The Unpredictability Is What I Like
This post from Jason Santa Maria brought up a good point:
By its very nature the web is a medium of displacement; content is not tied to being viewed on a specific device, screen, browser, and most importantly, at a standard size. Regardless of how well you plan your layout to work according to a ratio or principles such as the rule of thirds, you can’t predict how much of it will be viewable at a glance...
I hear this a lot, actually. Some folks hate it, some like "the challenge." But I have a totally different point of view. I actually prefer the whole variable rendering part.
I did plenty of traditional print graphic design also. You calibrate your monitor, run proofs, do preflight checks of the software, all in the hopes that your perfect alignment works great. Then you just end up at 2am in a giant building next to cow pastures in Blue Springs persuading the pressman that the red fountains on channels 11-14 need to be higher still. You chase this ideal as far as you can, down to thousands of an inch.
But I went to school for an art degree, in printmaking. Okay, actually I went to school for aerospace engineering, and actually did some legitimate research and design in it, but I sucked at the math, and statics & dynamics killed me, so couldn't get a degree and had to change. Anyway, I did mostly intaglio. You etch or engrave on metal plates and then ink it up, wipe off the ink from the high spots (carefully!) and run it through a press.
The paper has to be soaked. Press pressure has to be adjusted per plate and paper, and a few dozen extra variables. Anyone see where this is going? Sure, you can print in a fairly repeatable manner, but really no artists I know can; you hire people to do that, and even then the results vary a tidge. I actually specialized a bit in monotypes and monoprints. One off variations of a print.
This variability is not a challenge though. It's part of the charm of the process, that each copy is individualized, and the direct output of artistic creation itself.
And the same variability in results has always made me happy in similar ways, if not sure occasionally frustrated, when I started working with interactive media. And it's why I've developed a lot of the methods by which I currently work. Read more about them in my recent book Designing by Drawing: A practical guide to creating usable interactive design.
I was going to use this as an excuse to excerpt from the book again, but while I talk in explicit detail about object oriented design, re-use, polymorphism and so on, the key philosophy is so pervasive and spread out there's no big section to quote really. So, I'll try to narrow it down to a few principles here:
- Design for devices – Right now, we mostly mean different screen sizes and capabilities for mobiles, but in an increasingly connected world, you'll have to design for desktop, TV, UMPC, eReader, car GPS, mobile, and maybe more. What device is your user going to be employing today?
- Design for interfaces – Don't design for individual states, and resist the urge to photoshop up that perfect screenshot. Even the simplest website anymore is a dynamic, living thing. Design with that dynamicism in mind. What is the actual user going to see when this design is in production?
- Design for processes – Don't consider any design solution as a single screen, no matter how variable it may be. How does one state flow to the next? How does the user get to this, and perceive the change and information presented?
- Design for interaction – Interaction is between the user and the system. You can't design it per se but you have to think about the context and environment in which it will be used. How does the user employ your design?
Pixel perfect design is the antithesis of these concepts. It chases perfection in individual states of individual screens on some mythical device. But I want to be clear it's not lowest-common-denominator design, or learning to live with imperfection. It's still trying to design the perfect solution, but holistically and contextually. If that distinction isn't working, mention it in the comments and I'll try again.
While even I bemoan fragmentation, variability will continue to exist. We all don't need the same device, and different classes of devices will continue to emerge. Embrace this variability and design to meet the entire ecosystem of devices.
Comments
Add your comment