EBlog
It’s all about perception.
October 11, 2007 | Posted by: Marty
I’m going to make a clear delineation between two types of people using the internet. Web professionals and casual users.
Web professionals live day-in and day-out working on the web, creating for the web, developing for the web. We know the latest trends. We know what is cliche. We know the best practices in design, user interface, and information architecture.
Casual users “use” the web - they browse, check email, check out a product site, read the news on Yahoo! and then go on with the rest of their day. They have nary a notion of best practices. They will not pick apart a design, have no notion of cliche, or care about the latest trends.
Part of a web professional’s job is to produce the best sites that we can. We aim to create a great experience. A website that gets noticed and advances prior thinking. Problem is, the notion of “great” is subjective. Some may say drop-shadows, rounded corners, drop-down navigation and crazy widgets are “great”. Others may say “great” lies in huge type, simple navigation, solid colors and wide layouts. What really constitutes “great”?
The answer really lies in your audience and what they perceive what a great experience should be.
For the web professional, there may be an inherent bias towards current web trends outlining the “right” way to do things. We live in this stuff, day in and day out, scoff at bad design, revere great design, and expect that everyone we interact with understand the same nuances that we see. We also see overuse of things that were hot two years ago.
Casual users are not in that world, however. They do not know (or care about) the current trends. What was new two years ago really doesn’t matter to them. They want a site that gives them what they are looking for. If it looks cool, even the better, and in most cases, those elements web professionals consider cliche are the exact parts of a site that casual users think are cool.
How do we move forward? Are we stuck in a circle of putting out something that web professionals know follow all of the current trends - appealing to a more sophisticated web-savvy audience, or do we compromise what we produce so that casual users come eat up yesterday’s eye candy?
So I ask, do web professionals perceive a great experience from a totally different angle than casual users?
Tags for this post:
web design web sites web development
Categorized in: Design, Technology
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Comments
by Nicholas
I definitely think we do. And as the creators of what the non-professionals “use” I think we have a responsibility to deliver to them the most relevant content and content-delivery methods as we can, despite what is new or what we think is cool. Focus on communication and let cool take care of itself.
“Insight is good, clever is bad. Many websites say, “look at me.” Your goal ought to be to say, ‘here’s what you were looking for.’” - Seth Godin, How to create a great website.
by Bob
Q: “…do web professionals perceive a great experience from a totally different angle than casual users?”
A: No…and Yes.
No - for the most part web professionals are also consumers. Like normal consumers there are parts of the web we like, don’t like, struggle with or love.
Yes - we are very different in that we can look past a design or UI and often see what the team that developed a site intended to convey relative to what they have delivered (this is a unique skill - and it is not normal).