WEB DESIGN IS ALIVE AND WELL
One sure way to kill a long reputable industry and more importantly a livelihood is to make ridiculous statements towards the irrelevance of web design.
I can tell you one thing for sure, that it has become a fiercely competitive
industry divided into several decision-making factors, such as online design services versus traditional design, wordpress versus html, choosing which social media platforms best suit your needs, and so on.
No doubt, there is an awful lot more to consider today in deciding to create or improve a website, but one important factor that should not be overlooked is marketing strategy, something that is truly unique to every single business.
For now, I just want to focus this article on the relevance of web design and changing attitudes surrounding this whole paradigm.
WHY CAN'T WE JUST ALL GET ALONG?
We can get along just fine, so long as we just take the time to understand the challenges that lie ahead. Design is now replaced by experience and so, content plays a much greater role in captivating your audience. In order to understand exactly what is meant by this we need to divide and conquer, that is, take a closer look at the pros and cons of the web design industry as a whole. To be fair, I want to discuss some of the symptoms facing today's designers and and how better we can all coexist if we learn to accept and embrace the ever increasing tools and technologies available today.
Let's begin this discussion on a positive note.
ON THE BRIGHTER SIDE OF WEB DESIGN:
Keep in mind that when discussing all arguments for or against web design that clearly they often lack objectivity and balance, forcing our preference of one side of the argument over another.
No doubt a profound change has occurred in the way in which we design and build websites but,
"what is needed is a middle ground in which we can evolve together as opposed to creating a division and uncertainty."
Web technologies are constantly evolving - as I'm sure many of you would agree. With so many tools, libraries, methodologies, plug-ins, and techniques we learn to recognize that they're all very different and sometimes even contradictory. All created with good intentions and often serving their purpose quite well in specific situations - we can fix them, patch them, and provide solutions given the nature of open source.
This, to me, seems a more collaborative approach, and defintely more effective for the industry as a whole.
No one truly knows the uncertain direction of web design, but if we embrace this unpredictability and adopt a strategy to create more cohesive and consistent design systems these complexities will at least be more common and as such wider known. Problem solving is nothing new, in fact we do it every day making hundreds of decisions along the way. The dichotomy only exists in our subjective preferences, and seldom our objective reasoning.
Designers can still foster an open mind and creativity - given the web's diversity and versatility if we're pragmatic. Yes, we need to stop thinking in absolutes, pros for one method and cons for another. No one method is right or wrong just as the web isn't black or white. We just need to work a little closer with our clients to find reasonable compromises in meeting their demands and their constraints. The tools we have at hand are neither good nor bad, they need to fit a context within which to engage users and provide necessary enhancement for better responsiveness when designing.
A shift from generic solutions like themes and using the same templates over and over again is a trend we need to steer clear of. What is needed is more storytelling, more personality, and more character. Users tend to crave good stories, good visuals, and more interesting layouts to make them more distinctive and stand out from the rest of the crowd. Keeping user experience in mind we just need to be a lot more experimental and creative.
We need to try harder to rid the web of bad design experiences - leaving much work still to be done.Proclaiming to and believing our craft is dead is counter-productive, all that needs to be done is show what we're really capable of. To do this, our job, we just need to be more adaptable, more creative and less generic in order to progress and enhance user experiences.
Don't let innovation and experimentation be obstacles to providing what we've been doing over the past years. Just remember your client approached you for all the right reasons and not the wrong ones - but keep in mind that not all designers are equal.
Not sure about you, but "all this just makes me want to work even harder."
ON THE DARKER SIDE OF WEB DESIGN:
It seems only fair that I discuss both sides of this design conflict. Web design, like any other craft or discipline, must adapt to an emerging combination of technical and cultural trends to encompass the need for a much broader approach.
