A front-enders new year resolution
designer-hybrid… actually
Well it has been an interesting year for the web. Leaving the trends aside, it is safe to say that the web is on the right path. But what have we done wrong, or what should we improve?
We are not going back, the web will only go forward. We shall no longer support old browsers. Really love Microsoft's initiative. They are trying I can see this although they can do better.
We will take the mobile-first concept to a new level. Although this trend should have appear earlier since 2009 was the first year when the notion of media queries were first discussed. We’ll this new level that I’m talking about it’s creating a device-first base to start from. You don’t want to see full width sites on a 24" screen. A 1400 px max-width is always appropriate. Don’t make the user turn his head in order to view your website. On mobile optimize the users experience. Would be great to see more gestures based navigation in 2014. Rely more on what users are already used to… Really hope to see a way to prevent the default behavior of a mobile browser or overwrite some gestures. And maybe who knows, we will think more about console and TV browsers.
Speaking of user experience. We shall not lose usability over aesthetics. The big trend of 2013, the flat and all it came with, like long shadows was the downfall of this year. This idea is highly opinionated, I know. I can only say that the skeuomorphism aesthetics had a purpose. The minimal design, again, had it’s purpose but we could have stopped there. The idea behind flat, less is more, is good but don’t confuse the user by cutting down on the usability. I do like how some flat websites turned out, but that is mostly because there is a lot of space between elements, the vertical rhythm of the page, basic design principles. It’s always nice to see that aesthetically it looks good, but what about the user, what makes him click a “button”? Gradients were always good-looking, but the so called Web 2.0 buttons were the thing that killed it, those shiny ones. Drop shadows had their purpose… to mark off different components, but again the evil Web 2.0 with this over-usage of them, created the flat trend.
Keep it simple. Don’t want to be a hypocrite about this, since I was just criticizing the flat trend, but using styles, maintaining a style, for consistency, means higher code re-usage. A strong collaboration between a designer and a front-ender will always make both jobs easier. I know that in this article I’m just stating the obvious, but I think somebody has to do it. Creating style guides, setting general rules on error handling, loading statuses, keeping the user within context it’s not only a UX designer job, front-end developers always have a say when it comes to this. So whenever you need a second opinion just ask. Back to “less is more”… the advantage of this is that users can get used to your interface faster, the expected behavior is already there. I’m trying to emphasize that simple UX patterns should replace complex ones. Simple UX mechanics are translated in consistency.
Get more involved into creating a better web. Well we are all on github. Create useful open source solutions or contribute to a repo, like now. Don’t keep stuff only for yourself. SHARE!
All I want in 2014 is better typography integration on browsers. The antialias on some fonts it’s just horrible. Not to mention that not all browsers support it.
Thanks all for the read. Drop a comment and recomend. Help spread this article. Happy New Year!
