The Smoke Requirement
2005.07.06
Enough and more books, articles and blog posts have been written on how important it is to capture user requirements. Still more have been written on how to design the user experience so that information is provided as efficiently as possible, with minimum hassle and zero frustration to the user. It may work for Google, Amazon, Blogger and your Clients, but for some websites, hazy is the way to go.
I was “hired” to design a very important website a few months ago. I didn’t charge a cent for the work, as it was for a worthy cause to provide relief to the victims of a national disaster. It had to be done very quickly (the site went live in 3 days.) The design was intentionally kept simple: the vital information was provided upfront, and the home page had pointers to all important areas of the site. Not a single decorative image was used. And as usual, the code was lean, clean and valid, and the site was as accessible as I could ever make. After the launch, updates and support was also provided free.
My creation has now been replaced by a typical Sri Lankan website (i.e. Piece of Shit). I don’t want to go in to details - think pre-2000 and you know what I’m talking about. Yes, it’s scary when 1994 attacks.
Since the revelation of this rather embarassing change, I have been thinking what drives such decisions. The failure of the simple design can be attributed to one fault of mine: failing to understand the “smoke requirement”.
No matter how much they say they want to inform people, some corporate and government types have an inherent inability to make things transparent. For them, the design should make things blurry; leave room for speculation; drive the user off the site ASAP. Designers should be able to understand this ironically hidden requirement, and create solutions accordingly. Or avoid such clients like <table>s.
13 Comments
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indi
July 6th, 2005 at 1:32 pm
Honestly, it kinda annoyed me that their website looked professional. Seeing as people are still living in temporary shelters it’s only fitting that their site looks like one.
When I was working on my T-Sunami related thing they brought in a team of ‘UI Experts’ who created some craptastic tabular layout (with no spacing between elements, what is that?). I yelled at them and kick them out, but if I hadn’t been there the client would have gone with it.
I think Sri Lankans have the impression that good design is somehow harder to maintain than bad design, when in fact it is simpler. Rather than letting the tech do the work for theym, they just get a few cyber-coolies with Dreamweaver. They’re using human labor to do work that CSS and a CMS could do much better.
indi
July 6th, 2005 at 1:33 pm
btw, who did the Tafren logo, and where did it come from?
Prabhath
July 6th, 2005 at 2:41 pm
I have no idea. Besides, I didn’t expect anyone to actually find out what the site was :D
drac
July 6th, 2005 at 7:50 pm
Although I didn’t know the site in question when I read the post (I do now, thanks to the comments above).. perhaps you’re being a touch unfair. (Aside: I’m defending corporate and government types. Ye gods)
Think of the sites that an average internet user visits.. are the majority of them clean or like your example of a monstrosity ? I’d probably say the latter. I’m not saying that makes it better, but “pile of shit” is a pretty subjective opinion.. and different (artistically, aesthetically or otherwise) is another way of saying unusual. Is “unusual” really something that a corporate drone or pencil pusher wants associated with their message on the internet ?
Visit cnn.com, visit dailynews.lk … Are they so different from this site in question ? Umm. Not really. Clean and informational reads like “sparse” to some people. For what it’s worth, these are also the people who probably think that 100 page reports are better than a 5 page dossier which says the same thing.
On a slightly related note, people with long hair and visible tattoos would be looked askance in our (and many other) corporate cultures. Judging a book by it’s cover ? It happens all the time. Other interesting observations I’ve heard people tout about websites: lots of items on the index page has an appearance of busyness (and thus, importance) attached to it.. And no site is “professional” without flash, banners and lots of blinkenlights.
Mahangu
July 7th, 2005 at 9:49 am
I’m sure you’ve read of my experience with the CNO. I offered to wordpress their site free of charge but instead they asked me if I would come by their office everday and ftp dreamweaver updates.
Just let it go man, and be careful the next time you lend out services free of charge.
Prabhath
July 8th, 2005 at 9:08 am
Drac, I’m a web standards freak who expects better usability and accessibility from all websites, especially the government ones. In US you have Section 508, in UK you have DDA, and W3C has WAI to ensure that sites don’t get away being shitty. While CNN and dailynews maybe OK, that doesn’t mean they can’t be better.
But then again, that may be just me wanting to be a WaSP.
indi
July 8th, 2005 at 10:50 pm
I think standards are especially important in Sri Lanka where the connections are so crappy. xHTML/CSS isn’t necessarily faster-loading, but 9 times out of 10 it is. All the Sri Lankan government sites completely crashed during the Tsunami because they were so shitty and inaccessible (under normal conditions).
As a side note, using images for text menus is just unconsciable. On my connection they load slow, and on dial-up it’s like watching paint dry.
drac
July 9th, 2005 at 8:48 pm
You forget, Indi, that some people still run the default browser that came with Windows 98/ME; also because of the slower connection. I don’t want to diss Microsoft in particular but their implementation of CSS in the earlier browsers doesn’t leave designers a lot of choice. I’d want to kill myself if people insisted they still use IE 4. Sadly, I’ve seen it pop up in various places (that still run NT 4).
box model hacks, anyone ? That’s a IE 5.x workaround, isn’t it ? Coding to standards just became that little bit harder now.
Prabath, to quote your own words from here: Money didn’t change hands, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t a client. If people (ie: clients) don’t want to be cured, grabbing hold of them and forcing web standard medicine down their throat isn’t going to work :)
Prabhath
July 11th, 2005 at 9:26 am
OK, Here’s my way of doing things:
1. IE 4? Very sorry. Our designs don’t work that way. Clients who can’t live with that are kindly requested to go for someone else.
2. Box model hacks are a necessary evil. We are quite good at CSS hacks, so all version 5 browsers and above are treated kindly.
3. If a client doesn’t want to be cured, it’s his loss. We try to do our best to inform them of the advantages of going for a future-proof website, but if s/he still insists on shit, we don’t serve it.
How you approach web standards is largely a matter of personal preference at the moment. For some, they are yet another method of developing sites. For a few of us, they’re the only way.
Asela
July 11th, 2005 at 10:26 am
@ the orginal post:
Smoke? Nah! How about politicians, elections, sponsors, tenders, commissions? This is Colombo, right??
Prabhath
July 11th, 2005 at 10:38 am
Hmm… yeah, the all important bribery and corruption part. Makes the blog dirty, doesn’t it?
Rob Mientjes
July 13th, 2005 at 4:05 pm
Me being the irritating fucker I pretty much am, I am extremely patronising towards my clients. I should be. I’ve never had a client with more knowledge of what I was hired for, and I don’t expect that either. If they tell me they want a system they can maintain themselves, I will tell them to get a dynamic host. There is not a molecule in me that says “okay, then I’ll make it suck so you can edit it with your sucky application”. Not a bit of me.
Bah. I hate stupid clients. I mean, seriously, who the fuck are you hiring and why? Me, ’cause you can’t do it yourselves. Now go away and wait till you can pay me.
Prabhath
July 13th, 2005 at 4:40 pm
Thanks for that Rob. You say it in style.