There is a growing movement towards “less design and more constraints” in designing for the web – much of it sparked by “Jason Fried of 37 Signals”:http://www.37signals.com/svn/archives2/less_as_a_competitive_advantage_my_10_minutes_at_web_20.php.
At last month’s “Torcamp”:http://www.onedegree.ca/2005/11/28/torcamp-rocks-in-to I had an interesting conversation with “Jon Lax”:http://www.onedegree.ca/2005/10/06/five-questions-for-jon-lax-teehan-lax about this concept and how the biggest problem facing companies that want to adopt “less” as a design sensibility is client buy-in.
Clients typically want _more_ not _less_. When you’re paying for something the first reaction is that more is always better, but of course that isn’t the case.
Month: December 2005
_This is Day Four of *5 Days To Optimize Your E-mail Messages*. You can catch up with “part one”:http://www.onedegree.ca/2005/12/05/5-days-to-optimize-your-email-messages, “part two”:http://www.onedegree.ca/2005/12/06/optimizing-for-different-email-clients, and “part three”:http://www.onedegree.ca/2005/12/07/optimizing-for-the-preview-pane._
More and more I am seeing people use their portable devices to access email. The Blackberry has been joined by Palm Treo devices, handhelds that work on Pocket PC and Windows Mobile platforms, and even cell phones that read email. But have you taken a look at how your email – or other marketers’ email – looks on these small, mainly text-based devices?
“Squidoo”:http://www.squidoo.com is now live in beta and is definitely worth checking out. They may have my favourite home page right now (see above). How’s _that_ for minimalism!
I was one of the alpha testers for the site and did what I think many people will do – I built an “About Ken Schafer”:http://www.squidoo.com/kenschafer/ Lens (Squidoo’s term for a web page). Actually, I don’t mean that everyone will make a page about Ken Schafer, I mean lots of people will build lenses about themselves – just in case you thought my ego was completely unchecked.
Earlier today Heath Row of Squidoo sent this e-mail to all the alpha testers: