Where is the Emotion in Web Design?

11 Responses to “Where is the Emotion in Web Design?”

1. 

   Dustin Boston
   March 6th, 2009 at 10:29 am

   I was sort of thinking about this a couple days ago. I *do* think that the technology has sapped some of the life out of design (and content too). As a “standardista” it gets hard to follow the rules all the time. I can’t wait to break out of the structure and format for something that is a little more expressive.

   I can tell you that rounded corners aren’t enough.

   That reminds me: I’m not a big fan of Obama but his websites have that emotional connection that you’re talking about. Like when I see them I get the message.

    — 

   Here’s an idea for a solution: take it off line. Do mockups on paper and scan them in. Allow imperfection.

2. 

   Stewart Kirk
   March 6th, 2009 at 7:15 pm

   I think you make a really salient point. The issue of CMS is, I think both a design issue and a semantic issue. We often end up with copy on websites that is the online equivalent to a newsletter published in Word. In terms of the client meeting ending up as a technical discussion, I think that comes from a popular misconception that websites should follow a certain ‘blocky’ pattern (perhaps a hangover from the days of table-based designs. Perhaps we need to make clients more aware of the flexibility of web design and point then to some of the more imaginative sites ‘out there’ We perhaps also need to get away from slavishly trying to maximise SEO to the detriment of good flowing copy.

   Trouble is; I don’t know what the answer is.

3. 

   Zinni
   March 7th, 2009 at 3:07 pm

   Stewart,

   By mentioning SEO you have touched on something I didn’t even really consider when originally writing this article. However I normally find that this is something that happens after the fact. I will often see my clients editing the copy after it was completed in order to try and stuff as many keywords as they can into the copy. Not only does it make their already bad writing even worse, but it doesn’t work either. However I think it is going to take a shift in culture for clients to believe that there is no short cut tons of web traffic…

4. 

   lacedrabbit
   March 7th, 2009 at 11:46 pm

   I think the answer lies in what the consumer will eventually look/read/buy. As time goes on, and people are looking for Creative Emotional Websites, and are bored, tired of technical features. I think the creative pages will become the iN thing, and the boring, cms, technical sites will fall away into the land of nothing.

   Thanks for letting me have a say.
    lacedrabbit

5. 

   GabG
   March 9th, 2009 at 12:20 pm

   I’ve noticed, in our organization (which has 12 initiative-related websites) that the decentralization of content management has been the downfall, the reason for the lack of emotion. When we have eight people uploading things into a CMS, there’s no real commitment there to one true message (or perhaps I should say no real understanding of the one true message). Thus the message gets divided into eight “interpretations” and then begins to veer from the once agreed upon one. After a while, the eight messages turn into twelve because of staff turnover. At that point, the message is totally gone and the website becomes the organization’s online file cabinet.

6. 

   Bob Barker
   March 10th, 2009 at 9:15 am

   Don’t be silly. Just because you’ve seen a lack of enthusiasm—it means nothing.

   Lest-we-forget: the web is so much bigger than we can even fathom inside our brains. The web lacks very little at the moment—it is bar FAR the most exciting place to be as a designer.

7. 

   Aki Karkkainen
   March 22nd, 2009 at 10:54 am

   Very interesting and inspiring article! Food for thought.

   The web is now full of those “45+ Best Whatever-Techniques” articles. These articles are great but what matters is what you do with the technologies and when.