group94
Out of context: Reply #49
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- mikotondria30
We've all kind of allied ourselves to a small number of seemingly unbreakable codes, that emerged in the first half of the 00s, somewhat justifiably, but we've got locked into them. They center largely around conventions of usability. What happened as Flash was bloating and web2.0 as a UX concept - and a design aesthetic, was coming to the fore, is that it - became - set - in - stone, that the logo goes top left, a properly meaningfully described menu below or to the right of that, some engaging artistic imagery below that, to include some brand values via sharp, sterile copy and design, prominent content below that, column of incidentals to the right, and middle etc etc etc. All our sites - no matter what the subject, became bound up in the old-world inherited concepts of magazine readership. Now we are driven by ipad views, we've just transplanted the previous generation of media onto the new media and it's become choked. Flash helped break the mold and evolved a novel, seemingly endless way of presenting brands and art and encouraging and fostering interaction and novel relationship-building regimes. We've stopped animating, and have confined video to formulaically live in a little box as one stop on a jquery slider. It's all become still, and static, and rigid.
We need to rediscover dynamic, novel ways to engage and entertain - not forgetting the basic usability rules that we learned by making bad flash sites. We need user paths and information easily findable, usable, relevant and sharable, but instead of a page being a single node connected to dozens of one-step journeys, we need to reintroduce story-telling and multi-step experiences, not give it all up above the fold. Now we've got bigger screens and better typographical choices and the means of production of motion and complex static graphics are more accessible. It can be the start of something it once was, if we can just break out of the paradigm that the tools control the product - it can all be powered by wp as far as I care.
etc.