galleries and design showcase websites that popped up. These are excellent sources of inspiration, but sometimes a bit of offline media can be just what you need to spur some fresh ideas. Open up a newspaper or magazine, go to the grocery store and look at the packaging, watch a television ad. Pay attention to things that are applicable to your design such as typography, color, and element placement. Ask yourself questions like "What is it I like about this magazine ad?" and "What is about this packaging that just works?" There's a lot you can learn from observing traditional media. A few years ago a co-worker of mine lent me a book full of Russian posters and print ads from the 1920's. The lessons learned from looking at some of the material were invaluable - I was particularly impressed by how they were able to cram a ton of information into a tiny area but kept it from appearing too "busy."

Learn to let it go
Ever make a button that looks ridiculously awesome but just doesn't belong in your design? You put so much effort into your ridiculously awesome button, you'll go to great lengths to make it work. You'll bend the laws of space and time to make that goddamn button look right in your page.

Learn to let it go. Save the button and file it away. Although you've lost this battle, you'll soon have an arsenal of ridiculously awesome buttons you can use in designs later on.

Step away from the computer
We've all heard this before: If you're having a difficult time with something, leave it alone for awhile and come back later. It'll probably be easier after you've had a bit of a break and your mind has settled. Regarding web design, I've noticed this always plays out in a certain way: If I'm hating a design I'm working on and I shelve it for a few days, a lot of the time my reaction upon returning will be "Holy crap that's fantastic!" On the flip-side, I'll often toil away long into the night working on what looks like the best design I've ever created. The next morning I'll look at it again and cringe at the horrible abomination I've created. The moral here is to give your design some space.

Be absorbent

No art is born in a vacuum. Learn to effectively pinpoint what it is you love about other designer's work and incorporate it into your own. Don't steal designs, but don't deprive yourself of external stimuli either. Become better at identifying why you love the way something looks. When I come across a design that blows my mind, I try to pick it apart what aesthetically makes it tick.
is a good example. Sure, it looks wonderful, but why? Personally, I love the way the designer has taken a very modern set of shapes and applied them against a vintage medium: Cartoonish bubbles and clouds that appear to be cut out of distressed paper. When looking at this design I ask myself: What could I do with textures like that? What is it about those shapes and icons that look so remarkable?

Don't be a one-hit-wonder
Try to avoid using the same techniques over and over again, even if you've done really well with them in the past. Gradient rectangles are my crutch - I have a terrible habit of using them whenever I feel like a design isn't working. "This design sucks...I'll add a rectangle with a gradient fill!" The result is usually something that I'm unhappy with because it looks the same as all my previous work. Try imposing yourself with silly rules, such as "No drop shadows today" or "2D elements ONLY." Locking yourself out from certain design habits forces you to learn new ones. My happiness as a designer coincides with my ability to produce something that looks great but is different from anything I've done before.

Seek input from others
This is a tricky one. There are so many ways to especially when the wrong kinds of people are involved. Be careful who you ask and find people who can provide constructive criticism. I've seen many great designs die at the hands of aesthetically-challenged secretaries who have printed a few corporate bake-sale flyers in the past and consider themselves to EXPERTS at all things design. If anyone ever tells you that your design doesn't "feel right," or that they "just don't like it," you might want to look elsewhere for input. Find someone who can tell you specifically what's wrong and how it could be improved. Grow some thick skin, too. Don't assume every criticism is an attack on your work of art. Roll with the punches.

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authorUrl : http://www.seomoz.org/blog/web-design-tactics
To read more articles on: great design, traditional media, designing, CSS galleries, applications
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Your Future is in the Hands of Your Website Provider

How many car dealers really think ahead when it comes to internet marketing? My experience tells me that most dealers are right here, right now personalities. While that may be OK for right here, right now, it's inevitably going to hurt them down the road.

I spent the past weekend attending two birthday parties for family members. Saturday was a surprise 60th birthday celebration for my aunt, and Sunday was a party for her granddaughter's 1st birthday. Looking at a lot of old photos put together in a slideshow presentation which eventually moved toward recent photos, it reminded me how much things have changed in the last 60 years....the last 30 years....even the last 3 years. I found myself imagining what sort of party the one year old will have in 59 years. Some sort of virtual reality display based on home videos where guests are able to "be there" for the 1st birthday? Brain implants so they can experience being there? The way technology changes, it's probably well beyond what anyone can even imagine at this point, but you get the idea that it's going to be different than this past weekend.

