The shackles of innovation

It's a word that has lost virtually meaning due to its constant repetition: innovation. Any number of industries must hear this word all the time -- it seems like the single most important thing to just about everyone. Is your product, or site, or approach innovative? If not, it might as well be worthless. Everyone is trying to "think outside the box" (a phrase so cliched at this point that even putting it in quotes doesn't give it the ironic distance it deserves). There is a widespread assumption that the status quo is bad, the way we do anything today is inferior to some "new" way we've yet to discover, and the search for this "new" way should trump all other efforts.

I can't agree with any of that. Striving fervently for innovation strikes me as severely misdirected effort, not because I believe innovation is bad, but because I think it is a side effect, not a goal unto itself.

The biggest problem with focusing solely on innovation, in my mind, is the assumption that current ways are bad -- it is starting with a ground floor decision to disregard all the prior work done by those in your field to get you where you are today. It is certainly true that previous work may have been done based on faulty information, incorrect assumptions, and other ill-advised decisions that could have brought things to a highly imperfect state today. But it is by no means a guarantee -- in fact, the opposite could also be true. Your product/site/whatever could be the way it is today because of highly reasoned research and testing that led to it being extremely solid and well thought-out. Unless you know all this background already, you can't really claim that innovation is necessary.

Focusing solely on innovation also sidesteps what should probably be the true goal of any project - to make the best product/site possible. A thorough process will explore the tried and true ways as well as newer, more innovative approaches. In many cases, more standard, "non-innovative" methods may prove to be the best fit.

Let's say you create a new site or product and all your testing and research leads to a conclusion that your best bet is to rely on well-established techniques. Had your goal been solely to innovate, this project would be a failure -- you've created nothing innovative. And yet, you've created the best possible product/site for your users -- the only problem was that it didn't involve creating anything truly new, just using existing principles to their greatest effect. How could that be bad?

Now let's consider the converse situation. Rather than seeking innovation, your goal at the start of a project is solely to create the best product/site possible. You do your brainstorming and research and find that the best solution is one that DOES in fact use a new, innovative approach -- it is thoroughly supported by your testing. No one would call this project a failure, and by focusing on making the best product/site possible, you've now overdelivered by also finding an innovative approach in the process. Innovation was not the goal -- it was icing on the cake.

There are a lot of reasons why innovation is still such a prized asset -- it's sexy, it sounds good, it shakes designers out of their boredom -- but these are not enough to warrant prizing it above quality. Think you've got a better way to do something? By all means, explore that new method and see if it works better -- but be willing to recognize the value in also learning that it's possible an existing method is still superior.

I should mention that this post is partially inspired by Scott Berkun, who I saw speak at the UI12 conference in Cambridge, MA, in 2007. He spoke about the "myths of innovation" and mentioned, for example, how innovations are often accidents, and he also talked about how the word "innovation" has indeed lost a lot of meaning over the years. I don't claim that this post represents his opinions at all, but his talk came back into my mind as I worked on a recent project that was driven by a client's desire to innovate. Check out his blog, it's got some good stuff.

Cut cut cut!

For many people who have websites, this is a sad but almost undoubtedly true fact: No one wants to read what you have to say.

First, let me give a caveat - if you have a blog or some opinion-based or news-based site, chances are people that visit your site do actually want to read what you have to say. But, most sites do not fall into that category. Also, this is not to say that visitors won't read anything at all -- but all most visitors want to do is find a specific piece of information very quickly and move on. Nobody sets out looking for self-hyping or vague filler, and any amount of that present on your site is an obstacle to their goal.

What I've said in previous posts about being self-aware or maintaining objectivity applies strongly here -- do you read websites? When you search for something and find a relevant hit, do you explore a site, patiently sit through a flash intro, and read paragraphs of marketing copy? The answer is probably no. So why would you expect your visitors to do that?

I've seen cases where I get the distinct impression a client is afraid that not having a lot of pages and a lot of text will send a message to the visitor that there is a lack of substance there. This couldn't be further from the truth. A trim, efficient, streamlined site that is light on fluff but clear and direct on content will send a message that you know what you're talking about, you know what the visitor wants, and you don't waste time and energy on the superfluous. Probably the only commodity more valuable than money is time, and no one wants their time wasted.

So I'm going to listen to my own advice and keep this short. Some simple rules:

• Be ruthless and be willing to edit - because your visitors are ruthless with the "back" button and will ditch your page in seconds if they don't see what they want right away.
• Every piece of content you write needs to deliver vital information that the visitor wants to read, otherwise you need to get rid of it.
  
• Be willing to delete entire pages if their content is unnecessary or so light it could easily be combined with other pages.
  
• Don't be long-winded; write concisely.
  
• And perhaps underpinning all of this: don't be emotionally attached to any of your content, or you'll cheat yourself out of making the best site for your visitors.

Objectivity is a dying art

It's hard not to notice, as the US moves into the final days of election season, how increasingly polarized a lot of people are. Making an objective assessment of anything seems to have gone out of style, and I think it's to our great detriment.

