Figure 1 – Content is not just ‘things’ but always a combination of the information, interaction and experience designs (HREF3).
Paul McKey
PhD Candidate
Southern Cross University
paul.mckey@redbean.com.au
Poor design is a hallmark of the World Wide Web. This is expected as in this relatively new media humans struggle to understand what works and what doesn’t and what is possible and not possible. Old arguments of form versus function, borrowed from architecture and other design schools, seem outdated in a world where Berners-Lee and others talk of Collective Creativity. What are the steps to design better experiences for users of the world wide web? This Poster outlines the research for a user-centred design that will improve the usefulness of the Web.
It could be said that the World Wide Web design is an uneasy alliance between a number of disparate groups dominated by the functionalists and the aesthetes. Within the functionalists camp we have the technicians and the usability industry while the designers and artists like to concentrate on aesthetics. Within each group are further sub-groups who can also have conflicting and hence competitive goals in the design process.
Hunt describes a user's goals of these two dominating design perspectives:
“I define Aesthetic richness as a function of beauty, attractiveness, emotional depth, and visual impact.
Functional richness equates to usefulness, which is an aggregate of ease-of-use and functional power.” (HREF1)
It can be argued that both these camps are selfish, tribal and competitive and design to satisfy their personal, commercial and sometimes political goals. So instead of getting great sites that highlight design synergies most web sites end up as a compromise of ideas, political will and ideologies. Independent designers and non-commercial sites tend to be more adventurous yet appeal to a minority while most corporate, government and education sites usually reflect the ‘committee’ mentality with which they were designed and hence please nobody in particular.
Human or user-centred design (HREF2) grew out of a perceived need that design, in most of its forms, was bogging down into the functional versus aesthetic argument and generally ignoring the consumer of, or participant in, the actual designs. No more has this been more apparent than in software design and hence Web design.
“The Web is more a social creation than a technical one. I designed it for a social effect - to help people work together - and not as a technical toy. The ultimate goal of the Web is to support and improve our weblike existence in the world.(Berners-Lee,1999, p. 123)
Pine and Gilmore (1999) first mapped the evolution of economies through commodities, goods, services, experiences and transformation. The fundamental shift here is also one from supply to demand. Unlike most goods and services, you can try to control the delivery of an experience but it is the personal appraisal and then either acceptance or rejection which defines its efficacy.
“Despite the technocratic and materialistic bias of our culture, it is ultimately experiences we are designing, not things.” (Buxton, 2007,p.127)
Nathan Shedroff has long argued that “the elements that contribute to superior experiences are knowable and reproducible, which make them designable.” (HREF3) His view of experience design is a combination of the design practices based on information, interaction and the sensorial.Shedroff contends that the ‘content’ that people see is actually a combination of visual, rational and emotive sensory inputs and feelings. I have replaced Shedroff’s original term of sensory with the more commonly accepted term of experience.
To design effectively requires a process of getting to the essence of the design as well as the satisfying all needs and desires. The research for defining a user-centred design process that delivers digital products, applications and websites will examine Cooper’s six step process:
Research, Modelling, Requirements Definition, Design Framework, Design Refinements, Design Support (HREF5).
Ultimately the design is more than just a product or website etc. It also reflects the brand and culture of the organisation. Hence the overall design is a critical organisational asset.
