2006 / July 9^th/ Jumping Ship

Recently, someone in 9rules asked about whether it was safe to abandon 800×600 users on a new web application they were designing. A few people were adamantly against this, and I started to wonder why. The answer turned out to be pretty simple - but requires a bit of background.

Traditionally in web design, the designers are the ones who want to push the limits and take everything to the next level. It’s the job of IAs and clients to reel back the designers into a nice usable design. However, the opposite also holds true — IAs traditionally want to stick to what works and never stray from the beaten path. The person who ultimately makes the decision of which path to take is the Creative Director & the client.

The problem is that this isn’t a simple dilemma to solve. Each side has extremely valid points. On one hand, by playing it safe you can keep the most amount of potential users as possible. On the other hand, by sticking your neck out, you may win thousands of new users.

Parallels in the Automotive industry

In the past few decades, automotive design has fallen by the wayside. Cars are starting to look like the same, and American car companies are starting to suffocate in the prisons of conformity they’ve trapped themselves into. The simple truth is that overseas manufacturers can deliver more quality for less cost for the lowest common denominator cars like the Civic or Accord. They always have, and they always will. American manufacturers always win out in design. They’ve never been afraid to alienate the lowest common denominator in exchange for creating a whole new market. Cars like the Mustang change how people view cars.

Recently Ford realized this suffocation in their company and decided that they needed a revolution in their business model. They realized that the company could not stay alive deigning for the lowest common denominator. To survive in today’s world they needed to take some chances. Their answer is an ultra-personal campaign called the Ford Bold Moves campaign. Time will tell whether this ends up working for them or not — but in the mean time you can follow the Ford Bold Moves campaign.

Make your users feel special

The entire point of better design is to make your users feel special. Better design doesn’t just make their eyes happier while using the site — it makes them feel better for knowing about this new hot thing. A great example of this philosophy are the new Apple MacBooks. I live and work around quite a few tech-savvy people, and as such many of them purchase new laptops from time to time. There’s a distinct difference between people who buy new Dells and people who buy new MacBooks. Each and every single person who buys a new MacBook feels the need to show it off to all their friends. Why? Because the design is superb. It makes them feel as though they’re now part of a new special club. People with Dells? Not so much. For a quick comparison - check out Flickr’s tags for MacBook and Dell. The MacBook is only a few months old — yet it has over 8,000 photos compared to Dell’s 5,000 (a company that has been around forever).

This is a lot bigger deal than people think. Making your users feel special is worth more than any advertisement could possibly cost. The result is that those same users go out and tell their friends about their newest purchase. But, remember — people don’t talk about the Honda Civics of websites — they talk about the Mustangs. They talk about the hottest stuff out there that is brave enough to take a little risk.

Play it safe, or take a chance?

Now that I’ve laid down a little bit of background — we can come back around to my original question: Should you keep designing for 800×600 users? Hell, this doesn’t even just apply to screen resolutions — it includes versions of flash, requiring javascript, broadband, or SVG support. The question now becomes whether you have the balls to abandon the safe route — and possibly a couple percent of potential customers — and elect to let design take the driver’s seat.

Minty Goodness

If you ever wanted an example of a product that took a chance with design and came out ahead — Mint is a perfect example. When Shaun Inman first launched Mint, it was incompatible with Internet Explorer — the browser that held (and still holds) a vast majority of the browser share. Shaun’s reasoning? In order to make it to market in time, and maintain superior design, IE support had to go. The end result is a monumental success. Feature-wise, Mint is lacking to it’s heavyweight analytics competitors. But where Mint wins is in design. So much so that people are proud to say they use mint. People put badges on their websites at will displaying the fact that they use mint to track their statistics. Shaun has found a way to make people feel special through design.

By abandoning what seemed to be a large target-market, Shaun gained a larger conversion rate of his remaining target. This conversion rate increased so much that Mint is known by almost every single Blogger/Web Junkie out there.

Do you have the guts?

Do you have the guts to jump ship on the old users that are dragging you down? Or are you ready to look to the future and require JavaScript, flash, and flying monkeys to use your site? I’ve always been a forward-looker, and I’ll stay on that side of the fence.

