Thought & Theory

When you are the site of coveted internet awards, your website should reflect that prestige. Right now, there is a little bit of clip art, mixed with non browser compliant code and some left/right alignment gone a wee-bit too far.

I am not advocating adding gradients, rounded corners and reflections by any means. I just think that an award website dedicated to a certain genre should reflect that genre. Blogs are the largest forms of self expression on the internet. People spend hours trying to customize a template, wrangle in a style sheet and even write their own blog code from scratch.

The bloggies website does not equally reflect the sites it is giving awards to. I understand that the awards aren’t always given to the most well designed websites, but a high percentage of the websites up for the awards have some pretty great design.

It would be great to see some love given to the bloggies. Here are a couple examples of awards sites that the bloggies should think of taking a look at:

My favorite of the group, the Webby Awards:

Grammy’s, solid design and a great reflection of the award:

Definitely nothing to write home about, but at least the Screen Actors Guild Awards site is making a concerted effort:

ESPY’s. Yes I know ESPN has a ton of money and resources, but it doesn’t take either of those things to create good design:

Very surprising to me - a site that the bloggies should NOT follow is the Emmys:

So what do you say bloggies? Maybe go for a little “funksex” (thanks B4) style design? Something to really encapsolate what it means to have free speech, solid design and the ability to show off your individualism/creativity?

By the way, everyone vote for /Film (best entertainment weblog)!

Don’t get me wrong; there were a lot of pretty sites this year. Hordes of one-page portfolio sites biting various KDU designers with retina-burning work. A collection of shiny, gradient-filled, 2.0 goodness from almost every app under the sun. But if you looked closely and got beyond the designs that burned the brightest, you’d find the designs that will continue to burn for years to come.

They represent a delicate balance of aesthetics and usability. Some sites ride that balance differently because of their target audience, but all of them found a sweet spot between form and function.

5. Newstoday

Newstoday

While design portals like Pixel Surgeon and Lounge 72 have joined the dead-pool this year, Newstoday has taken the time to reinvent itself. They’ve ditched the 4-column layout for a more editorial feel and more importantly added a lot of little details to make the site more usable and unique (still no RSS feed, but no one’s perfect).

In particular, the discussion board system is not a cluster fuck of hard-to-read threads anymore. It has transformed into an organized, simple-to-use system with cool innovations like dog-earning posts and separating threads into their own dialogue containers. The extremely cynical and snarky attitude remains as far as dialogue goes, but at least its easier than ever to post something that will wreck some kid’s day.

4. Virb

Virb

From the people who brought you Pure Volume, Virb jumped in the social-networking pool this year with an incredible design and probably one of the most intuitive profile layout systems available today. It actually allowed you to edit your profile in a logical manner instead of the wondrous Myspace system that we all struggled through.

And that’s really the best way to describe Virb – It’s what Myspace should’ve been.

The typography and grid for everything is incredibly balanced and has a great sense of vertical-rhythm to it. Not an easy feat considering all the constraints social networks face in the build process. Hopefully Virb keeps that high level of excellence as it goes through their redesign sometime in 2008.

3. A Brief Message

A Brief Message

In a sea of CSS and Photoshop tutorial sites, Khoi Vinh and Liz Danzico created a site that managed to spark some really interesting and intelligent dialogue in the design community. While other sites like Design Observer often accomplish the same goal, I found a certain charm to the simplicity of A Brief Message. Essays are limited to only 200 words so the natural verbose nature of designers is curtailed to a concise simple point.

2. Google Analytics

Google Analytics

Rounding out the supremely utilitarian of the bunch, Google Analytics became one of the most dramatic examples of what a brilliant user experience designer could do to even the driest of subjects, a statistics application. Tufte would be proud.

Google Analytics finally completed their merge with Measure Maps this year but more importantly added Jeffrey Veen to their design team. While the previous incarnation was great mainly because it was free, the new version outshines a lot of paid versions of analytical software because of the new robust features and stellar design. If you want to study the idea of visual hierarchy and data visualization I suggest you sit down and take notes because there was only one other site this year that I thought could come close.

1. CNN

CNN

CNN became the benchmark for news portals in 2007. The standard by which other beautiful redesigns like MSNBC and others will be compared to for years to come.

