Vancouver was host to the "Web Directions North" conference February 6 to 9. The event brought together web designers and developers to "investigate, consider, and discuss the directions the web is taking." Many of the presentations focused on the concepts of user-centered design, a subject that is poorly understood by the public. User-centered design can be thought of as a bridge that crosses deep gorges of specialized knowledge to allow others to make use of technology. An example of this type of design is the automobile. A person requires no knowledge of internal combustion or mechanical engineering to operate the vehicle, due to design.

Design, when applied to the web, manifests as the user interface to websites, such as search, email, banking, blogs, and so on. The main design problem is how to most effectively present information and services in an understandable and useable way. When a web site is not designed well, a user becomes confused and frustrated and moves on. Conversely, when a site is designed well, a user doesn't notice the fact. This is what makes good design so poorly understood-done right, it's invisible.

Sometimes a bad design is so prevalent in our everyday lives that we stop questioning and just accept it. For example, why must people constantly ask for directions to washrooms? If buildings were designed well the answer would always be self-evident. Think about the last time someone walked into an establishment and asked "Where's the bar?"

By applying this understanding of good design concepts, the conference struck a balance between discussing the easily identifiable, bad online experiences with the hard-to-see, invisible, good ones. Many of the presentations focused on the recurring patterns that have emerged online since the inception of the internet. The patterns in content and the ways in which content is used, by both people and software, were explored.

An interesting presentation on "microformats" gave a solid indication of a new direction the web is taking. Microformats are defined as "a set of simple, open-data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards" and are said to be "designed for humans first and machines second." They are formats to describe content such as people and organizations; calendars and events; opinions, ratings, and reviews; lists and outlines; licenses; resumes, and many other commonly occurring contents. On the implementation side, a micro-format allows anyone, from a website developer to a blogger, the ability to embed the semantics about a certain type of content into a web page in a standardized way. This allows the content to remain in a structured form while still being viewable with current web browsers. So instead of having to copy and paste line-by-line a person's contact info from a webpage, a user can just click on the contact and import it directly into another application such as an address book.

Take events content as another example. Currently it is very difficult to search for events information online, and when an event is found, it is tough to transfer it over into a calendar application. Representing the event in its corresponding microformat on a web page makes these problems go away. A search engine can index the event since the information is in a structured format, and a typical user can click and import it into their favorite calendar application.

As this new direction becomes more mainstream, the ease of information-retrieval online will improve dramatically. This has the potential of transforming the web from a browsing resource into a true information resource.

Going in this direction is a good design decision, and because of that fact, it's not one that will readily be noticed by the general public. What will be noticed, though, are websites that do not adopt this new direction. That is why it's important to be aware of what happens at conferences like these! For more information visit: north.webdirections.org and microformats.org

dcrawford@republic-news.org

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