Wow! What a first day. From creating table-less sites using CSS, to calling on XML to populate your content, to the how and why of blogging, it has been a whirlwind of information and there are still two days left.
I want to try and focus my first thoughts on the keynote speaker for the beginning of the conference, Jeffrey Veen.
For those of you who don't recognize the name, Jeffrey Veen is the founder of
hotwire.com,
webmonkey.com and runs his own company
adaptivepath.com.
His focus Tuesday was on
usability and going beyond what we now consider usability standards. Along with the need to anticipate the users’ experience, we need to keep in mind the full spectrum of clients when designing a site.
On one hand you have the company you are designing for with their list of needs. They want to:
Sell more stuff
Increase profit
and develop a stronger Brand Awareness
On the other hand you have the end user. While the company wants to achieve their goals, the end user has a completely different set of goals:
Surf for information
Find the best price
and do everything without putting a lot of thought into it
Unfortunately the end user doesn't care about profit increases or brand awareness like the company does. That is where the challenge lies. While we have to create for our client, we have to create a usable site for the end user as well.
Some of the main components Jeff focused on were navigation and accessibility.
He made several key points when discussing navigation. The fact that when looking at the same selection of items, some people see colors while others see shapes; creating the point that while you see it one way, your audience may see it another and you need to take that into account when creating a sites navigation. Another example was that of Coke. What do you call Coke? Do you say soda, or pop, or Coke, or cola? This type of thought needs to be placed into how you word content and navigation. For example, a company may use the term "Flibity Gibit" within the organization when referring to widgits. But if you put Flibity Gibits in your navigation to lead people to what they know as widgits, are you making your site usable to the end user? While it works well for the company, it doesn't help with the usability for the end user; thus causing lost revenue and brand awareness for the company even though it makes perfect sense to them.
His other main focus was on accessibility, He used the example of comparing the use of JavaScript in a web site to steps leading into your store. When working online you need to take into account the issues of end users accessing sites when things like JavaScript are turned off in a browser or the viewer does not have the latest Flash plug-in. You are telling the consumer or end user, “If you don't have JavaScript turned on you can't use my site.” While that may be fine online, what if you had a brick and mortar storefront with a set of steps to the door? Are you going to tell the guy in the wheelchair that he can't shop your store unless his legs work? One of these examples would end with a court date.
His other points showed that as the web continues to develop, the real challenges in designing are going to be around using plain language to convey the clients message to the end user instead of using corporate jargon that is so frequently found in sites; and Jeff emphasized the need to focus on growth design. Designing sites that maintained the usability while maintaining a format that would allow for corporate or client growth,
Well I am about to jump into day two of this great conference. I will try to keep you informed as to what is covered and any new issues in future development. Today is all about Macromedia! Yeah!!!!!
Originally Posted by Scott
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