I have started to take a Web Design class at Seattle School of Visual Concepts. We just recently had a class discussion on our first homework assignment that I thought was a refreshing look at what people like best about using the web, what there most common activities are, and what is commonly missing from their online experience. We were asked to create a mood board for the discussion.
I took a different approach by thinking of words that came to mind when asking myself these three questions using Wordle.
1. What's the Best part about using the Web?
2. What are your most common activities online?
3. What's commonly missing from your online experience?
Some Explanation for some of the words I choose:
NOW
I have a wondering, A.D.D. mind that most people in the creative world have, and the biggest thing that helps that is being able to educate myself on anything that comes floating in my head on a day to day basis. All I have to do is type a word or a phrase in a search box, and BAM! a whole crap load of things are a click away.
Therapy
This is something that I have just recently been exploring. The main part of therapy that I lack in doing is blogging. Blogging is therapy, you have something to say and you eject it into the online world for further discussion. Some smaller parts of therapy online that I use frequently are the social sites such as Twitter and Facebook.
Education
Within the last couple of years this part of the online experience has been getting stronger and stronger. If I want to learn about things from DIY projects to a new version of software, I can, and on my own time with sites like CreativeLive, Lynda, DIY Network, and even Youtube.
A couple things missing from my online experience:
Originality
Website have become a lot of reiterations of the same idea, and when I see something original it inspires me a great deal and gets me excited and motivated to learn new and better ways of getting a point across online. Originality doesn't really mean a whole new way of doing a site, it could simply be a new kind of rollover for a button.
Faster! (Bandwidth)
No matter how fast things get, I will always complain that they need to be faster. It's just a simple fact.
One thing during the discussion that came up frequently was the idea of the web not being touchy feely. Personally I don't have a huge issue with this, and not much was really said about it, I did however share with the class a new site that I discovered called Toy-A-Day that can, in a way, give you the touchy feely feeling that print has.
One last thing that I got out of last nights class was a great sentence to ask clients and yourself early in the discovery process of building a site, I think this sentence alone can dig a lot out of clients and get to the reason a site is needed for them:
"What do people need to do on your site for business to be effective"
