The First Step…

If you’re like me you’ve read a lot over the last few years on Web 2.0 designs, are they in are they out and how should I design my web page today.
I continue to do my duty as a designer by checking out the latest designs on this CSS Gallery site and trying to stay abreast of the latest fads.
What I’m starting to see though is that your typical, highly stylized pages done all up in their flashiest Web 2.0 design doesn’t
work for many web sites. Even now I hesitate in bringing this up as it feels a bit like saying the emperors’ new clothes aren’t all that spectacular.

Now before you start pulling out the firing squad, I think there are a lot of design principles of Web 2.0 that work well on any site.
It just seems that the most common examples tend to be on the artistic side and are a bit light on content.
I’ve found this is especially difficult to do with eCommerce based sites.

A Little Introspection

To look at this lets use the ever popular Amazon.com to review some of the typical Web 2.0 design principles and see how they measure up and if
that’s good or bad.

1. Simplicity

Many typical Web 2.0 designs seem to abound in white-space and almost a minimalist feel to them. However when you come to a hefty site like Amazon who has a
lot of “stuff” they need to get on the page this doesn’t always work too well. I think this is pretty typical of most eCommerce sites that stick
with the old left hand listing of products and right hand display of results. Having said that I think Amazon has usually done pretty well with keeping the noise
level down and providing a streamlined shopping experience. For the sheer size of Amazon I’d be pretty hard pressed to say that they fit into the simplicity
category.

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2. Central & 2 Column Layouts

While it’s one of my favorite layouts the standard Web 2.0 central layout is again missing from Amazon.com. Again Amazon just has so much to display that I
think it would be an inefficient use of the space to center and reduce the number of columns. I beginning to feel a bit like the first time I reviewed the source
code on Google’s main search page. For the lack of content and the size of Google I naively thought Google would surely validate their code. Ohhhh no, was I wrong.
So now that my hopes and dreams are dashed I’ll recover a little from Google’s shortcomings and Amazons apparent fauxpaus as well.

Maybe I just need to readjust my thinking a bit and realize that not all Web 2.0 design principles work in all cases. I think it behooves us as designers to not
try to push a square peg into a round hole on this either. We have to find a nice balance between making a site another showing in our gallery versus giving the customer
what they want and what they need. I think this is a constant battle we face in whether or not to implement the latest design strategy or technology at the expense of our
employers and customers.

3. Distinct Top Sections/Headers

Now this is one of my favorite parts of Web 2.0 designs. Seeing all the cool and creative ways people come up with to start out their pages. It’s the first
thing someone sees when visiting a page and one section that can be difficult to master.

Again if we look at Amazon.com we see we have to make room for the logo, the welcome or hello message, advertisements, primary and secondary navigation, a search
bar and shopping cart buttons. A quick look will make you appreciate the quality work the people at Amazon.com do in dealing with such a high-traffic web site.
I think a quick review of just about any of the CSS design galleries will leave you hard pressed to find an example where they’ve fit all the pieces into a
distinct header. Now I’m more than open to someone showing me wrong on this one as I’d think that would defiantly be an example we could review and
learn something from. I’m just not sure how many of them there are. By my account Amazon.com is 0-3 on the Web 2.0 design checklist.

4. Simple Navigation

This is again one of my favorite Web 2.0 principles because it really allows us to rework the hierarchy of a web site and get down to the most important items the
web site contains. However if I again look at this from an eCommerce perspective I find myself coming up short. I’d love to reduce most sites to four or
five main topics and not have to even worry about secondary navigation, but with all of the categories on a typical shopping cart like Amazon it seems nearly
impossible to do. Amazon has 11 main categories and 72 sub-categories hanging off of those. I ask you, how in the world
do you make simple navigation out of that? Amazon has chose to use a standard slide-out multi-tiered menu system, but I’d love to see how other designers would
tackle this mammoth task. Make simple navigation out of 83 links. I think one solution many people are coming up with are layered menus.

I think jetblue has a great example of this on their web site for their flight search form. They have at least four dozen airports that they serve and instead of
using a typical drop-down select control they’ve used a hidden layer that contains the valid origins and destinations. This is just one alternative to the typical
tiered menu when there is no implied higherarchical relationship between the options. Now is where we breath a collective sigh of relief and thank the developers who
gave us our favorite JavaScript libraries. On three everyone, “Thank you JQuery!”

JetBlue is another great business that has thrived in it’s Brick-and-morter efforts as well as being cutting edge when it comes to airline reservation systems,
yet they don’t seem to be adhering to many of the Web 2.0 guidelines. Could it be that many of the guidelines just don’t translate well into shopping cart
or reservation systems or have we just not come up with a better way to reprent these now somewhat legacy systems?

5. Bold Logos

Man, am I starting to see a pattern hear. Let’s take a look at some of the most well known logos around.

Who doesn’t know and love Coca-Cola, McDonalds and Nike? Around the globe most people will be able to quickly recognize these brands.
Not very Web 2.0-ish are they. Maybe they just haven’t keept up with the times. Maybe Coca-Cola needs a cute Illustration or the McDonalds arch could be in a
fatter, more bubbly font, or I know how a bout a reflective shadow on the Nike swoosh. Hey, that one might not be bad…let me think. Maybe not.
Now I’m just playing the devil’s advocate on this but can you argue with success. Some may say yes, we should do so frequently to constantly
reevaluate our image and change with the times. Other may so no that good design is timeless and we shouldn’t change our message. Personally I’m on
Socrates side. He has one of my favorite sayings not just for code and design but life in general. “The unexamined life is not worth living.”
Tell me what you think.

Today we’ve looked a five of the standard Web 2.0 design principles and they’re effectiveness with some web sites.
Don’t get me wrong there are many aspects of design I think these new principles have helped us with but I just don’t
think they work everywhere and I’m looking for what does. I hope you’ll join me as we talk about this and other principles in future blog episodes.
If you think I’ve brought up some valid points post a comment. If you think I’m a complete idiot and don’t know what I’m talking about
let me know that too, but don’t just flame. Back up your argument and give us examples so that we may all learn from your experience.