Not trendy.
Lame.
Silly.
Childish.
Looks like it was designed by a third grader.
Generic.
Unsophisticated.
Not modern.
A step backwards.
Unprofessional.
Boring.
Lacks creativity.
Looks like a second-class community college website.
The main reason I’ve been less active ‘round these parts is that for the better part of four months, I’ve been working on a project for my 9-5 that’s been a bit consuming, to say the least. I volunteered to do it, as I am paid to work on a specific area of the university’s sites, not the main presence. I asked for it. And I got it.
Art critiques supposedly bled out of me any sensitivity to my work. The memories of my first crits are seared into my skull, moments in my life where I learned the depths of people’s scorn and the pain of purposeful, directed scrutiny. I thought I came out the other side with more than a diploma, but rather a coolly-detached appreciation for rational feedback on my work. What I’ve learned this week, however, is that I’m much more sensitive than I thought. Or perhaps I’ve been designing in a bubble for the past six years.
I opted to place a mechanism on the new homepage to allow for public feedback. I felt badly that “their homepage” was being up and changed suddenly and without warning—akin to sneaking in and moving around the furniture in someone’s house. In higher education, people claim a sense of entitlement to their school’s online presence. It serves as everything from their dashboard-connection to webmail to a daily news source to a shiny online marketing brochure. And just as people are possessive about their furniture arrangement, they are as well about their homepage. Violently so. You would have thought we had murdered someone’s grandmother with what we did.
Sure, there’s been plenty of good feedback. Yes, most people that take the time to spout-off usually have something negative to say. But what I’ve taken away from this (besides not wanting to “voluntarily” take on such an enormous project ever again, for no extra compensation or recognition) is that despite all of the analytics and reports and trend-watching, no matter how prepared you think you are going into a major design project, with the web you’ll never please everyone. Or maybe that’s just a life lesson in general.
The beauty of the internet is that it is so open, transparent and diverse (at least currently). The curse of it is that it seems to have made every Joe User with a mouse and an IP address an expert. And when you think that you’re taking your million-plus page hits per month and shooting right down the middle in all of your design decisions, you need to realize that you’re bound to alienate or offend at least 50%. Too dark. Too white. Too busy. Too plain. There is no consensus, except perhaps that the majority believe that they themselves (or cousin or friend or coworker) could have done it way better than you.
And to say I’ve been a bit disillusioned by it all would be an understatement. It surprises me just how much this has taken the wind out of my proverbial sails. I made compromises in the design because of bureaucracy to the point that it’s no longer something I’m proud of. And I feel like I’ve failed the “everyman” user that I’m supposedly the champion of. I’ve given up countless hours of personal time, vacation time, time at home with my wife. I’ve sacrificed my health (and sanity) for this project…a project I’m not even assigned to do. And for what?
Some days you get cut. I’m just not sure if this is deep enough to call it off.
