Simply-Simpy || Scott Simpson Web Design » Scott

Who’s the Boss?

Scott — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 14:37:22 +0000

No, I am not referring to the quintessential ‘80s TV show of the same name — but rather the workplace conundrum of who has final say in questions of user experience, technology, and design. The obvious answer may be: “Well, d’uh — the person in charge of that department.” The UX boss is in charge of of UX, the technology boss is in charge of technology, and so forth. But — due to office politics and client ~~demands~~ relations, the roles tend to get blurred.
In an office that is driven by technology the limitations of that technology seemingly begin to limit the creativity of designers. I say seemingly because in order to be truly creative, one must design within the constraints of the medium. One culture with a very strong technological drive is Google. Google has made the conscious decision to let technology dictate design. Do more people click on the rounded corners vs. square corners? Then rounded it shall be.
While this works well for Google, it would seem extreme in a marketing setting where the idea is the crux of all that is pure and good. The question is however — should these creations be built at any cost? I dare say no, they shouldn’t. When designers fail to understand the technology they are designing for, it is the user that suffers. And if the user suffers so does the client with lowered conversion rates, traffic, and return visitors which results in lower overall profits.

Who’s the boss? The user is the boss. Design your websites for the user and success will follow.

When jQuery Mobile is not so good

Scott — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 00:43:17 +0000

So, don’t get me wrong. Jquery Mobile is awesome! But there is a time and place for every thing. When is a time for jQuery Mobile you may ask? The time is when you really want an out of the box solution. When the client is happy with slapping a header on the site and you are good to go. When is not a good time? When you want to create a custom mobile web site. Trying to customize jQuery Mobile is like herding greased-up monkeys in a snow storm. It is not fun, and you will feel the pain.
My best advice for a custom mobile site is: go about it in layers. First build a static mobile site that has some very simple functionality. You know the type — it goes from page to page, the layout changes slightly in portrait versus landscape mode, the browser bar gets hidden. AFTER, and only after this functionality is complete should you try to add a bunch of whiz-bang javascript ajax-based transitions and other non-crucial functionality that tries to mimic a native app. Otherwise you will just be building a pile of flaming poo.

Photoshop is the worst web design tool

Scott — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 00:16:17 +0000

I used to design websites using Fireworks — sometimes I used Illustrator. To me, they were easier to use and also performed a lot snappier than Photoshop. Fireworks also had some cool features like symbols, where you could turn a group of objects in to an editable symbol that could be used throughout the site. Then I was informed that Photoshop was really the standard, so I had better get to it. And I did. And that was a good thing — Photoshop has been the standard at both my current and previous places of employment. But, just because it is the standard, does that make it right?
My two biggest issues with Photoshop for web design are:
1. No paragraph styles. 2. No symbols.
Imagine setting all of your text at the proper size with a paragraph style for each H1, H2, and P tag — then being able to update every bit of text on your site by simply adjusting a paragraph style. Imagine turning all of your common elements such as headers and footers and into a symbol, then editing one instance of that symbol to affect change across all of your templates. Imagine seeing all of those templates at the same time (no turning off and on layers or layer comps) on ONE document across different artboards. This is Illustrator. I think I am going to give it a try for my next web design project.

Are you a Decorator or Designer?

Scott — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 02:56:01 +0000

One thing I hear a lot while working on the web is: “I like it! That design looks good”. Beauty is king. This type of comment implies that the design has met its goals by being pleasant to the eye. While being ‘pretty’ is important, does it really matter? What I would really like to hear is “I like it! That is an incredibly easy to use web page! Usability should be considered first, not last when designing and developing a website. Often it seems that ‘features’ are more important than making a clear, concise, usable site.

Some common usability mistakes:

1. Kitchen sink home page.
You know the one. The home page that lists EVERYTHING the company has to offer — the home page should set the tone for the entire site not be a collection of links.

2. Too many top-level navigation items.
The top-level navigation should be no more than 5-7 links for maximum scanability. There are some exceptions to this, Amazon has 13 top-level items for example. But it is safe to say most people are not designing sites as large as Amazon.com.

3. Overly complicated forms.
When generating sales leads or sign-up information there is no reason to ask 20 questions of your users. It is better to strike fast and get the lead before a user gets distracted or has second thoughts.

4. Too small of a font size.
Generally the body copy should be at least 12px for best readability. 13px is probably better. I see a lot of print designers designing websites with 10 and 11 point font. While this may be desirable for print design — it can be difficult to read on screen.

Remember, web design without good usability is merely decoration — and who wants to be a web decorator?

An Easy Fix for IE6 CSS Problems

Scott — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 14:37:07 +0000

Before I began development on this blog, I made the conscious decision not to support Internet Explorer 6. Why you ask? The the answer is simple — saving time. One less browser for me to test and potentially debug was a no-brainer. Even though I didn’t want to support IE6, I didn’t want the site to look ‘broken’ for those users. The solution was to use an IE 6 conditional to only send styles to browsers if they were not IE 6.

The code is as follows:

1
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In IE6, it looks like this:

Not pretty, but at least the content is readable.

I am sure there are some who think that I should support IE6 — that every site should fully support IE6. But to this I say: ‘No thanks’. Continued support of an almost 10 year old browser is a waste of time and money. Most projects are limited by budget, so we should spend our time wisely and continue to move the medium forward.

There is a new internet coming. An internet crafted through HTML 5 and CSS 3. An internet viewed on tablets and mobile devices — an internet where even Microsoft will be supporting these new technologies in their upcoming Internet Explorer 9.