E is for Experience Design

When you're designing a site from scratch, why would you ever leave out efficiencies that are already ubiquitous. By that, I mean, if Facebook does it, what is so hard? Just make it better. It seems like web design is still divided into several categories: There are the super advanced sites like Facebook and Gmail that use the latest in AJAX, Java, Flash Actionscript, SSI, Php, Rails and other current development languages and tools, all in the attempt to make the user experience even more simple. These sites auto-close AJAX pop-ups after you've had a chance to read them. That's slick. Save you a click. Then there are the sites that are still using technology from 3-4 years ago, and have updated the design, look and feel of their site, but not the functionality or UXD, because they can't, not because they don't want to. They're stuck with things like traditional pop-ups, or doing incredibly complicated things with CSS and DHTML just to make things look good, when they could migrate, and make things work good too. Then there are the sites that haven't even bothered. They put up their content back in 2003, with no CMS to speak of, and have to manually adjust copy and news and content when necessary because they simply did not build an infrastructure to make those changes. At the end of the day, when designing a site, think about it from the user's point of view. Forget about the technology and the restrictions, and simply ask the questions "If I were using the site, how would I want it to respond when I clicked here...?" You will likely give an answer pretty close to the best practice for UXD, however development likes to sometimes scrimp on the Experience to make the code easier. Baby and Bathwater.