Content Usability vs Content Design
Posted by Phil Renaud on October 24th, 2005.
Phil Renaud has posted 21 articles.
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Style or Substance? Design or Content? Does there have to be a battle between the two?
Is there a happy medium?
In the music world, The Velvet Underground dealt with this problem throughout each of their careers: Sacrifice their musical integrity to garner more listeners of a wider demographic, or keep with their core?
So it is in the modern world of design.
Specifically, what I’m talking about here is the barrier that’s been set by sites that use an RSS feed, generally blogs and news sites.
With the emergence of such technologies such as Feedburner and, more recently, Netvibes, Blog and Site designers are faced with the reality that some people are simply not visiting their sites anymore to get their blog. Sure, this could be useful for someone that’s just using a generic blog layout, but what about the people that put work into their site design?
Is this really a fork in a road? Do we feel as though we can’t quite win this battle, since by offering RSS for your site you know that some people will prefer to simply read your content through a reader and thus miss out on your design altogether, but doing the opposite of this and neglecting to offer RSS to your readers will probably lose you some major usability points?
This, of course, brings up a very important question: Is a site really a site by virtue of it’s content alone? Is content alone king?
Because certainly good content and good design combined make for a very nice site indeed.
Take fad.tastic here for example: excellent site/blog design.
And dog gone it, if a post that compares The Velvet Underground to the current situation in Web Design doesn’t make for good content, I don’t know what does.
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9 Responses to Content Usability vs Content Design
I can understand your worry, Phil. You make a beautiful site and then some pain in the neck doesn’t ever view it - but justs reads the content in some naff looking reader. ;)
I guess it does show that ‘content is king’ (such a cliché now.) When writing, one thing I have to get used to is assuming the reader can’t see the site. (They may not even be online.)
I don’t really like using a reader personally. I visit sites individually. Visiting sites like joshuaink seem so much more appealing when reading the ‘real’ version.
What are peoples reasons for using a feed reader? Just curious to see if I’m missing something.
I think it’s ok that people don’t visit. However, I think it’s still important to have a decent design, in order for people to like your site in the first place, and therefore (hopefully) subscribe to your feed.
Content is more important than design, but design isn’t irrelavant.
Disclaimer: I design people’s blogs for a living!
Most RSS Readers do not allow the viewer to read the whole story. I personally rely on FireFox’s live bookmarks for my RSS feeds and read the story in the browser if the headline catches my attention.
I say design a wicked-awesome site and offer an RSS feed…just offer an excerpt only feed ;) Then, you’ll have to visit the site for the entire article.
Note: comment meant semi-sarcastically
Hey bud,
I am sure there are some people.. like me, who still enjoy going to the website to read the “blog” -> i have yet to find a suitable reader, am not happy with most of them, and the web is faster load time for me, i just load up my blogs in the tabs. Then i read it at my liesure ;).
Cheers, and good work on colors.. i looowe them!!
Jhon,
That sums me up too, mate.
[…] While surfing today I came across Phil Renaud’s latest post to Fad.Tastic, Content Usability vs Content Design. Check it out, bookmark fad.tastic, and comment . He touches on the points of Style or Substance? Design or Content? Does there have to be a battle between the two? […]
I use RSS because many sites I visit don’t post regularly. Also, many sites are OVER-designed and, especially (for instance, this one) have tiny print. Readability is king. I am very, very tired of fancy sites which may have been designed for huge monitors or by people who care more about how the site looks than how easy it is to read. Light blue print on light background=very poor design in my book.
Melinama,
Are you referring to the fadtastic links? Or something else?
Light blue print on light background=very poor design in my book.
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The above post has obviously kept you amused. Why not discover similar material:
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