The WebCommons philosophy of web design, and a “formula for website health”
Posted on December 4, 2009 by Steve Magruder in Web Development Practices, WebCommons InformationWhile revamping the WebCommons About page recently, I realized that I hadn’t ever really expressed what my company’s web design philosophy was.
So, I just took myself through a thought exercise, trying to drum up my guiding experiences and methodology for approaching my web work. After 15 years of tinkering with websites, certainly I could think of a way of relaying this in a way where most anyone, especially potential clients, could understand what I’m driving at. A true challenge, I thought at first, but I made myself do it.
The strange thing was that the words that formed this philosophy practically wrote themselves. In many ways, I just repeated what I say to myself all the time when working on various web projects.
I broke down the philosophy into three parts:
- A beginning, overarching thought about proper web design, which can be spread like a meme;
- A bunch of statements that undergird the overarching thought, lending significant but not overwhelming detail;
- And finally, a “formula for website health”. This is where I distill everything I said before into a symbolic equation, that if followed closely by professional practitioners, should produce very well-designed, more potentially successful websites.
Here’s my overarching thought about web design:
At the outset, web design, like any visual functional design, is about controlling the “flow of the eyes.” In the long run, web design is about capturing the ongoing interest, if not soul, of a significant many who visit the website. Period.
And here’s the distilled WebCommons formula for website health:
Website Health =
Eye Control + Obvious Navigation + Convenience Functions + Simplicity
+ Modesty + Performance + Coherent Style – Nonsense
Check out the new page entitled The WebCommons Web Design Philosophy to read the undergirding statements in between.
What do you think of WebCommons’ web design philosophy, and the formula for website health? If you are a web developer, what is your design philosophy? Disagreement is welcome. Philosophical differences in web development are the norm, and we can all learn a lot from these differences.
Note: In case you’re wondering, I didn’t include “Fresh, Compelling Content” in the formula because I see this as the purview of the website owner, not the designer. A designer doesn’t create the content, unless it’s their own website they’re designing. It’s not a “formula for website success”, which is part good content, part sufficient marketing, and part good luck.
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Could you blog about “Eye Control” and it’s methods? Maybe give a few more examples?
Paul, thank you very much for the idea. That’s definitely a great topic to write a post about, and I do plan on expanding upon various aspects of this post. I just wanted to lay out my design philosophy in a very straightforward way for easy absorption, as my audience is web design clients in addition to web designers.
Like many aspects of design, eye control is something I think about nearly constantly. It’s also something talked about fairly regularly on web usability sites. I have gotten the most interesting information from reading Jakob Nielsen’s ideas and views on the subject.
That reminds me… I need to add his site to my “Favorite Web Dev Sites” link list.