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Your website is not for you

websmith.studio

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Re: Your website is not for you

#81

Post by arijun »

tqwhite wrote: post #71
xyzelement wrote: post #28

The only problem with this analysis is that in practice a lot of the designers don't understand the customer and don't understand the business. Don't understand the market, at least compared to the founders or people who've been in the space for a long time. So there's a bit of a false confidence where the designers think they know what's really right because they did "scientific approach". But in reality the founder…

"in practice"? Disrespectful, of course, but also not true. In practice, most designers know what they are doing as well as you know your job. If yours doesn't, you hired a quack. Here. Try this, in practice, most business owners don't know what they are doing. In practice, most programmers write shit. It's easy to bitch at artists because most people don't understand what they do. Don't be one of those people.

Tons of consultants are missing expertise in their clients' wheelhouses. The client and consultant each have domain knowledge, and when those domains overlap, there might be conflicts.

If you hire an architect to redo your house, it's fine to say "I see where you're going with this thing for my kids, but I know them and they will never go for it."

Re: Your website is not for you

#82

Post by jerf »

xyzelement wrote: post #28

The only problem with this analysis is that in practice a lot of the designers don't understand the customer and don't understand the business. Don't understand the market, at least compared to the founders or people who've been in the space for a long time. So there's a bit of a false confidence where the designers think they know what's really right because they did "scientific approach". But in reality the founder…

And when the CEO says "Hey, we really need to make our contact information more visible because I get a lot of customer reports that they can't figure out how to contact us", sure.

When the founders say they want the picture bigger and the logo a bit more purple and can we add underlines to all the menu items and also bold them, probably not.

Which one is more common?

Re: Your website is not for you

#84

Post by IAmBroom »

ubermonkey wrote: post #49

I find that I am AMAZED at how few customer-facing sites have failed to even consider the basic idea of "why is someone on our site?" A great example is a restaurant site. If a user has to scroll and click around to find an address, a phone number, and hours of operation, the site has FAILED.

Literal pages of hyper-zoomed pictures of food, followed by pictures of groups laughing while eating, followed by mentions of catering and merch... and vital info at the very bottom, with dinner menus hidden in web menus, or only available from the "Order Online" link.

What I see all the time. I hate it so much. "Oh, honey, this restaurant has a picture of pepperoni on cheese. Let's eat there... wherever it is!"

Re: Your website is not for you

#85

Post by DrewADesign »

xyzelement wrote: post #28

The only problem with this analysis is that in practice a lot of the designers don't understand the customer and don't understand the business. Don't understand the market, at least compared to the founders or people who've been in the space for a long time. So there's a bit of a false confidence where the designers think they know what's really right because they did "scientific approach". But in reality the founder…

Well, there’s a hell of a lot more false confidence among people who think they can evaluate the merits of a design than designers that do major interface projects not knowing the purpose of what they’re doing. And there are different kinds of designers out there. If you hire a database genius that only has done serious, involved database work, and then add a bunch of front-end web dev work to their tasks because they’re ‘a developer,’ it’s neither an indictment of that developer or developers in general if your web front end is structurally wack. If you hired someone that’s only modified a few existing Wordpress plugins for a green field project, is it their fault or yours if they do a bad job?

The complexity in dev is a lot more obvious than the complexity in design. There’s a big long clear approach to Dunning-Kreuger’s Mt. Stupid with dev work. With design work, the whole idea is to make something that clearly communicates its purpose. That makes a lot of people think they understand what went into it because if it’s done well, the solution should feel ‘obvious.’ Getting something that feels obvious is way more nebulous and convoluted than getting from point a to point B in most dev tasks.

Re: Your website is not for you

#86

Post by [deleted] »

tqwhite wrote: post #71
xyzelement wrote: post #28

The only problem with this analysis is that in practice a lot of the designers don't understand the customer and don't understand the business. Don't understand the market, at least compared to the founders or people who've been in the space for a long time. So there's a bit of a false confidence where the designers think they know what's really right because they did "scientific approach". But in reality the founder…

"in practice"? Disrespectful, of course, but also not true. In practice, most designers know what they are doing as well as you know your job. If yours doesn't, you hired a quack. Here. Try this, in practice, most business owners don't know what they are doing. In practice, most programmers write shit. It's easy to bitch at artists because most people don't understand what they do. Don't be one of those people.

[deleted]

Re: Your website is not for you

#87

Post by monokai_nl »

My website is absolutely for me. Anyone who wants to visit is welcome though, I put it online for a reason. (You're also free to move along for that matter, that's up to you.)

The article states "A website isn't art". This product mindset fundamentally makes the web a boring place. I would personally welcome all websites that are art.

Re: Your website is not for you

#88

Post by hughw »

dgellow wrote: post #53

I fully reject the whole “the website isn’t art”, “the website isn’t about you”. That fees so myopic. A website is part of developing a brand identity. It is about expressing your values, while also providing information/a service (assuming we talk about companies). Art is about communicating feelings, emotions, a message, there is a clear overlap with a brand identity here

Agree. Show people your vision. Make them understand it the way you see it. Otherwise you're publishing the same ineffective pablum we see everywhere.

Re: Your website is not for you

#89

Post by bee_rider »

dadie wrote: post #80

Sorry to be frank and for the upcoming rant as your site is mostly fine, but looking at most websites I visite these days be it from a company, a service, a webshop, an open source project, a forum, a blog, a newspaper or almost any form of social media. I'd say I do not know for whom anyone is designing those sites, but I can clearly say it is not for me (as a human user and/or customer). The websites with the best…

> The websites with the best UX I know are mostly those who haven't really changed for the past 20 years.

> I might be crazy but assume to not be alone in this one, as I have yet to finde someone who likes their back button being hijacked. Likes being blasted by an autoplay video on max volume. Likes seeing the UI reorganized almost every other month. Likes seeing constantly moving and/or blinking elements on a mostly text based website.

Are these really common features for modern websites? I think most browsers block auto-play of videos. Back button hijacks: annoying but again I feel like I stumbled across that more often 5-10 years ago.

Nowadays the annoying website thing seems to be screwing around with the scrollbar.

Although, I definitely do agree that the 20-30 years ago style is best. Just give me some text. I’m going to block the JavaScript and set my own background colors and font anyway, so the less clutter the better.

Re: Your website is not for you

#90

Post by pimlottc »

Government websites are often particular bad this way. Nobody cares who the head of the agency is or wants to read their newest blog post. Most people don’t need to know that the new records department opened in Des Moines. They need to know what programs they qualify for and how to get benefits.
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