On 28 Feb 2003, at 18:08, Steven W Loney wrote:

> At 12:56 PM 2/28/2003 -1000, you wrote:
> >  I *know* they know their needs better than I do!
> 
> The vast majority of surfers on line are users of the
> technology without any particular interest in the
> technology itself.
> 
> They have no interest in determining their own "needs".
> They use whatever default settings their system came with
> and when they arrive at a site it either works well for
> them or they leave.

That's their need, right there. They know better how 
they want to satisfy it than the web designer does.

> In a resource/educational site where visitors are highly
> motivated to work through the content to get what they
> want a particular visual look and feel is not critical.

Learning is even more hindered by poor look and feel.

> In a commercial site that exists to interact with
> potential clients and motivate them to a particular action
> the visual look and feel is extremely important and giving
> viewers too much influence on the display is a poor idea.

Depends on what you consider too much influence. I 
get to a lot of sites that use text far too small for me to 
read, so I often enjoy Mozilla's convenient ability to 
increase the text size. How about preferring to use my 
own fonts (I don't do that, but my sister-in-law who does 
a lot of shopping via the web, does) vs whatever 
unreadable gimicky typeface the designer wanted to 
use? Are those "too much influence"? They are to our 
graphic designers here when they design web sites!

> There's nothing mystical about the internet. Much of what
> has been learned in the print and video media about
> effective communication carries over to the web and has
> evolved to include the interactive aspects of the web.

Some has. Some has proven to be the opposite of 
what's true in print media. And some that has been 
proven true in print media is true online, but with twists 
...

David
dvjones(at)ksbe.edu
 

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