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Read it, comment, and share it with your friendsWeb Design and Web 2.0
I still think the best article ever written is Web 3.0 by Jeffrey Zeldman. If you haven’t read it, you should.
Web 2.0 is the second and latest gold-filled mountain for the web. The first was e-commerce. Gold-filled mountains mean gold rushes, and this means that there are a lot of people involved with the web who really don’t know much about it; as in, they don’t know much about web design, standards, or usability. Knowing a little about one or two of these things would be a good start.
What brings me to writing about this? Web geeks should be able to look at this page and require no more explanation: Moola’s blog. I heard about it via WebJillion. For any non-web-geeks in the audience, Moola’s blog is a page with ads and a frame which loads a blog hosted at blogspot.com. This is not how you do it. The web geeks who required no explanation are currently crying or laughing. When I saw it, I was rolling on the floor. Chuckles galore.
Then again, it isn’t uncommon to see a Web 2.0 site or application that has great programming in the backend but terrible design on the front end. As a disclaimer, when I say design I’m talking about all aspects; visual appeal, usability, cross-browser compatibility, etc. Web design is complex and it’s a pain to see it so often ignored in this era of “Web 2.0.”
Need examples?
- Everything Google makes is still a joke when it comes to web design. This probably explains why none of their services aside from search, mail, and maps have been successful… and there have been a lot of other services launched in the past few years. I mean, Google finally decided to hire a “Visual Design Lead” less than a month ago, and at least they chose Douglas Bowman, an expert in the field. I have no idea what they were doing before that.
- Flock got a redesign a while back. Before the redesign it had a terrible site; the redesign didn’t change it much but it helped. I just wish I had a picture of the old version to share.
- Techcrunch, the blog of Web 2.0, sports a terrible design. See Mike’s analysis for more information.
- The developers behind MySpace have been rumored to be vehemently opposed to anything associated with good design or clean markup. I’ll have more to say in the future about it.
- Other sites that need no explanation: Reddit, CrispyNews, Craigslist. I’m sure there are more I could mention.
I’m not expecting these developers, marketers, and entrepreneurs behind these sites to know about web design; they all have their own talents and are doing what they do best. What I wonder is why they go to Rome without doing as the Romans do. If you are going to use the web as the vehicle for your cash-cow, at least find yourself a driver. Find someone, anyone, who knows about web design, a designer or a consultant, and let them handle your frontend work. Especially when you have more money than small countries like Google or boatloads of VC funds like Flock. Don’t take web design lightly. Hey, you could even contact me. I promise to try not to laugh at your business model 
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11 Comments
Responses to my articleI could not agree with you more. Why is ugly new cool is a mystery to me. But I am willing to be it will not last. I think that MySpace will have to do a face/usability lift, otherwise people will stop using it.
Alex
I think the reason for these sites lacking the motivation for better designs is the fact that as-is, the current pages “work” for them.
Google yeah, they aughta change their design a little more and going with the guy from stopdesign is a good choice too. Although their calendar design serves it’s purpose (for me atleast :P).
But I gotta disagree with Alex, that people will stop using MySpace for lack of usability purposes, the users really don’t care much about that coz they themselves create “anti-usable” sites, too.
Even people who create bad sites themselves, subconciously prefer cleaner design.
The lack of usability is a flaw and flaws are exploited by others in business world. My prediction is that within 1 year MySpace is gonna do a major face lift or will loose some users.
Alex
Myspace has definitely lost a few users to TagWorld, which does have a nice design, but I don’t know if there is another competitor out there that can do the serious iPod-level advertising campaign necessary to compete with MySpace. MySpace has reached the level where they get new sign-ups just because people want to be part of the club. Their are tons of sites out there dedicated entirely to serving the MySpace community with custom layouts, graphics, tutorials, and storage space for files. Did you know MySpace has their own IM program now? It’s like AIM, but specifically for MySpace users.
And I’ve watched my little sister and her friends, who are MySpace users… honestly, that’s the only website they ever visit… they check their profiles every ten minutes, sending comments back and forth. I really think MySpace has passed that critical point, like Google, Amazon, and Ebay, where they don’t have to try anymore! Another service could beat them if they really worked hard, but I don’t think MySpace could fail all by themselves.
Yes, this goes back to the debate in I think March when Scoble and his cronies were talking about how Plenty of Fish, an ugly site, was making the most AdWords dollars. There was a post written called ‘The surprising truth about ugly websites’. Essentially the author claimed that these websites were okay and making money and that they were better marketing vehicles. I replied with a post much like what you talked about in this, called ‘The Unsurprising Truth of Good Design’. For the most part I stated that good design creates a better user experience — and that’s what we are creating as web developers.
“MySpace has reached the level where they get new sign-ups just because people want to be part of the club. ” — too true. Who ever watches G4TV, MySpace gets alot of mention on there… I even have the feeling that MySpace and G4 have some agreement….. Although even on CNN they discussed the dangers of MySpace, talking about heavy advertisements…
Sure they might lose some dudes to Tagworld or Friendster, but ultimately will gain other users…
MySpace really does epitomise a terrible regard for design ethics. If I was designing a layout in Photoshop and that came out, the DELETE key would look very appetising.
I belive that Bryan Veloso, the writer og avalonstar and the guy who redesigned flock’s page has a before and after picture in his flicker stream.
Hey, good idea. I just searched Flickr and even better than just a picture of the early Flock design, here’s a side by side of the ugly Flock design and the same design stolen and used on some other site. Maybe if my site was ugly, people would steal it too
Stolen Flock on Flickr
hehe yeah maybe, I hate design stealers, even if the design is bad
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