Web Design Awards

Web Design Awards?

You may have been sent to this page from a page with our statement that we had not (yet) received any awards for our Web pages. As I said, fine and dandy with me.

I have discovered that if something wins a design award, it probably has terrible human factors, and is the least usable design around. (That includes buildings, web pages, power tools, etc.) I learned a bit about usability and design in the excellent book The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman, Published by Doubleday, 1990, ISBN 0-385-26774-6. Look him up on Amazon, his books are well worth reading.

I have also gained knowledge from the human factors work of Jakob Nielsen, as well as the fine information design ideas of Edward R. Tufte. One of his earliest books was Envisioning Information ISBN: 09613921420. Again, look him up on Amazon.

When we first created web pages, the download speed was very important. Then, too many websites (commercial mostly) overloaded the page with too much junk and images. Then came (OMG) Flash. Now, we have some bandwidth, but when we were RV'ers, we had to pay for it (a LOT).

And now we have smartphones. Those horrible, huge webpages are STILL a problem, and providers of web content seem to think that everyone has INFINITE bandwidth and data limits. (Don't get me started on APP's, and their horrible quality.). Well, we try to check our own pages against the Android phones, and use various tools to shrink the browser window on the computer screen display to the size of a phone. We have started to use flexible layout systems like Vanilla (see link at bottom of page), and others.

So, go ahead, and win design awards. The ability to quickly load, easily view, and easily navigate Web pages is far more important, as far as I am concerned.

Web Design Awards?

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