The web is weird
Posted on May 8, 2010
The web is weird. If you don’t understand it, that probably just means you’re normal.
I’m a web designer by trade. That’s proof right there that web design is not as difficult to understand as quantum physics or medicine. It’s just that web design requires a specialized body of knowledge that happens to cross over a lot of different areas.
On the one hand, a lot of it is common sense. On the other hand, it would be wrong to say that anyone with common sense can sit down and build a great website with no training.
Some research estimates that it takes around 10 years or 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become an expert in a given field. That’s probably true of web design. Yeah, there are plenty of good web designers who have been at it for less than 10 years, but the ones that are approaching Jedi skill levels are probably in the 10,000 hour neighborhood when you add up all the work they’ve put in to get there.
The point is, it takes awhile to become a good web designer.
Not to worry. As a client, you don’t need to spend 10 years learning about web design to get a good website built. Not even close. What you need to do is spend some amount of time learning the right things. You don’t need to understand how to code a website from the ground up, but you do need to know what makes a good website, how the web works, and how to figure out what mix of web tools you need for your web presence.
If you have a solid understanding of these things, a good web designer can help you with the rest. That’s the good news. The bad news is if you don’t have a clue about the web, it can be very difficult to get good web work done, even if you hire a great web designer.
The less you know, the more likely you are to hire a bad or mediocre web designer, and that pretty much rules out any chance of getting what you need.
If you’re a non web geek trying to use the web for your business, organization, rock and roll band, etc., you might be be glad to hear that it is feasible for you to learn what you need to know. There are some essential things to get your head around, and then a lot of other things just build on top of those basics.
From the outside, the web just looks like a big swirling sea of incomprehensible stuff, but once you know a few of the secret handshakes, it starts to look more like a big swirling sea of mostly comprehensible stuff. You’ll also find out that a lot of the web is just clutter that you can and should ignore. Learning how to filter out this noise will get you a long way down the road.
Nice post, its rubbish that clients know so little about good web design so I am informing them now what makes a good website to get the them in. They should know that you are the expert and know your game.. Nice post thanks.
“From the outside, the web just looks like a big swirling sea of incomprehensible stuff, but once you know a few of the secret handshakes, it starts to look more like a big swirling sea of mostly comprehensible stuff.”
That sums up my experience in the web design industry. At first I thought CSS and HTML were nearly impossible to learn. 4 years later I dream in code.
There will always be new mysteries since new devices, technologies, techniques, and even languages are hitting the market daily.
The more I learn, the more I realize my ignorance.