The cutting edge of (web) design
You might be surprised to hear that the cutting edge of web design probably isn’t the latest interactive flash sites with integrated video, cute scrollers and clever buttons. It probably isn’t amazing AJAX interfaces with draggable boxes, modal preference panes and fancy pants animated text transitions.
The cutting edge of web design is:
- Knowing what to leave out, focusing on doing less and doing it well
- Understanding what your users really want over what you think they want
- Making decisions using real data over hearsay
Google had the right idea back in 2000. While their competitors had their heads in the clouds, cramming their home pages with as many features and links as possible, Google was working away feverishly behind the scenes, building a search engine that actually worked.
Yahoo! & Google in the year 2000.
In the wider software world, Microsoft has aimed to be all things to all people, which often leads to average results. In contrast, Apple focus on a smaller set of features that are more complete. And the result? Apple’s U.S. sales have increased 38.1% year-on-year, far outpacing the total industry growth of 4.2%. And what about all the features missing from the iPhone? That didn’t stop them selling 1 million in the first weekend.
Even the Microsoft giant themselves are realising they have missed a trick and are setting their sights on providing an Apple-like experience.
Building and writing less is often harder to swallow or more diffucult to apply-to-self than all those fancy pants features. If you’ve got your ear to the ground, then you’ll know that these ideas are well known. If this is all new to you and you are serious about providing an amazing user experience, you could shelve what you think you know for a bit, and check out these great books:
Very true. I have been concentrating less and less on Flash and eye candy in my design and more on usability. Users are very often only interested in completing one task when they come to a site and any other distractions or hurdles can potentially send them elsewhere!
so true, and so difficult to achieve. the results are worth it time and again.