Week 6 Articles
March 4, 2009
Blasting the Myth of Above the Fold – by Milissa Tarquini
In her article – she does a good job outlining how different interest groups can be out of phase in a fast moving industry going through a lot of technological change. The interest groups here are designers, users and commercial parties such as advertisers.
Best practices take time to establish and often more time because of the challenge associated with changing relevant human behavior. She offers good practical advice and guidelines on moving forward regarding “the placing of the fold”. Essentially saying to be flexible – that users are more flexible than are currently being given credit.
Search Engine Placement Tips – by Danny Sullivan
David Letterman had it right. His top ten list. He never had a top 11 list. After 10 you begin to loose or not attract your audience in the first place.
Good practical advice. The general uncertainty or lack of visibility into exactly how search engines create rankings has created work for independent consultants to advise commercial firms (or non profit firms for that mater as well). Search engine firms are notoriously secretive about their hard earned algorithms used to create top ten or any other ranking schemes.
But the author provides good basics that need to be considered and I am glad to have him close on a positive note in that search engines are just one tool in promoting any business, and that one should not obsess on just this tool.
I could not agree more with Joshua Porter’s sentiment that design is not Art. He puts the focus on problem solving where I think it rightly belongs. The only point I questoin is his observation that the artist only works for themselves.
This may be a bit narcissistic. If someone dedicates themselves to be a novelist – then the reader does matter and it is not all about the author.
In other words – you write with the intent to be read (even if you elect not to publish). If you sing and work at singing as a profession – you sing to be heard. There is an audience in mind, and great performers will tell you that their most sublime moments are when the author/performer and the audience intersect.
If you are a painter – you may not value the opinion of many nor even that of the few, but you do paint in a context – and you are communicating. Communications takes both a sender and a receiver of the utlimate message (visual, audible, etc.)
8 Web Design Tactics to Help You When You’re Stuck
More good practical advice. Two I especially like: know when to take a break and walk away from a design that may not be working and give yourself and the design some space. Second = pull out the sketch pad first…this can say a lot of time before just jumping into the program of the moment.
