The right crust, with a delicious sauce, with a perfect amount of the right cheeses, covered in the right toppings…  Each of the true pizza lovers reading this will have a different picture in mind.  The “smartest” pizza lovers will agree with me – Canadian bacon and pineapple toppings!

My obvious point is that each person will have a different opinion of what makes a good pizza.  What makes a good website?  A similar conundrum applies.  There are lots of different valid ways to produce a solid, usable website.

Consider a few different sites:

Google – simplicity reigns

Yahoo – everything including the kitchen sink

Amazon – tabs, tabs, and more tabs along with amazing recommender systems

Adobe – top navigation, single large graphic, 3 columns

Apple – one page no matter what, also tabs / top navigation and single large graphic

Each of these sites has changed through the years, but also each has typically had a certain consistent design philosophy.  It can be quite interesting to look at the way these sites have varied through the years using the Internet Archive: Wayback Machine located at http://www.archive.org/web/web.php.

And so I come to my basic rule of making a “good” website:

Be true to a vision and consistent in implementation throughout the site.

In particular I would urge that one must be careful – design by committee rarely results in a quality design.  Each person of the committee has a set of priorities and if everything is treated as top priority, a jumbled site is often the result.

This does not mean that there are not some consistent design principles which are helpful in creating quality websites.  There are a number of them, and I’ll be discussing some of them in this blog.  Many of them have been written in various books – typically expressing the particular opinions of the authors.  Unfortunately, these principles can be vague and even contradictory.  Like the pizza, in a crazy way, they can both be right.

One resource is unique.  The US Department of Health and Human Services has a free publication called Research-Based Web Design and Usability Guidelines.  This book couples design principles with research on readability, etc.  While a number of the principles are fairly vague, it is still an outstanding resource.  You can download the entire thing (292 pages, 161 Mb!), or just various pieces of it at http://www.usability.gov/pdfs/guidelines.html.

1. By

Name: Hidden Hidden Location: Los Angeles, CA, US Last login: 9/4/2007 Member since: 3/12/2007 View Full Profile >

dprice on 3/13/2007
Lee,

You're certainly correct that too many cooks will spoil the pizza.

Still, having been part of teams -- gasp, *committees* -- that successfully designed or redesigned well-regarded Computer Society magazines, I maintain that there is a way to balance the desire to have a single artiste whittle away alone in his or her garret and having 10 people fight for the mouse.

In your example, for instance, yes, every team member will have a different set of priorities. The trick is to come to agreement on a single set of priorities beforehand, then cutting an indivudal designer loose to realize those agreed-upon goals as best that person can.

In magazine design, it also works to have several artists work separately to realize the core team's goals, then compare and contrast.

Cheers,

-- Dick

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2. By

Name: Hidden Hidden Location: Unknown, Hidden, Hidden Last login: 11/9/2007 Member since: 3/14/2007 View Full Profile >

j.isaak on 3/14/2007
At a slightly higher cost, IEEE Std 2001-2002 on best practices for web sites might be useful ... it touches on useability, accessibility, and internationalization among other things.

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3. By

Name: Hidden Hidden Location: Hidden, Hidden, Hidden Last login: 5/18/2007 Member since: 3/1/2007 View Full Profile >

tmanuel on 3/15/2007
I would also recommend the good folks at A List Apart whom I always use and refer to when it comes to creating attractive, standards-based websites. Key word being attractive.

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