hyalineskies

As designers, developers, and technologists riding the bleeding edge of web design, usability, and Internet culture, it’s easy for us to become wildly arrogant and unruly on our own sites. We let our egos space to roam free, listing our professional accomplishments and allowing our fiery arrogance burn higher when something we do gets widespread recognition. It’s easy for us to tell our readers that the reason they visit our sites is because they are there to learn from us. We are the designers. We are the creators. We, as dictators, much like the editors at my newspaper, should dictate the editorial and design directions of our own work.

Hypocritically, this is the same sense of authority and inaccessibility that our industry has rejected as obsolete. The reason that we have voices at all is due to the communities that we’ve created and contributed to. We have built a substantial morality (according to Tim O’Reilly) into Web 2.0, and one who throws this community out the window (or, rather, feels as if he or she is above it) is a designer’s anathema. Sadly, many of us do it each day without even realising it. Every time we redesign our personal sites, every time we write a new post, and every time we lecture on the state of the Web, we are potentially undermining our social community.

Although our blogs are our place to ramble on about our work, others’ work, or our lives, the blog’s one-way, soapbox-style content can overshadow the fact that plenty of people are behind the scenes listening. Although we are creating Web 2.0 when we are bloggers, it is the role of the reader and participant that truly drives everything that the Social Web is founded upon. It is also the participant that is easily neglected when you are the content creator, leaving us in a position of pretension and undermining the work we do as web creatives. Your readers should be your inspiration during a creative block; your readers should be your reason for keeping up your blog even when you are pressed for time elsewhere. It is the reader that should drive your content and design in an acceptable direction.

Community-driven content

How, then, can we be so democratic with our content while still maintaining our own individual voice? How can we allow our readers to take over our own literary styles with their desires? Honestly, it’s not that black-and-white: just because you are listening, you shouldn’t feel your creativity being stifled. It is partly true that your readers have come to your site to see your individual work, but it is also true that some (or all) of your work interests them in some way. They will give you your creative room; at the same time, they’ll want to see something that piques their interest.

Anyone who’s ever looked at their blog statistics will notice a few popular articles that seem to be the most interesting to readers. In a recent Alertbox, Jakob Nielsen, the web usability authority that I have a unidirectional love/hate affair with, coins these popular articles as evergreens due to the fact that they spawn consistent reader interest and never seem to die.

Every time I see my site’s articles or design wandering around the Internet, I make note of it. An entry’s popularity usually means that I did something right, so I try to see what the strong points of the entry are. Usually, I evaluate these entries from three angles.

Content What was it that I wrote about? What is it that makes people interested in the entry? The content is the core of the entry and should be the part given the most scrutiny. Pay attention to both the subject and the article: is it an informative, technical article on the uses of AJAX, or is it a humourous, list-type article of the worst sites on the Internet? Branch out into new writing waters every so often to test your reader base, but always keep in mind that your most popular content is what your readers use to form an opinion on both you and your site.

Graphics Some of my entries contain supporting photos or other alternate media. If this media is popular, it’s probably best to use more of it. I’ve found that a technical article can be made much friendlier with the use of screenshots or diagrams.

Comments Oddly enough, some of my most popular entries are the least commented upon. When people do leave expansive comments, though, it’s worthwhile to see what they’re talking about both with you and with each other. In future articles, you may be able to address reader concerns. You may also be able to get a topic idea or two from them.

Usually, I’ll get a decent evaluation of the hyalineskies Zeitgeist in these simple steps. Once I have an idea of what everyone else is thinking (and what has kept the evergreens from becoming everbrowns,) I’ll see what other topics I’d like to write about that readers may enjoy. In this way, I am still offered plenty of creativity; at the same time, it helps me to deliver consistently useful content to my reader base.

Democratic design

It’s silly to stop all this analysis at your written content: remember, too, that your alternate media, such as music, software, and even your design contribute greatly to your site’s accessibility. I have a tendency to tire of my designs frequently, moving onto complete redesigns every few months. After a while, I was beginning to tire of this template’s stark colour and sterile appearance. I wanted something darker. I began to develop “Gridlock Evolved”, a new CSS style for a slightly modified XHTML of the current hyalineskies design, Gridlock. The XHTML/CSS was stalled when I thought I had found a bug in sIFR. After having a chat with Mark Wubben, one of sIFR’s developers, it turns out that I had actually found a bug in Firefox. After that, I had to halt development to help a client work on porting his old content to a design I had built for him. I decided that I’d come back to Gridlock Evolved on the weekend.

