Ken and all,
I find that most of what Gerry McGovern says is not terribly new.
Perhaps I have been around too long!
But the lack of any relationship between design awards and the
effectiveness of the design in use seems to have been commented on by
many.
In my own field of communication and information design, there is a
long history of things winning awards and not working. I seem to
remember seeing comments on this in architecture and product design too.
I realise that the area of web design is relatively new, but the
issues are not.
Am I missing something?
David
--
blog: www.communication.org.au/dsblog
web: http://www.communication.org.au
Professor David Sless BA MSc FRSA
Director • Communication Research Institute •
• helping people communicate with people •
Mobile: +61 (0)412 356 795
Phone: +61 (0)3 9489 8640
60 Park Street • Fitzroy North • Melbourne • Australia • 3068
On 15/10/2006, at 7:23 AM, Ken Friedman wrote:
> Dear Colleagues,
>
> An entertaining and informative article on web site from
> the current issue of Gerry McGovern's newsletter, New Thinking.
>
> Gerry is one of my favorite writers on web design. His newsletter
> comes once a week, and it's always worth reading. His site is worth
> visiting at
>
> http://www.gerrymcgovern.com
>
> You can subscribe to the newsletter free at
>
> mailto:[log in to unmask]
>
> Yours,
>
> Ken Friedman
>
> --
>
> 5 PERCENT OF YOUR WEBSITE DELIVERS AT LEAST 25% OF YOUR VALUE.
> DO YOU KNOW WHICH 5 PERCENT? FIND OUT HOW
> http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/mcgovern-carewords.htm
>
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> WHY AWARD-WINNING WEBSITES ARE SO AWFUL
>
> Practical and functional websites rarely win prizes for design
> but they do win sales and make profits.
>
> Recently, I did a masterclass on web sales with about 50 Danish
> web managers. I gave them a list of issues and asked them to
> choose the most important ones for them. The top 5 issues for
> these managers were: Increase sales, Customer-focused,
> Usability, Completing the sale, Serving customers better.
>
> Then I asked them to look at the list again, and this time
> choose the issues that were of least importance to them. These
> were: Credit card fraud, More use of Flash, Award-winning
> website, Wow factor, More animation.
>
> The Danes (and other Scandinavians) are probably the most
> sophisticated web practitioners I have had the pleasure to deal
> with. When I deal with countries that are at the bottom of the
> curve when it comes to web adoption and ecommerce expertise,
> award-winning websites driven by Flash and wow factors tend to
> be top of the agenda.
>
> "I no longer enter my agency's layouts in the contests by the
> art director's societies, for fear that one of them might be
> disgraced by an award," David Ogilvy wrote in his 1963 seminal
> book, Confessions of an Advertising Man. This legend of
> advertising stated that "I wage war on art-directoritis, the
> disease which reduces advertising campaigns to impotence."
>
> Inspired by David Ogilvy's wisdom, I decided to visit
> Ogilvy.com. There I was presented by another quote from the
> great man: "You aren't advertising to a standing army, you are
> advertising to a moving parade." And right underneath that
> quote, Ogilvy.com is boasting about how it has just won 13
> awards.
>
> In fact, rarely have I come across a more vain, conceited
> homepage. In about 110 words, the name Ogilvy (or Ogilvy &
> Mather) is used over 20 times. Other phrases include "our work"
> and "what we do".
>
> Nathan Shedroff recently gave a talk at User Interface 11, where
> he asked the audience to name areas of life where good design
> has made a real impact. (Nathan is the co-author of a book on
> experience design called Making Meaning.) Design innovations
> such as wireless, voting systems, nutrition fact sheets,
> starting a car, were mentioned.
>
> Nathan mused that they could spend an hour mentioning really
> important design innovations and have a very long list. In his
> opinion, nothing on this list would have won a design award.
> Nathan showed an image of the iPod, that he described as a white
> block with rounded corners. Absolutely functional design. Just
> like the Google homepage.
>
> The Danes understand that a website needs to be designed for the
> customer, not for the organization, and certainly not for the
> web team. The most dangerous thing that web professionals can do
> is assume that what they really care about is what their
> customers really care about.
>
> The Web is a functional, practical place. A great website drives
> the customer to act. It uses clear, substantial language, rather
> than clever, meaningless words. To quote David Ogilvy again:
> "When Aeschines spoke, they said, 'How well he speaks.' But when
> Demosthenes spoke, they said, 'Let us march against Philip.' I'm
> with Demosthenes."
>
> The shiny surface wins awards. Real substance wins customers.
>
> Gerry McGovern
> mailto:[log in to unmask]
>
> SUBSCRIBE TO NEW THINKING (It's free!)
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> 5 PERCENT OF YOUR WEBSITE DELIVERS AT LEAST 25% OF YOUR VALUE.
> DO YOU KNOW WHICH 5 PERCENT? FIND OUT HOW
> http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/mcgovern-carewords.htm
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>
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> NEW THINKING NEW THINKING NEW THINKING NEW THINKING
> By Gerry McGovern - http://www.gerrymcgovern.com
> *****************************************************************
> October 16, 2006 - Volume 11 Number 39
> *****************************************************************
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