As a website company that specializes in independent car dealerships, our typical clients don't need a lot of the bells and whistles that some of our competitors offer....yet. Our business model dictates that we provide only those tools that are needed by our core client base. Someone who is relatively new to internet marketing and/or technology in general does not want to be overwhelmed with products they don't use or understand. As a dealership grows and puts more emphasis into an internet department I believe the average dealer will want these extras. The way I see it, there are thousands of dealers across the country. Some are ahead of the curve and some are behind the curve. Our company's role is to get the "behind the curve" dealers up to speed. At the same time we do this, the curve continues to move, and we as a company need to evolve and adapt.

A few years ago videos on dealership websites were rare. This is a perfect example of a technology trend that's growing and becoming closer to par for the course. While our early dealers did not even consider such things for their sites, we're starting to get more dealers who are. As a reputable web design company it's our obligation to advance the technology with the times. Complacency may not kill a company, but it shortchanges that company's clients.

Whether you have an existing website provider or you are searching for one for the first time, it's important to consider how progressive the leaders of that company think. One company may fit your needs today, but if they maintain the status quo, chances are they won't meet your needs for very long. Choose a web design company wisely, and although I know most car dealers don't like to think about the future, doing so when it comes to the technology side of your business is one of the best moves you can make.

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authorUrl : http://onlineautodealer.blogspot.com/2007/06/your-future-is-in-hands-of-your-website.html
To read more articles on: web design, web design company, progressive, searching, internet department, internet marketing

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Ugliness, Social Design, and the MySpace Lesson

I’ve been attempting the impossible: trying to get a clear picture of the whole MySpace/Ugly issue.

But before I continue, if you haven’t seen Ze Frank’s Piece on Ugly, go watch that. In it, he says:
“Ugly when compared to pre-existing notions of taste is a bummer. But ugly as a representation of mass experimentation and learning is pretty damn cool. Regardless of what you might think, the actions you take to make your MySpace page ugly are pretty sophisticated. Over time, as consumer-created media engulfs the other kind, it’s possible that completely new norms develop around the notions of talent and artistic ability.”

In addition to Ze’s point of view there are several other viewpoints floating around. Here’s a quick summary:

MySpace succeeds despite its design

MySpace is poorly designed and succeeds despite that. It got into the social networking space early (some say first - which is entirely untrue - Friendster and others were there years before) and captured the “market” before anybody else. As a result, its design doesn’t matter, because its success depends on something else.

MySpace users just have bad taste
This assumes we can objectively judge design to some extent: that MySpace really is ugly. (I assume this in The MySpace Problem) This argument goes further, however, and suggests that those who use it must have bad taste. Do MySpace users have bad taste?

The success of design depends on whether or not it is used, and MySpace is super-used so it must be well-designed
This is the argument I want to make. It’s a difficult argument to make, however, as the visceral reaction to the ugliness of MySpace is just so strong. We so easily equate ugliness with bad design that we cannot separate usage from our own opinion, even if we aren’t the ones using it! However, if we accept that good design as that which is used, then we have to accept that MySpace is well-designed.

Many have asked: Could MySpace look better? I think that’s the wrong question. The right question is: Why does it work?

Do you think Steve Jobs says at the end of the day: “Well, our stuff is well-designed…who cares how many people use it?” Probably not. While he might not need 80% marketshare to sleep tight, he certainly needs Mac users to continue to buy Macs…there is a threshold of use that Apple needs to stay solvent. It may be only 5%, but in terms of the entire population who buys computers, 5% is a few billion dollars.

Design is All About Use

Design all about use. Most web sites exist to be used (and many to make money) and if yours doesn’t have people using it then it’s not designed well. This is not just a usability/geek way of viewing design. Many successful designers feel this way, including famous ones.

You can’t predict what people will like. I never, never, never would have been able to design MySpace, because I wasn’t in the position that Tom & Co. was in to react every day to their audience, who demonstrate over and over that they want their web pages to look like their bedrooms.

It may be that this is only a phenomenon in social networking sites. That’s OK, but we certainly can’t take the lessons we’ve learned creating other types of sites and apply them there without serious consideration.

