A while back I received an email from a friend with a link and this quoted statement; "the most professional web design firm in the world".Ok, fair enough. This friend is a web designer whose work and opinion I respect (still do, despite what you'll read here). Anyway, I followed the link and saw the figure on the right.
That's a screenshot of what appeared in my browser. You'll notice all the browser like stuff (FireFox) and right in the middle is...ah...this company's opening screen. I wasn't sure and thought my friend was having fun with me. I emailed back:
"You're kidding, right?
"Joseph
"PS) God, is that food for a column or what?"
My friend's response caught me off guard.
"Actually I loved this site. Not for your biz, natch, but conceptually and stylistically it's so refreshing, and the guy clearly has great Flash skills. So many sites look and feel the same,same,same. It's nice to see something so different."
I want to emphasize that I trust my friend's judgement on things. This also gave me great insight into how differently designers think. It really caught me now that I'm talking with designers and developers regarding the "Bad Joseph, No Cake" posts.
I couldn't read anything on this site aside from the company's name and the "the most professional web design firm in the world" logo. If there were instructions, I didn't see them. If there was sound, I didn't know it. If there were action items, I couldn't find them. If there was animation, it wasn't animating.
And I still believe what my friend wrote is accurate from their point of view. And I know my screen and related settings could be throwing this company's presentation off...
And that's my point. The more your design requires specific things enabled, specific settings activated, specific this and that that you have no control of, the more likely you are to limit your audience. All of this reminds me what one of NextStage's early adopters told his people;
"Well, I personally think this web site looks like [crap], and believe it or not, I don't care about that, nor do I care about any design theory. What I do care about is that everybody who visits this site thinks it looks like [crap], too. The information I have tells me that it needs to have less of this and more of that. Either you make that happen, or I'll find someone who can. This isn't a showcase for your alleged talent, it's a business tool."
More crap to follow along these lines, I'm sure...
Please contact NextStage for information regarding presentations and trainings on this and other topics.
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I'll be speaking at the San Francisco April '07 Emetrics Summit on Quantifying and Optimizing the Human Side of Online Marketing on May 7, 2007. Come on by and say hello.
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