Web design patterns are maturing. The latest innovations like responsive design and parallax are already considered old and somewhat useless. User interface components and patterns lack any innovations as of late. While good for users and consistency in their daily use of the web, even conformity here is losing it's grip as we constantly seek new ways to enhance our checkout experiences, login procedures , and email list procurement methods. Creativity in these areas might prove more harmful than good.
Templates have made design a commodity of sorts since most web content is run by some sort of framework or service - Wordpress, Blogger, and Drupal just to name a few. These shortcuts allow for spending less time on the creation of a web site, and more time on content. Hence the term "content Is King." As a consequence of these frameworks and shortcuts, the abundance of free and paid templates allows for a professional looking design in a short period of time. Just add some branding customizations and just about anyone can have an inexpensive web site.
My argument here is (1) people and businesses alike still value their leisure
time, (2) the learning curve is still a bit too steep for beginners and (3) there
are critical hidden snippets of code not readily available to many beginners
like sitemap.xml files, robots.txt files, and code necessary for search engines,
seo, and analytics. I've asked many a newbie designer who has used one of
the many online design services if they have included such files and they
suddenly are lost. So web designers still have a few tricks up their sleeves and
all their years of effort are not wasted.
Automation and artificial intelligence can do the same job. This new trend of automated design services and simple drag and drop procedures provide a service which makes semantic design decisions for anyone adventurous enough to do so.
This artificial intelligence provides careful content analysis to determine the best layout, colours, fonts, and imagery for your site. When something like this can be successfully automated, it means that these standards no longer need human input.
This will provoke a huge competition as to which service can deliver better designs, faster, and with less human intervention. All this thanks to The Grid, the next generation of automated web design.
Not sure about you, but most if not all of my buying decisions are often
based on human interactions. Call me old-fashioned! It is what it is.
Facebook pages are the new small business homepage. Unlike the late 90's and even into 2005 future-minded business owners would buy their domain names, purchase expensive hosting plans, and hire a "webmaster" in order to have a web page to make them visible on the internet.
Soon after, sites like Blogger and Wordpress.com were providing more than enough for a small business web presence that was quick and free. Today Facebook pages have taken over as the free, made to be viral out of the box solution and make setting up a profile page so easy as compared to paying for updates and media postings in past.
While efficient at making business more visible they are hardly a replacement
for a website and the freedom that it allows. Don't confuse social media with
a real website.
Mobile is killing the web. How often do you visit a website from your mobile device by directly typing the address? Only when you don't have the app right? People think more about digital brands than they do web pages these days, translating more into apps or subscriptions or likes and follows. This is the reason why most websites, blogs, and portals are pushing their mobile apps on you - out of home screen, out of mind.
Making a web site responsive merely guarantees viewing in a mobile device and still requires a different set of SEO rules and parameters. Not sure about you, but i still ask for and request a good old-fashioned web address or URL.
Caution: Unless you want to avoid early vision complications from
persistent eye strain like me, I still prefer the comfort and viewing
pleasure delivered by my desktop computer and large viewing screen.
I consider this shift in web design to be digital suicide and only the
viewers can make that choice with what little room in in our minds we
may still have left after thinking about the hundreds of apps we already
use. Our memories can only absorb and retain so much, so a choice will
have to be made somewhere - domain address or app name.
The truth is, we have far too many choices to make, too many web pages to sift through, and quite simply TMI - that's too much information. It's become one big competition for your attention and your money. What truly matters is how much time we have to devote to this dazzling array of effects, intros, navigational methods, and oh yes, let's not forget those annoying pop-up ads.
There seems a real shift with Android to providing the exact information you need, when you need it. Tap to call buttons are causing people to bypass websites altogether in an effort to improve user experience. But are we really getting it right?
As a baby boomer and by far the largest segment of the population with the most spending power, I still like to know more about whom I am dealing with and what they have to offer and say to me as a consumer. Not alone and knowing this, I hardly think that web design is going to change any time soon and that having a web site with carefully placed content in terms of specific user need is still the preferred norm for myself and many others I know and that isn't going to change any time soon.
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