Visual vs. Social Design

One distinction we can make is between the visual and social design of MySpace. The visual design, though it communicates what it needs to (”this is your social life”), is objectively ugly as it doesn’t follow nearly any established visual design principles like balance, symmetry, and harmony. That’s OK, as far as it goes. But the design of the social element of the site, the community aspects like the appearance of Tom as a friend in every profile, is amazing. Little touches like that make people feel right at home, as does the site’s ability to react to its audience quickly. This is great social web design. Bad visual design. Good social design.

There’s a new term: social web design. I’m using it nowadays to refer to the social aspects of design: community, persuasion, motivation, social interaction, influence, authority, etc. These things aren’t always apparent in the interface, but are just as real as a submit button. If your friend uses MySpace and uses the email widget to ask you to join, that’s a win for the design…social design.

Social aspects affect people as much, maybe more, as the interface itself. (update: Brian Fling over at Blue Flavor is having similar thoughts)

Reframing the Debate

MySpace is the ultimate site when it comes to reframing the debate in terms of user experience, usability, and most importantly what matters to users. In the world of user experience its all about figuring out what matters to users, and the MySpace example (and most of the teenage world) is a true enigma for us all. That’s why MySpace is so damn interesting…because we don’t understand it! And that’s why it’s such a good example of understanding users, because most people who do that for a living (usability folks, designers, interface hacks) have few preconceptions about the service (or negative ones) because they don’t use it, don’t understand why people do use it, and don’t want to use it. In most other applications designers have preconceived notions because they’re familiar with the domain in some way. Not so on MySpace.

However, if you can accept that MySpace is so successful because of something they have done in their design (as opposed to chance), you have to accept that they’ve done an excellent job…so far.

The MySpace Lesson

Will MySpace continue to rock? Probably not, as teenagers are as fickle as New Englandthat’s the point. They have to react, to evolve, with their audience, and the outcome probably won’t look like a “designer” would have planned. That’s the MySpace Lesson. weather. What will MySpace have to do to stay successful? I don’t know, you don’t know, and

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Can Design Change the World?

That’s the question being asked (and answered) at DesignCanChange.org, a pro-bono site built by smashLAB, a Vancouver-based design firm. (viagong szeto)

There’s a lot to like at this site. Not only do they provide excellent visuals that explain the concepts of climate change, but they also candidly address the impact that design has on the world. They also gives tips on how to take action.

Beautiful, inspired work.

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Five Principles to Design By

Technology Serves Humans.

Too often people blame themselves for the shortcomings of technology. When their computer crashes, they say “I must have done something dumb”. If a web site is poorly designed, they say “I must be stupid. I can’t find it”. They might even turn to a book for Dummies to get it right.

This is horrible! People should never feel like a failure when using technology. Like the customer, the user is always right. If software crashes, it is the software designer’s fault. If someone can’t find something on a web site, it is the web designer’s fault. This doesn’t mean that the designer has to hang their head in shame…they should see this as a learning opportunity! The big difference between good and bad designers is how they handle people struggling with their design.

Technology serves humans. Humans do not serve technology.

Design is not Art.

Art is about personal expression. It is about the life, the emotions, the thoughts and ideas of the artist. It matters very little what observers do, their activity is not required, only their appreciation. The practice of Art doesn’t require them. It is a necessary activity for the artist, and the artist alone.

Design, on the other hand, is about use. The designer needs someone to use (not only appreciate) what they create. Design doesn’t serve its purpose without people to use it. Design helps solve human problems. The highest accolade we can bestow on a design is not that it is beautiful, as we do in Art, but that it is well-used.

Unlike Art, Design is always contextual. It matters when a design was created because of the context of its use: what problem is it supposed to solve? And for whom? At what point in time? This is why design is so related to technology, because technology changes so quickly, so must our designs. A design that worked ten years ago might not even be worth considering today. History is littered with wonderful designs that are no longer necessary.

Great Art, on the other hand, is always in style. We appreciate Michelangelo’s David even though we could recreate a million of them because it was the toil and expression of a single man. That will never fade. Great Design is dependent upon the age in which it is made and the problem which it is meant to solve. But not Art. Art is timeless.

The litmus test. When people enjoy Art, they say “I like that”. When people enjoy Design, they say “That works well”. This is not by accident. Good Design is something that works well.

The Experience Belongs to the User.

