How many times have you heard a prospective customer sadly lament the fact that their previous expert web designer disappointed them and that is the sole reason why they are now looking for a new person to help them out? Your probably missed:Web design in a city called Durban

Or, what about the popular,”I thought they were a professional web design company, but I guess I was wrong.” The list is quite truly endless.

An expert web designer is an individual who is widely recognized as a being “able” to carry out the duties of designing websites due to the fact that they have studied and proved to excel in their field according to that person’s peers and community at large. More so if theta designer received accreditation from a university.

A web design expert, is one with extensive knowledge or ability based on ANY kind of research and due study that they have carried out that pertains to their particular skill. If they have worked for more that a certain minimum number of years that society deems necessary, then that individual can be called “expert” which make them a highly credible source of information regarding web design.

If you have read the novel called Outliers, the author, Malcolm Gladwell implies that in order to be called expert in any field, you need to clock at least 10,000 hours of practice. Well, try 18 000. I’ve been designing websites for 5 years and I work mostly 8 – 12 hours a day, every day of the year.

A professional web designer on the other hand is one who is has associated with the profession of web design. Here is the catch, according to the simplest definitions of what a web design professional is, it seems to somehow encompass the term expert in it and in some instances it leaves out. That person has achieved the same standards of learning how to build web sites and has the same level of training as that other designers who have been termed have also been called professionals.

Description of an Expert Web Designer

Extensively Hand-code

Without a doubt, you must be able to hand-code websites using the current standard of HTML5 and CSS3. This means in the absence of code-sense, auto-completion and error detection soft-wares, you should be able to glance at code and instinctively “know” what it does.

Can Write Clean, Commented Code

This is something I have discovered to my chagrin, that most junior designers, tend to skip out, making not only their lives but the lives of anyone who comes after them to have nightmares in understanding their code in the future. The expert knows instinctively that building websites from scratch can result in more than 3000 lines in the CSS3

Can Do JavaScript

You cannot survive for too long as an expert without a basic-intermediate understanding of the universal web programming tool called JavaScript. Sure, anyone can search for those thousands of JavaScript snippets from the internet and integrate them into their design like slideshows, drop-down menus, error-handling and page transitions.

“The definition of an expert is someone who knows what not to do.”

Can Trouble-shoot Design Code

As an expert, you should be able to trouble-shoot a complex HTML or CSS related problem that is created by you OR by someone else without necessarily requiring tools like Code Debuggers. After all, why would you need Dreamweaver to tell you that the TITLE tags are too long and that half of the ANCHOR tags have not been closed.

Like the guy in the Matrix who sees the world in code, you start to “feel” your way around code as opposed to minute study. This only come from very prolonged exposure to web design – it cannot be jump-started with a quick course at w3Schools. You have to go the extra mile and put in the hours.

Graphic design

Web design is not just lines of code mashed up to right-align text and increase fonts until they look just about the right size. You have to have graduated from the school of basic Graphic design. The biggest obstacle that beginners face after studying HTML, CSS and JavaScript religiously is that in the real world, the people who will see your website do not care and will not be bothered by how clean or beautiful your “code” is. They are mostly concerned with two treacherous words called “aesthetics” and “usability”. That is where graphic design comes in.

A known hazard of the industry is that, in the quest for quick-fix solutions and overnight certificates, most designers discover that the basics of graphic design lie even before one starts to decide on colors and pictures.

It starts with drawing boxes on a blank canvas and re-arranging them 10 times a minute for hours on end until you have the basic grid of you website. Without basic graphic design skills this is an impossibility. We cannot begin to even talk about editing photos, that is to basic and any 12 year old can grab his daddy’s laptop and make a picture green.

Can Adapt

It is easy to fixate on a fancy technology and refuse to move ahead with the times – but in the end this always leads to future heart-ache for fellow collaborators and new projects that require new ways to solve problems. the expert mostly knows that keeping abreast of technology and adapting to different work environment does not only secure their place in the team but will make them to stay more relevant in the endless cycle of growth.

An expert in XHTML and CSS has low relevance in a society where the HTML5 and CSS3 expert exist. He has to stay up to date, it is part of his itinerary.

