Design Sacrifices
As a designer I am sure you come up with some really great ideas to implement on your website. However, either you or someone else will chime in on how that specific idea is not usable or does not follow standards. A lot of times you may be hesitant to go with a certain design because you fear the backlash of the community, which some people really do fear, for example if you launched a new site using tables.
Designers should design sites that they are comfortable with calling their own, yet also follow the guidelines that their clients have set for them. However, there are design issues that sometimes clash between the two parties and a lot of the time I have seen that it is the designer who has to make the sacrifices.
Damn Egos
Designers are egotistical creatures and they should be. You put all your effort into creating something and to have someone come in and tell you that it won’t work can be traumatizing. What is worse is when the client doesn’t trust your decisions and decides to add her own little tweaks to the design. As a designer what do you do? “The customer is always right.” Well that works when you just want the money.
Everyone has bills they must pay, but they also have happy lives that they must live. Designers who are passionate about their craft care about the work they put out. If they make a design decision then they do so because they firmly believe in it. Convincing a client about your decision seems a lot easier than having to convince other designers on a team who share different beliefs.
I know there are some out there who will tell me that they just do what the client asks of them because they just need the money and have responsibilities to attend to. That’s cool, just don’t take this entry too seriously then.
Designers transform ideas into visual elements. Clients should hire you because they have an idea and you are the designer who gives that idea a visual identity. When clients begin to try to takeover the design and its visual identity then that shows a lack of trust in the designer. It’s no fun working for someone who doesn’t trust you to do a job they paid you to do.
Don’t get me wrong. I think it is okay to challenge a decision, but at the very least the client should be open to hearing why the decision was made and understand as the designer you bring in your knowledge from the field.
Battlefields and Gurus
Forgetting clients now we move onto the experts in other fields. You have the Usability experts, the IA experts, and the Design experts. When working separately and sticking to their field they are marvels and benefit everyone. Its when they attemtp to force their ideals upon other fields or make their field seem more important than the rest the trouble begins.
Jakob Nielsen (does anybody talk about him anymore…hell is he alive?) was good when he stuck with usability. Then he just got silly and started to place usability above design. I have heard usability people tell me that usability is important and not necessarily the look of a site, but I have yet to have a designer tell me that a non-working, beautiful site is acceptable. IA people draw up the wireframes and then like to get involved in the aesthetics of the site. It makes you wonder why there are separate fields when everyone seems to be interested in everyone else’s field.
For some reason it seems the designer is the one that has to make all the sacrifices and not the usability guy. I admit that a lot of the IAs I have met are good at offering an opinion on aesthetics without trying to force their opinion down your throat.
You know that a website is collection of parts. It has usability elements, IA elements, design elements, and coding elements underneath. All these elements work together so why can’t the people who build the sites learn to work together?
Our playgrounds
On personal sites you get to play the everyman role. You have to be the expert of all the elements that form to make your site. Over time you understand what sacrifices you had to make due to the way your site evolved. You listen to other’s opinions and some you keep and others you throwaway. When I critique a personal site I do so without knowing the thought process of the designer. I let them explain why they did what they did and everything makes more sense. You can see why one element had to take precedence over another.
With the rise of the CSS galleries it seems not even our own playgrounds can be used for our enjoyment without a horde of designers turning the design inside out. I wonder if some designers have a secret place that no one knows about. Hopefully you don’t have to make sacrifices that effect your satisifaction with the end design.
Related reading:
Good points Paul. Regarding Usability and IA vs Design. I see it like this.
Usability and IA are design. There really shouldn’t be a separation. I look at it like this. A good signage designer has to be aware of much more than the aesthetic - traffic/people flow, auditing movement, legibility, colour recognition not to mention construction techniques and materials.
I’m not sayign the aesthetic isn’t important, but it’s only part of a designer’s remit.
By Mark Boulton on September 21, 2005 6:10 am
You should of think twice before posting something like this. With statements like “Then he just got silly and started to place usability above design” you are not going any far ahead of the people / practicies you are criticizing.
What does it mean to sacrifice your satisfaction? Don’t we work together with our colleagues and clients? Are we working in a situation which is like a constant battle with our colleagues and our clients? There is no sacrifice. There are goals that must be met and everyone should do their best so that by the end of the day the project accomplishes these goals.
By George on September 21, 2005 6:52 am
That actually humors me, because I just seen a great big debate over someone that did launch a site using tables, and then it turned in to a great big debate about how usability was the important thing if they ever wanted their site to get good rankings.. this clearly isn’t a good attitude.
Yes unfortunately there are some idiots out there, and we still have to take it.. but the public eye and feed back from others will always be vital to growth, after all they’re the ones that spread the good word about how awesome we are and tell joe store owner down the street about a great webdesign.
By Jake on September 21, 2005 10:06 am
This seems like kind of a dated point of view and I think gets back to the whole discussion of what IA is (it seems like that’s one of the major points the ‘IA community’ can never seem to nail down). Slicing the disciplines between usability experts, IA experts, and design experts is pretty shortsighted in my opinion - have you worked in many large, design-focused organizations? You’re talking about usability, IA, and, design like they are different things; a view that, to me, verges on comical. A blurred separation between interaction and visual design I can understand because those skills vary designer-to-designer based on education, skill, and experience but usability is a quantitative and sometimes qualitative measurement of the design not a completely different field. What the heck is the difference between “usability elements, IA elements, design elements?” All of these “elements” = design.
