A reply to Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, July 23, 2000: End of Web Design
Jacob Nielsen's call to "tone down individual appearance and distinct design" displays extreme short sightedness and narrow vision.
Most of Mr. Nielsen's points are only valid if we conceived the Internet from the view point of Information Architecture. As it stands now finding anything on most web sites is a virtual nightmare. This is even more true on sites such as Yahoo, Amazon, and Microsoft (I have yet to find what I was looking for on Microsoft's web site in under a half hour). Being bombarded by multiply options in boring blue text links, does not in my opinion spell good web design. What it spells is lazy web design. The message I get from such design style is they just don't care! Add to that the fact it never fails to take multiple click to find anything of value only adds to reinforce that message. Yes, I agree, people spend allot of time on these sites, mostly trying to find what they are looking for. And why do they go back? Mostly out of frustration and fear. "If Yahoo is being held up to the world as an example of good design, my gosh those other sites must be worse and more difficult to find information on. Well I already invested an hour of my time just finding this, I think I'll bookmark it and not look anyplace else."
If people are spending more time on other sites, maybe it was because they were able to quickly navigate your web site, find the information they needed and moved on with their life. I for one don't see that as a negative, but then again I don't sell advertisements on my web sites.
The Mobile Internet will require that site/information navigation be re-thought. With any luck some of the solutions will flow back to the big screen Internet and eliminate the maze of options that is forced upon a viewer when they arrive at a web site.
If we look at the Internet outside of the frame work of Information Architecture, What is the web evolving into? In this area, Mr. Nielsen did not state anything new, that anyone with some basic design sense does not already know.
Yes,navigation should be simple and straight forward. Zero learning time should always be the designer's goal.
Yes, if you are going to provide the same information over multiple devices, or a network, then your navigation should be standardized (for that system).
But doing that will not sell advertising, so why do it?
I did 20 years in the real world of grayness. Twenty years of living on a haze-gray ships, with everyone dressed in denim blue, where sometimes the only way you knew who you were talking to was to look at their name tag. I have no desire to see the Internet look like a white background, black text with blue text links version of the Navy.
Information is fine, information is great, but if we were to except Mr. Nielsen's version of the Internet, we might as well just embrace the vision of the 6th Generation concept where everyone could type in their question in the morning and when they returned latter a pile of printed information would be waiting for them. In short, why have the Internet as a visual medium in the first place.
The point I think that is being overlooked by Mr. Nielsen and Microsoft's Windows-biased .NET tools, is that the Internet is more then the market place for a few corporations. Take a moment and visit this National Geographic web site. Now close your eyes and visualize it with no graphics, a white background, black text and blue text links. Who would visit?
The Internet is a place for learning and for expressing one's self. For the first time in human history anyone can put their art work, their music or their prose and poetry out for not just their friends and family to view, but for the whole world to view. The opinion of Mr. Nielsen and Microsoft's Windows-biased .NET tools would put an end to this. In short the message they are communicating is, if it 'aint big business it don't belong on the Internet.
If the public truly believed in the future that Mr. Nielsen and Microsoft's Windows-biased .NET tools are attempting to push on us, we would all be viewing the Internet on green screen monitors using text only browsers. As we are not, then in my opinion these views hold very little water for the majority of the Internet's users. Variety is what makes the Internet what it is today, not sameness.
Parker Torrence
Graphic Designer