Designers do not create experiences, they create artifacts to experience. This subtle distinction makes all the difference, as it places the designer at the service of the user, and not the other way around. This doesn’t rule out innovation, it doesn’t prevent a designer to leap beyond what is accepted as state-of-the-art. It just means that the experience of a design doesn’t happen simply because the designer says it does, it happens when a user actually reports it.

The ultimate experience is something that happens in the user, and it is theirs. They own it.

Great Design is Invisible.

An interesting property of great design is that it is taken for granted. It works so well that we forget that creative effort was involved to bring it about. Sometimes, like with the lowly spoon, the object is so simplistic that it seems obvious, and we disregard that at one point in history it wasn’t. Other times, like with the automobile, the object is so sophisticated yet easy-to-use that we’re blinded to the fact that millions and millions of human-hours went into getting it to this point. That’s a shame…every great design has a rich history. And every design has behind it a designer or designers who tried to make the world a better place by solving some problem or another.

Bad design is obvious because it hurts to use. It is awkward, difficult, and complex. In a great irony of the world, bad design is much easier to see than good design. It raps us on the head like a bully. Because of its success, great design is often invisible.

Simplicity is the Ultimate Sophistication.

As Saint Exupery said, “In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when
there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away.” Simplicity is treading a line: knowing what to keep and what to throw away…it comes across as magic when it works, because none of the complexity is transferred to users…only simplicity. That is the highest achievement for a designer.

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5 Newsletter Writing Tips

Are you considering adding a newsletter to your website but need some newsletter writing tips to get you started?

Do you have concerns like: How much of my time is this going to take up? How long should each email be and how many emails should I send out in total? What if I no longer have anything relevant to say? Can I keep up the quality of my newsletter over a certain length of time?

The first thing that you must remember is to always offer some interesting and useful information. You will no longer have any subscribers if you do not. Next, you will want your newsletter to remain fairly short. These days, people are inundated with emails, so they will appreciate it if you send them something that they can quickly scan and then put to good use.

Put some thought into the best possible format for your emails. You will want a model that can be easily reproduced week after week. To make your job simplier, you can choose any one of the following newsletter writing tips as your standard format or you can combine them, whichever. The final choice is yours.

1. Tip of the Week

Come up with at least 24 tips on your main topic. You could brainstorm a specific topic and get enough content for at least 6 months of weekly newsletters. When you focus on your area of expertise this should not be a problem. You will find it best to do this by (a) explaining the problem and then (b) offering a tip that will solve the problem. The length of each email should be from 150-500 words.

2. Top Ten

This format is easy to create and it works. For example, if you are an expert in health and fitness you could give advice on the “Top Ten Health and Fitness Tips”,”Top Ten Tummy Flattening Techniques”, “Top Ten Weight Loss Tricks for 2007″. Be sure not to go over board with the word length, just a few sentences for each tip will be fine, not half the page.

3. Three Ways to…

Finding ten ways to do things can sometimes be a little challenging. A quick newsletter tip is to provide only three tips instead; it is much simpler and can be alternated with the “Top Ten” format.

4. Before and After

Just like the “Tip of the Week” format, this tip introduces a problem and then immediately provides a solution. The “before and after” format does however work better with case studies as this is one way of interacting directly with your clients.You can ask them to send in details of something in their possession that requires a makeover; such as a website page, an article, their wardrobe etc, and then you can present them with your solutions.

Or you can ask for “before and after” examples from your readers who have been able to do this themselves, and with their permission show them to your other subscribers. (If you are using text only format for your newsletter, then you can include a link to your website page which has the photos on it). This especially works well if your newsletter is related to health and fitness - the photos will motivate your readers when they see the changes of others through diet and exercise, even weight training.

5. Checklists

Are you trying to learn something new? There is nothing quite like the checklist format to make sure that you do not leave out any steps along the way. Checklists can really save loads of time and your readers will appreciate getting one. All you will need to do is write a short introductory paragraph, make your list and then close with some final tips. You can base the whole of your newsletter on the checklist format, or you can just present one on occasion as a change from the regular newsletter format.

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Beyond the SEM Bells and Whistles

There’s a lot more to search engine marketing than examining the pros and cons of all the hot new Google AdWords services.

True, that’s often the most fun and interesting part, which explains why that’s what you read about if you follow online marketing news and blogs. But just as every trial lawyer has a support team of associates and paralegals burning the midnight oil, every successful SEM campaign must a team of experienced production specialists and coordinators that make it happen.

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Is Google PageRank Still A Valid Marketing Tool?

