Designing for the web is very often an exercise in brevity. The one, almost universal, truth about the web user is that they are time-strapped. Read: impatient.
A journey on the web is more about being on a highway than on a scenic country road. The desire is to get to the information as directly as possible, no need for the leisurely, meandering (if more aesthetically pleasing) route. Functionality and clarity are the web designer’s concerns, rather than metaphors and visual indulgence.
Writing for the web is also about keeping things short. It appears to be easier to click to another site than to scroll down through reams of text. And for “reams of text” read “more than one paragraph”. Web wisdom suggests that there is no need to paint a picture with words – just show the picture.
Much of this impatience could be attributed to the coming of age of the immediate gratification generation. Kids who have grown up on a diet of TV, movies, games and activities that require little or no mental effort. It’s understandable that these web users demand instant information. Yet it seems to be a general web-headspace for all: “give me what I want super quick or I’m outta here”.
This threat lands up being a major part of the brief when crafting content and visual structure for websites.
Great websites as shown in design annuals can look beautiful and engaging, but if they take too much of the visitor’s most valued commodity (time), there’s a risk that there won’t be too many revisits. That goes for slow downloading as well. If that time-measuring bar doesn’t move quickly enough, your visitor has a hundred other things they would rather be doing, including visiting all the competitors’ snappier sites.
It will be interesting to see how site design develops within these limiting parameters. As videos and pictures appear to have more immediate appeal, what will happen to words on the web? As more and more people turn away from all other forms of media beside the digital, what will happen to words in general? As brevity becomes the driving force, where the word “great” requires too much effort but “gr8” doesn’t, one does have to wonder what the repercussions of our increasingly limited attention spans will be on communication as a whole in the future. Wl hv 2 wait n c.