Allchorn Blog

High levels of stress and a reasonably obvious truth have driven me to write this post. A rather corny title it may be, it’s pretty spot on to what this is all about. It all stems from the true nature of the internet, and the common misconceptions of what that true nature really is.

Defining The True Nature Of The Internet

Is it like print, where you design or typeset your way to a happy conclusion? Possibly fight a bit with colours and plate registration, but ultimately end up with something you can reproduce?

Or perhaps it’s like television where you produce a linear presentation of audio visual goodness?

Nope, it’s actually like both of those, but with more factors drawn into the mix which -in my opinion- closely resemble that of vehicle maintenance rather than some facet of any advertising aspect.

Am I nuts? Maybe, but hear me out.

The internet is a living breathing entity which has ins and outs. It is fed with information (text, video, files, images etc.) and it allows for this information to be extracted, viewed, manipulated, deleted and well… used.

With this interactive nature and the fact that it is constantly changing, there is always margin for error. There is always a loophole for malicious action. There is also the amazing opportunity for which the internet is used for at large and thats it’s main intent; facilitating greatly enhanced communication.

So How Is Website Design Like Motorcycle Maintenance?

Can I rephrase that to “Motorcycle Design, Production and Mantenance”? Sure I can. This is my blog!

The reason I see it this way is through my experience of designing, maintaining, developing, moving, deleting and administrating websites since 1999. All websites start somewhere. Maybe in the mind of an entrepreneur, or perhaps in the marketing department’s weekly board meeting. Regardless what the website’s inception was, it had a beginning, and from there it grew into what it is now.

Designing the website -if you’ve read anything I’ve written- doesn’t relate only to the pretty colour scheme you used and the frilly edges, but rather the the overall design. The proverbial engine behind the website (be that straight HTML, or a fully fledged Content Management System) as well as the page layouts, the structure and flow of information etc. It all needs to be “designed”. If not, you’re using someone else’s design (ready made software/solutions), but either way, it was or is designed by someone.

Production of a website can come at whatever phase the team or individual finds to be the most effective time to do so. Whether things are meticulously planned out with all the i’s dotted and all the t’s crossed, or if a single page objective document was drawn up and an evolutionary project was embarked on. It’s the same thing at the end of the day and the end result is subjective and up to those web “builders”.

Maintenance of a website. This is where things get interesting. Does the website maintain itself? Does a website fix itself when a human or non-human error causes something to go wrong. Does a website with user generated content work indefinitely without some form of moderation?

The answer to all of those questions is a resounding no. It does not. You can fake it. You can make it do some form of moderation and clean out naughty words, or go with the best hosting provider money can buy. At the end of the day, no the website will not stand the test of time, neither in looks (another subjective matter that) nor in it’s structure.

A motorcycle’s valves wear. It’s pistons grind up against the barrel and it’s constantly exposed to varying degrees of intensity of use and heat and cold.

Similarly, a website sits on a server. It’s visited by varying quantities of visitors. Information is pumped into it and drawn out of it and not only by humans. There are automated programmings scraping information from it. There are search engine spiders following links. There are spam bots posting anoying links to their Viagra sites.

Maybe your host is insufficient? You take it out of that provider’s warm comfy bedded engine mountings and plonk it into an unknown environment and things break. They need to be fixed. Folder permissions change and the engine’s fuel line is effectively clogged. The website slowly or quickly suffers and dies.

Okay, Enough Drama

You should now understand what I mean in my metaphoric comparison of Websites to Motorcycles, and if not, read it again. If you still think I’m wrong, then maybe I’m crazy, or you are.

There are other aspects to a website that aren’t mentioned above. Things like online marketing and SEO, optimising content for the web (believe it or not, you cannot copy and paste from Word without creating an invalid botch job of your site) or just keeping things fresh by tweaking colours, focal points, specials, announcements etc.

A new browser might come out and get very quickly adopted (Firefox as an example grew from nothing to almost a 30% market share). If your website doesn’t work in the new browser… are you willing to exclude 30% of your target audience?

Have a think. I reckon my point makes sense.

I’m busy writing about three articles concurrently. All of which lose my interest after sitting in front of them for longer than 10 minutes. I need to step back from them for a bit and this is why I’m writing this interim post. One is a piece on big brands with horrible websites, another is self defining article to try and put my thumb on who I am, and then there is a follow up of the first one showing outstanding websites.

While I write those, have a look at 37 Signals’ book entitled Getting Real. It truly is one for your bookmarks if you’re a programmer or designer, or even a client interested in having something developed or designed.

I came across the site after reading someone’s mention of 37signals‘ business model and subsequently followed the natural progression of link following. You know how it goes. “They have a book… cool, let’s check it out *click*. They have a PDF version, cool. $19 is fair. Ah, there is a paperback version too. Nice. They have a FREE version! *click*.” And this is where I ended up.

I found a section in chapter 2 particularly interesting. It basically states that budgets and timelines can be fixed in application development should be kept flexible. It makes sense to me that if you’re to launch a piece of software, rather make it with 5 solid, well rounded features than 10 badly thought out and issued ones. An excerpt:

If you can’t fit everything in within the time and budget allotted then don’t expand the time and budget. Instead, pull back the scope. There’s always time to add stuff later — later is eternal, now is fleeting.

A 100% free 16 chapter book on keeping things real in application design. A must have for any serious geek. I mean, Basecamp… who can argue that that was not built by designers and developers in the upper 99 percentile.

Being the fact that I am in the website design industry, this post relates first and foremost to that specific line of design, but some parallels can surely be drawn with other forms of design.

First and foremost, my favourite saying is:

“Design is not about making things pretty, but rather about making things work.”

I don’t know who first said that, but in my experience, it is the truth, and cannot be refuted ever. Even if your objective is to drive away sales (I don’t know why you’d do this), then if you designed with that purpose in mind, and it works, then well… it worked. Your design worked!

Content, Structure & Communication

I believe that designing websites should be focussed around your content. Creating content to suit your pre-imposed design is working backwards and counter productive.

Think about the message you are trying to portray. Yes, that is communication. Be it communication to the masses, communication to a small group of people, or even communication to one person; you are communicating.

Does your message come across clearly in a no-frills format? Can people readily and easily pick up on what you’re trying to say without a background image and frilly edges? If not, then your foundation for the design to come is made of squidgy, non-drying mud.

Think beyond aesthetics (the concept of beauty) and come back to “designing” your message. Be that in the form of visuals (either created or photographed visuals) and your all important copy (textual content).

Think what your prospective customer would need to instantly recognise your offering.

Designing a website also involves the choice of structure, be it a static site, one powered by a CMS or something else. You need to carry out the wireframing of the layout to achieve the best usability for your visitors as well as determining how things must work and the users will interact. Often this is an evolutionary process, and one which cannot be pre-determined.

The Finishing Process

Applying the visual finishing touches to a website in my eyes is a step -contrary to my calling it the finishing process- that can come in the middle or end, or even the beginning of the project.

Normally I don’t promote nor condone the design being number 1 on the list, but sometimes a project is visual design only, with little or no back end considerations. In this case, go ahead.

If your project requires more than one page, and perhaps some on-page changes like dynamic navigation etc, the number of design mockups would likely need to be in the hundreds if you wanted to show every conceiable state of the site.

In Conclusion

To sum up what my view is of design, is that it is a process in which frills are just icing on the cake. Placing all emphasis on how things look is incorrect thinking should you wish to have a resulting website that performs. Get your foundations right and then start doing some window dressing.