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The Commoditization of Coding, the Democratization of Design and the Importance of Meaning.

There is a shift that has taken place in the building of the worldwide web that many organizations, institutions and small businesses are not realizing and the later they come around the harder it will be for them to make the change. The current economic crisis will make this situation even more acute.

This shift is:  The Commoditization of Coding and the Democratization of Design

Whenever  a product or business service approaches the tipping point of commoditization or democratization the professionals that have crafted their careers on this service start pushing back and squealing. This is definitely happening in the wild, wild west of the world wide web. Web design and web development is going through a significant change that many in the industry will not survive if their skill sets do not evolve.

Note, I have separated the two.

Web development for this author involves the actual building/construction of the site. Web design is the branding and information architecture that gives form, meaning to the site. When I studied Architecture in the ’90s there was a book called Structure and Fabric that was incredibly useful in our coursework. The title confused me at first but after a little while I came around to understand what it really meant. But today I am going to re-purpose that title.

Web development gives the structure/framework upon which is draped the fabric of the design.

Two distinct, yet in-extricably linked entities working together for the common good. To make your site’s visitor either spend money or listen to you.period. All the major brands and web properties understand this from Coca-Cola to Kimberly Clark. From Nike to Ecko. The sad reality is that, not enough of our small and medium businesses and organizations realize this.

But where is this commoditization and democratization coming from? On the design side so many people have a crack version of Photoshop that it is relatively easy to procure a layout for your site at a moment’s notice. Then on the coding side there are an increasing large number of online outfits that all they do is code the photoshop layouts being generated by the crack editions of Adobe’s bread and butter. This, in addition to the fact that so many people know how to code a site in Dreamweaver or write CSS in a text editor. These two activities  are approaching critical mass and are rapidly squeezing out what I would call the “masterbuilder” function of the webmaster and splintering the activities of this post into two distinct tent poles under which websites are being built. It will become increasingly difficult to find persons that are equally versed in both design AND development as coding is such a commodity and people who say they can design are everywhere.

Now, part of the reason companies and organizations hire a hybrid of the two is because they take for granted one of the two functions, coding or design. It’s as simple as that. Usually it’s the design that gets knocked down a couple notches the priority pole. It’s seen as the skin, the lipstick on the pig, the “make-it-pretty” layer in the workflow. This approach, I believe is dead wrong.

“Photoshopping” is not Design.

Design is much more than making it pretty.

Real Design is infused with strategy.

By relegating the Design aspect of a site to the fringe of it’s creation, you are crushing up to 50% or more of your site’s potential. If I said to you, I could get 30% more persons to stick around on your site for longer would you listen? If I showed you that beauty has a function would you take this article seriously? It is crucial for stakeholders to realize that Design needs to be seen less as decoration and more as communication.

If your site’s Design does not; communicate the brands core message, influence a specific action or at the very least grab the user’s attention by the horns, just trade in your marbles and go home.

The web is built on an attention-driven economy. You keep someone’s attention, they stick around. If they stick around at some point they WILL do what you want. Simple. If 60-80% of your sites visitors are clicking away to your competitor in under 30 seconds you have a problem. Either your content is weak or your Design is poor…or both. Within those 0-30 seconds there may not be enough time to show off the wiz-bang functionality of your site. So all the resources you invested in the site’s back-end Coding is gone in 60 seconds…usually far less. The decision to stay or leave your site is based on the Design, content or lack thereof. It is the first interaction before they make a single click. If the design sufficiently attracts, then solid Coding and content will cause the bee to go in and get the pollen.

As time spent on your site goes by the functionality aspect takes precedence and the quality of your Coding starts to show. But it’s still the Design and content that keeps them coming back. It’s a fact of life, we like to hang around people that either look good, have something great to say or posses something that we want or all of the above. The same for websites. It’s the cool place to be after school. It’s the spot to be seen at. While at the Caribbean School of Architecture, award winning architect Denny Repole once said to us during studio class, “People go to special places not only to see, but to be seen”. Creating a site that people want to be seen at (like Facebook) takes many man-hours from the Design and Coding teams to pull off. But what is the result?

continued . addictive . attention.

Spending large sums of money on a website is becoming increasingly rare especially among small to medium size businesses. As this kind of spending goes down, especially in this caustic economic environment, making the case for spending either to your board of directors or to your wife is gonna be pretty darn HARD!

So the design is out-sourced to your nephew and the coding to a friend that’s a network admin in his day job. The splintering of web development is in full swing. It is rapidly becoming cheaper to do and the long-time Designers and Coders are being marginalized rapidly.

How can everyone benefit from a situation like this? Probably not, is the truth or at least not in every case. I believe the only way to add value to what you are good at is to specialize in either coding or designing. Evolve what you are good at to it’s highest possible level. With the public’s highly evolved awareness of good design and the increasing functionality of what sites can offer now a days, there is plenty of opportunity to specialize in either field.

I think more of us website producers seriously need to adopt the model of car production. Where the functions of the engineers and the designers are distinct but the product reflects the synergy and symbiosis of the two.

By specializing on their skill set the end product will be much better for all parties. The two sides of the coin will have a better chance at evolving their deliverables to the highest possible point by going through multiple versions without causing critical aspects of the site to suffer in the production process.

Coders should focus on squeezing every drop of functionality, robustness and elegance from every line of code while paring away the unnecessary barnacles. Make the site sing. Optimizing their  processes.

