- As designers,
we are on a fast moving train that never stops.
New technologies change how we work
and what we do faster than ever.
We work to become an expert in one media.
In five years,
that technology is irrelevant.
Rather than trying to keep up with the train,
I do my best to stay current
and find the right people to help me.
I don't need to be an expert in everything.
Websites by their nature and purpose
change constantly.
Information is updated,
content is added,
and new images replace old ones.
So it's not surprising that we're often asked
to redesign a website.
Obviously designing websites is a big, big subject.
There are multiple courses here that do a great job of that.
Here I want to talk about some of the operating
and visual choices made for redesign.
Art Center has a robust study away program
including a studio in Berlin.
Each term a new faculty member
from one of the school's departments
takes a dozen students to Berlin.
For three months the team works on a project
and experiences life in one of Europe's most vibrant cities.
With a new department,
faculty and students in Berlin every three months,
the web presence was confusing and complex.
There were multiple Testlab Berlin websites.
Each one made by one group.
They had similar names but shared no common
visual style or navigation.
It was clear that all these different sites
needed to be compiled into only one.
Before beginning the redesign,
I worked with all the primary users who updated the site.
I needed to know
how often was it updated,
what kind of content is added,
how deep was their website management experience,
what worked and didn't work on the existing sites.
After compiling all the information,
I discovered the seemingly varied content
could fit into a few categories.
The individuals adding content
had little or no content management experience online.
New kinds of content might be added later.
The site had to work for all departments each term.
Rather than designing the site as custom,
it is a template based site.
We chose Squarespace as many participants
used it already.
And it's easy to understand.
There was only one site with a simple structure.
Each unique project has a series of pages.
They all share the same typography,
visual approach, and navigation,
but the content can change each semester.
The design is purposefully neutral to not fight
with varied types of images, movies, and ideas.
The website also linked to social media.
Again rather than having four Facebook,
Twitter, and Instagram pages,
there is now one shared by every group.
Each new student team simply adds content.
The look and feel is set,
and we no longer have 12 different websites.
As time passes the content will become richer
and more pages will be added.
The goal was not to make a more complex site,
but to simplify the experience.
It is easy to learn how it works and add content.
If the addition of new content were complex,
it wouldn't happen.
A website that never changes is rarely revisited.
The user experience may not yell
new website technology,
but that's not its job.
Redesigning a website is,
like all good website design,
about the user experience.
How does the client interact with the content management
and how does the viewer find and digest that content.
And of course it doesn't hurt
to have some stellar design.