For editorial-focused sites, thesauri, managed vocabularies, taxonomies and the like maybe the IA label applies, but I think interaction design is truer label especially as we have things like xmlhttprequest and traditional software interaction paradigms being implemented via script in the browser. Is mapping interaction patterns and task analysis IA, Usability, or Design? I might be jaded since I’m coming from a traditional software/product design perspective but I definitely consider myself a designer and I do understand common usability issues and heuristics, as every designer should.
If you were talking only about visual or graphic design, I can understand but this entry seems to miss the mark in a huge way. One man’s opinion.
By kevin on September 21, 2005 12:43 pm
I think designers need to challenge the idea that the customer is always right. The customer should always be heard, but allowing them to always be right is dangerous. Would the same logic apply in an architect’s office? A doctors office? A financial planner’s office?
Clients hire designers to be advisors (hopefully) and we should apply a little force to the advice when necessary. Granted, there will always be those times when we are reduced to a giant Sharpie that the client abuses at will, but in general I think we owe the profession a little backbone.
By Geoffrey on September 21, 2005 1:11 pm
Just an side note; it’s weird reading postings on this new design, Scrivs. I end up invariably reading the comments from last to first.
Anyway, I was going to make a more substantial comment, but I basically agree with Mark. From my experience, I/A and usability form the basis of the design for most sites. Your I/A and usability ends up driving the high level structure of your navigation and usability, whereas visual designers are there(IMO) to provide a visually appealing (for lack of a better phrase atm)layout that adheres to the creative brief and branding that’s defined early on.
I do basically agree with your points. If requirements are understood correctly by everyone (and you are actually a great designer), the client should have trust your expertise.
That said, I really only try to work with smart clients that understand the importance of the user experience, and using site objectives, business goals in combination with user centered design, etc to form the basis of the design. I’d rather cut scope elsewhere upfront and ensure that the site has a solid, scalable I/A than do work that I feel I couldn’t be proud to display as a part of my portfolio.
Btw, can we all agree to finally kill the term ‘guru’? ;-) My main client at my last job was always referring to me as ‘our main technical support guru’, and it used to drive me nts.
By Kyle on September 21, 2005 6:55 pm
Kyle, Mark: Don’t you mean that Usability and IA *should be* design? I know a few good designers that really know nothing about Usability and IA, and they work on websites all day long. I know that sounds a little contradictory, but its true.
And what about the direct response industry where ‘ugly sells’? If you’ve seen any of those sites, you will notice that Usability and IA are all but thrown out the window. And it’s intentional, because that approach converts well for them.
By Kyle Posey on September 22, 2005 9:33 am
Mark, Kevin and Geoffrey have all put it so well that I’m hesitant to add anything. I do agree that that all of the areas *should* be seamless, however, the reality is that they are often at odds. I suppose it’s the crossroads of commerce and art that is the inevitable tension here.
As far as that goes, Geoffrey is correct, “the customer *should* always be heard. Before the designer gets to far into his artistic cocoon, he should remember that this is a job and someone has “cornflakes” to sell. Furthermore, I/A and usability are not the natural enemies of design and don’t think that anyone is really saying that. It *does* look as if some designers were feeling that though.
Now, if the site were merely an artistic statement with no product, per se, then the scenario should be different with the balance perhaps falling to the designer. Especially if it’s a designer with a proven track record.
Got to say, Geoffrey’s image of a giant Sharpie still has me smiling.
By anon on September 22, 2005 11:49 am
Kevin I think it’s less about all of those things being design and more about specialty. As a web designer you do need to know at least the basics of IA and usability as well as coding/scripting and sometimes database work but just because you understand it all doesn’t make it part of the same job.
Content organization & rewriting and optimization and labeling is a huge job… Same with usability. So if the project can support it you want to have specialists at those jobs instead of one person trying to do everything. I think when that happens though people think of the web designer as the person that makes it look good instead of the person (that should be) reponsible for merging the specialities of the ia, usability, coding/scripting etc. into the final product.
By sunshine on September 23, 2005 10:33 am
I actually think this topic is very important.
Certainly when I am doing a piece of work for a client I do a concept and build a design in photoshop, get it checked by the client as to wether or not the design is in the right direction then decide how best to code it, and yes sometimes tables are the only way to get a piece of work done on a deadline. And if I get time I do like to do CSS and XHTML but if either a) I don’t or b) I don’t want to spend 75% of my time debugging code between browsers then I don’t bother with the hassle.
I’m sorry but those of you who think that doing a website in tables is a hideous thing to do then you need a swift kick up the arse and planted back in the real world.
By Stewart on September 26, 2005 2:53 pm
Well nothing personals to the person above but i think the design is very well done and the colors have a very good scheme
By personals on February 4, 2006 3:58 am