If you work with a client long term or are part of their internal team chances are you will see a number of redesigns of a site.
Over the years I have come to question why we constantly redesign things every few years. It’s usually a change in directional branding, a facelift. As if a website is just a fashion accessory that must be changed as the trend of the season passes by.
Problem is to often I see the same mistakes being made time and time again. The same old issues reoccur, as the central cause; lack of audience conversation and engagement is ignored.
There is no doubt content is important, no doubt it’s in fact more important than any design. It’s the primary thing that people come to a website for – the content.
So you would expect new sites to come out with perfect content.
Well we know it’s not the way, still we have websites with crap content.
All the other boxes are ticked, the design just works perfectly, there is a distinct visual experience when you arrive on the site. Even the information structure and labeling allows you to get to the right information.
Time and time again we tell ourselves that the best designs are the simple ones. That the best services are the ones that are clear concise, simple and direct to the point.
Often in our goals to make things simple and easy to use we will remove all the clutter. However sometimes we also remove all the little things that can make a design shine. That special attention to details that tells you the designer cares about the product or service in question.
Well on Christmas eve 2010 I was reminded of this in two surprising ways. Both of these reminders came in the form of parcels.