Although it might not pop up on your favorite CSS Gallery Site, its beauty resides in its subtle nature and details. Beautiful grid and typography. Brilliant design for breaking news and news summary features. Intelligent interface choices and great layout-variations for sections like CNN Politics. The list could honestly go on forever.

So when people ask questions like “where is web design’s canonical designs?”, I can say that CNN has is going to be one of the designs. Over time, it will hold its place with other shining examples of design like New York’s Subway map, or Rand’s IBM logo, etc.

Honorable Mentions

I Am Always Hungry
Facebook
AIGA
Color Lovers

What if designers were heralded as much as musicians, actors or sports figures? What if your best friend could spout off names like Paul Rand, Milton Glasner or Jonathan Ive as fast as Jordan, Will Smith or Kanye?

There’s an interesting discussion going on at A Brief Message about the importance of design and why its not featured in publications like NY Times and other big media entities. While I agreed with the article at first, part of me questioned why design needed to be brought into society’s spotlight. More importantly, what benefit does it bring to the discipline when being a designer means you can achieve fame and fortune? Would it help things at all?

Not that the design profession is a pure profession of angelic creative martyrs but on the whole, you get into design because you love it, not for the paycheck or notoriety. You get into design knowing that your own parents will not understand exactly what you do. You get into it knowing that you could make more waiting tables or working as a manger at some store. Designers aren’t driving down the road in Aston’s, top down, throwing $100’s out of the window. Most of us choose to be designers for much simpler reasons.

So if design stays transparent in society with a little fanfare here and there, that’s just fine for me. People will continue to design great things and designers will be just fine being noticed by their peers.

Of all the crazy terms being thrown around these days, usability is the one phrase that makes me cringe. Its not the idea of usability that I have a problem with, its more in the way people use the term that irks me. People twist and contort its meaning and turn it into a slam against designers trivializing our job along the way.

You can’t be a usability expert and be a designer. Its just not possible. Really?

Alright, say it with me now. Usability is Design. Good Design is Good Usability. They are not mutually exclusive goals to strive for. Your primary goal as an interactive designer is to take into account the user’s needs, goals and experiences all while expressing a unique identity. Its not just pretty visuals or a passive form of entertainment no matter what all of the award and design annuals tell you. It encompasses a lot of different disciplines that work together towards a common goal.

This is the best diagram I’ve found that clearly illustrates the relationship of usability and interactive design.

Designing for Interaction: Creating Smart Applications and Clever Devices (VOICES) by Dan Saffer

So the question now is, why would you want to only concentrate on one aspect of the big picture? Real design has usability in mind as well as many other factors. There is no reason to separate them or their intentions.

I absolutely hate how my car stereo works.

Lets see. To change the playlist on ipod on my Alpine 9857 I need to take it off M.I.X. Press this unmarked square icon, slowly scroll around, select a playlist, choose the song then it finally starts playing. Mind you, none of these are properly marked and most of them are actually marked as other functions. It took me about 10 minutes of digging through the manual to finally figure out how to play music from my iPod. Not a great way to drop $450.

The problem is that the car stereo’s interface is stuck in whatever media format is popular at the time. The metaphors for the controls all play off a combination of tape and CD controls found on most stereos in the mid 90’s. You’re starting to see some MP3 functionality clumsily find its way into the stereo interface but its an average experience at best. They provide an average experience because they are restrained by their physical interfaces.

Learning from the Poster Child of Contextual Interfaces

Not to be an Apple fan boy, but one of the best examples of a contextual interface is the Apple iPhone. A major reason why they didn’t use a physical keyboard is that in order for the iPhone to provide a simple experience, the interface had to make sense and fulfill basic needs for the user at any point in time. If I’m on the iPod section, I need controls and buttons that are relevant to that program at that specific point in time, not a keyboard. The interface always gives me what I need properly labeled and nothing more.

In contrast to the car stereo, you’re locked into a set amount of buttons to interface with the stereo. They don’t adapt well to every single situation because they’re labeled for a primary task and then the user has to infer what its secondary function might be. Or they provide way too many buttons and give the user too many irrelevant choices. Not exactly the simple functionality I need while driving on the freeway.

Summing it up

Physical menus will always struggle to provide the right choices for the user as our needs grow more complex. Contextual menus give designers the ability to provide the user with an interface that is relevant and simple and more importantly adaptable to users ever changing needs.

Update:
VW’s take on the car stereo