I’m a sucker for anything about thoughtful web design and development. The motto of this blog is “Thoughtful posts about nonprofit websites.” The MRW Web Design motto is “Thoughtful websites for nonprofits and mission-drive organizations.”
The blogger Jeremy Keith has some excellent thoughts about thoughtfulness in his post, “Decision Time”:
I’ve always associated good design with thoughtfulness. Like, I should be able to point to any element in an interface and the designer should be able to tell me the reasons it’s there…
But I’ve come to realise that this is a bit reductionist. Now when I point at an interface element, I still expect the designer to be able to justify its inclusion, but I’d also like to know the trade-offs that were made.
This is exactly what I mean when I think about “thoughtful websites.” When I’m working on a project, my ultimate goal is to invite the client into a “thoughtful websites” practice with me.
At some point during every project, I will build long cases for and against a decision. Slideshows, links that force themselves open in new tabs, wireframes, popups, etc. That can sound like I’m being a real bummer and gumming up the works.1 But there are a lot of real good reasons to not do these these that must be weighed against the reasons for doing them.
Jeremy offers a straight-forward example:
Suppose there’s a large hero image. I’m sure the designer would have no problem justifying its inclusion on the basis of impact and the emotional heft it delivers. But did they also understand the potential downsides? Were they were aware of the performance implications of including a large image?
I hope the answer to both questions is yes. They understood the costs, but they decided that, on balance, the positives outweighed the negatives.
I rarely put my foot down and say “no” (except in cases of accessibility requirements) because what I care about most is facilitating thoughtful, informed decisions. Nothing makes me more frustrated than doing something because other people are doing it.
To be extremely clear, I force myself through the same thought exercises, pro/con lists, and pained decision-making when I’m designing or developing sites. The best projects require trusting and thoughtful collaboration from everyone involved. When we bring our unique and crucial areas of expertise to a project and use that knowledge to make thoughtful decisions about our work is when we experience the most success.
- My desire to help people make informed decisions means I try to invest a lot of effort into developing relationships and trust early in a project. A list of “cons” gets taken as negative when there’s no relationship. That same list becomes informative and valuable with a relationship. Authentic collaboration that values everyone’s input is hard and takes longer than unilateral decision making. One person’s “roadblock” is another person’s critical consideration. ↩︎