March 22, 2004 | View Comments (25) | Category: Design
Summary: Why we should continue to talk about standards.
It started with a great post by Greg on how the community is focusing too much on standards and not enough on metrics. Then it was followed by Jason with a post on how we should stop worrying about the tools and start focusing on the people. I agree that we should focus on metrics. I agree that we should focus on people. I agree that we should focus on usability and accessibility. What I really agree on is that great design takes into account all of these topics.
For years there was a lot of talk about usability. Nielsen did an excellent job of bringing the topic to our attention and to that of the general public. Now it has gotten to the point where he no longer really says anything new, which is a good thing because it means we are learning from our past mistakes. Usability is beginning to become embedded into our designs by default.
However, does this mean that we should stop talking about usability and move on? If that was the case, 37signals would have some problems selling their new book, Defensive Design for the Web. We should continue to talk about usability, but understand that it is not going to have the "loudness" that it once did. It has become part of general knowledge and it did so over time.
First, let us get one thing straight. We are all professionals who follow what the independent web says and when there has been talks of standards for over two years we are bound to get tired of reading the same old stuff. It was going to happen. Do we stop talking about them though? Again, like usability of course we should not stop, but eventually the "loudness" of standards talk will settle down because designers and developers will instinctively begin to use them. However, there is a difference between the topics of standards and usability.
When Jakob tells us that all of our links should be the default blue, he is not asking to change the way we think. Any change in usability usually just comes from a change in our design. When we begin to ask people to develop websites using standards (CSS) we are asking them to change the way they develop websites (not design them as that should never change). For the people who code websites this is a paradigm shift along the lines of functional programming to object oriented programming.
Paradigm shifts simply take time. As designers we are the Alpha Geeks who will always be ahead of the curve so talks of standards might begin to bore us. However, we are a very small percentage and that is why talks of standards and their importance in design can not stop as I am sure both Greg and Jason would agree.
When Andrei wrote his open letter to Jakob Nielsen, the theme of the letter was that usability is simply a subset of design. This is the case with standards and accessibility as well. When Jason talks about focusing on people again, he is simply reiterating what a successful design does. When Greg says that a standards based site means nothing without some proven results he is right, but is that not common sense? A success of a website goes far beyond just the design of it. How many great looking websites fail?
Jason seems to want to focus on the total outcome of a design, which gets back to the people. I say that design never left the people and talking about using standards is bringing focus on the people. I know I just don't design using CSS to make myself happy, but I know that it offers benefits to my users. That is focusing on the people. You have seen this website evolve over time because I focused on the people. Sometimes I mentioned the small changes, other times I did not. Point is, there are people who talk about designing for people, you just have to open your eyes. Many others prefer to show their focus on their audience through their designs instead of through words.
Greg wants metrics as would any manager or executive of a company. Why use standards if they do not improve anything? If done right obviously the two major improvements you will see through standards is that you are opening your site up to more people and you should see a reduction in bandwidth (if coded properly).
If you want to show how sales improved then you better look to the designer of the site and make sure they designed a site that people would want to buy from. Look at the IA to make sure they designed the architecture so that any user could move around quickly. Find the usability guru to see if the site is functional for all members of the audience. Look at the project manager to find out if everything was done on time and on budget. Point is, lots of times we talk about standards because we are the designers or developers so that is what we do. The success of a website comes from many factors. Standards are just a way to help us get there. Funny thing is, I never have to sell standards to anyone. Most people do not even care what is under the hood.
Jason and Greg simply wish to see a broader selection of topics to read I think. Obviously as two great designers talks of standards is nothing new to them. Kind of like teaching a professional bass fisherman how to hook his bait. There is no need, but that does not mean everyone knows how to do it. When it comes to design, talk about people, usability, accessibility, standards, and everything else that it entails. All the pieces are important.
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I wonder what the make up is of efforts by designers to products and to projects.
Product designers, to me, are better off because they can follow the design needs of a product and its users for a lifecycle (hopefully).
Project designers usually have more constraints because they are given their scope (or if lucky have a small impact on the scope) for the project and that's all they get to do. And then they may never work on that product again.
In a project-based development shop, it is harder to create valuable metrics. Sure, you can measure things, but it is limited to the scope of the effort, and usually doesn't take into consideration any other projects that are affecting the product.
The reason I am bringing this up is because I agree with the "duh" statements made by Greg and Jason. A more holistic (if I can use that word) approach to design makes sense.
Most designers, IMO, aren't ready for tackling a holistic approach and it will be difficult for those designers who work in a project-based environment.