The Google PageRank Toolbar in SEO circles is a hotly debated item, as are most issues dealing with Google. Some say it’s useless, others say it gives you a general overview of your site’s standing in Google. Regardless of who is right, this Toolbar shouldn’t be ignored nor worshipped, just closely watched.

The Google PR Toolbar is a simple tool you can download and place on your browser. When you surf the web, this toolbar will give you Google’s PR or Page Rank for that particular site or page. Google ranks all web pages from a scale of 0 to 10. This Toolbar is more like the Richter scale than an ordinary scale. There’s a big difference in the rankings as you go up and they are not proportional.

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Using Social Media Marketing To Promote Your Specialist Information Website

Before I get started, it is worth defining social media. It has become a widely used and abused term that means different things to different people.
My definition of social media is:

‘online technologies and practices that people use to share their opinions, insights and experiences with each other. Information can be shared as text, images, audio or video via blogs, message boards, wikis, RSS, podcasts and social networking sites’.

At the heart of social media is the ability of individuals to interact with other people so that they feel involved and part of a community. A big part of this phenomenon is the activity of finding, sharing and recommending products, services, events and experiences to like-minded people. This is where social media crosses over with marketing.

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Quick Link - Create Your Own Social Network with Ning

From time to time I will be posting quick links to sites that I think iwebis readers could benefit from. I will not be doing any kind of review with these ‘quick link’ posts. However, these quick link posts will probably be the topic of reviews in future articles.

Quick Link for today is Ning.com. Ning offers anyone the opportunity to create their own social network and/or join any of the many networks they have listed. It’s free to join and create your own social network.

I was first introduced to this site by A Brewster Smythe. She has created a network for Blog Writers and Artists.

Ning is an interesting website that I am likely to get involved with. If you haven’t noticed already, I like social networking ;).

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Search Engine Optimization

The Importance of Anchoring Incoming and Outgoing Links

Don’t forget to subscribe to my RSS feed. You can also Subscribe to iwebis by Email Thanks for visiting!I always knew that anchoring text links were important but not until I read a recent post by Jennifer Slegg, a Search Engine Optimization consultant, did I understand why it was so important. Jennifer’s post […]

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urrently browsing: Web 2.0

Don’t forget to subscribe to my RSS feed. You can also Subscribe to iwebis by Email Thanks for visiting!
If you haven’t already noticed Web 2.0 has created a new look for the internet. Much of the website design has taken the direction of a 3-D shinny look. Not sure if this look is just […]

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Defining Social Media

I read a very interesting article today regarding the definition of social media. I suppose I should have been clear of the definition before I dedicated this blog to follow it’s changes but who is ever really clear about the definitions related to much of the internet (web 2.0 anyone?). The article I read on the MediaPost Publications’ Online Spin, authored by Joe Marchese gave social media a deffinition that was easy to understand but surprising.

According to his article Wikipedia defines social media as such: describes the online technologies and practices that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, perspectives and media itself.

Joe Marchese adds to this definition by including non-internet related media such as ‘America’s Funniest Home Videos’. From what I understand of his definition, social media has more to do with the ’social’ part of the phrase than the ‘media’ part. He seems to suggest that simply the ’sharing’ of content, whether it be social networking (MySpace), reference (Wikipedia), news sharing (Digg) or video sharing (YouTube).

ANY TYPE OF MEDIA CAN BE SOCIAL MEDIA — and eventually all media will be social media in the most literal definition. This will have serious implications for media companies and advertisers alike, so it is important that we are not dismissing social media as the user-generated portion of the Internet.

Now I find it interesting that a group of people sitting around a table were able to come up with a definition of social media without asking the rest of us what we thought of it.

..everyone seems to have a very different opinion on what social media means. Once everyone had a dialogue on an agreed definition of the term..

The Internet seems to be good at having someone create a word/term/phrase and then the rest of the world try and define it because somehow the definition go lost ??. Or I suppose it could be that the word evolves with the changes so we are constantly having to redefine it. Whether you agree with the definition or not this is one groups take on it. You can find the full article here.

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Five, plus One, Steps to Successful Website Development

To successfully create a website that fulfills your goals, a thorough web design and development process is required. Each web design company may have their own preferences to steps in the process, while some on the other hand may not have any. Just keep in mind that the more the web company knows about your business the better position they are in to make suggestions.

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