Web 2.0 Distracts from Good Design

stevedcc writes "The BBC is running a story about web 2.0 and usability, including comments from Jakob Nielsen stating "Hype about Web 2.0 is making web firms neglect the basics of good design". From the article: "He warned that the rush to make webpages more dynamic often meant users were badly served. Sites peppered with personalization tools were in danger of resembling the 'glossy but useless' sites at the height of the dotcom boom."

Comments

All good things in moderation.

[AltGrendel]

Web 2.0 doubly so.

Seriously, just because you can doesn't mean you should.

Some explain this to me?

[zappepcs]

stevedcc writes "The BBC is running a story about web 2.0 and usability, including comments from Jakob Nielsen stating "Hype about Web 2.0 is making web firms neglect the basics of good design". What does Web 2.0 have to do with people neglecting the basics of good design? As far as I can tell they have always done that.

From the article: "He warned that the rush to make webpages more dynamic often meant users were badly served. Sites peppered with personalization tools were in danger of resembling the 'glossy but useless' sites at the height of the dotcom boom." Hmmmm "glossy but useless" ? Is the author talking about all these 'news' sites that are dripping with advertisements interspersed with only a small to modest amount of content? The web sites of today are looking more and more like magazines of yesterday; >60% advertisements and 30% content, where the difference is filled with trying to find the table of contents or the 2nd and 3rd parts of the story buried deeply in the magazine with incorrect page number links to them.

Re:Some explain this to me?

[drgonzo59]

What does Web 2.0 have to do with people neglecting the basics of good design? As far as I can tell they have always done that.

This is some BBC guy, their version of good design probably = "Flash and shinny buttons with special effects and blinking links". I actually prefer the basic and simple looks of a basic MoinMoin wiki or a simple blog -- the less flash and crap the better, just the information.

Re:Some explain this to me?

[Ngarrang]

Amen, brother. There were visually-poor web sites long before "Web 2.0" was coined.

Re:Some explain this to me?

[Bogtha]

What does Web 2.0 have to do with people neglecting the basics of good design? As far as I can tell they have always done that.

It's a story that reoccurs every few years when a new technology comes along. Somebody comes up with a new technique/technology/approach, and gets a lot of attention because it's quite useful. Then the hype engine goes into overdrive, PHBs start putting it on job advertisements, and people get book deals. A multitude of copy & paste monkeys buy the books, get the jobs and apply that technique/technology/approach to everything they see, with no understanding of when it's actually useful. The industry gets flooded with a bunch of one-trick ponies.

This happened with frames, JavaScript, Java, Flash, DHTML, ActiveX, Ajax, and now it's "Web 2.0"'s turn. Eventually, the field will settle down and there won't be quite so many fanboys around — they'll either broaden their skills and get a clue, their business will fail, or they will get fired. And then things will be relatively stable until the next big thing comes along.

So I guess you're right, this is an ongoing problem, but it's still news when the cycle starts again.

Re:Some explain this to me?

[Bogtha]

I agree that unnecessary graphic elements can get in the way of your message, but his solution is usually to remove *all* graphic elements and stick with plain dark text on a light background.

No it isn't. That's largely a myth propagated by bad designers who resent being told that they are over the top, the odd line here and there in an article taken out of context, and people like you, who seem to repeat the myth without having read his actual opinions. It's true that he used to make a bigger deal out of the graphics issue, but that was a decade ago, when download speeds were a fraction of what they are now and had a much bigger impact on the user.

Try reading his books and articles. He's actually quite reasonable when you listen to what he actually says instead of the ridiculous straw-man people have him confused with. He typically presents the issue as a trade-off between what designers want to do when they get carried away, and the consequences it has on the end-user. And he backs it up with actual data from actual studies.

Can you actually point to a single instance of him saying that all graphic elements should be removed and a monochrome colour scheme should be used? I've seen him say that overuse of graphics and use of graphics without a purpose are bad, which often get exaggerated to "Nielsen says don't use graphics", but he's rarely as inflexible and dogmatic as his critics would have you believe.

Yep.

[Black Parrot]

He warned that the rush to make webpages more dynamic often meant users were badly served. Sites peppered with personalization tools were in danger of resembling the 'glossy but useless' sites at the height of the dotcom boom. That was precisely my thought when I saw, side-by-side, the proposed look for a new W2 site vs. our current bland but functional site.

Actually, I thought our current one *looked* better too.

Re:Old fashioned

[Mouse42]

Really? Thats considered old fashion? I figured everyone these days hand coded their HTML with close integration with CSS, because thats the only way you can really ensure a minimal amount of code, cross browser compatibility, good SEO, and ease of updates.

Management 'distracts good design'

[hendridm]

Of all of the best practices that I've learned as a designer analyst over time, I've come to realize that management (with a bug in their collective bonnets about some new-fangled technology), do a better job of screwing up design and usability than the technology itself.

