Author: John Naughton
Article publication date: The Observer, Feb 18th 2012
URL: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/feb/19/john-naughton-webpage-obesity
Article title: No, John, it's web designers who are ruining the web
Author: Jack Schofield
Article publication date: Feb 20th 2012
URL: http://www.zdnet.co.uk/blogs/jacks-blog-10017212/no-john-its-web-designers-who-are-ruining-the-web-10025448/
Article title: Decorators with Keyboards
Author: Jack Schofield
Article publication date: The Guardian, July 17th 2003
URL: echnology.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,999218,00.html
I found these very interesting articles published in two British newspapers, about the importance of relevance in web designing. The first two article discuss the idea that many websites lately have forgot their meaning or purpose, by being overly designed, slow loading and lacking in information. This is of importance for me as a web design student because it offers great insight on the practice
Both writers agree that websites today are too complicated due to the overly designed web pages. Both agree that the true meaning of websites is to inform, and that could only be achieved by creating clean and easy to load web pages.
However, Jack Schofield disagrees with Naughton on the exemple of proper website. The website that Naughton favors Peter Norvig's, lacks visual beauty even though it displays very useful information. Schofield, moreover, presents his own exemple of well build and airy website Information Architects.
The discusion in based on the principle that web design was somehow confused with print, and that some websites are poorly build. Schofield's closing argument is very strong:
"website managers/developers/designers/whatever must surely know that bloated designs are costing them readers, because almost everybody quits before slow websites have finished downloading. The desirable response time is 1 second. Any site that takes more than 15 seconds will start losing people at a rapid rate. Even if they stay for one page, it will put them off loading any more."
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