In fact, a holistic approach would have the designer working even before there's an idea to change something. The designer should be looking at the System (that is the system of getting work done which includes environment, users, products, services) to discern problems and opportunities that could lead to a change.
Perhaps we need to revisit methodology to integrate these things. I know there are plenty of methodmaps out there, but I am not sure how many are free to use, or break down each phase so people who are knew to the field can learn.
Well crappy-doodle. Didn't mean to go off like that. After all I do have my own blog I could be posting on.:)
Matthew Oliphant (http://usabilityworks.typepad.com)
I Suppose this is a good thing to be saying, but it seems to me to be a rather plain and simple truth. What your saying is right.
The thing is about plain ans simple truths, is that we often over look them. This post will hopefully bring some people back down to earth to remember what web development and design entails.
phil baines (http://www.wubbleyew.com/blog/)
I agree. Good post Paul. There are just so many factors and angles getting thrown into a thing called a "website". Like you mentioned, Project Managers, marketing department, developers, designers, blah blah blah... enough to make someones head spin. If it was OUR world, every site would be standards compliant and it would meet every customers need. However, it is not our world, we are just workers being told that a site needs to be made, so make it. I agree with you that typically, you don't have to sell standards. Standards allows someone to tell another individual WHY it will save them money, but if the question isn't asked, is there a need to explain it? They will most likely just look at us with a dumb expression on their face and say, "OK".
The biggest problem with most firms is that not everyone is on the same page. You have 1 developer who develops sites *this way*, another developer who develops his sites *that way*, then you got that one developer who likes standards and develops his code *his way*. Who's is better? Its in the eye of the beholder, but most likely the one doing standards is more "up to date" on technology. In the ideal job, the marketing manager can explain to the client whats going on with their site, why its being coded the way it is (all the profit benefits, bandwidth savings, etc..), the developers can look at the code and know what needs to be tweaked to keep the site validated, the sales person can also explain the benefits of why their company builds websites the way you do, and the designer wouldn't just create a photoshop template and cut it up into sections to be put into a website, he would understand what sections needs to be chopped and what sections can be re-created using css. But that is the ideal job and I don't know anyone who has that kind of environment to work with. If you do, reply in Pauls posting here, because I would love to hear about it.
Bryan (http://www.gamecubecheats.info)
Speak for yourself, Bryan. If it was *my* world, I would crush all who oppose me, all sites would praise my greatness, and the customers would be meeting *my* needs, not the other way round.
:-)
And of course, use of the blink tag for anything other than the phrase "schroedinger's cat is [blink]not[/blink] dead" would be punishable by immolation. :-)
JC (http://thelionsweb.com/weblog)
JC: Yeah, I honestly thought I was going to go after them harder, but after re-reading their entries and the pursuing comments I got a better idea of where they were coming from. However, some of the people who posted comments on their site were going a little overboard.
The funny thing about a post like this is that once you sit back and think about, it really is just common sense (as phil points out).
Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)
Man, if it happens, I wanna live in JC's world:
"customers would be meeting *my* needs"
Nice post Paul, and you're right "they're all just a bunch of tools" ;-]
Mike P. (http://www.fiftyfoureleven.com.com/sandbox/weblog/)
Your right Paul, a lot of ingredients go into a good design recipe (and all are important), but I strongly agree with Jason at this particular point in time. Design will always prosper when good lines of communication and understanding are drawn between all the benefactors of a project - and there's a definite lack of people-based skills in the industry right now. It's been frustrating me to no end. A return to people orientated design and relationship building is needed to re-balance and strengthen design once again.
Sam Royama (http://www.designdojo.ca)
All this talk of standards is just the bandwagon filling up, which may get a little repetitive, but then again, what isn't repetitive in the weblog world?
Ultimately though, standards aren't about design. "Standards" is a buzz-word created 7 years ago by Zeldman et. all to get the Web moving in the right direction. The technologies that standards refer to are arbitrary. The reason to support them is so that we can have some hope of compatibility. This has nothing to do with design other than to enable it. So if you wanna talk about design, there's plenty of other places to start.
However, there is one big reason that this standards bandwagon is important, and that reason is Microsoft. If we don't get a critical mass of sites that require standards, Microsoft won't support them properly, and they will push their proprietary web application models onto all the hordes of tech-school trained 'web developers' and FrontPage monkeys who will then make it impossible for anyone to use Linux or Mac for daily web browsing. That is why all this advocacy is actually critically important. We need as many people on the bandwagon as possible, even if it gets a little repetitive to the inner circle.
