Web Designers, Usability, & John Lennon

Jason Fried of 37signals thinks web designers have taken their eyes off the ball. His 'post-SxSW essay' bemoans the fact that designers seem to be way too interested in 'standards' like CSS and XHTML and not interested enough in usability and the impact of their designs on real people and the bottom line. The folks at Airbag make a similar point.

Fortunately for all of us, the invisible hand is increasingly making usability an issue. Not because anyone suddenly cares about silly things like logic or customer satisfaction, but because on web sites, better usability makes more money. The rise and recent dramtic improvement in web site analytics software, and impact of PPC advertising are dramatically increasing awareness of ROI, and as soon as you start working to improve ROI on web pages, you wind up working on usability. (BTW: It won't be called usability, it will be called conversion marketing or some similar new term.)

It will be interesting to see how the design community reacts when their work has to produce objective rather than just subjective results. John Lennon once said (or so I remember) something to the effect of 'artists are all for change until someone tries to repaint their local coffee house'. Here come the painters...

Posted by Craig Danuloff at March 17, 2004 11:09 PM