At work, i've had various discussions with folks in my group that i'm pretty sure haven't exactly enamored me with them.
We have some outstanding folks who work on user interface stuff and graphic elements. They produce some incredibly top-notch stuff and really take a good deal of well-deserved pride in their work. They're the ones responsible for how a great many sites look and feel.
And i've been telling them that design doesn't matter.
Yeah, i can see why they don't like me, but let me explain why i keep saying that.
i work for the Developer Network. That means, by definition, i'm dealing with developers. Developers, also nearly by definition, tend not to be the most design focused individuals on the face of the earth. Don't get me wrong, they know them some ugly, but if you've ever spent a few minutes looking around sites like CPAN, php.net, or any developer twiki, you'll pretty much realize that it ain't exactly about the pretty.
It's about the information. For them, the most important thing is being able to find, read, and bookmark the docs. They're raised on man pages, so giving them pages of pre-formatted courier new and they wouldn't complain or bat an eye.
That's not to say that you can't make 'em pretty later. Give them nice balanced page layouts and non-clashing colors that, you know, actually appear in nature and may not be selected by near random choice. You can even use creative navigation schemes for sibling documents so long as it's really clear how to get to the next or previous documents that use nifty DHTML tricks and sliding menus.
Geeks won't use those, naturally. They'll find the page using the search engine of choice, and use greasemonkey to "fix" the "broken" parts. Good for them. We should make sure that things are designed so it's easy to do that. That's why it's also critical that regardless of whatever fancy bits you toss on a page, it absolutely must be designed for search engines.
Ultimately the most important thing isn't getting it to look good, it's getting it out.
That's what matters.
I agree with xian! Getting the information out also means putting it in a layout that's friendlier to the way the eye follows the page and how to have it focus on the important stuff right away. You get maybe 2-3 seconds of someone's browser time before they decide to see what LOLcats are up to today.
I agree that there are some basic rules about putting stuff on pages. (you know, like "use line breaks, spell checkers and a table of contents/index")
Seriously, I'm not against good design. The deal is that developers (and I speak about that group nearly exclusively in this case) are used to such horrid design that even if you were to give them an incredibly intuitive navigational interface, they're more than likely to rely on a search box instead. Possibly the one on the page.
Yahoo, is pretty well known everywhere for having the best documentation. That's in no small part due to the folks that I'm working with. I actually want to make sure we stay that way by making sure we address the needs of the right audiences at the right times. ("Cutting edge"/"Early adopters" need less hand-holding than late comers that need clear cut and paste examples of how to do things.)
heh. I guess my stand is more "We don't have to get it perfect the first time. We've got plenty of time to get it right."
Priorities:
1. Exists
2. Well written
3. Indexed
4. Doesn't crash browser (cough MSDN cough)
5. Looks ok, I guess
6. Free pony
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form and function can work together, jr! you are absolutely right that the fundamental semantic meaning of the web docs is paramount. the ydn pages should look good in lynx, be legible with the css turned off, etc.
we're not just trying to "pretty it up" - a lot of design is also about clarity and organization.