Slightly Remarkable

Many of us today are aware of accessibility and usability issues. We have Section 508, the Web Accessibility Initiative, and a host of other accessibility-related web sites and organizations.

I myself am an accessibility-aware Web developer, and I have made it my job to ensure accessibility standards are met in Web sites I work on, whether I am programming in JavaScript, writing HTML, using image replacement techniques, or beautifying pages with CSS. But this entry is not about Web standards, and it’s not about me. It’s about a new kind of standard; we need an initiative for something else.

Web Appearance Standards

Now, I’ve no idea at the moment just how such an initiative could be organized, but before we get into creating an online organization for making Web sites in general more beautiful, let’s look at the reasons behind my preposterous idea.

The Problem

Let’s identify a few problems with the Web as it is. First off, people are used to ugly and poorly designed Web sites. It has become commonplace for even the most popular Web sites to be ugly, poorly designed, huge in terms of page weight (kilobytes), and broken. I see more personal blogs and hole-in-the-wall (pardon the expression) Web sites that few people get to see, and these Web sites are beautiful, light weight, easy to use, and just plain fun to look at. Yet, when I visit Yahoo!, MySpace, MSN, Amazon, and so many more of the most popular sites on the Internet, they all have poorly selected typefaces, ugly or difficult-to-use interfaces, bland colors, a complete lack of simplicity (information overload), and so many other inadequacies that they would cause any competent designer to vomit. It is severely appalling to witness such high-end Web sites with a complete lack of professional, quality appearance. It is sickening. The only reason these Web sites succeed is because the public is used to seeing ugly, half-assed Web sites that only function correctly a fraction of the time.

Case in point: MySpace is a perfect example. This Web site is ugly as they come, and despite their recent changes (oh, yeah, they added gradients to their ugly menu — big deal), there is no sign of improvement. The Web site is, and always has been, ugly as sin (and I mean the worst kind of sin). They continue to try to develop new features, and yet for some reason frequently have to post messages to their users that certain features or aspects of the site are down. At least once per week, I get an error message that is “forwarded to the MySpace technical group” simply when logging in.

Like our wonderful accessibility standards projects, which have done an excellent job at creating buzz in the online community and slowly creeping into the mainstream, a Web appearance standard initiative will require a great amount of exercise to provide direction and consulting for both existing and new Web sites alike to carefully design their Web sites with appearance, accessibility, and usability in mind. Fortunately, many (I would say most) accessibility-aware Web sites and developers have a great eye for developing beautiful Web sites while adhering to standards — although the same cannot be said for the majority of the actual accessibility standards Web sites themselves, ironically — but we need to bring into focus appearance as well.

The Mission

“The Web Appearance Standards project is an initiative to strongly and adamantly encourage the aesthetic and visual amelioration of all Web sites while supporting complementary initiatives for accessibility and usability standards.”

The Road

Now I’ve had my rant — and perhaps that’s all this really is — but I think it’s time for action. I haven’t started this organization, and I currently don’t have the time or resources to do so. Perhaps someone else does. If so, the Web site will have my full backing, and any support I can provide in my free time.

Following are three things that need to be done to get this started.

First, make a Web site. WASIP.org (Web Appearance Standards Initiative Project — I know it’s long, but WASI was taken; if you’ve got better ideas, go for it). This Web site should exemplify the beauty that the project aims to spread, but also meet accessibility and usability standards.

Second, spread the word. Build buzz. Make it the next Web Accessibility Initiative. Get all of those popular bloggers like Jeffrey Zeldman, Dave Shea, etc. involved and on-board. If the initiative becomes a large enough organization, it will have a great amount of political influence in the business realm, which will weigh heavily in favor of raising the bar for Web design and usability, which brings me to my third and final point.

Third, start getting in contact with these larger, more popular Web sites and get them involved. Pressure them to redesign their Web sites. As a public relations tool, it will be useful for them, as they can have some kind of stamp of approval for beautification or something. Obviously this would be derived by a committee of industry-leading designers. Furthermore, the companies would benefit because their users would benefit. For example, I use Facebook instead of MySpace for two reasons: it looks nice, and it’s fully functional, 99% of the time. The effects are not immediately realized, but as a late competitor into a social-networking scene, Facebook is actually doing more than phenomenally well against is less-than-beautiful counterpart.

The Future

The Web has an incredible, powerful future ahead of it. It’s still very young, but already we are seeing problems, and these initiatives are very critical (particularly as early on as possible) to nip issues in the bud before they become even more severe down the road. When Web sites are designed as an afterthought, or by people who have no experience designing with high-quality, or by lazy, careless individuals who are satisfied with the status quo and working their 9-5 jobs, then everyone loses. Don’t let that happen. Find vision. Find visual.

Oh, and before you post a comment about it: yes, I am an avid Taylorist.

