Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Things we learned from BucksWoodside.Com

Author:Dave Winer
Posted:5/21/1999; 7:15:49 AM
Topic:Things we learned from BucksWoodside.Com
Msg #:6532
Prev/Next:6529 / 6533

I want to spend some time this morning writing about the internal design of the Buck's website. This is for Scripting News readers, of course, but the website itself is for non-technical people, both the readers and the main writer for the site, Jamis MacNiven, the owner of Buck's.

It's been an incredible job, an eye-opener, because while Jamis is a creative and hard-working writer and collector (look at some of the pictures of the inside of Buck's) he is not a website developer.

Our first stab at an editorial interface failed badly! It was a maze of different designs, cobbled together. The behind-the-scenes view was vastly different from the user's view of the site. One lesson we learned is that there has to be an overall design for the site, and that user interface is a lost art, but if we want the web to grow and prosper, we must relearn the Ease-of-Use lessons that the software industry was focused on in the 1980s. Not everyone wants to become immersed in the minutia of the web. Writers, even me, just want to write.

I'm not claiming victory yet. Personally, I am happy with the editorial interface. But this site has to grow and hopefully support a few more writers and in that process I have no doubt that the interface will change again.

There are responses to this message:

This page was archived on 6/13/2001; 4:50:20 PM.

© Copyright 1998-2001 UserLand Software, Inc.