After browsing many of the popular websites over the past few years, I was left with a sense of “coldness” or perhaps “distance” from my experience surfing them. While technically impressive, many of these sites left me with a sense of isolation, inferiority even.
I felt shutout physically by these sites. I found these perfect virtual worlds managed to shut me out emotionally as well. These impressions I was left with didn’t exactly make me want to come back for more.
Though the internet is a cold, bodiless place, the user still wants to be invited in - to feel a part of something. Therefore, the most fulfilling user experience happens when the designer wisely incorporates elements from the natural environment.
Instead of cold vector perfection, these warm elements can communicate with our humanity and our soul and make the visit to a website a journey of discovery.
Two years ago, someone pointed me to Yasuto Suga’s “Ray of Light”. After seeing so many sites that were like “Star Wars on steroids”, I had finally surfed upon a website that hooked me right from the very first second. I must have stared at it for over an hour without actually clicking anything. The girl on the cliff with the waving hair, the colours, the music, everything was just perfect to me.
After this experience, I hunted down similar sites with a similar feeling but, sadly, I ended up with just a few sites in my bookmark collection. One of those was Gabe Rubin’s "Wrecked" (
http://www.wrecked.nu). I began to wonder how his site would feel, mixed up with the amazing atmosphere of “Ray of Light”.
I also realized that both sites had something in common… less content. Uh oh, I don’t want to say that content kills the atmosphere but those two sites really get to the point. “This is me, this is what I am doing and you can contact me here.”
Anything more would not fit right with those types of sites. You have to look at them more like one of those great movie trailers. They build up the suspense and they show parts of the whole picture but they make you feel hungry for more by just giving you enough to feed your senses.
Remember the movie “The Perfect Storm” starring George Clooney? Remember the trailer for that movie? The one that shows that huge wave with the crashing thunder in Dolby surround sound, with theatrical music and destructive subwoofer assault?! Everybody goes “WOW”, this is a must see! Mind you, on this occasion I guess most of the visitors who saw the movie actually left the cinema slightly bored afterwards as this particular scene was nearly at the end of the movie.
To get to the point, this is a perfect example of how you sell a product. It’s just the same with any website - even if there is nothing more behind it than just a big wave. Helps with surfing though. ;-)
This type of approach doesn’t work with every customer but there are enough clients out there (artists, fashion, photographers, restaurants… etc.) where an atmospheric website like this can do so much more for them. It can make them look outstanding (especially in relation to their competitors).
And here we go again, we invite the user, we let him experience the thoughts, the spirit or the initial idea behind a product, the company and/or the artist by building up a special and unique atmosphere around him.
See, if a user starts surfing the net on the results of a search for a special product, company or artist he might have visited 10 to 30 websites before he arrives at your client’s site. The user may have found that there was not much diversity on the websites before, all of which may have had the same generic content over and over again and you may find that the time between one click to the next website is getting shorter and shorter. Now, it all depends if your client’s site is able to do the same to the user as what the “Ray of Light” site did to me…hook them in and keep them transfixed.
He will realize and appreciated the difference, the mood, the atmosphere…and now you are halfway there.
I remember a briefing with a very famous medical company over here in Germany; it was actually one of those briefings most webdesigners will be familiar with. The Founder, the Co-Founder, the Co-Founder’s assistant and tons of balance sheets to show off, all of which claimed they were the “global leader”, number one in the market place and how the marketing department wants to see them positioned in the target field and so on.
I interrupted that slightly boring conversation and asked the Founder about the time when he first thought about building a company like this, if he was sitting with some friends in a bar, scribbling ideas on a piece of paper…and he told me. He told me about his dreams and visions he had in those days, how hard it was to get the company to the place where it was now etc…and this conversation ended up lasting for over two hours.
The result of this was that I was able to build a website around his early visions and dreams and not around the balance sheets. Because this is what the user or the client’s customer believed in and what took their company to where it was now and this was the best way to portray the company on the web as it had proven results for them.
In order to build an atmospheric website it is absolutely essential that you understand the environment of the client. During the design and development, always try to be a part of it and be prepared to jump right into the laid-out scene.
In most cases, I have the audio part ready before I even start to do the layouts in Photoshop. I do things this way round just to set the right mood, even if that means listening to Johnny Cash for several days.
With the client’s vision in mind and the audio part already in place, it’s now just down to the visual side of things. Designing Lana Landis (
http://www.lanalandis.com) for example, I was closing my eyes, listening to old scratched Marilyn Monroe tunes and was thinking about the feeling of how it used to be to drive in an Pink Chevy down the highway. Just to feel the era and the American way of life at this time (pretty hard for an German, believe me) so I could lock into the atmosphere and environment needed for the site. Most of the graphical ideas were born during this process.
However you do it, just try to be a real part of your upcoming work and dig as deep as possible into the demanded setting.
Create suspense, create detailed scenarios, give the user something to discover and also make him a part of it.
As I said before (did I?) this won’t work with every client, but as soon as you have the chance to do something like this, go for it. The users out there will thank you for sure.
About me? My name is Ingo J. Ramin of
247 Media Studios, I am 42 and damned to permanent originality…hard work.
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