Wandering the web I came accross an old essay, Web Woes
“My erstwhile students found themselves doing more and more static, formulaic stuff and being less and less happy. If Jacob Nielsen had his way they’d be doing nothing that resembled design and a lot of clients are listening to what Nielsen has to say. Is mundane and pedestrian work under the flag of “usability” the future of the web?”
I thought this essay was going be another “bash-Jakob Nieson” “flash-intros allow us to express ourselves as artists” piece. But no. It starts out bemoaning the conformity of websites, and points out designers have found themselves marginalized. “Graphic designers often find themselves in the role of visual dishwashers for the Information Architect chefs” He goes on to challenge designers to rediscover and reinvent the medium.
And in the end, Gunnar asks some great questions about the future of design online. I highly recommend people read this article, and see if they can come up with answers to some of his questions:
“If one can’t fall back on the joy of the object because the point is another’s experience, what does that do to our joy in the process? Does all of this require a new kind of designer? How do we make sure that doesn’t mean a designer in name only? Does doing meta design–designing what will happen when a database meets a unique request generating a different (and unpredictable) “object” 250,000 times a day–require a different mind than that of a graphic designer?”
If you’re not a designer, it doesn’t hurt to put yourself in their shoes. In these changing market conditions and with technological change never slowing those shoes may soon be yours.