[Air-l] With all due respect to Ken Friedman

[Dean Rehberger]

I agree that the debate has little to do with content vs flash, usability vs
looks.  While it is great to have good books, the primary site of waste and
problems for academic and .org design has little to do with theories of
usability and design.

Sites of waste and problems (among others):

sites are designed by committee (and committee rarely agrees).

sites overseen by administrators who do not use the web.

spend too much money on outside vendor -- does not understand discipline or
organization (and nobody knows how to update).

spend too little money on student designers who leave the next semester with
all passwords (and nobody knows how to update).

IT controls and will not allow variations and does not understand differing
needs.

IT does not control and cannot support the thousands of variations and
micro-startups within each department.

No discipline specific images can be used on a web site because it may
"favor" one department area over another.

Site at the center of a faction dispute within department, college, program,
organization.

content limited by copyright and differing "visions" of what the site should
do.

On and on.  I am sure others have many better examples.  It would be nice to
see a book that addresses the real issues of site design.

Dean Rehberger
Associate Director of Matrix
Associate Professor
Michigan State University
310 Auditorium
East Lansing, MI 48824-1120
rehberger at mail.matrix.msu.edu
matrix.msu.edu/rehberger
wk: (517) 355-9300
fax: (517) 355-8363
hm: (517) 347-7372