"Technology is so much fun but we can drown in our technology. The fog of information can drive out knowledge."
—Daniel J. Boorstin

Reflect for a moment on the Great Internet Buildout of the late 1990s. It's not hard to wax philosophical about the Web's beginnings, when anyone with a few hours’ worth of HTML experience was immediately hired to design Web pages. And who can forget the results? Websites of the boom were often a cyberspace food fight of eye candy and over-hyped technology.

These days, most site design is focused on the improvement and upgrade of existing Websites. As the economy continues to sag, more emphasis has been placed on maintaining what already exists, rather than breaking new ground. As a result, productivity, ROI, and other measures of efficiency have found their way into the lexicon of Web design.

This focus on productivity has seen Website designs go back to basics. With the end user in mind, the core purpose of today’s sites is to provide information or make transactions quickly, simply, and without the distraction of long animated introductions, overblown visuals, or multi-hyperlink black holes.

So let's take a look at the basics of good Web design, as well as some of the current tools and technologies available to assist you in creating powerful, usable Websites. We'll also look at some concepts that are out there on the bleeding edge of design theory and browser technology, just to keep you on the edge of your seat!

Good Websites Start with Good Web Design

In the heady days of the Buildout, Web designers went straight to page design, building the overall concept and user experience one Web page at a time. Only after all the pages were built were they connected together—the results were usually a mess.

In today's world, most Web designers begin by developing a concept before they create their actual Web pages. Several techniques have evolved to assist designers develop a concept, such as wire framing and site architecting. In any of these cases, a designer defines a starting point, then builds out the various parent/child relationships between pages, documents, external links, and so on. In addition, a separate "link framework" can be defined to point to documents or external destinations. And of course, today, programmatic elements such as dynamic markup language, database connectivity, and Web service support are defined before anyone begins to build any pages.

Like a symphony performance, where the music binds each instrument together in harmony, so a Website’s concept definition binds each participant (graphic designer, copywriter, programmer) together in design harmony. And just as the conductor keeps time and manages the performance, the Web project manager uses this concept definition to coordinate resources, and ensure that the Web project moves through its milestones as scheduled.

Current Web authoring software programs, such as Adobe GoLive, provide Web designers with information architecture, user experience definition, and other design tools. With this kind of toolkit, you can architect a better user experience up front. Whether you create this roadmap for yourself or for a team of graphic artists, designers, and copy editors, a well thought-out site design will ensure your symphony doesn't hit any sour notes.

For a glimpse of the future of information architecture, check out a new application by UC Berkeley's Group for User Interface Research, DENIM. This application "sketches" designs, then helps you hook them up together, before exporting the designs as HTML.

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