Web Designer Syndrome

Almost every web designer I have met has web designer syndrome (tunnel vision). What is web designer syndrome you ask? Well web designers are always striving to produce an innovative and creative web site with an amazing interface. They want to be famous amongst other web designers. In this quest for the ultimate web site they continually forget about the user or they have a misguided impression of who the average user is. They spend all their time looking at Web design portals like newstoday or thefwa. Which both have links to very innovative work, often with creative interfaces which while heavy web users like web designers or developers can navigate easily my mum can not. This is not to say that my mum is dumb, quite the contrary, it is because my mum is not a heavy web user and has not been exposed to these unusual and creative interfaces before. My mum has a limited knowledge of interfaces online. So if a web designer is designing a site for Marks & Spencer or Carphone Warehouse it is important to realise that the average user is not a fellow web designer but my mum and my dad, brother, sister, etc for that matter. I'm not saying never create innovative interfaces, it is fine to push the limits a little but makes sure you don't lose your user rely predominantly on the cognitive learnings of an average user not a heavy user. Make sure you really are designing for the correct audience. Ask your mum to use your websites after designing them, watch her use them, take notes on the way she interacts with them. Work out where you can innovate and where you may be losing her. This will not stifle your creativity it will open your websites up to a much larger audience.