#tangling

Hey all! Amari here. I'll be starting a post series about web design traits and trends that have become inescapable across the internet, and whether we can internet without them—as users, developers, and designers.

Petri Dish - a weird web experience thing I made.

So, I'm a web developer who's had brief stints in graphic design, and my current PhD research orbits around the theme of virtual spaces and places. I've made websites, I've taught people how to make websites, and I'm something of an avid user of websites myself.

And…well…I'm bored! I'm bored of SEO-driven design. I'm bored of single-flow webpages that start with a giant hero image and end in a shiny call to action button—all designed to channel you as quickly as possible to the part where you subscribe or enter your card details.

(Even this post is formatted like one of them! It wasn't even intentional! It's become ingrained in the way I structure and present my ideas, and that's just a little disturbing.)

These templates are sweeping the landscape like invasive trees. And at the heart of this scourge is the vaunted axiom of "Predictability," which gets peddled in every UI/UX class that is "future-oriented" enough to use that acronym. Predictability lets users learn a new site quickly so they spend money sooner, fosters comfort and familiarity with the idea of spending money, and allows for the development of usage patterns where money is spent.

I get the merits of that axiom; I get that it has a time and place. But when game and webcomic sites look and feel and interact like that, I think we have to ask: Can we imagine something different? Can we slow the takeover of the smooth corpo aesthetic? Can we avert a future where the effective geography of the web, with all its varied terrain and endemic textures, is bulldozed into featureless oblivion?

I think it would be presumptuous to suggest that they're some mythic species of the past that slowly died out, too. A lot of the web experiences we loved well as kids are still right there, or have successors that are! They've just gotten so crowded out, by the combination of corporate sites and corporate-driven search algorithms, that one wonders if they will someday become impossible to stumble upon.

Anyway, the intended post series is born out of these provocations. I'd like to tackle elements of the current schema of "good web design" and contemplate a web without them (hopefully with examples if I can find them):

Predictable layouts, the "F" scan pattern, and calls to action

Discoverability / SEO

Well-formed HTML and well-maintained linkage

Responsive web design

Identity and device tracking

Socially engineering higher engagement through design

Statefulness and timelines

Visually communicating functionality

And I know, all of these things sound like good traits for a site to have. And yes, in most contexts, they are! But I think imagining the web without them is a highly worthwhile exercise anyway.