getluky.net

To kick off this series of SXSW-related thoughts, I decided to start with a side note I made while thinking about the discussion at High Class and Low Class Web Design, moderated by Christopher Fahey. As an important preface, the issue of class in web design conjures up images of discrimination and prejudice, which is why I believe the panel felt pretty uncomfortable. I believe that some of these brave souls were being asked to represent their company’s attitude towards the class system, and that was probably more than a little unfair. It was a charged discussion, but I felt some important conclusions lay under the surface.

Although most of the panelists spent a great deal of time investigating whether their experiences involved designing for a particular class of society, most of the opinions held seemed to be pretty unsurprising. Brant Louck of WWE seemed to be very aware of their work to design the publication to a particular class, whereas Khoi Vinh of NYTimes believed that such action could ultimately be detrimental to the growth of a brand — that is, it could be construed as disrespect of the customer, ultimately harming your ability to serve them.

Now, big brand companies spend a great deal of time focusing on Brand with a capital B. You don’t see a massive redesign like the new Yahoo! Homepage too often, because it’s difficult to make a technological upgrade without a corresponding leap in brand identity. Also, within a large organization, the brand is considered in almost all design work.

So, it is possible that a class of society is chosen at the time the brand is established?

This would certainly explain why the NYTimes, having over a century of established brand identity, simply doesn’t need to have these discussions internally. It would also help explain why the WWE finds itself having to gradually introduce brand-shifting changes to try and attract growth in the segment served by the expanding UFC. And it would also explain why some startups may begin with User Personas that include the car a potential customer would drive (i.e. John with a Jetta, Matt with a BMW 330i, and Jenny with a RAV4) only to later ditch them when they seem unnecessary.

Now, in the world of web design, the biggest shift in brand identities comes with the all-encompassing Big Redesign, or Version 2.0. When we look at companies that refuse to do so — craigslist, ebay, myspace — it helps me understand why by looking at red esign possibilities. Even the emphasis on whitespace and alignment could possibly shift brand perception into an entirely new category.

In fact, what happens when you completely change a brand by applying “good” design principles to relatively primitive sites? One of my most lamented examples of the shift in brand perception that can occur through redesign is Chowhound. In the old days of chowhound, the page was a usability nightmare. Essentially, it was a number of gigantic old-style everything-on-a-page messageboards, with fixed-width typeface and huge load times.

Then, one day, with much fanfare, there was CHOWHOUND, the redesign: Revenge of the Giant Fonts and Web2.0 Stuff, and Different Messageboards. The commentary on the recent redesign was pretty varied, and there was definitely some backlash. But why did the Chowhound redesign bother me so much?

The old design was the perfect example of incredible content locked in an aesthetic nightmare. However, in the case of the Chowhound brand, this was not a problem for its audience! These people (including myself) pride ourselves in our ability to go eat in restaurants with horrible decor but incredible delights to the palate. When the design changed, the brand that I adored felt discarded, and the content may be as good, but I no longer felt like I had found a little hole-in-the-wall on the internet.

How’s that for an optical illusion?

In conclusion, I wonder if i’m really saying anything that interesting. Brand identity, of course, is key to whether a potential customer feels welcome, or chooses to identify with a product or service. It’s a given. During the conversation at SXSW, though, I felt like the panelists we heard from either had no established, long-term brand, or already had one, and so the question of considering class was somewhat moot. So, i’ll posit a conclusion that may seem obvious — that Web Design is probably not the point at which one should take class into account; rather, it’s during the Brand Design process that one really needs to care.

Tech, sxsw