Re:Old fashioned

[mangu]

Anyone else this old fashioned ?

I also stick to hand-editing html, however I also use a lot of automatically generated html. For instance, when formatting a computer language for syntax emphasis automatic coding not only saves work but makes less errors than hand coding. Also, when creating tables I often use small Perl scripts to insert the data into the html.

But I always cut and paste the result into an html file that I edit by hand. I've never found a WYSIWYG html editor that gives me full control over how my pages will look.

drop shadows and mouse hovers

[Speare]

Adding simple fortune-cookie CGI scripts, html tables with round corners, and javascript mouse-hover-active colors doesn't really make a site more useful. Sure, they can add to the mood if everything else is already well thought-out, but they can't save a bad site. That's Web 1.0 gloss.

With the newer sites, there's just as much crap that adds practically nothing. Expandable submenus in sidebars with cute > marks, dynamic community tagging options, dynamic community inbox viewing and sorting, and the ever-present use of rich gradient shading in every header tag. That's Web 2.0 gloss.

Hrm... I seem to have described an awful lot of Slashdot features. Curious.

Re:Old fashioned

[cultrhetor]

Dreamweaver wouldn't be so popular if everyone took this sensible route. I once had to unscrew about 15 pages created by Dreamweaver and Fireworks. It took forever - each page, despite coming from the same "template" was messed up in its own unique way.

Pssh.

[MeanderingMind]

Sure, blame Web 2.0 for your horribly designed web pages.

The man in the article himself states clearly Web 2.0 is simply the "latest fad". It's simply the most recent in a long stream of red herrings chased by ignorant companies in an attempt to be web savvy.

The root of the problem is that the people who understand web design and make webpages are beholden unto managers, bosses, and other autorities who haven't the faintest idea what a good webpage does or looks like. The web designers bring prototypes, designs and nifty things to these people and get asked stupid questions such as "Is it Web 2.0". They want everything the internet has to offer in their webpage, whether or not it makes any sense for it to be there.

Web 2.0 is another potentially awesome facet of the internet being turned into a collective migraine for web designers.

Re:Hype and more hype

[Turn-X Alphonse]

These people don't have a single clue about a good website design, they just think "oh that is so awesome I must have it!", so they start swinging wildly at shadows and end up destroying the entire point of the process.

Look at Myspace, these people go "OMG MUSIC ON MY WEBSITE! SO COOL!" but have no damn clue how annoying it is, or how it eats bandwidth and makes their profiles pretty much unusable for Dial up users. But they don't know about this because "ZOMG SO COOL!!!"

See why there is a backlash now? Give an idiot a hammer and tell him to knock down a wall and he'll take down the house. Give an expert a hammer and he'll knock the wall down without causing any damage to the building at all.

What is Web2.0?

[jb_nizet]

I've seen two definitions of Web2.0: user-contributed contents, and the use of AJAX/DHTML.

The first characteristic doesn't need any new technology: Slashdot is a good example of a web site containing lots of user-contributed contents, and works for ages. No need for a 2.0 version of the web.

The second one is newer: we already had DHTML, but didn't have XMLHttpRequest. This is where abuse can lead to bad design and bad usability, IMO.
My advices to web developers: just because the content of your web site is dynamic and the site contains some forms doesn't mean you have a web application like GMail! Most of the time, it's just a web site, and should work like a traditional web site: the back button should work, opening pages in new windows or new tabs should work.
Just because you may refresh the body of the page without reloading it entirely doesn't mean you should. Think about why frames are usually avoided when you plan using AJAX: it might cause the same annoyances.

Re:Old fashioned

[DittoBox]

Don't discount Dreamweaver. It's editor is absolutely top-knotch.

Now it's definitely not emacs, eclipse or VI(M) but it's awfully good and has nice auto-complete features. And if used properly it can help you stick to standards better. It also can do direct FTP editing, another big plus for me.

Hmm...

[EinZweiDrei]

Although people in their late 30s make very different use of the web to those in their teens, Mr Nielsen expects that when those teenagers grow up the time they spend online will diminish.

Yeah...
Just like our parents' generation grew up to watch less television.

Why is the BBC posting this now

[liquidsquid]

What I don't understand is why the BBC is posting this now. Did Neilsen just speak somewhere?

It's the same story he's been telling all along - so what makes it news? Why now?

