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Last night, I went to an open house at MICA run by the graphic and digital design group of their Continuing Studies program. I went mostly because Sean Carton was speaking, and he had invited me to come by.

Carton has started writing a weekly column for my day job. Considering he’s now Dean of Philadelphia U.’s School of Design and Media, it was kind of strange on the surface that MICA would ask him to come speak–it almost seemed like GM having Lee Iacocca come speak at a Chevy product launch.
But I was also there to network, and to find out about MICA’s graphic/digital design programs. Plus, it gave me a chance to check out the new Brown Center at MICA, the concrete and glass monster on Mount Royal that’s most famous here in Baltimore for catching a bullet shortly after it opened. And besides, I wanted to steal some ideas from Carton.

After a whirlwind tour through the last 20 years of digital convergence and its impact on culture — and on the amount of available attention people have — Carton talked about how important design has become to the success of a product. Products (be they physical or information-based) succeed because of the total experience people have with them, and much of that experience is a result of design. The “that’s cool” factor, what Carton bullet-pointed as Delight, is what seperates the iPods, BMWs, Mini Coopers, Muvicos, Googles and such from the rest; people overlook the specs if something engages them in a way that goes beyond just the function of the product.

Delight with a web site isn’t just about the graphics, the beveling, the font choices, or demonstrating mad CSS skillz–it’s dependent upon creating a connection with the audience. The content needs to speak to people at a whole level beyond just passing along information. Eventually, the technology is irrelavent–it’s about making people feel like they belong within the world that the site reflects.

I look at the stuff my company does. Does it “delight”? I don’t think so. How do you “delight” IT people, corporate executives, etc. with a tech website? Or with a weblog, where it’s hard enough to just suck less?

The answer, I suspect, isn’t one that media companies are going to like.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 19th, 2005 at 2:57 pm and is filed under Web Dev, Blogistan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Last night, I went to an open house at MICA run by the graphic and digital design group of their Continuing Studies program. I went mostly because Sean Carton was speaking, and he had invited me to come by.

Carton has started writing a weekly column for my day job. Considering he’s now Dean of Philadelphia U.’s School of Design and Media, it was kind of strange on the surface that MICA would ask him to come speak–it almost seemed like GM having Lee Iacocca come speak at a Chevy product launch.
But I was also there to network, and to find out about MICA’s graphic/digital design programs. Plus, it gave me a chance to check out the new Brown Center at MICA, the concrete and glass monster on Mount Royal that’s most famous here in Baltimore for catching a bullet shortly after it opened. And besides, I wanted to steal some ideas from Carton.

After a whirlwind tour through the last 20 years of digital convergence and its impact on culture — and on the amount of available attention people have — Carton talked about how important design has become to the success of a product. Products (be they physical or information-based) succeed because of the total experience people have with them, and much of that experience is a result of design. The “that’s cool” factor, what Carton bullet-pointed as Delight, is what seperates the iPods, BMWs, Mini Coopers, Muvicos, Googles and such from the rest; people overlook the specs if something engages them in a way that goes beyond just the function of the product.

Delight with a web site isn’t just about the graphics, the beveling, the font choices, or demonstrating mad CSS skillz–it’s dependent upon creating a connection with the audience. The content needs to speak to people at a whole level beyond just passing along information. Eventually, the technology is irrelavent–it’s about making people feel like they belong within the world that the site reflects.

I look at the stuff my company does. Does it “delight”? I don’t think so. How do you “delight” IT people, corporate executives, etc. with a tech website? Or with a weblog, where it’s hard enough to just suck less?

The answer, I suspect, isn’t one that media companies are going to like.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 19th, 2005 at 2:57 pm and is filed under Web Dev, Blogistan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.