Michael Zuschlag — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 22:26:06 GMT

Compelling synthesis of present thinking on web design, but I fear it thus suffers from a limitation I’m noticing in current thinking. It seems to be still rooted in an old-style web perspective that the purpose of sites (and apps) is to push a message onto a relatively passive user, which you seem to regard as a vessel of attention that must be divvied out. By focusing on the management of user attention, I’m concerned the result will be overemphasis of the machine-to-human pathway, saying little more to the user than, “Do this now.” I think the promise of rich web apps is to change the user to active participant in content creation and assembly. From this perspective, the purpose of apps is not to communicate a message to the user but to provide the tools for the user communicate his/her own message. While some effort must be made to communicate the availability of new tools to the user, the emphasis is not to tell the users what the they can do, but in make what they can do it easier, faster, less cognitively demanding, and more fluid, allowing them to forget the site and focus on their own communication.

Boxes and Arrows: Comments by Michael Zuschlag