Can Implement A Full Web Design Cycle

In case you thought that all it meant was that you could do 10 minute quibbles in Photoshop, and start coding it in HTML quickly and have fully working website in 24 hours flat. You are dead wrong. It is process. If you’re doing it 24 hours, without a doubt you will create a trail of extremely unhappy bosses and clients. Here’s why:

Adhere to Client brief:

Must be read and understood completely. In order to do, a telephonic conversation or Skype chat is often necessary in order to “here” what the owner of the project is hoping to achieve and what their aspirations are. A client brief cannot convert emotions. An instant chat can try. But, a telephonic conversation is price less. Web design always seeks to solve problem. Its is always best to hear what that problem is directly from the client. That rapport has so many benefits that will not be sufficiently covered here.

Ideate Pro-actively:

This is process of coming up with ideas of how a web design can work best to promote the needs of the owner. While junior designers bugle up the process, the expert invariably knows to follow a hierarchical approach from top to bottom:

+ Decide on the pages that should be created. + Create a list of the components that should be there in each page. + Meditate on how those components are going to fit into the grand schema.

The the expert should come up with solutions on:

+ Promotional banner placement. + Call to action accessibility. + Where the login/register buttons should be placed. + The image/text ratio. + Best type of grid to use, full screen, 1280px, 980px, responsive or adaptive.

Once they have finished this process, they compile a report and email it to the client to keep them in the loop. You see, after many years in the field, they knows that it easy to blow up a projection out of proportion or grossly under-allocate the essentials of a project. This a sure way to ascertain that the project is on the right path.

Can Create Comprehensible User Flows:

Having spent 2 months on a web design project in early 2011, I have first-hand knowledge of how failing to draw up User-flows can grossly cause headaches for the design process as well as for developers. A user flow is like story telling. While most experts prefer marker and white board, the tool to be used is not the issue. What is important is how to determine a user’s journey from opening you website until they leave it. Its all too easy to determine where you want the user to click.

Any Tom, Dick and Harry can draw a huge red button and smash it flat on their home page.

Only the expert is concerned about where the user goes to after that, and he obsesses over it. So he will create a diagram with

• Start
• Scan Menu
• View Header
• Focus on Call To Action
• Read Top Content
• View An Image
• View Sign Up Call To Action Button
• View Reason for Using Website
• Scroll to Testimonials
• View Thumbnails
• View Email Newsletter Invitation
• View Footer.

And the resultant click actions like,

• Click Top Register Call To Action
• View New Sign Up Page with Form
• Enter Details
• Submit
• Thank you page
• Email Confirmation Notification
• Confirmation
• Introduction to Portal
• Invitation to Start … and so forth.

Side Note: It was only when Steve Jobs returned from his walks in the East Asian monasteries that he achieved a much higher appreciation for visual aesthetics, preached the beauty and power of simplicity to finally spearhead the pioneering of the ground-breaking smartphone that we call the iPhone.

Drawing up user flows requires the same level of focus that an artist uses when putting oil to canvas. The expert has to visualize the user going through the site and predict how they will navigate it.

Can Wire-frame:

This is a commonly ignored aspect of web design that often results in navigational horrors and highly inconsistent layouts. Recently, experts are using a term that is called Low Fidelity Wire-frames to build create layouts that have some level of detail incorporated.

It is game of , put that login button there, place the text here and leave white space here in order to make the vision from the user flow to become a reality.

It is too easy to assume that you have nailed it and just bulldoze on ahead, but experience and wisdom demand that you must submit the wire frames, page by page to the client – to ensure that they can see what you are building and allow them to participate on how they envision the project to work. Junior designers typically skip this step and get very frustrated when their bosses and the owners of the project say stuff like, “I never agreed to have a full-screen slide show” later on after days of coding have been lost.

Can Build High-fidelity Renders

Once the client has given the full thumbs-up for the wireframes, and the expert feels that the wire frames have approximated the her flows as closely as possible, the very exciting stage of high fidelity renders kicks in. Once again, the junior designer will blindly charge in and just convert the whole wire frames into “beautiful” full page layouts, but the expert takes it one step at a time:

+ Carefully research on the best color combinations to use for sections and the body based on industry norms and the psychology of color. + Choose the most readable and relevant font colors and sizes for headers, paragraph text, high-lighted text, link text, visited and hover states. + Choose the most relevant images to use for banners, main content and for the sub pages in the project.

Each of these will be proposed to the client who approves and gives their own feedback of how they feel these should be. Once approved, the expert will rapidly convert the low fidelity wire frames into high-fidelity renders, placing high emphasis on using the information gathered thus far to determine which direction to use.

