My infatuation with the Internet began around ten years ago. We had just gotten a computer chugging along with Windows 98, and signed up with AOL. Of course, back then, the Internet was a desolate place — compared to today, anyway. But, because of my age, none of that really mattered, since all of my time with it was just spent at the official Pokémon Website and searching my name on Ask Jeeves.
But it wasn’t long after that I actually wanted to do something with it; to be a part of it. I wanted to have my own special little place on the Internet. At the time, I knew absolutely nothing about networking or programming, so I retired my efforts back to playing video games (N64, anyone?).
It wasn’t until a little later that I discovered HTML, and learned the basics from an article and cheatsheet at HowStuffWorks. At the time, I was making the most hideous atrocities one could find on the Internet. I misused tables, I overused frames and the color yellow seemed to be pretty prominent on my palette. But I had to start somewhere.
By the time I had my first laptop, things really started to take off. I was an avid user of Angelfire and then Freewebs, and so was able to really experiment with things. It eventually led me yearning to learn more, so I bought a book on PHP. With these new tools at my disposal, I could suddenly do more than I had ever hoped for, both design- and programming-wise.
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Even now, I’m still exploring different styles and trying to find my own place in the design world. This site’s redesign is one example of my ever-changing skill set, and so my own personal foundation of minimalism and simplicity shows through. That’s not to say, however, that in a year or two, I won’t come back with something completely different. In fact, it’s pretty much guaranteed that I will. As my aforementioned skills change, I feel compelled to update my own site to reflect it and keep it modern. That’s what inspired the change from the previous design (and others before it), as well as the quiet logo update halfway through.
The truth is, though, nothing ever really stays the same. You may have noticed that I went out of my way to reminisce about the Internet of the olden days earlier in this post. Most of the mentioned entities still exist, but only some still hold a high place in the world. The others weren’t as lucky, having been (for the most part) replaced long ago by innovators who weren’t afraid of change — AOL with other ISPs, Ask Jeeves with Google, etc. Designers (and programmers) have to adapt to keep up with the ever-refashioned styles and trends of the Web.
The wonderful thing about the Internet, however, is that you don’t have to guess at the trends. The most common ideas are already laid out for us: Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 have come and gone, and now even Web 3.0 is being dreamed up by new innovators. Each “iteration,” so to speak, has its own defining characteristics, and if a Website doesn’t have them (where necessary) or something better, then it’s difficult to compete. These self-defined standards are integral to where the Internet is heading. With them, sites are ensured to work in a number of different browsers, and have relatively uniform elements that casual users can become used to and comfortable with (like sidebars on blogs, navigation at the top of page, or even graphics themselves), since designers often borrow concepts that work from others.
However, more profoundly, they’re also useful so that — to be blunt — user interfaces don’t suck. Maybe it’s just natural selection, but we’ve only seen mainly just positive design choices pull through above negative ones. If our casual user from before is turned away from a product because of poor decisions, then that product may ultimately fail, leaving others to succeed.
So what lies in the future? What specifically will the characteristics of Web 3.0 be, and how much of a role will good user interface design play in it? While there’s no sure way to tell where we’ll be in five or ten years, one thing’s for certain: without designers and innovators, the Internet would still be a desolate wasteland full of un-user-friendly sites, misused tables, overused frames, and — take a long, deep breath — the color yellow.