Kalena Jordan reports on Jason Santa Maria’s session Good Web Design Ain’t Easy:
Jason started his Webstock presentation by changing his subject entirely. He originally wanted to talk about how to use grids and tyopography etc but realized he had to start with storytelling – storytelling with a plan. He decided that a better title for his talk was Design for Communication. How does a design tell a story?
Dale, who won a Chumby (I’m so jealous!) says Webstock08 Rocks!, and specially enjoyed Damian Conway’s session:
The best session was the second to last, where we were given 26 tips (from Z to A) of how us ELOI can confuse the hell out of you MORLOCKS. It was 50 minutes of non-stop laughs as the speaker basically took the mickey out of everyone by telling us how to design websites that confuse, annoy, frustrate, infuriate and irritate the average internet user. It was the most entertaining session and certainly brought home all the elements of best practice that make the web experience either a breeze or a pain!
Skinny found that how you make a website “all depends”:
The big out-take of the two day event was that we can all have different ideas of what the web should be, and how the web should behave, and that none of those ideas are right and none of those ideas are wrong. …
And so we all need to learn to make websites that serve the audience — this should be our mantra (and it is at Click Suite ). Who is the audience? What do they want to get from this website? How can they interact with this website that will give them the best experience possible (based on their expectations)?
Some websites need to be text based and easily searchable and scalable and non-hierarchical; other websites can have graphics (or god forbid, Flash) and be immersive and experimental. It all depends on your intention and the audience requirements. It’s quite simple.
