A look back at web design trends from the 90s

The other day, while doing important things like Facebook-ing and obsessively checking the Woot-Off, I stumbled across a very cool link: The Geocities-izer. Simply enter your URL, and this site will re-format your site to look like a typical Geocities page. Remember Geocities? Good times…

After a bit of time laughing and getting misty-eyed, I started to reflect on web design from the 90s. We were all so green and naive. Design wasn’t about our users; it wasn’t about showcasing ideas or products in a meaningful, usable way. It was all about pop! she-bang! yowza! look what I can do!

And here are some of the things we did [shudder]…

Frames
For some reason, people thought it was useful to stick every page element in its own little container. With scrollbars. Hmmm…

Tiled Backgrounds
Because nothing is easier on the eyes than reading pink text on a green grass background.

Flash Splash Pages
“Click to Enter.” By clicking a link or entering your URL, didn’t I already click to enter?

Animated GIFs
While these aren’t useful, they sure can be entertaining. The original Hamsterdance is back, after a long hiatus!

Hit Counters
Does anybody really need to know how many (or how few) people have visited your web site?

Under Construction
If your web site is not ready, don’t put anything out there at all.

Blinking and Marquee Text
Need I say more?

Have I mentioned that I’ve designed several iPhone applications? I have? Yes, of course I’ve mentioned it. I was being facetious. Designing for the iPhone had a definite learning curve. I had to transition from the relative freedom of UX design for the web to following the strict iPhone UX guidelines that Apple publishes.

Today, I’m starting to wireframe for my first WPF application. Another learning curve, another set of UX guidelines. And thank goodness for that! Have you seen a ribbon control lately? Very sophisticated, very robust, and chock full of menu-ing and controls.

While there are many required elements of the ribbon control, the very basic elements are:

• Core tabs — the tabs that are always displayed
• Groups — a labeled set of closely related commands

Some of the basic guidelines for developing a ribbon control include:

• Groupings must be task-driven.
• Be very careful to organize the groupings and tasks in a manner that reflects how your users work.
• Commonly-used tasks must have larger buttons.
• Buttons must be labeled, except for tasks so common that their icons have become part of the computer realm’s lexicon (bold, italic, etc.).

For more information, the MSDN library has a whole section on ribbon control UI guidelines. I encourage you to check it out.

Normal Modes is growing, and I’m yet another new employee. I’m Libby, the new user experience designer, and I’m old-school.

I’ve been working in web design since I graduated in December ‘95. Back then, my university offered only HTML and CGI classes, which I shunned. I was an English major! Why the heck would I need techie stuff like that? Funny thing, though…my first copywriting job out of college also required me to maintain the company intranet. My boss sat me down in front of a page of HTML and told me to figure it out.

After a couple weeks of grumbling under my breath, I discovered something weird — I actually liked it! And I was also good at it. Eventually I was maintaining and designing all of the company’s web sites.

Back then, there typically wasn’t a strong emphasis on usability or user interface design. Or even, at times, any emphasis at all. I actually had a VP who, upon discovering the export to HTML function in Word, asked me what he was paying me for.

As my skills grew, so did my interest in usability. Because my jobs mostly entailed “generalist” duties, I made it my personal mission to become a UX expert. I attended information architecture classes; I soaked up books and blogs about HCI, wireframing and designing for the user. I attended Jakob Nielsen’s Usability Week conference; at his keynote, he bounded onto the stage accompanied by a smoke machine and Rolling Stones music.

Lately, I’ve been developing interfaces for the iPhone. These apps present a whole new challenge: limited real estate, simplicity, user expectations. I learned many lessons — some easy, some hard.

• Remember the goal. What the heck is this app supposed to do for the user? Can they do it? Write a list of tasks. Make darn sure they’re easy to accomplish.

• Remember my mom. Will my mom be able to perform these tasks? If she can, anyone can. She’s my UX nirvana. I always ask my mom to go through the app. If she’s happy, I’ve done my job. Maybe for you, it’s your grandparents, your little brother, the shaggy dude on the street corner. Figure out who your “Libby’s mom” is and utilize them.

• Remember your fingers. The tip of your finger, to be exact. This is the smallest touch point for anything you need to do in your app. Keep your screen clean and clear of clutter. Minimize necessary touches and movement. Focus on your primary functions. If it’s secondary, is it necessary?

• Remember user expectations. The iPhone has an extremely established set of patterns and behaviors. Work with them, not against them. iPhone users are generally entrenched in the Apple experience (guilty as charged). Design your iPhone application to behave like…well…an iPhone!

Angela Randall, President of Normal Modes, will appear at the Mom 2.0 Summit on Friday, 19 February 2010. She will speak in the 1:15-2:15 PM breakout session, Product Track: Consider the User Experience & Usability of Your Website, about User Experience (UX).

The event will be at:

Four Seasons Downtown Houston > Google Map

1300 Lamar Street
Houston, Texas, 77010-3017

Tel (713) 650-1300
For more information, go to www.mom2summit.com

A former co-worker was so kind this week to write a recommendation for me on LinkedIn. This is how it appeared in Google Reader.

Are web pages the new TV and phone?

According to Jason Fry writing in the Wall Street Journal, those inventions of the past – regarded in their generation as curiosities, in later generations as necessities – walked the well trodden path personal web pages will in the future.

Why? Two reasons, really. Personal web pages:

1. Allow others to find you online. Once they find you, web pages allow you to share with others the level of information you feel comfortable.
2. Brand you the way you want to be branded.

It’s the second point that is crucial to businesses. Defending and defining your identity online is often a neglected priority. Owners and key decision makers rationalize the choice by noting “it takes too much time,” “it’s too complicated,” or “the person who did it left and I don’t know how.” My personal favorite is, “I used to have a good website, but I didn’t update it and now it’s all out of date again.”

“The Internet WILL tell stories about you, true or otherwise. Make sure your own version is out there too.” – Curt Monash

We think about web pages as a way to buy and sell goods and services, web pages as a source of information, and web pages as a way to “get our name out there.” We think of web pages as some static text in a pretty wrapper.

But we forget the day of the paper pamphlet is over. Information is evolving, it’s dynamic. Web pages are living, breathing representations of our missions in the world. As soon as a person hears your name, they can use Google to find out what you stand for — good and bad, true and untrue.

Try it now — go to Google and type in “[your name].”

Now type “[your company name] sucks.”

What happens?

Many people may find that troubling. Our age is marked by worries about too much information floating around too freely — some of us want as little to do with the digital world as possible, and most of us who feel differently still sometimes wish we could keep that world’s tentacles at bay. Given that, it’s off-putting to imagine that having a Web page could become an expectation and a near-necessity. But technology and the social changes it ushers in have always been coercive. We’ll get used to the idea, just as we’ve gotten used to all the ones that preceded it, and soon enough we’ll be able to tell a lot about a person by, say, the mere formatting of their home page — including if they made it themselves or had the communications company do it for them. Whether we like it or not, it’s too late to cram the personal-information genie back into his bottle. Better to make sure he serves us.

What does your online identity say about your company? What does it say about you?