Technology Not Equal To Good Design

[Nitroadict]

This confirms something I've always thought true, especially when I first saw CSS come out (although mostly with CSS 2.0, the much more troublesome incarnation). New technologies, whether it be AJAX (which is becoming known for being insecure), CSS, or even HTML when it first came out, do not equal instant good design. Even now, users of HTML, arguably one of the oldest markup languages on the internet (or the oldest most used markup), still utilize what have become poor features, notably the marquee tag (interestingly implemented by Internet Explorer), and some consider tables a remanent (although arguably still useful tag) since CSS came along. Web design has always been, IMO, about compromises: compromise for what you want to do for what you can do, for what you want and what works, for what's ambitious to what's practical. Just because you have that bomb, doesn't mean you have to blow something up. This why only recently have i considered learning more beyond HTML and CSS (the later which I'm still learning to get a fluent grasp on without consulting tutorials every 5 mins). Again, IMO, I would point out that PHP is probably the only technology of Web 2.0 that has proved more useful than troublesome, which is why I plan on learning it whenever I stop stalling and actually take an intro to programming course I regretfully choose not to take in high school in favor of "learning" Word for an entire semester >_>. It's not all hopeless though; part of the fallout of this whole Web 2.0 business is that the new technologies will eventually be learned enough to utilize more specifically instead of riding a popularity wave. It's all really silly when most changes happen gradually; it's just the same game as whatever Web 1.0 was with different cards and different players.

Google Groups 2.0ed-up

[Tablizer]

Google Groups (usenet) is an example of misuse of Web 2.0. Before that it had a pretty good HTML-based approach. Then they Ajaxified it, and it is clunky and jittery. It is hard to know whether a mouse-stroke "took" or not, and sometimes it resizes wrong. It just feels "unnatural".

Lesson: Use Ajax *only* when "traditional" HTML is not a reasonable match. Don't reinvent the wheel when you don't have to. There are good uses for Ajax-like stuff, but this was just not one of them. Somebody at Google is fad chasing.

Pure HTML

[chord.wav]

I'm against entirely Flash-made sites. Not even Macromedia has a full site made in Flash, they use it only for the menu and landing-page banners. They don't put content you need to read in there.

And they didn't yet come up with a simple solution for what IMHO are their main 4 problems:

1 - One URL, One page. In order to direct a friend to a specific product in a flash site you have to tell him things like: Go to this URL, then click products, then click the shoes number X. OK, this may be a development problem but they could make it very easy.

2 - Open links in new tabs/windows. This one is really annoying.

3 - Content indexing. It is currently possible, but yet more attention is drawn to a normal HTML page than to a flash site.

4 - Ability to copy/paste the text you are reading. This one is really a development problem but again, it can be made simpler.

web architects

[chdig]

It used to be that an art director would build the design for websites, but with dynamic and active websites (Web2.0 if, we need to use that word), a web architect is the new boss needed to run the show. That is, someone who understands template-based programming and information workflow enough to develop a solid basis for the designers to take over and make things look pretty. Oh yeah, and this person should also be able to direct the programmers to organize things in a useful manner for the designers as well. Until companies catch on and begin hiring website directors with these qualifications, they'll just continue to roll out that static, oh so pretty and dumb sites that they always have been.

Re: archaic

[Anonymous Coward]

So once you have hundreds of pages developed in dreamweaver, it's very hard to move away from using dreamweaver. $reply = subst($parent,"dreamweaver","Word"); // heheh
Using Microsoft Frontpage makes what you say nigh IMPOSSIBLE.

Back on topic:
When Ye Olde Macromedia bought up Allaire Homesite, they gobbled and buried what was the best by-hand HTML editor on the market. Back in the Dreamweaver 3 & 4 days, all that Javascript hoojimawaja was best left as an "Action". I didn't want to know what it did... Just if it looked nice when I resized my NN4 window.

It's all well and good to say "I code by hand", you probably also "charge by the hour", why then do you not also "carve on clay tablets"? This notion of "good old days" purity and perfection is just a waste of time. HTMLTidy exists, use it. Text editors with colour coding and brace matching exist, use them. (Using a Mac? Go buy CSSEdit! NOW GORRAMIT!!!) You think an iGoogle page that's 99% Javascript was hacked together by some purple-haired kid wearing roller skates, over the lunch hour? IDE's exist, use them.

Humans use tools. I don't need Eclipse, and I have long been of the growing opinion that NVU is not a viable option for professionals. Dreamweaver is a perfectly viable multipurpose tool that will never get it all right, and offers about three times more cruft than I need, but has enough time-saving features to make it worth the fraction of a suite bundle that I need to buy anyway... I have CS3 to play with now. Joy! I think Adobe will take DW to better places than GoLive, and they drastically improved Flash right out of the gate.

Dreamweaver templates have always been a terrible solution. Contribute ain't much better, but in some cases it's the only way to maintain strict control over users posting content without resorting to a CMS, and all the security troubles a CMS brings. I like that all these tools exist, even if I think they're (for the) stupid. What bothers me is the constant monopoly merging, reducing the choice. R.I.P. Homesite.

Cheers