Developing Sophisticated Designs
Watching people design from an external observer’s standpoint is something new to me. Its not something that comes naturally either because I’m the kind of person who likes to input into the process. But its incredibly interesting on some level to view the thought processes involved in another person’s learning process.
This week I came to realise - or at least theorise - about why people originally find it hard to create high quality web designs. It isn’t about lack of talent or necessarily about skills in Photoshop. A great part of it involves the rudimentary mental models we bring to the table about what we’re out to achieve - seeing beyond left hand navigation and a header isn’t that easy when you sit down to do it yourself.
There are some subtle differences between print and the web that centre squarely on the way we traditionally relate to each medium. I read an article not long ago which asked how many times you stop at a poster in the street and criticise the font or leave within six seconds because you couldn’t see the content. The web is tricky. And what’s worse we’re all keyed up to judging the web so when we sit down to consider designing something for it we’re intuitively aware on some level of the criticism for getting things wrong. There lays the enemy of good design - playing it safe.
I’m not for a minute suggesting we rant wildly with maddening unreadable fonts or create multicolour extravaganzas. But we should at least be trying to let go of the boxey clunkey (yes I can talk you’re right) idea that our mental model is correct.
Its really interesting because even showing examples of Veerle Pieters, The Man in Blue and the work of other cutting edge contemporary designers don’t necessarily relate back to similar outcomes. Its just so hard to let go and break that mental model you dragged to the table of what the web is and push the boundaries of what you want it to be and what it could be.
Making the imagination meet the screen in some meaningful form of finesse has just as much to do with a magic (but developed) talent as to do with technical know-how. My tips from observation about web design and watching it evolve through other parties -
- dare to take a risk, be audacious, but use what you know about human behaviour and technical constraints
- look outside the content images to the more subtle areas of white space
- drop your mental model (which probably resembles Jakob Nielsen’s site in some way)
- spend a lot of time forgetting what you’ve already seen because most of it was exceptionally bad - concentrate on what was exceptionally good (the rare ones)
- ask yourself if you understand the user and the information within the design
- and finally, not exhaustively, don’t rest on your laurels
Has anyone else got advise how someone might evolve into a more sophisticated web designer?
