Digital Boomerang Singapore 

These words from the Yale Web Style Guide 2.0 couldn’t have come at a better time. We are at the tail end of a project and there are a few mighty management hats who are hijacking the project.

All of a sudden, we have moved away from focusing on the user to pandering to the wants of management who are now seeking “obvious and visual” representation that the project is “theirs”. That’s no problem, but not once, has anyone discussed the user.

Yale Web Style Guide 2.0 - Remember that the site development team should always function as an active, committed advocate for the users and their needs. Experienced committee warriors may be skeptical here: these are fine sentiments, but can you really do this in the face of management pressures, budget limitations, and divergent stakeholder interests? Yes, you can — because you have no choice if you really want your Web project to succeed. If you listen only to management directives, keep the process sealed tightly within your development team, and dictate to imagined users what the team imagines is best for them, be prepared for failure. Involve real users, listen and respond to what they say, test your designs with them, and keep the site easy to use, and the project will be a success.

It’s a silent reminder for our next weekly meeting. The user counts. And if we ignore that, then we are doomed to fail. We just wanted to leave this on our blog to remind ourselves and any wandering visitors to our site.

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