Comments on: Luke Wroblewski: The hardest working man in web design

By: Kevin Smith

Kevin Smith — Tue, 20 May 2008 02:44:47 +0000

Great interview.added to my favourite blogs list..

By: Abhishek - Web Designer India

Abhishek - Web Designer India — Tue, 13 May 2008 10:37:21 +0000

Hi! Thats an awesome post. Its really worth going through that post. Web design is an art and its much more than what we do in our workplace. What I think web design is a language through which we express our feelings and convey our emotions to the whole world. And one who can make some understand about his thoughts and emotions via his creative designs shall be regarded as the best.

Thanks again for this wonderful post.
Regards
Abhishek

By: admin

admin — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 17:56:06 +0000

The “hardest working man in web design” is simply a tongue-in-cheek reference to the title given to James Brown (”the hardest working man in show business”). Not an empirical truth or indisputable fact-just a way of saying Luke wears a lot of hats and puts a lot of passion into his work.

The comments section includes linkbacks to other sites who mention this post. I have to agree that sometimes it disrupts the flow of commentary, but mostly I think it rounds out the discussion by bringing in other sites and sources of information.

Ms. Editor

By: Interview with Luke Wroblewski by uidesign

Interview with Luke Wroblewski by uidesign — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 18:04:17 +0000

[...] Design Session published an interview with Luke Wroblewski Luke Wroblewski: The hardest working man in web design Luke Wroblewski is a Web strategist, designer, and author. He is currently Senior Principal of Product Ideation & Design at Yahoo! Inc. and Principal of LukeW Interface Designs, a product strategy and design consultancy he founded in 1996. Luke has authored a book on Web interface design principles entitled Site-Seeing: A Visual Approach to Web Usability, as well as numerous articles on design methodologies, strategies and applications. He is also frequent presenter on topics related to Web strategy and design, and a former member of the board of directors of the Interaction Design Association. Here, the hardest working man in web design shares his insight into the most important topics in the field today… [...]

By: Aj

Aj — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 13:55:20 +0000

I’m not sure where the ‘Hardest Working Man in Web Design’ phrase plays out, but I thought the article was interesting and worth reading. Luke seems very passionate about his subject, but from what I’ve read here, not necessarily at the level of someone like John McWade, Seth Godin, or Chuck Green (I personally look to John McWade as the pinnacle of visual design awareness). That might be partly due to what I see on his own site, which has lots of useful examples of what he’s done, but just doesn’t seem to have the refinement of the design pros that I respect the most. He certainly knows much more than I do and there is a lot I could learn from him, but he hasn’t yet reached ‘that level’. Based on his seeming passion for this though, I won’t be surprised when he does.

On another note, I find this response section quite confusing. There are posts here that seem like they are just pulling text from this same site or other sites talking about this article. Not what I want to see in a Comments section.

By: Dustin Brewer

Dustin Brewer — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 11:09:10 +0000

Great interview

By: LukeW

LukeW — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 04:56:52 +0000

Christina, you raise some valid points but your definition of “visual design” seems to be limited and I actually think we are mostly saying the same thing.

The whole point of thinking about visual organization in ADDITION to look and feel is to have a composite visual design that supports the relationships between content and actions. Naturally that relationship can also be reflected semantically in mark-up. That helps screen readers, SEO, etc. Thinking through a solid visual hierarchy forces you to come to terms with the underlying content, its relationships, and prioritization.

Where we disagree is I’m certain the vast majority of people parse Web content visually. This is also true on mobile devices. Why would hierarchy, legibility, affordances, and more no longer apply simply because you are on a mobile device? Granted there are blind users and people on screen readers but a cohesive visual presentation of content and actions does not impede their experience. Quite the opposite.

By: Christina Johnson

Christina Johnson — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 23:27:07 +0000

“you can’t have good usability without good visual design simply because the web is a visual medium”

Sorry, but this simply is not true. The web is NOT inherently a visual medium just because the technologies involved in creating websites have been used (and misused) that way in the past. Granted, there are business advantages to a website with good visual design, and we will always need good visual design for visual users. However, a large subset of users (both human and non-human) are not visual and you are ignoring a large part of your market share by assuming that websites are entities used only visually. Blind users, the plethora of user agents (mobile devices, screen readers, etc.), the advent of the “Semantic” approach to the Web, search engine optimization (a site built entirely in Flash won’t be indexed in Google) - these are but a few examples of why it is a mistake to assume the web is visual, or that visual presentation should take precedence. The art is making websites usable and scalable for as many human and non-human users as possible, which encompasses visual and non-visual elements and a solid understanding of how to integrate the two.