Oct 12 2006 at 2:30pm
Professional Standards in Web Design
Jeff Croft has a great post on what it means to be a web designer. We come across this sort of thing all the time at TWF – people who have done a few web designs and think they are ready to start selling it. They post their portfolio sites for review – what are we supposed to say? Well, sometimes we manage to talk them out of it.
We did have a big discussion about this issue last year. If you take a look at that thread (and the websites of some of the posters) some of the problems become evident. Even the people who are deploring the lack professional standards don’t seem to have any themselves.
In the comments after Jeff’s post he used a haircut analogy, which is something I often bring up myself when discussing this issue. I could give you a haircut right now, but do you really want me to? Probably not. Your hair would be shorter but would certainly look like crap. So why is it okay for someone who just picked up Dreamweaver to start selling web design? And why is it that once people learn how to make a decent site they decide it’s okay to stop learning? Would it be okay with you if your doctor wasn’t reading up on scientific research and incorporating it into his/her practice? I didn’t think so. This isn’t a life threatening problem by any means but it does affect the quality of product.
Speaking of quality, why is it that people can easily spot a bad haircut when they see one but can’t spot bad web design? Even some of these so-called “designers” can’t see it. Why is that? Do some of us just have overly sensitive eyesight or what? It’s bizarre – you look at some of those sites and wonder who in their right mind thought that was a good idea. If someone was selling bad haircuts they wouldn’t be in business for very long. And I’d bet their disappointed client would be heading to another hair stylist ASAP.
I do agree that it is necessary and beneficial to have different levels of price/quality in the industry. But the products that some of these people are selling is just way below what a low quality/cheap site should be. Ever check out those freelancer sites? Take a look at some of the portolios posted some time, it’s good for a laugh …. or cry! As another example, this is one of the most successful web design companies in the medium sized city where I live. Go on, disable tables, you know you want to! (Update: that company has posted an updated design since this post was written)
There have been a number of strategies proposed to deal with this problem by others in the industry. As Jeff mentioned, Mark Boulton had a post last week about a professional organization for web designers. I like the idea of that but agree that the logistics of it might be too much to overcome. You’d have to have a lot of powerful people in the industry coming together to make something like that happen. Earlier last year some others had a big discussion about “non-professionals” using tabled designs and all that. I found that this had the opposite effect on the people it was meant to target. They just got more set in their ways.
So what would be a good strategy? I think we first need to work on educating people about what good web design is. We also need to work on educating beginning webmasters about what it takes to be a professional.
Molly E. Holzschlag October 16th, 2006 at 5:06 am
Education is absolutely key. Yet, there are very few really well educated folks doing the education. So we need to figure out how to train the trainers first, as it were.
Initiatives from major companies such as Yahoo!, Microsoft and Opera are very welcome, too. When they send folks on the road to do true education and not just product hawking (go see Nate Koechley (Y!) and Chris Wilson (MS) for example, and insights and perspectives can really change. What’s more, sharing of technology is imperative. This is something some companies are doing really well and we need to keep encouraging them to do so – they have the resources independents such as myself do not.
At any rate, this is obviously a concern near and dear to my heart. Thanks for keeping the conversation going.
Megan October 18th, 2006 at 2:29 pm
Molly – thanks for commenting! I totally agree about education. There are some people like yourself teaching to the experts but there aren’t many who are able to reach the beginners and intermediates. I see people like you as being the university professors of web deisgn. And it doesn’t make sense for the university professors to be teaching the beginners. What we need now are some high school teachers! That’s where I see myself
It is a challenge to reach out to those people. How do you find them when they’re not looking to improve or don’t even feel they need to? From the other end we can also try reaching out to business owners – the people who buy web design – and teach them about what good web design is.
I really love the Web Evangilsm stuff they’re doing at Opera. I actually applied for a job there
I would have moved to Norway for that! I think now they’ve moved that part of the company to India now.
Joseff Betancourt October 23rd, 2006 at 10:18 am
Hi. I’m an oldschool web designer that stopped for a long time and then began to find everything different (CSS, etc).
Where would one goto to read up on the standards and such.
I have two sites up currently, my personal joseffbetancourt.com and my hobby site URTournament.org and I’d love to imporve them with standard based design.
kabonfootprint September 3rd, 2008 at 5:35 pm
The more time that is spent dissecting, analyzing, and critiquing a design by the wrong kinds of people the worse that design gets. The same trend applies to the number of people involved in the design process.
Thx a lot for infomation!
Troy Showalter January 12th, 2011 at 9:26 pm
You title a post “Professional Standards in web Design” yet offer no such standards. This paper is nothing but rhetoric and slanter. It would be nice if you sites some hard examples of poor website designs and explained what makes them poor instead of taking the position that only you (and those like you) should be developing websites. I am a student at University of Phoenix starting my bachelors program in web design. I find your spiteful demeanor in this post troubling and would suggest trying to be more constructive in the future. On a final note, the background color you have chosen for this site is painful to the eyes. I would suggest a softer color in the future.
Megan January 13th, 2011 at 6:44 pm
Hi Troy,
Well, I see my post has struck a chord with you! Keep in mind that this is a blog post, not an article or “paper” (and 4 years old!). I agree that the tone is a little confrontational, but that comes out of years of seeing businesses getting ripped off by people selling a poor quality product. Once you’ve been in this industry for a few years I’m sure you’ll understand.
As for some examples of poor site designs, I normally prefer not to single out particular examples. However, I do frequently review sites at The Webmaster Forums. On this site, I have some examples of good design as well as a review of some major 2010 Olympics websites.
Sharon R. May 24th, 2011 at 9:40 pm
My website is still under construction, so you probably won’t want to waste your time on that…lol. However, NONE of your links work! Navigation is KEY to good web deign…just sayin’
Sharon R. May 24th, 2011 at 9:43 pm
Way to go Troy!!! You Rock! My thoughts exactly! I’m a fellow UOP student in my Web Design II class…. looking for valid information…clearly it won’t be found on this website. I’m looking for FACTS, not opinions….just sayin’
Megan May 25th, 2011 at 8:34 am
No, some of the links don’t work – I can’t help it if other sites change their link structure. Check the date, this post was written almost five years ago.
This is a blog post, which was part of an ongoing discussion in the industry. Of course it’s opinion. But seriously, you don’t think there should be some professional standards for selling web design? You think people who don’t understand the ins and outs of navigation, layout, typography, SEO etc. should be charging others for their work?
This post was written 5 years ago. I actually think this is less of a problem now than it was in 2006.
Mark December 8th, 2011 at 4:45 pm
Well Megan,
Professional standards have nothing to do with web design as related to you by your blog, to set a standard on design would be like telling Picasso to clean up his paintings. Besides, we do have a set of design standards that are enforced by the developers of the browsers we use, it’s called HTML 4, (now up to 5), and CSS. These standards dictate what we can and can’t do to our web design. The only limitations set by design is that which the mind can create.
So back to your blog on “standards”, the term Professional is coined for anyone who receives a payment for a service performed, technically this means you receive monetary funds, but the service could be a barter exchange or an item that furthers your career. So does this mean that the college athlete who gets a free education to play football is a professional? In my opinion, yes. Others will disagree of course… Perhaps this blog would be better titled as “Professional or Amateur: Considerations on Design”