Cameron Moll elaborated on his “Good designers redesign, great designers realign” phrase in an A List Apart article. Although at first Cameron’s message sparked controversy deep inside of me — I greatly enjoy designing web sites, even if there is no reason to do so — I’ve come to realize that he is indeed correct.

So, following Cameron’s outline, I want to go through a few questions so I can attain my Realigner badge.

First, why am I redesigning? It’s more than the CSS Reboot, and it’s more than the fact that I like to keep my site fresh and spiffy. Those are the reasons of a Redesigner, but in addition to those reasons, I’ve redesigned realigned my site to become more content-oriented and streamlined; I want navigation to be simple yet very accessible, I need a wider sidebar, but I also need a larger, more focused content area. I want to make my del.icio.us links and extended content into more like a secondary blog in the sidebar. Lastly, I want to change the way the site functions when viewing blog entries themselves; you should be able to skip to the comment form, there should be more information about the post, its author (me!), and other posts related to it.

Second, not a whole lot on the site needs to change, but a complete redesign is in order because these changes bring other challenges that a modification of the current design could not fulfill.

Third, the redesign isn’t the prettiest work I’ve ever done, so I don’t expect to get awards for my design. For now, my interest is focused on the content primarily, and the design secondarily. It will look nicer next time I redesign, as I’m sure by then I will have more solid reasons for redesigning (yes, I’m talking about May 1st, but that’s still six months away).

And fourth, obviously because I’m part of the CSS Reboot, I’ll definitely publish the redesign all at once on November 1st. However, for those of you who dislike my redesign so much that you can’t bare to look at it, I will be offering a theme switcher so that you can return to my older design at any time. I must warn, though, that in the future no modifications of past themes will be made, so those designs may become obsolete or even non-functional as I progress through new designs and add new features to the blog.

So, are you a Redesigner or a Realigner?

Reading news today, I came across an article at Mozillazine about the bookmark system in Firefox being rewritten by Vladimir Vukićević. The thing is, Vladimir hasn’t finished this small project, yet he’s announcing that he will be doing it in the near future. Sure there’s no deadline, but Vladimir has no choice but to do what he announced he would do.

As I read the article, I thought to myself, “What if I were working on something like this and said that I would be making such-and-such? What if I didn’t deliver? How would I feel? How do I feel now?” The truth is, I have a feeling that I won’t be able to commit the time to a project that I need to in order to complete it. It’s a feeling of fear and self-inadequacy. I’m confident that I could do it, time providing. The problem is that, obviously, time is a large issue and I am afraid that I won’t be able to complete what I set out to do within that limited amount of time (even if there is no deadline, an approximate one should always be assigned mentally, otherwise you’ll never get to it).

A vital approach to a beginning project is to start confidently. If you are having doubts or approach the project with a timid attitude, you’re more likely to give up or, worse, procrastinate. Get your things together and be completely sure that this is something you want to do and can do, then give it your all — don’t hold back. Think of it as a game of chess: you consider the location of the pieces, decide which piece you want to move, where you want that piece to go, and then you confidently move that piece — no second thoughts, no take-backs. If you cause a problem, you can rectify it by making changes in the future or changing your strategy, instead of wishing that you could go back and make changes.

• You will get overwhelmed: you may be thinking, “What? I need more clients, more work!” but the truth is, you need to be selective. If you can’t dish out what your client wants in a timely manner, that client is not as likely to come back to you in the future.
• “Hire” the right clients: Jason Fried mentioned this before. The trick is learning when a project is too big to handle, the client is too difficult to deal with (including things such as language barriers), or when you know you don’t have time.
• Be sure you have time: if you can’t devote time to a project, your client will be less likely to come back to you in the future; if you’re unsure whether you’ll have the time to devote to the project, the worst thing you can do is accept the project.
• Always sign a contract: if you don’t, there are some obvious problems that could arise, but it’s also important that you specifically outline what you’re doing, and stick to those items outlined. Anything more will require a new contract. If you don’t sign a contract, your client is going to get more out of you than you wanted to give at the price you quoted him at.
• Learn to how say “No”: saying “No” the wrong way will not please your client, but saying “No” the right way may possibly lead to future work from that very client (or other clients via word-of-mouth) because the client will understand why you had to say “No” and may request your services in the future.

Overall, you want to stick to decisions and don’t change them. Make a contract to define exactly what you’ll be doing for the client, and don’t do anything more than that. Decide if you have time or not, and don’t say “maybe later” because that means “no” and that’s not the way to say “no.” Stick to your work, too, though — your client wants you to do something for them, so do it, and don’t procrastinate.

Update: I just thought I’d give a little testimonial. Recently (very recently — June 16th-ish) I had to say no due to previous engagements which didn’t permit me to devote the time necessary to a project for a client. Because of the way I approached the client with my “no,” I was surprised (yet pleased) to read that, quote, “Something might still work out at a later date.” If you treat your clients right, they’re going to come back. People will understand when you have to say no if you approach them in a straightforward but kind attitude.