This blog isn't about politics, but I think this concept of turning every decision into a battle has carried over into many aspects of our lives, including management and design. Take, for example, a designer who believes strongly in simplicity and reducing clutter (as I do). You'd think the best way to put together a recommended design in that instance would be to analyze what's needed and suggest a minimalist design that still offers all the necessary functionality. But I've seen situations where, expecting push back from a client to add more, the minimalist-leaning designer ends up recommending something that is even more scaled back than they believe it should be. If their design were approved right off the bat, it wouldn't even be what they want. They expect an equally opposing force to fight them, and hope that they land somewhere that looks like their actual recommendation.

The end result is that rather than working as teams to accomplish the best work possible, each faction takes the core of their suggested beliefs and recommends an "extremist" version of it, believing that it will be watered down over the iteration process to hopefully land somewhere close to what they really think is best. Everyone becomes an advocate for a particular strong viewpoint, and the end result is not so much a happy compromise as it is a series of concessions. We deliberately don't look at things objectively because we think, "well, if I'm objective, and the other person isn't, I'll lose so much ground that my stance will be lost." We turn off our objectivity, and sometimes don't even know why we're fighting for things anymore, except that it seems like it's the side we should be on. Sometimes the other side does have a good idea -- a better one than you had -- and we should embrace those as learning opportunities rather than as "giving in."

This process doesn't usually end with a happy solution. It ends with something everyone feels moderately comfortable enough not to continue fighting over.

I don't have any particular proposition for how to change this, beyond just trying to foster objectivity more in your own work. I try to look at my own designs and ask, "is this really the best way?" Sometimes I'll do a full design on something and scrap the whole thing because, after stepping back, I realize my initial assumptions about the best design were off track. I try to listen to critical feedback and objectively accept when that feedback is right. If I love something, but everyone who sees it is confused by it, it's irresponsible of me to ignore that -- I try to figure out why my instinct was off and how I can adjust to avoid making that mistake again.

I'm not perfect at this by any means, but I do value objectivity and think it's to everyone's benefit to be a little more willing to stand back and take a critical look through someone else's eyes. You might see something you never thought of before.

Launched: Trinity Boston Foundation concert page

My association with Trinity Church and the Trinity Boston Foundation goes back over four years, and I'm very grateful that in the time since I left working for them full-time, I have still been asked to help with a variety of design projects. These have included invitations, postcards, brochures, email newsletters, and now a one-off set of two pages to promote their 2008-2009 concert season, which was launched about a week and a half ago.

This project was a fairly quick and simple one, as they were on a tight timeline, but sometimes "quick and simple" yields exactly the kind of bold, clear designs that get the job done.

You can see the pages here: http://www.trinityinspires.org/building/music/

Widescreens in motion

With widescreens and browsers on the mind, I noticed a nice way to use some of that "extra" space browser windows may provide on larger screens. As I updated my Flash player, I noticed that the "Search" box was located on the far right of the screen, despite there being no other content that far over.



I suspected that changing the size of the browser window would trigger some alternative layout that realigns the search box in relation to the top links. My suspicion was confirmed:



The search box remains right-aligned, but is now placed above the top navigation links rather than next to them.

It's an interesting and well-executed approach, and it should be noted, is not even that difficult to do.

Our widescreen future (and present)

You'd think we'd have this figured out by now, but the ever-changing nature of the internet, computers, monitors, and design has made "How big of a screen should we design for?" a question at the start of every web design project.

The super quick answer to that has changed over the years, from 640x480 WAY back in the mid-90s to 800x600 to the current "safe" standard of 1024x768. Basically, subtract about 25 or so pixels from the width to cover the size of the scrollbar and you should be safe.

But, if you look at trends in monitor sizes -- and many clients do -- you'll notice that the widescreen monitor is becoming more and more prevalent. The screen I'm looking at right now is 1680x1050, and there are plenty of monitors out there with even wider resolution. W3Schools lists the % of people using screen resolutions of "higher" than 1024x768 at 38% as of January 2008 -- which is an increase from 26% the year before. A similar jump would put fully half of monitors at higher than 1024x768 by January 2009 (I think it's time for them to start breaking out that "or higher" group).

For the most part, however, virtually all sites have stopped themselves from designing for anything wider than 1024, even though statistics would suggest that you are serving up unused real estate to about half your visitors. Why not design for larger?

Well, there's a good reason -- as screen resolutions get larger, people are less inclined to maximize their browsers to full screen. But that starts to be a sort of chicken and the egg question -- are users not maximizing their browsers because of the "wasted" space, or is the way we use our computers shifting such that we prefer seeing multiple windows at once?

It would be interesting to see a site take full advantage of wider browser windows -- it is sometimes being done (look at Clear Left or this Particletree example and change the size of the browser window, and you'll see the content adapt), but I think a lot of heavily-trafficked commercial sites are missing out on an opportunity here. There may be a fundamental shift in the thinking behind site design in the not-too-distant future as our viewing area gets increasingly wider and (thus relatively) shorter.

Some additional interesthing thoughts on the subject are at 456 Berea Street.