1. 

   Chris

   July 9^th | #

   Wow, you really expanded on this topic. I’m impressed. I’ve been pondering this question for the last 24 hrs and have changed sides repeatedly. I look at applications like Basecamp and Backpack which support 800×600 out of the box (they use percentage design so that it looks ok in larger window widths).

   Then I look at BlinkSale which also wins awards and they have a decidedly larger layout (it’s not huge, but definately not 800×600). Last time I checked they were doing ok.

   I love your comments about making your users feel special. It’s definately something to remember.

2. 

   Jg

   July 9^th | #

   I spent a lot of time debating this same point when I began working on my site’s current design earlier this year. I present a lot of information on DS, and it just seems to keep growing. So every time I’ve begun working on a redesign, it’s been a bigger challenge to organize the data.

   I spent a lot of time crawling around in Mint and AwStats, gathering information about my users. Ultimately I discovered that just six percent of my visitors were using 800x (or lower) resolutions. Every single other visitor was operating at 1024x and higher.

   Even if I’d discovered that ten or twenty percent of my visitors were at 800x, I probably would’ve made the leap to a widescreen design. I desperately needed the additional space. In the end, though, my site is just a personal web site — if you can’t play fast and loose with tradition on your own web site, then where else can you?

   Admittedly this is very different from making the leap with a corporate site. I can definitely understand the negative aspects of going widescreen, but when it comes right down to it, as a designer I love to have the freedom to push a little, so I’m certainly not going to complain.

3. 

   Botman

   July 9^th | #

   This is somewhat off-topic, but more simply, I think it’s just about targeting your niche.

   Mint appeals to the web-literate blogging/Safari/Firefox type. It’s shiny and Web 2.0. These are people who don’t use IE anyway, except for testing and when they have to. Mint isn’t aimed at corporate environments (from what I remember, it tracks short-term trends, not data-warehousing); according to its FAQ, it won’t even run on a Windows server. So dropping IE support doesn’t look like such a big risk with that in mind.

   A risk for Mint could be targeting WebTrends’ market without IE support.

   I think resolution is still a case-by-case judgement call. Maybe we will go full-circle as we design for higher-resolution hand-held devices.

4. 

   Joel

   July 10^th | #

   An interesting case to be sure.

   For personal sites I don’t really see an issue (to an extent) with not sticking to the 800×600 mark. Sure, you could potentially miss a potential audience, but if you don’t care about them, are you missing them.

   I think of higher importance is understanding the viewable area, rather than the screen resolution. As screen resolutions increase, the desire to browse full screen diminishes (anecdotal evidence only). How many of your readers giving you screen resolutions of above a width of 1280 use their entire screen space for a browser window? Of those who don’t, where do most sit? and how can we pull these stats? That is an even bigger question now.

5. 

   James at Explode Code

   July 10^th | #

   Hehe, nice comparison of Apple Vs. Dell and also the car industry. I think making users feel special is really worth it. I’m designing a web application at the minute and I just find it harder and harder to justify to myself why I need to support javascript. But do I have the guts?

   One thing I do like about smaller resolution websites like 800 x 600 is that I don’t have to have my browser fullscreen to view them when I’m working at a higher resolution. I like to see my desktop and other windows as well as the page I’m browsing.

6. 

   ntschutta.com » Blog Archive » Playing by the Rules

   July 10^th | #

   [...] One of the hard and fast rules of web design has long been “thou shall develop for a screen resolution of 800×600.” Of course with monitors getting larger and larger (heck, this aging PowerBook runs at 1280×854) this maxim might be past it’s prime. So what’s a designer to do? Kyle Neath of Warpspire takes a look at this question in his post Jumping Ship. Basically, Kyle channels Kathy Sierra (check out her Safe is risky, risky is safe) and, well, Nathaniel Talbott’s keynote from RailsConf (check ScribeMedia for a link to his talk). While designing for the lowest common denominator can attract a large pool of customers, taking some risks opens you up to a batch of new ones. [...]

