Communication in a Digital World

One of the best parts of the digital world is that the user is in control. Don't want to sit through the flash movie at the beginning of someone's website? Click "skip intro." Website difficult to navigate? Go back to your search engine and find a better one. Social networking site doesn't have the features you want? Switch.

The digital world is all about making choices with a mouse. The challenge is that when communicating via the web, we have to keep in mind that the user has the power to move to something else. While there are a host of websites offering trendy gimicks for capturing and maintaining attention, we believe we can connect simply by providing something of value. One thing the web has proven, is that people will participate. The challenge is in providing something compelling enough to participate in.

Okay, so here is the "rubber meets road" analysis for our first version of strategicdimensions.com: in being truly honest, we found we designed our website mostly with ourselves in mind rather than the people who use it.

In Dan Roam's book, Back of the Napkin, he talks about web design in terms of three questions: 1) What do people want to know? 2) What do people want to do? and 3) What do you want them to remember?

With those three questions in mind, we've worked to develop our redesign into something that would consider you--the one out there at the other end of the keyboard.

The blog format allows you to talk back. Comment below and let us know how we can continue to make it better.

© Strategic Dimensions 2008