henrikharsbo.dk

Dangerous Web 2.0

Always controversial Jacob Nielsen has issued a warning with his news letter Alertbox today: Web 2.0 can be dangerous.

I think he is right in most of the argument but wonder if web 2.0 is really the bad guy here. His points basically drill down to the fact that you should always design a web site with a good deal of user-centricity. But doesn't this go for any web site out there.

There's one really quirky thing about Jacob's post... He puts (rough) percentages on how much web 2.0 infusion that might  benefit different types of user experience:

• Informational/Marketing website (whether corporate, government, or non-profit): 10%
• E-commerce site: 20%
• Media site: 30%
• Intranets: 40%
• Applications: 50%

But how do you measure a web 2.0 feature? And when do you know when you have say 10% of web 2.0 on any given site?

With A Little Help From Google

Danish front runner ad agency WDP (also known as NetPeople) has drawn the conclusion that Google rules. Thus they have centered their site totally around Google searches. Take a look at www.wdp.dk

I see where they are going with this approach. Linking to Google search results about their work is a nifty, no nonsense way of showing potential clients that they know what the web is all about, namely search.

Still, a list of search results is a pretty naked promotion of site content and the over all design is pretty horrible in all its 'Googleness'.

That leaves me stranded between praising the concept as a nouvelle design idea and downing it for it's cheap looking design and total lack of structure.

Cult Brand

How to make a cult brand of beer? Well, these Belgian monks seem to have the recipe.

First of all: Brew a damn good beer and sell it by appointment only. Sell the beer once a month and limit the pr. customer quota to two cases.

Give the beer an fairly odd name and refrain from labeling the bottles.

You'll have beer connoisseurs from around the globe lining up to get their hands on the stuff.

;-)

Via Church Of the Customer

The Nature of Good Design

Over at A List A Part Jeffrey Zeldman has some interesting thoughts on the nature of good web design.

"Although a great site design is completely individual, it is also a great deal like other site designs that perform similar functions. The same is true of great magazine and newspaper layouts, which differ from banal magazine and newspaper layouts in a hundred subtle details. Few celebrate great magazine layouts, yet millions consciously or unconsciously appreciate them, and nobody laments that they are not posters."

I think Jeffrey is spot on. Innovative web design is not characterized by fantastic fonts or groundbreaking css use. However there still seems to be an agenda (among web communicators too) to kick web design for not being as open to design creativity as print design. But web design shouldn't try to emulate print design. I agree with Jeffrey Zeldman who writes:

"The inexperienced or insufficiently thoughtful designer complains that too many websites use grids, too many sites use columns, too many sites are “boxy.” Efforts to avoid boxiness have been around since 1995; while occasionally successful, they have most often produced aesthetically wretched and needlessly unusable designs."