Gabe (http://www.websaviour.com/nexus/)
Great points Scrivs. I’ll keep it brief, but I wanted to say that usability is probably the hardest thing to test on a site. Why? Well, you need real people from the streets (insert Chappelle’s show joke here), not just Sue from Accounting (no offense to any accountants named Sue reading this). You need a group of people to sit down and use the site, and they can’t be biased, which is very difficult to attain since they know they are part of a focus group. This is also probably one of the most expensive ways in terms of both dollars and employee time to figure out where your users are going or being led astray on your site, and it is probably not even much of a thought in today’s “do more with a negative budget” companies working on the Web. What’s the solution? I don’t know; if anyone finds out feel free to email it to me. :)
Vinnie Garcia (http://blog.vinniegarcia.com)
"who will then make it impossible for anyone to use Linux or Mac for daily web browsing"
Sorry, have to put on my horns and be devil's advocate.
That's nonsensical. The people who write mac and linux browsers could make their browsers work with IE specific code. And it would make a heck of a lot more sense. Yeah, there are more non-IE browsers out there that would need change, so in terms of numbers it's harder than simply changing IE, but IE is the only real standard, since it's 95%+ of the user base out there. Not alot of incentive to change it... really, it should be the other way around. As you said, the "standards" we preach is just a buzzword for a group of recomendations by the w3c, a group which really has no power over anything, and which puts out ignored recommendations for various (mostly ignored) technologies about as frequently as slashdot feeds trolls.
It's also a little overdramatic. I've never seen any website that was absolutely impossible to use in another (modern) browser, though there were a few that required me to lie about what browser I was using to get past poor browser-detection javascript. There might be a few oddities here and there, spacing off a bit, but it's not the bloody heat death of the universe.
The issue isn't those poor little mac and linux users with their underpriveleged browsers, it's that IE isn't perfect.
The whole standards buzzword in the first place wasn't about IE. IE was pretty darn good. It was about getting rid of the bloody abhomination that is netscape 4.x. It worked. There were serious problems with that browser. But now people try to ride that momentum onto a browser with minimal problems... it's just not that big a deal. Seems to be more the usual general dislike for MS than anything else.
Reminds me this scene from Monty Python's Life of Brian, a little.
JC (http://thelionsweb.com/weblog)
Hey Vinnie... Jakob Nielsen has some pretty good advice on that on his website. Just remember
$jakobNielsen = require("bucket of salt");
JC (http://thelionsweb.com/weblog)
Thanks for the links JC, they are well appreciated. And I’ve got the bucket of salt ready, who wants tequila shots? ;)
Vinnie Garcia (http://blog.vinniegarcia.com)
Man, I wish you could have been at SXSW and seen Jeff Veen's presentation on The Frontiers of User Experience (PDF) -- it really drove home a few ideas you express here.
I'm in the middle of a post about it, please read and comment when it goes up later today.
You know how I feel about it. The Web is all about people and it's a shame that more Web folks don't get how people interact with the Web.
I think it's going to change soon and I really think it'll be for the better -- discussions like this will lead the way. We've only scratched the surface.
Keith (http://www.7nights.com/asterisk/)
"The people who write mac and linux browsers could make their browsers work with IE specific code. And it would make a heck of a lot more sense."
the problem with that frame of mind - to just work to MS standards - is that Ms standards are not reliable. And on a much more valid point, MS are a member of the w3c themselves. They are part of the w3c, and therefore are part of the w3c standards. They are supposedly telling us to use the w3c standards by being members of the w3c. But, then they don’t stick to the standards themselves.
How do we decide what MS standards to follow; The ones that they are supposedly promoting? Or, the ones that we discover after they release their software that doesn’t support the 'standards'?
Phil Baines (http://www.wubbleyew.com/blog)
"Standards" is a buzz-word created 7 years ago by Zeldman et. al
It may be a little more accurate to say that Zeldman et. al made the web design world aware of it's own standards, but calling it a buzz word?
It's certainly a hot topic, but getting a little circular, standards are pretty much a standard in every industry - for the reasons that you explain, predominantly "The reason to support them is so that we can have some hope of compatibility".
Mike P. (http://www.fiftyfoureleven.com.com/sandbox/weblog/)
Mike -
yeah, it's a buzz word. There are hundreds of "standards" in the web world. Hell, HTML 1 was a standard. The w3c probably comes up with a new (and generally esoteric to the point of uselessness) standard every week, if not more often. But the buzz word "standards" is generally understood to mean CSS based tableless sites, and less specifically is usually delivered with an emphasis on XHTML rather than HTML 4, though that's a more recent addition.
