How To Split An Atom

If you thought that Web 2.0 was mostly just strange names, pastel colors, tag clouds and a overblown sense of importance wrapped in design methodology…you were pretty much correct. However, there are many good points that can still be drawn from the idea that simpler is better and that there is beauty in clean design. Take 37 Signals for instance (pictured above).

That’s why when I first came across the Web 2.0 design guide my feelings were mixed. On one hand, something like this does perpetuate the idea that the “new web” is somehow intrinsically different than the “old web” which is incorrect, but at the end of the day it does provide some pretty decent design advice — including this polemic on simplicity:

Why simplicity is good

* Web sites have goals and all web pages have purposes.
* Users’ attention is a finite resource.
* It’s the designer’s job to help users to find what they want (or to notice what the site wants them to notice)
* Stuff on the screen attracts the eye. The more stuff there is, the more different things there are to notice, and the less likely a user is to notice the important stuff.
* So we need to enable certain communication, and we also need to minimise noise. That means we need to find a solution that’s does its stuff with as little as possible. That’s economy, or simplicity.

Read the guide, take what you can and then go out and build a better web site — web 2.0 or otherwise.