Designers need to establish themselves not just as Photoshop jockeys but also as thinkers and communicators that know how to embed meaning into every pixel they lay down through intelligent branding, wise use of color theory and typography along with  smart information architecture.

That leaves us with the third leg for the previously unmentioned stool. Meaning.

But what is meaning…really. Meaning is beyond the template driven, monoculture that is producing multiple sites that look way too much alike. Meaning is taking the brand D.N.A.  of your client and expressing that in every single pixel. LACK of Meaning is what happens when you remove the text from a site and you have no idea what it’s selling or communicating. Where this company is and who is behind it. Most times you have to go to the about us or the gallery to get a sense of place and purpose from a website. It should not be so. These two aspects of meaning can and should be expressed in the design.

We remember things because they MEAN something to us. We remember a first kiss, our first car, our favorite color, our first job, our favorite teacher and many other things because they mean something to us. I bet your mind just drifted. One of those things must have meant something. It’s what makes them special. Sometimes it’s a weird little quirk that we like about a place, a person or a thing that adds the meaning. It is the same with a website, a car, a home, our iPhone. Even a smell has a meaning. Simply put, Meaning aids memory, when your website is saved in someone’s memory you are there for life. Top of mind forever.

At the end of the day it is the subconscious Meaning that will help in a large way to help people to pay attention to your site. Because the inconvenient truth is, if a site’s visitor does not want to pay attention, there is very little else they will pay for.

When the coding structure and the design fabric reflect a high level of evolution and are blended perfectly in the matrix of meaning you will not only have a site that can take you from point A to point B. But will ride like it’s on rails  and oh yes, is drop dead sexy and unforgettable. Those are the functions of a successful site.

Yorkali is a Jamaican designer. Follow his tweets on Twitter here.

Apocalyptic rock formations at McKinney Park, Austin TX

A few moments ago, I responded to a twitter post . It triggered a bunch of thoughts that have been floating around my noggin recently. As I watched the Christian Science Monitor shift to an all web platform and newspaper and magazine readership plummet to the earth like Narcissus I realized that the tipping point has long past. We are experiencing a brand new shift in media as print, the oldest bastion of human communication is pushed to the edge as it officially becomes fringe media.

Video killed the radio star but radio never really killed the print star. And the internet never really killed the TV star (slowly but not yet). As bandwidth and net speed has increased we are seeing that we humans really love the moving picture, regardless of the platform and a book of faces. See the NY Times new video section, watch Lady Gaga achieve a record in social media. Yes, the death of the print medium has long been ballyhooed but where do we go from here? What do we do with this fact?

Fringe media does not mean it is worthless media. The prices for NYT cover proclaiming Barack Obama president got into 3 figures on ebay. There is still a need for permanency that will not go away. The sound of pages flicking, the smell of the paper and of course scrap-booking articles, etc, etc. There are others that plainly will never give up picking up the morning paper at the news stand or from their front door.  So…first, know your target audience. I mean, REALLY know them. What platforms are they using, where are they going first thing in the morning. Which media do they trust and use that. Use your imagination to mesh the digital and analog worlds in new and creative ways.

Even if you think your product or service does not match that medium, get your self on it…NOW!

Fringe media (radio, and print) will always have a place, always. BUT,  it has to be integrated into your marketing mix with Teutonic accuracy. If you can’t measure it, do . not . do . it !

The media magnates that do not recognize the gravity of the shift to the web and social media will be left with their pants down in front of a panel of congressmen asking them why didn’t you recognize what was going on, why did you wait so long to do something. Universities, Colleges, Government agencies, Churches and organizations of all stripes, but especially small business owners cannot afford millions or even thousands, or in many cases hundreds of dollars to go down the drain on one mailer or one ad. Business 2.0 is dynamic, organic. It blogs with a purpose, listens to twitter feeds with Obamian ears, engages on Youtube with MTV-esque creativity and  keeps attention with a steady stream of Facebook updates. Then, tagging and measuring it all till thy kingdom come!

If you are not doing this, your days are numbered. Blasting an e-newsletter to 200 thousand people is no longer enough.  Sending hundreds of 2011 calenders out to your clients will no longer cut it.

That’s the easy way out.

You must engage the masses or your entity will be relegated to the fringe….It’s as simple as that.

After Just watching Fringe, this sure is spooky. This is some wicked stuff. Man, we are so close. So close.

Indian neurosurgeon peers into a woman’s brain, finds guilt – Engadget

I recently wrote an article about a heartbreaking new trend in our classrooms. In Universities throughout the US, students are surfing the internet, shopping online, Facebooking, and emailing while their professors speak to disengaged minds.One can argue that kids have always passed notes, but this semester’s explosion of multi-tasking is on a terrifying scale and teachers nationwide are bereft. The Dean of the University of Chicago Law School just banned surfing during class. Harvard Business School was forced to cut off internet access. Columbia, Barnard and countless others are hustling for solutions, but students demand that their rights are not infringed upon.You can read my account of this crisis and of the dangers of multitasking in this piece on Tim Ferriss’s blog. What I would like to do now is propose some actionable solutions to a cultural problem that extends far beyond our schools.

7 Habits Essential for Tackling the Multitasking Virus | Zen Habits

Tags: multi-tasking, threat, 2008, schol, students, danger