But it was a buzz word with a good purpose, originally. It was a pretty face on an ugly (but oh-so-beautiful) lynching of Netscape 4.x... you couldn't tell your boss to lose netscape 4 because it was old, but tell him it wasn't standards compliant, and he'd listen. Even mine... we're down to about 20% NN4 and falling throughout the organisation... not too bad for a group of people who a year ago thought the intranet was called netscape and yahoo is the internet.
JC (http://thelionsweb.com/weblog)
You know, the funny thing is, we'd never have a "standards debate" if people did it right from the start.
You can see this throughout the world. For example, there are standard sizes of lightbulbs. If a manufacturer deviates from this standard, it simply won't work. I'm not going to even mention standard measurement systems, such as the metric system (ironic choice of words, by the way).
Unfortunately, browser makers showed a bad lack of foresight (and some still do, no names) by embracing proprietary technology. Also, the lack of good standards (the kind that would have made table layouts seem ridiculous) simply didn't exist back then. Thus, we have a simple continuance of what we've known before.
Thus, in my ideal world, standards aren't tools. They are the de-facto. They are the only way things can be done. Imagine that web browsers only take standards. Of course, this isn't the real world, and most people don't use a real browser, so we must make exceptions. My hope is that a certain company will get into gear, or that the mix of browsers in use by the majority will become more diverse (indirectly forcing that company to compete by going with standards).
Chris Vincent (http://dris.dyndns.org:8080/)
When lightbulbs first started being mass produced there were no standards. Even today, some lamps take screw fitting, some take bayonet and it took many years to get to that stage.
Sometimes we need to remember that we are using/working on NEW technology, which is running on a platform (the internet) that no single body controls (as in they don't control every site).
The standards WILL come.
Although, if we all just bowed to market share and got everything to work with IE it'd be much easier for everyone surely... ;-)
*ducks*
Gordon (http://www.snowgoon.co.uk)
Nielson will never shut up about usability. Myself and other standards ranters will never shut up about standards or semantics. Why? We/they may have influenced one part of the web, but the majority of websites are still made awfully! Tales of un-usable websites are still the things nightmares are made from.
More people need to know.
David House
Yeah, David... but... uh... those people who made the awful websites... don't know you exist and probably don't care. They're too busy playing with Big Bob's Animated Gif Extravaganza to read up on web standards.
We can't really expect that the majority of people who call themselves 'webmasters' (and whatever other job titles have been perverted by 'the kid down the street who knows computers' and 'my nephew knows all about web design, he did this great site with frontpage once') to create such esoteric things as semantically correct websites when they can't even fix really blatant problems. It's like asking the guy who can barely change his oil to rebuild his transmission. He wouldn't know where to start. Unfortunately, while you can't just call yourself a mechanic with no real skills and get paid (though sometimes I wonder...), there are plenty of these mostly clueless wannabe designers (and some of them are even making good money at it, which is even more depressing).
And of course, most of the sites out there aren't going to be redesigned anytime soon because there's no real financial benefit in doing so.
But keep talking. You'll influence the fringes of the clueless and maybe work your way inward a bit, bringing them into the fold, so to speak. And of course good designers & developers will read what you and others say as they expand their skills.
Just don't expect the people who've already heard it a hundred times to be excited to hear it again. The primary thrust of the original WaSP has been accomplished, and what remains is considerably less urgent in nature, and harder to sell to the boss.
JC (http://thelionsweb.com/weblog)
I'm sure most of you professional web designers have heard it a hundred times already, but I bet there are a lot of people like me, software engineers who do user interface work, who are kept busy with server-side coding, and don't have as much time to keep up with web technology. My friends in software engineering think of CSS as just a way to set fonts and colors. It's not because they don't care (though it's true some don't), but more that they aren't aware. And I think they would be a great audience for this message, because they can truly appreciate the benefits of separation of style and content (and code).
Not all of those who have yet to be converted are clueless Frontpage users who delight in using a million colors and flashing images. Some are just busy with other things and haven't heard the message yet.
Jennifer Grucza (http://jennifergrucza.com)
I don't feel at all that there is less of a focus on usability. I just think that now it's second nature to most professional web designers/developers.
Standards on the other hand is something that hadn't been pushed enough until the last year or so. Once standards are second nature, there will be something else.
Just because nobody is scraming about it anymore, doesn't mean that nobody is paying attention to it.
Garrett Dimon (http://www.yourusabilityresource.com)
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#1
'zacly.
Well said. But I don't think you're really contradicting them the way you implied you'd be the other day... more on the order of enhancing and building on what they said.
JC (http://thelionsweb.com/weblog)