September 21st, 2007
The #1 Problem in Web Design
by Joshua Porter | 
18 Comments | shortlink: http://bokardo.com/p/683
The world of web design is actually a gigantic game of telephone.
There are two messages involved in every web design project. One is the desired message, the message that the site owners want to deliver to their audience. This message probably has something to do with the value of participating, of using that tool or service to make your life better in some way.
The other is the actual message, the one that actually gets delivered. This message is usually some form of the desired message, but often has a lot of ambiguity and uncertainty thrown in. In the worst cases it is actually not the desired message at all but an unintended communication that means something completely different.
The number one problem on the Web today is a mismatch between the desired message and the actual message being delivered.
Remember the game of telephone, the one where you sit in a circle and whisper a message to the person beside you? That person then tells the person beside them, and once you get all the way around the circle you compare messages. Rarely are the messages the same. In many cases it is funny what we end up with. After all, it’s just a game.
But on the Web it isn’t so innocent. The entire industries of visual and interface design, copy-writing, usability, user experience, and all the rest are tasked with playing a gigantic game of telephone. Their job is to communicate the message that needs communicating. Does their design deliver the desired message, or is the actual message completely different? All of these groups, in their own way using their own techniques, are trying to align the desired message with the actual one.
There are a lot of other topics in design that get a lot of interest: technical issues like cross-browser implementation, using semantic markup, and scalability to name a few. There are also an amazing amount of process-related topics: which design method is best, how many users do you test, and when should you get funding, etc. There are a million issues to deal with, but really they all pale in comparison to the #1 problem.
And, to top it all off, the Web is a visual medium, and so we tend to judge things visually. If they look right, then we assume they are right. But just as a smile from a serial killer isn’t really what you want, neither is a web site that looks great but doesn’t support what you’re trying to do. On the other hand, when a message is being communicated clearly, it usually looks good because the way it looks makes sense, so there is some merit in judging by how it looks.
From a 30,000 foot perspective it is easy to see that the web site serves as a function. You take the desired message, run it through the web site, and out the other end comes another message. If the actual message is the same as the desired one, it is a 1:1 function whose output doesn’t change the input. If it’s not, the function is doing something undesirable…it is changing the input in some way before it is output.
So two points become absolutely critical. One is the point at which the desired message is most clear. At what point do you know exactly what the desired message is? Well, you have to talk to the person in charge. The person making the critical strategic decisions on the project. If you’re not talking to that person, then you probably have dirty data. And, if you can’t get a straight answer, or the real answer isn’t best for the audience, then maybe the desired message isn’t the right one.
Here’s an example of push-back. The business strategy of generating increased advertising revenue is often realized as a design strategy by increasing page views by breaking up stories into multiple pages. From a reader perspective this is obviously less desirable. So at this point it’s the designer’s job to say “Breaking up pages arbitrarily isn’t so good for our audience…it provides a worse experience. Let’s not design for page views and we’ll make happier users in the long run”.
The other critical point is the actual message. At what point do you know the actual message that is being communicated? Well, there are various ways to get at it, but the best is to experience it and watch others experience it. Designers tend to deal with this intuitively, and usability folk tend to deal with this by testing. And, to that end, I’m not sure that one method is better than another. I’ve been on both sides of the fence long enough to know that there is no such thing as a single method that always works, and until there is, we’re just going to have to keep trying.
So for those folks trying to make sense of their latest project…if you’re stuck about what to do…try to find those two points: the point at which your desired message is best explained, and the point at which the actual message is most clear. If you can get your message communicated well, in an actual form that is close to the desired one, then all other issues are small potatoes.
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Comments
1. Ryan 12:11pm, Fri 21st, 2007
Really? I would say it’s the balance between business goals and user/customer goals usually being … well… unbalanced? If more businesses would realize that their customers/users/visitors are not their enemies, it would be problem solved.
Number 2 to me would be the large amounts of pseudo-science running around web professionals. “This is intuitive,” “customers like this,”… oh yeah? Prove it!
The disconnect between intended message and actual perceived message is a problem, but mostly for marketers and art directors.
Anyway – nice post. You de-lurked me!
2. Josh 12:30pm, Fri 21st, 2007
@Ryan: I de-lurked you! Excellent, my day is made.
Seriously, I wish I could de-lurk my entire audience because I have no real idea who you are.
Anyway, perhaps I was a bit single-minded in my description, but I would say the point you made is a sibling problem…the communication between business strategy and design strategy just isn’t happening as well as it should.
What isn’t clear from my post is that in my mind it is sometimes the designers responsibility to push back on the business strategy folks when it doesn’t make sense from a user experience standpoint to do something. I kept my rant solely on faithfully reproducing the business strategy in the design, but you are definitely right in that it isn’t always the right communication for users.
3. Editor B 12:49pm, Fri 21st, 2007
Aw, hell, I’ll de-lurk too. I’m a multimedia artist. I work in faculty development at a university in New Orleans. I’ve been reading you for a while now. Fascinating stuff. I’d say the problem you outline here is a fundamental one. It’s not exclusive to the web, but maybe it’s more dramatic.
4. Josh 12:51pm, Fri 21st, 2007
Another de-lurker! Awesome!
@Ryan…I added a section in the post to address your point.
5. Dany Sfeir 1:45pm, Fri 21st, 2007
That’s right! All other problems seem to be the simplest compare with a mismatch between the desired message and the actual message being delivered
6. Alastor 4:38pm, Sun 23rd, 2007
No doubt, that’s why it’s important to reduce mismatch that eventually is being made. Way to solve this is to meet in person to discuss desired design, rather than using telephone. Then again, sometimes it’s hard to not use one (especially if you’re unable to contact with person via any other way than telephone or e-mail).
7. Jermayn Parker 1:52am, Mon 24th, 2007
telephone?? We called it ‘Chinese Whispers’ as a kid…
8. Shai Gluskin 2:41am, Sat 29th, 2007
A web design team can be perfectly placed to discover huge problems in a business strategy, or even a business model.
But most leads on a web design team, if an angel came and told him, “It’s time to give your client some business strategy feedback” would turn around and say “Who me?”
I think there is a need for more web design firms that build in business strategy and marketing strategy reviews into the process of creating a site. In this post, Josh provides a great framework for communicating with the client about the core connection between web design and business strategy.
9. Mathew Browne 5:56am, Tue 23rd, 2007
This is very true of smaller clients. A classic example is the client who asks for a site to be designed how they’d like it, rather than in a manner which best represents a business. Yes, I’m talking about a solicitor with a canary yellow and blue template. (They paid me to do it, having ignored my pleas to reconsider. I left my site credit out of it. I feel dirty.)
10. Web Design 4:56am, Tue 17th, 2009
‘If they look right, then we assume they are right’. – I agree completely.
Just because we have designed a good website to reflect a certain business, does not necessary mean that we have achieved this.
Trying to get a message across to the intended audience can be quite a challenge. I think the design process should be kept simple. Firstly, keep the navigation clear and concise, use a piece of flash that keeps the user entertained and information that is both informative and supports what you are trying to get across.
It seems as if though the initial thought process gets lost along the way and as a result the website becomes confusing to the user and no longer relevant.