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

Old fashioned

[andy666]

I stick to html, since everyone can read it (mostly). And I hand code it, since most of the editors seem to make a real mess of the code, and sometimes I want to change it. Anyone else this old fashioned ?

Re:Old fashioned

[Mouse42]

Personally, I use Drupal to run my sites. Even though the content is stored in a database, and the site is run on PHP, I still have hand written my template files.

Sometimes, it's more efficient to go back to the basics :) I just created my first static site in three years the other day. It's a four page site, and the owner knows HTML rather well. It actually would have been more complicated for him to learn how to use Drupal to change the text on the site than it would be for him to edit the HTML pages directly.

And thats where a close integration with CSS comes in handy. The amount of HTML tags I needed were very minimal, and all of the "cool dodads" were created through merely CSS classes (like rounded corners). That way, the owner will likely make less mistakes while editing - quite the contrast from keeping track of a bunch of TR and TD tags!

Re:Old fashioned

[CastrTroy]

The point is, is that they don't want to make it possible. By making the resulting html not human readable, they lock you into using their application to edit it. So once you have hundreds of pages developed in dreamweaver, it's very hard to move away from using dreamweaver.

Re:Old fashioned

[kosmosik]

Well you didn't got me. I meant that doing HTML line-by-line style is old-fashioned. Currently we tend to output HTML elements via XML transformations and so on. Meaning that you do not hand code but the application code generates document nodes/tags automatically. Like (but this is oversimplyfied imagined presentation language).

echo "<title>"
echo $title
echo "<title>"

vs.

html_render_title($node.title)

The first one is prone to typos (as you type tags by hand), the other one not because function generates proper code in HTML without hand typing.

Hype and more hype

[virgil_disgr4ce]

I'll grant at any time that usability is the number one priority. But this kind of "backlash" *against* Web 2.0 technologies is misguided, and a kind of hype in itself. Technologies are tools--they can be used to good or bad effect, and you can't generalize about the tool by the sites that happen to use it.

How can Nielsen miss the HUGE advancements in usability that these technologies have granted us? Sites that are designed as applications -- say, gMail -- no longer (as of years ago) have to be restrained by a protocol that was NEVER intended to be used like an application! I swear, I'll never understand why people get all up in arms about technologies that make the web EASIER to use!

This appears to me to be the same kind of argument as "Style vs. Substance! Style is bad, mkay?" Yet in this case it's not even about style, but about tools that enable a far bigger range of usability than previously. What gives?

What I find...

[Otter]

What I found, first when most of the literate people here split for Multiply, again when I was offered a moderator spot on another 2.0'ish site, and with other sites since, is that there's now an asumption that users are already familiar with all the generic functionality of delic.io.ous, Flickr, Digg and the rest. No one ever explains how to use "tags" or stuff like that -- it's as taken for granted as clicking on hyperlinks.

The makers seem either unaware of or uninterested in users who aren't already knee-deep in their competitors.

Web 2.0 == Flash?

[Colonel Angus]

Sounds like Web 2.0 is just like Flash.

Everyone gets such a hardon trying to come up with new crazy new ways of doing things that have been done the same way since the dawn of the interwebs. They forget that they've been done that way for a reason... they work. People know what to expect. And they find themselves at ease and in a comfortable state when surfing within those parameters.

That's not to say there should be no innovation, but that innovation should make things easier to understand and use, not scare your customers away.

Avg experience declining

[sherriw]

I use a bunch of Firefox plugins to improve my browsing experience... but I recently was stuck using a computer with only IE. I had totally forgotten how many sites were obnoxious. I don't mind some reasonable advertising, but sites seem to be increasing the percent of the screen given to annoying animated/Flash ads, huge colourful ads in the middle of the article, etc.

The worst are the sites that underline every noun and if your mouse accidentally passes over one of those words, a big ad box pops up that you have to close. How did it ever occur to someone to make a site where you aren't even free to move your mouse around if you want to without your reading being interrupted?

It also seems like the big, rich companies are the worst offenders. Like they can afford to piss off visitors, and we'll just take it... 'cause you know MSN is such a great site. Yuk. Usability has been going downhill since forever.... blaming web 2.0 is barking up the wrong tree. Maybe try blaming the boom of web advertising.

Re:Jacon Nielsen

[virgil_disgr4ce]

it organizes the content well Are you kidding?

I'm serious--are you joking? There is almost NO hierarchy. All the data, and there's a lot of it, is basically on one or two visual layers. It's impossible to get an instant snapshot of the available content sections because the section headers scroll off ("below the fold"), and there's no top level navigation. Section headings are the same size as the body type, so I can't easily discern where sections begin and end (he could have just used separate divs for each section, so there'd be a gutter between colored backgrounds).

You and Nielsen seem to promote this idea that having no sense for design (information OR graphic) somehow actually *increases* usability. I'm all for usability first, fast downloads, etc., but we have to stop and admit that design IS important.

Nielsen a sellout

[zakkie]

Nielsen is a sellout and has no credibility. Shortly after releasing his "Flash is 99% bad" work, Nielsen took money from Macromedia, and suddenly it's not so bad:
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20001029.html

Usability includes being able to access the content without using proprietary software, Jakob!

Re:Some explain this to me?

[ObiWanKenblowme]

Despite the constant references to him and his ideas, I think Nielsen is highly overrated. 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. Good design is about conveying an idea or information cleanly and clearly, and often "making it look pretty" can go a long way toward that goal. More often than not, "usability" seems to just mean "get rid of the images."

Moving Target

[The Nipponese]

I think the problem with Nielsen's argument is that what he considers the "basics" have changed over the last 10 years. As an anal graphic designer AND a huge MySpace fan, all this complaining about usability (or lack of) is just "old design" snobbery. Eventually people have to wake up and realize that just because it's ugly doesn't mean it's diffucult or 'not fun' to use.

Bottom line is that MySpace, to my knowledge, is the ONLY "web 2.0" site that allows (hacky) CSS and HTML to be manipulated by users at all levels. People who, 3 years ago, could barely turn a computer on are now blogging, posting pictures, e-mailing (albeit through the MySpace messaging service), and learning to write hypertext tags, specifically because of MySpace.

IMHO, in the "new" consumer-based web, the functionality IS the design, and it is NOT useless.