Can Code and Iterate

Through out the entire design cycle, while junior designers usually moan and grain when project owners request for changes, the expert instinctively knows that ALL feedback is welcome and uses it in order to build a better product that the owner will love and cherish. At this stage, it is safe to code the website using the Internet’s modern building languages and include the scripts or styles to animate the things that should be animated. Page by page, it is hand coded and submitted to the client for feedback.

At this stage, the project is said to be completed and files are uploaded to the server. Further testing can be done, but that is entirely dependent on the contact.

However, this does NOT make you a PROFESSIONAL WEB DESIGNER. It only makes you an EXPERT.

Professional standards of practice and ethics in web design are typically agreed upon and maintained through widely recognized professional web design associations. These standards are exactly the same ones that 90% of designers have failed to carry out or observe. It is not just individual designers, but it is something that even well-established companies have been caught on the wrong side of, countless times.

It is quite startlingly obvious were I have been failing as well. But I am working on it.

Description of A Professional Web Designer

Education & Experience

Just all other professions, the professional web designer needs to have done either some formal education or informal but come out of knowing the same things that existing professionals in the field know. In that way, he becomes a “profession”-al. However, this is less than 20% of what describes a professional web designer.

Is Accountable

How many times have you heard a web designer say “This bad design is entirely my fault. I rushed into doing it, did not follow the design brief and I completely forgot the users.” Yes, I have never said it and you have probably never said either. The list is endless:

“The client’s demands were not clear.” “I did not have enough time.” “Financial rewards were too small.” “The client does not know what they want.” “My boss is old fashioned.”

Without accountability, any project can go to hell and never come back. This is the proverbial stick that breaks the camel’s back. When the team that is working on a project does not accept accountability, thousands of dollars get flushed down the toilet and bosses start writing letters of dismissal.

Is Reliable

We are experts. We know how to do it and we can do it. Somehow, we do not always stick to deadlines and fight tooth and nail to ensure that projects are completed exactly under what the client or our boss requests. We often rather drown in ridiculous time-wasters than strictly adhere to fixed deadlines as demanded by our employers or clients. Perhaps, being such highly skilled individuals, often results in overly inflated egos that makes us feel that we are indispensable. We get dispensed of. This is a cold harsh reality often hits us when we least expect it.

Is Disciplined

The era of indie faded white jeans and unruly hair for artists and designers alike left an unfortunate mark on the industry. To this day, the most devil-may-care attitudes that I have experienced have been in front of fellow web designers. Discipline is NOT important. We just do not care.

I have met many designers who found it very appropriate to raise their voices and literally talk down their bosses or clients with “take it or leave it” mentality. If a designer arrives late for a meeting, its because the client came too early. If the job is still not complete, its because it is too much for one person. Try talking stern to a designer and they will either back-chat or stone wall.

This conduct is wrong, it is child-like and has given designers alike a reputation that is tainted in all countries in the world.

Is Efficient

When a client or boss requests for an update to a website, how many designers actually:

+ Compile a short email confirming the receipt of the request? + Estimate a fair time for request execution and completion? + Carry out the requested changes within the time that they have promised?

Once again, yes, none of us. Maybe we send confirmations, but do we also give fair estimates on how it takes to complete and actually finish the requests on time like clock-work?

Once again, I can see that we are in agreement.

Efficiency is not just reporting that you will do something, it is the ability to perform the most amount of action within the shortest time achievable through intelligent processes and using the most adept tools. It is a culture that is lacking in most web designers. Sure we can code, we can design – but why do we take forever to finish even the most basic of tasks?

Is Consistent

It is often touted that as someone becomes more experienced in doing something, they develop a sixth sense on how to duplicate their success over and over again. If this is true, then how come most designers seem to take longer to attend to requests from bosses or clients especially after the project has been completed and has entered the support phases. It is almost like an unspoken rule:

“Get paid – and get lazy.”

and

“Finish the design and take a vacation.”

Somehow, the excitement of the money and project wears off quite rapidly. Especially project completion and after payments are received. It is a huge factor into why even the owners of new websites are often found looking for new help. They have paid someone to carry out building their new portal and mysteriously, that person is now taking 30 days to alter one picture on the home page.

This is not a rant.

It is an open letter to all web designers in the world. We are who we are. We want to be better.

Somehow along the way, we did not pick up the patience, discipline and characteristics that would elevate us to being fully acknowledged professionals.

All it takes is hard study, putting in the work hours but importantly, embossing these five things: Accountability, Reliability, Discipline, Efficiency and Consistency inside our minds.

Don’t forget to check out:The Grid is coming in 2015. Web Design will not die.

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