Dear Gunnar,
In rethinking the role of graphic designers in website design there appears
some benefit standing back a little .
Three points stand out:
1. Web design is taught to and practiced as design by professionals and
students in Management Information Systems (MIS), Information Systems(IS),
Computer Studies, ICT, software professionals, EBusiness MBAs, multiple
fields of Engineering, Artists, multiple Social Science professions,
Multimedia professionals, film-makers, journalists - and graphic designers.
The assumption that web design is primarily an issue of graphic design is
not obvious.
2. Most of the web-design in the world today comprises database-driven
websites in which the graphic appearance is managed by a suite of rules;
where there are no webpages; and where content is assembled, formatted and
presented on the fly in an interactive manner that also involves aligning
the rules with the properties of the appliance on which it is viewed. The
display of the website is also automatically reformatted depending on the
current state of content being displayed (i.e. columns may be added or
removed, line lengths changed, font sizes adjusted etc on the fly depending
on the interactions between different content elements)
3. You hit the nail with your reference to AI-driven websites. For some
years, this has been commonplace. Database-driven websites have for many
years had a simple AI engine to manage the moment by moment formatting and
reformatting of the appearance of content and users' interaction with the
website. This AI-driven process identifies the viewing appliance
characteristics, the structure of the multiple content elements (and
software interventions) being presented on screen and provides a different
set of formatting rules for the display engine to format the content on
that appliance.
The question is, where does the graphic designer contribute to these kinds
of website design? What is their best role?
For middle-scale database-driven websites (which is what I'm most familiar
with), the appearance of the content is managed by a collection of CSS rules
collated into a 'template'. Contributing to (rather than designing) this
template is probably the main point of input for a graphic designer in these
kinds of websites (which are apparently around half of the web). The formal
definitions of rule and formatting structures by which that 'visual
styling' is translated into displays for a variety of circumstances is
at different level of design. In addition is the composition of the
information structure and its navigation and there there appears to be
another contributory role for graphic designers. My experience has been
that this is not necessarily, however, a strength for graphic designers who
specialise in visual aesthetics particularly when content items are in the
thousands with many different types, and menu navigation that may involve
hundreds of possible choices by the user.
To be a design 'control freak' in this web design environment means to
control the rules that define the creation of lower level rules and
automated decision-making processes that shape how content is assembled on
screen. This is very different from the idea of tightly defining the
aesthetic appearance of a fixed web page.
A second interesting question is at what stage in a database-driven web
design project is best to seek input and draw on the skills of graphic
designers? My feeling, and experience over the last few years, is that it
works best if graphic designers join the design team after the website
organisation, structure, navigation and content has been created and the
baseline usability has been settled, i.e. when the website is already up
and running. I'd welcome your thoughts on this.
Best wishes,
Terry
____________________
Dr. Terence Love, FDRS, AMIMechE, PMACM, MISI
Senior Lecturer, Design
Researcher, Social Program Evaluation Research Unit
Edith Cowan University, Perth, Western Australia
Mob: 0434 975 848, Fax +61(0)8 9305 7629, [log in to unmask]
Senior lecturer, Dept of Design
Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia
Director, Design Out Crime Research Centre
Honorary Researcher, Institute of Entrepreneurship and Enterprise
Development
Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK
____________________
-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Gunnar
Swanson
Sent: Sunday, 30 October 2011 1:12 AM
To: Dr Terence Love
Subject: Re: The shoemaker'c children: designers who produce lousy web pages
On Oct 29, 2011, at 10:43 AM, Terence Love wrote:
> Web design problems can be more 'wrong design profession' rather than a
> font size issue.
>
> It occurs when web design is done by print-based graphic designers.
Terry,
Early limits on the visual display of websites led to a couple of distinct
approaches--Jakob Nielsen-type asceticism and David Siegel "Killer Website"
jury rigging. The former remains mired in a general suspicion of Dionysian
terrorism (either the fear that someone, somewhere, might be having a good
time or the somewhat more rational worry that party goers might leave the
hotel room trashed.) The latter was undermined by advancing standards but
not before many people developed the habit of relying on problematic
alternatives, the site that started this conversation being an example.
Print designers do have some problems fitting into web design. (For my take
on that subject ten years ago, see
http://www.gunnarswanson.com/writing/WebVsDesign.pdf) We tend to be control
freaks in a medium that only allows control in odd ways. Designing for the
web is, in many ways, like pushing a rope. (Some of the realizations of web
design would serve us graphic designers well in other media, too.)
The various attempts to make web design WYSIWYGish have ranged in quality of
interface and quality of output. Part of this is because some technical
choices are so fundamental to basic visual design decisions in a way that is
much less common in print design. This makes print development application
paradigms unsuitable to the task.
I've long thought that this is a place for an AI-driven application for
design. When someone sets a width, the software would ask "What do you want
to have happen if someone opens her browser wider? Does the window stay the
same size, remain proportional. . .?" Or when someone does something that
relies on specific browsers, it could say "What do you want to do about the
39% of web users who will not be able to see this?" When someone sets links
that are not described in text, it could say "Blind people will not be able
to use your site because you didn't bother with tags. You client could be
heading for a lawsuit (as well as, at very least, joining you for a long
stay in purgatory.)" When someone makes forms that only work in Windows it
could say "Warning: Your location has been sent to Gunnar Swanson. He is
coming with six of his most thuggish friends and intends to do permanent
physical harm to you."
It is worth pointing out that websites promoting graphic design programs
should, like any other piece of promotional design, reflect their subject
matter and satisfy their audience. One thing that would be as pathetic as a
design school website acting like it was designed by a graphic designer is
one looking like it was not.
Gunnar
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Gunnar Swanson Design Office
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Greenville NC 27858
USA
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