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borrowed idioms
Every medium has its idioms. At first, they are borrowed via analogy from other mediums, e.g. TV archetypes evolved from cinema news-reel to make daily news bulletins, live radio performances were appended with vision to make various entertainment shows. With time, unique idioms emerge, for example, live reports with in-situ footage, soap operas etc.
The web started the same way, Gopher or console terminal like selection lists and book style single column text. By about 1996 (going by my own example), index card or tabbed notebook metaphors replaced the menu lists and margin columns were introduced to present additional content.
In time, multi column layout was adopted from newspapers, following the rationale that more items needed to be seen without scrolling the page. This metaphor allowed for advertising to make it to the top of the page (even the anti-design Google tried this for a short while). The experimentally inclined and academic theories continued the search for unique forms and structure, but just about all business continued with the 'me too' approach.
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so what?
Does it still work? Or is it time to try a bit harder now that the technology is mature and users seem to be ready to accept more than the yellowed pages of last century's newsprint style? Life in the 21st century may have changed a lot, many people are not only surprised, but often shocked and yet the 'look' is drab and nobody seems to care. Even the loudest designs today are all retro and rehash, perhaps with a little twist of technological glare.
The short answer of course is YES, its about time! For those thinking: why change something that works – because of new technology, the evolution of user interface, e.g. small screens and touch interaction just to name a few. Small screens dictate a more dynamic approach to design and the touch paradigm really fails when content is crammed into columns fighting for the top slot.
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what next?
The first thing to die has to be the fixed width. In terms of usable screen real-estate this was always a losers way to eliminate a few design unknowns. I'll be very pleased to forgo the needless scrolling of a narrow strip so many sites are currently limited to. The opposite applies on the phone - sideways scrolling.
Much of the navigation paradigm is heavily biased towards pointing and clicking with a mouse and certainly fails when occluded by the user's hand. Then there are severe dexterity limitations of fingertip selection on small screens of a phone. I prefer resistive touch screens using long fingernails, but that's not the answer - besides being limited to single point gestures. Swiping pages may be a nice gimmick for the iPhone folk, but we need to find better and more precise solutions before the endless swiping novelty wears off.
Other problems come to mind, but what would I talk about in real life? I also have some answers in the bottom drawer, however - design ideas turn into 'open source' when they go online.
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