When I logged into hyalineskies late last week, I found some incoming links from ProEstilo, a Spanish site showcasing the “best” web redesigns for December 2005, where, surprisingly, Gridlock was featured. (Andy Rutledge must’ve had the same idea I had, because I sure hadn’t seen his site before.) Google Analytics showed even more praise: Gridlock had been showcased in the popular CSS-MANIA and the British DesignShack. I guess Gridlock wasn’t so boring after all: people loved it. Instead of switching to Gridlock Evolved, I spent last night tweaking Gridlock’s stylesheets. After all, great designers realign, and I guess that this site’s look is doing well. (What about all the work I did on Gridlock Evolved? Expect a publicly-available WordPress theme here in January.)

Even if your site’s design isn’t getting a whole lot of attention, the past week has led me to an obvious conclusion and common American idiom: if it isn’t broke, don’t “fix” it. If your site is doing well and you’re getting a decent amount of traffic, seriously evaluate your current layout before switching it on a whim. As for my site, I’m keeping Gridlock until 25 April, when it’ll be redesigned as part of Reboot 2006.

As an alternative to massive changes, consider tweaking. Move content around a bit. Add a new feature, such as remaindered links or maybe a mobile edition. Improve your typography. It is amazing how much tweaking you can do.

When feedback goes bad

Obviously, it’s impossible to make everyone happy. You will have to ignore some feedback to maintain both proper site usability as well as your site’s primary purpose. Usually, you’ll have three reasons to reject reader feedback.

Tangential content If you write almost exclusively on web design and Internet culture, it’s probably best to reject feedback wanting you to write about something totally off-topic, like sex or politics, or even remotely related, such as video games. Unless it is an extremely special circumstance, I relegate my tangential content and ramblings to hyalineskies personal. It just doesn’t have a place when the majority of this blog is devoted to the Web. Tangential content is also bad for usability (at least according to Nielsen.)

Absolutely absurd content Although I thought that blogs wouldn’t get this type of attention, I have had plenty of people come to my site with “great ideas” for me to write about. Nearly all of them are ideas that involve me giving unnecessary publicity to the submitter of the idea. If I want to write an article about someone or their work, most likely I would have by now or am planning on it in the future. When people send you this type of self-congratulatory feedback, it’s best to just reject it. It shows little care for you as an author or your content. Although you should be listening to your readers, it is not your job to promote them.

Vulgar or illegal content This should go without saying. No, I will not post pornography on a site about design. On a more related note, I will not send people or make available for download my fonts or creative software unless they are licenced for such distribution. I will not write you an article on decompiling sIFR Flash movies to extract commercial fonts. Yes, I’ve been asked to do all of the above. I suggest that you follow this rule if you want any credibility whatsoever; developers will hate you (and possibly sue you) for distributing their content without permission.

Community-centred copyright laws

Most all bloggers and developers are familiar with the GNU General Public Licence, in some form or another, since most Linux-based web applications are released under it or one of its variants. A good majority of us are also familiar with the Creative Commons Licence thanks to services such as Flickr. Both of these licences are good for more than software; they also can be adapted to your written content, allowing your readers the accessibility and insurance of free content.

If you are a software developer - particularly, a web developer - release most everything possible under the GNU GPL or a Creative Commons Licence. When people were downloading the NEScover album, a set of songs I compiled for Something Awful, the packaged Creative Commons Licence helped the album propagate as well as drew many thanks from users. Many of these listeners still read hyalineskies and chat with me often. It’s easy to fall into the “open source just means no profit and free distribution” trap from the perspective of a naïve web developer; however, your readers honestly enjoy the peace of mind.

Be the user of your own work.

Although the idea of reading your own content may be mundane, redundant, and a little egotistic, I use my own site’s content a lot. I link to it in later posts. I subscribe to my own RSS feeds. I use the front-end interface and work with my own software the way a participant would. Although a lot of this is for my own testing purposes, it does something more than uncover bugs: it allows you to see your own work from the reader’s perspective. It’s said time and time again that you are your biggest critic. Simultaneously, however, you can also be your biggest fan.

This is where the participant keeps you in check, adding a bit of quality control to a free creative spirit. This work-feedback-rework model used in professional web design with paying clients yields a synergistic result with both parties content, something rather abstract in the blogosphere and personal sites. Listening to your participant is simply the synergy of a complete design. Avoid the pretension of Web dictatorship and take action. It is more than just our sites that rest in our hands: the very infrastructure of a healthy Web 2.0 rests upon our shoulders.