Daring to be Different at 24ways.org?
Tuesday, December 9th, 2008
There isn’t any doubt that Drew McLellan has a successful website with 24ways.org and I’ve been a passing fan of Time van Damme’s Made By Elephant for some time. Tim provided the latest 24ways.org web design that’s getting discussed heavily in Veerle Pieter’s comments. So this post should hopefully not be taken as anything other than respectful regardless of the direction it takes. Because the danger of being different, of searching for design innovation, is always the underlying risk of likes and dislikes in the user community. Being different not only forces us to consider that conventions may be wrong, it also makes us consider whether they were right.
Veerle’s post in defence of 24ways.org’s design innovation definately comes from the graphic designer as is clear from her comment reply regarding usability. I’d put forward tentatively that just because something is accessible doesn’t mean it can’t be beautiful, and the same should apply to usability. When we step beyond the user’s importance to weigh in with our trump card of design as art - that’s a particular kind of design arrogance. But that’s another discussion entirely, so back to 24ways.org.
The problem is that in the great web tradition of trolling and flaming the comments about the redesign are often acutely negative. Part of the relationship between a popular site and high traffic will mathematically transpose to a higher number of negative comments, right? Well, sort of. The problem is that rather than critique, which very few of us are professionally trained to provide, we give opinion. As time short as we are that opinion can be reduced to a series of caveman grunts - don’t like, is shit, pull in your head. Personally, I’d consider just pulling those out in moderation simply because they don’t add to the conversation - water off a ducks back. But Veerle has a valid point, we ask for innovation but bowl anyone over in an instant who dares move outside the conformist circle (remind me tomorrow to do my graphic design post, by the way - I have similar issues with a lot of graphic design).
