{"id":16439,"date":"2018-11-15T11:20:23","date_gmt":"2018-11-15T11:20:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marvel7077.wpengine.com\/?p=16439"},"modified":"2020-09-03T12:47:17","modified_gmt":"2020-09-03T11:47:17","slug":"need-design-faster-design-slower","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marvelapp.com\/blog\/need-design-faster-design-slower\/","title":{"rendered":"We Need Design That is Faster and Design That is\u00a0Slower"},"content":{"rendered":"

During a recent conversation with David Sleight<\/a>, Design Director at ProPublica<\/a>, I found myself realizing and saying \u201cwe need design that is faster and design that is slower.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Who are we and what is this thing called\u00a0design?<\/h2>\n

When I say \u201cwe,\u201d I mean our whole industry, when I say \u201cour whole industry,\u201d I mean design, and when I say \u201cdesign,\u201d I mean: web design and development; digital product design; digital user experience design; digital user interface design; digital interaction design; \u201cmobile\u201d design (which is the same thing as web design and development); graphic design as part of UX, UI, interactive, digital, and web design; publishing and editorial design; and other design practices specifically empowered by the internet and digital technology and built largely around reading and interacting with words on screens.<\/p>\n

A mouthful, isn\u2019t it? Some people mean all the above when they say \u201cUX.\u201d I generally mean all the above when I say \u201cdesign\u201d and call myself a designer.<\/p>\n

I exclude from the category, for this specific discussion, tactile, conversational, and passive design powered by the internet of things. Not because those practices are uninteresting or unimportant \u2014 on the contrary, they are fascinating, exciting, and fraught with critical ethical questions \u2014 but because they are not specifically screen- and reading-driven<\/em>. And it\u2019s our screen- and reading-driven design that needs a reset.<\/p>\n

Our whole industry, as I\u2019ve just defined it, needs design that is <\/em>faster<\/em><\/strong> for people who are trying to get things done, for they are our customers and should not be burdened by our institutional surrenders. We need design that is <\/em>slower<\/em><\/strong> for people who are trying to comprehend, for they are our only chance of saving the world.<\/em><\/p>\n

This porridge is too\u00a0fast<\/h2>\n
\"\"<\/a>

Derek Powazek\u2019s {fray} (1996) was an early site that practiced art direction on the\u00a0web.<\/p><\/div>\n

Our news and information sites have succeeded so well, they are failing. We\u2019ve designed them to be quickly scannable \u2014 at a glance, I take in the headline, the key visual, and the lead paragraph. But today\u2019s news is anything but simple. The truth cannot be reduced to visual sound bytes. That\u2019s how we got in this mess in the first place.<\/p>\n

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Imagine that! Typography and whitespace can encourage thoughtful reading.<\/p><\/div><\/center><\/p>\n

As a society, we\u2019ve replaced thinking with slogans, listening with wall-building. Our best news publications are doing a better and better job of reporting beyond headlines \u2014 getting down to the details that really matter. But we designers have so trained readers to scan and move on \u2014 Pacmans scarfing dopamine hits \u2014 that they no longer have the instinct to sit back and take their time with what they\u2019re reading.<\/p>\n

Our news designs must work to slow down the reader, engage her more deeply, encourage her to lean back and absorb. The good news is, we\u2019ve long had the tools to do it: typography and whitespace.<\/p>\n

Larger type<\/a> \u2014 type that actually encourages the reader to sit back in her chair \u2014 plus radically uncluttered interfaces and (when budget permits and the story merits it) art direction<\/a> are the way to do it. Derek Powazek<\/a>\u2019s late lamented {fray} (1996 \u2014 remnant here<\/a>) and Lance Arthur<\/a>\u2019s Glassdog were the first sites to do real art direction on the web. Jason Santa Maria<\/a>\u2019s personal site was a later, brilliant exponent of art direction on the web. (See \u201cPrevious\/Embarrassing Editions.\u201d)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

You can see these techniques working in the recent designs of The Washington Post<\/em><\/a> (but not its homepage), The New York Times<\/em><\/a> (but not its homepage), ProPublica<\/em><\/a>, Slate<\/em><\/a>, Smashing Magazine<\/em><\/a>, and Vox<\/em><\/a> \u2014 with inspiration from predecessors including the Readability<\/a> application, Medium<\/a>, and A List Apart<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

To a great extent, the ability of news publications to pursue slow design<\/strong> depends on their ability to finance themselves without overly relying on race-to-the-bottom advertising. Not all periodicals can free themselves of this dependency.<\/p>\n

On the flip side of the news experience, which must be savored and digested slowly, comes the challenge of our corporate and organizational sites, which must become faster<\/strong> \u2014 not just technically, but (even more importantly) in terms of their content\u2019s comprehensibility.<\/p>\n