7. 

   checksum.org blog » Blog Archive » Jumping Ship

   July 10^th | #

   [...] This is a nice article on abandoning 800×600 users while designing ui’s for the web. [...]

8. 

   Ron Domingue

   July 11^th | #

   I totally agree Kyle. I’m currently building my next version of my site using your Hemingway template and I’m proud to use Mint. Simply put there is a comfort level with someone making a good design. I can trust your instincts and it makes my work as a designer that much easier.

   I think its also a reassurance to designers and a status symbol, the fact we wish to use your products. I don’t feel like you have to please the lowest common denominator to be successful. It the fishing from the same hole mentality.

   I think Johnathan Ives mentioned in a recent interview that Apple was developing a hands-free phone at one time and test showed however that people really felt uncomfortable using it, and were probably even embarrased to be seen using it.

   Then along came the iPod which everyone loves to be seen with, “Hey I’m cool and hip!” epitomizes what the iPod represents. We are comfortable and even proud to own one. We especially like to be seen using it. It says I love music and technology all at the same time.

   Ultiamately, I think many of us are more than willing to pay extra for clever design regadless if there is a more inexpensive option. To use a phrase from Schindler’s List “Nice things cost money.”

9. 

   J R Mortland III (Bob)

   July 11^th | #

   WTF… Bob.warpspire.com sticks its neck out… I like necks

10. 

    Kyle

    July 11^th | #

    Thanks Bob.

11. 

    David Leal

    July 12^th | #

    I don’t understand why this must be seen in black and white. If the application is only targeted to desktop users, by all means–use whatever resolution you think they’ll handle. But my Nokia 770 only has a resolution of 800×480. Most PDAs and phone browsers don’t even get there. Besides, as James wrote, there are all those who browse with a smaller window, even when they have a resolution of 1024×760 or more.

    So, please, please know your audience first, and let’s stop thinking about these kinds of absolutes, ok?

12. 

    Ron Domingue

    July 12^th | #

    Knowing your audience is correct but what about your potential audience. I’m sure I could easily develop for IE users at 800X600 forever and do it for every client with the excuse 90% of people on the web use IE.

    Trying to please everyone is a sure way to please no one. I think you are right that you need to know your audience but I think people easily fall into a comfort zone. Lets just stay at 800 to be safe is something I constantly hear. I can use that excuse for almost every site on the web. I think taking to the chance to expand out of the norm may lead to some suprising results.

13. 

    David Leal

    July 13^th | #

    Ron, I suspect that the main concern here is not about the needs of the users–it is about the needs of the designers. I honestly can’t see how 1024×768 has so much more advantages than 800×600 for most web sites. In fact, at its worst it will only give me more information that I must digest at the same time. I also believe that the trend will be towards resolutions lower than 1024×768, as the number of people browsing through mobile phones and tablets increases.

    Yes, there are probably places where this makes sense, and that is why I say it is best to know your audience, but to be honest, I don’t see the aiming at 1024×768 to be “pushing the limits”. As someone knowing this feeling very well (because I’m often guilty of it) I believe this is more a case of designers wanting shinier toys.

14. 

    Joel

    July 18^th | #

    More for the web-app side of things

    Something you may not have thought about is thinking you know what your site/web-app will be used for.

    Take Microsoft Excel as an example. A simple spreadsheet that is much more now - people are using it well beyond the scope of a spreadsheet and have made programs/applications/helpers that sit over the top of it - something never foreseen for the use of a humble replacement of those paper grids that were the torment of accountants everywhere.

    Likewise with the web - you may think you know what people are going to use your app in one way (or site for that matter) but along comes something new + different. Without flexibility (and that’s the key - think ifelse’s site as an example) adaptation is difficult.

15. 

    ntschutta.com » Blog Archive » Screen Resolution

    July 31^st | #

    [...] A while back, I commented on Kyle Neath’s piece regarding screen resolution. Of course both of our posts went a bit beyond that, but it appears that we now have an answer from none less than Jakob Nielsen. In his latest Alertbox, Screen Resolution and Page Layout, Jakob tells us we are free to bump it up to 1024×768. So there you go - don’t say you never learned anything here! [...]

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