In the beginning, there was shovelware<\/h2>\n

As the once-vital blogosphere<\/a> recedes from the equation<\/a>, and as traditional periodical publications struggle to retain solvency and relevancy (and wrestle with readability), the web becomes the turf of stores like Amazon, powerful networks like Facebook, and traditional corporate brochureware. It\u2019s this brochureware<\/em> that most needs fixing\u2014most needs to be designed to be faster.<\/em><\/p>\n

In the 1990s, disgruntled computer buyers coined the word \u201cshovelware\u201d to refer to the second-rate games, fonts, and software that came pre-bundled with many PCs. It wasn\u2019t stuff you had to have, carefully curated by software wizards who cared for you \u2014 it was garbage presented as value. Early web designers, including your present author, soon used \u201cshovelware\u201d to refer to the reams of corporate copy that got thoughtlessly dumped into the first corporate sites. The corporate overlords thought of the stuff as content. The readers didn\u2019t think of it at all.<\/p>\n

Getting easier to publish and harder to communicate<\/h2>\n

So we spent years preaching that the web was not print, finding ways to design words on screens so they could be scanned and used. We learned to inventory our old content and develop the will and the sales ability to toss the dross. Only content stringently designed to satisfy both customer and business needs would be permitted onto our excellent corporate websites. At least, that was how we did it when it came time for a major redesign (and only when astute stakeholders permitted it).<\/p>\n

But most of the time, and constantly between redesigns, junk still got shoveled into our websites. We even made it easier for the shovelers. We developed CMS systems and gave everyone in the organization the power to use them. It was easier for us to let people publish the stuff their little group cared about than to stop and ask what mattered to the customer. And it was also easier for the organization, as it enabled warring fiefdoms to avoid difficult meetings.<\/p>\n

It was easier. But not better.<\/p>\n

And the CMS systems multiplied, and the web-savvy middle managers were fruitful, and the corporate site was filled with documents nobody but those who posted them ever read. And the corporate site sucked. It sucked harder than it had even in the earliest shovelware days of the 1990s. It sucked deeper and wider and more frequently and with better algorithms. For all our talk of user journeys and mental models, most corporate sites are mostly pretty garbage.<\/p>\n

Shhh! Don\u2019t tell the client. They still owe us a payment.<\/p>\n

Beyond pretty\u00a0garbage<\/h2>\n
\"\"<\/a>

Ethan Marcotte\u2019s 2010 article, \u201cResponsive Web Design\u201d not only changed web layout, it pointed the way to more meaningful content.<\/p><\/div>\n

Gerry McGovern\u2019s \u201cTop Tasks\u201d method<\/a> showed how to prioritize the information the customer seeks over the darlings of Management. Ethan Marcotte\u2019s responsive web design<\/a> and Luke Wroblewski\u2019s mobile-first<\/a> strategies pointed the way to restoring the focus on what\u2019s most essential. There\u2019s no room for pretty garbage on the small screen. Now, before it\u2019s too late, we must fulfill the promise those visionaries and others have shared with us. If we want to save our brochure sites, we must make them not just faster, but relevant<\/em> faster.<\/p>\n

Designing with the content performance quotient (CPQ)<\/a> in mind is how we will take the next step. We\u2019ll ruthlessly prune the inessential, cut our sitemaps down to size, slash our bloated pathways, removing page after unloved page, until there\u2019s nothing left but near-neural pathways from the user to the information she seeks.<\/p>\n

In short, we will sculpt the design, presentation, and amount of content in our brochure sites with the same scalpel we take to the shopping carts<\/a> in our e-commerce sites.<\/p>\n

Evaluating speed or relevancy for your site\u2019s\u00a0content<\/h2>\n

How can we tell which sites should be faster, and which should be slower? It\u2019s easy. If the content is delivered for the good of the general public, the presentation must facilitate slow, careful reading. If it\u2019s designed to promote our business or help a customer get an answer to her question, it must be designed for speed of relevancy.<\/p>\n

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A conversation with David Sleight \u2013 The Big Web Show No. 171<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll continue to explore both these themes in future articles here. My thanks to ProPublica\u2019s David Sleight<\/a> for the remarkable conversation that helped give birth to this piece. David is a web designer, creative director, and leader at the intersection of publishing and digital technology. ProPublica is an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces \u201cinvestigative journalism with moral force.\u201d To hear the complete conversation, don your headphones and listen to Episode No. 171: Art Directing the News \u2014 with ProPublica Design Director David Sleight<\/a> on The Big Web Show.<\/p>\n

Read more<\/h2>\n