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Nick Finck Discusses Digital Web Magazine

"While still important, design is taking a back seat to more critical issues such as Information Architecture, Usability, Accessibility, and User-Centered Design."

Nick Finck is the Editor in Chief of Digital Web Magazine which bills itself as "the Web Developer's Online Magazine of Choice." A resident of Portland, Oregon, he enjoys snowboarding when not devoting time to his various online pursuits. At SXSW 2003, Finck and Steven Champeon will co-lead a panel titled "Inclusive Web Design for the Future."

You serve as Editor in Chief of Digital Web Magazine. What are your day-to-day responsibilities like at this publication? How did you first become involved with Digital Web Magazine? How much time do you spend per week on this publication?
There is a long list of tasks that I do on a weekly basis, perhaps too long to list here. As large as the volunteer editorial staff may be, there are still plenty of things to do and not enough hours in the day to do them. The time spent on the magazine has varied over the years since it's inception in 1999 and the site's inception in 1996. I estimate I spend around 20 hours a week just getting issues published every week. I am still trying to figure out how I am going manage a redesign of the site.

What are some of the most popular stories / articles posted on Digital Web Magazine in recent weeks? Are you ever surprised by what is popular (and what is less popular)? What kind of overall site traffic does Digital Web Magazine generate at this point?
Well for a while there the most popular article was the interview I conducted with Joshua Davis. Recently, however, that has all changed. The publication of an excerpt from Forward Compatibility: Designing & Building With Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman properly entitled "99.9% of Websites Are Obsolete" struck a few chords to say the least. We recorded around 1,120,000 hits and 34,000 user sessions for that day. So you can see, it all depends on what sparks some interest. We also run regular reader surveys to see what topics are hot and what ones are not.

The current issue of Digital Web Magazine focuses on "User-Centered Design". What is your definition of this concept? Can you name a few sites that you think do the best job of user-centered design?
UCD is the philosophy of designing something based on the needs of who will actually use it. As far as identifying sites that demonstrate good UCD, that is not an easy task. This is because it all depends on the user. Take yourself for example, you may not be in a site's target audience or even in their secondary audience so the site may seem awkward or unclear. However for those who do fall within the target audience, things may be easy to understand and use.

What kind of topics will the publication be focusing on in the next few months?
Well, long time readers will remember when we used to focus on specifically Web Design. Over the years, things have changed, the industry has advanced and technology has advanced with it. While still important, design is taking a back seat to more critical issues such as Information Architecture, Usability, Accessibility, and User-Centered Design. We will be focusing on these topics, plus the concept of Form and Function over the next few months. After that, we are planning a re-launch of the site complete with a new logo, design and new architecture. You will see a whole new Digital Web Magazine.

The editorial staff of Digital Web Magazine is spread across the country. In terms of management, what kind of challenges does the decentralization pose?
Surprisingly, very few. Digital Web Magazine is just that, digital. We have no paper to ship, everything we do is digital. All communication is done online via e-mail, file transfers and instant messaging. The only problems I have been faced with are issues of time differences. Because of this it is hard to schedule meetings in the middle of the day Pacific Time if some of the contributors are in Japan or Australia.

One section of Digital Web Magazine asks readers to donate a dollar to the costs associated with running this publication. Have you been able to accumulate necessary funding this way?
Yes, and then some. Our hosting fees are extremely affordable and will probably become even more affordable in the near future. We have received enough money in donations from our readers to cut a check for every individual volunteer that has contributed their time and effort to the magazine with no expected compensation. I myself don't plan to keep a dime.

Given your experience with asking volunteer donations, what do you think is the future of "free" content on the web?
One thing that is important to know is that just because you do something for free doesn't mean you won't be recognized for your contributions. In recent days I have received several communications that reaffirm that the independent web publishing industry is only going to get better. It won't, however, get better over night or without some serious effort. The content you produce must have value and maintain a decent--if not better--level of quality than what is already out there.

Halloween is almost upon us. What are some of the scariest trends in web design these days?
In short, designers who are still trying to design for Print on the Web. Nothing horrifies me more than seeing a design with 20 nested tables, hundreds of spacer GIFs and other hacks simply to offset an image by 2 pixels.

What do you think is the most frightening concept in terms of web design?
The thought of a user interface model where no one can print, highlight, copy, paste, exchange or transverse the information. These systems are inaccessible, unusable, incompatible and utterly destined for failure. Good design is about solving problems, not making them.

Continuing with the Halloween theme, do you have any superstitions in terms of web design?
Not that I know of. At times I have been accused of idolizing validators for fear of the markup gods wreaking havoc on helpless Web pages, but I assure you, that is pure nonsense.

At the 2003 SXSW Interactive Festival, you and Steven Champeon are scheduled to co-present a panel titled panel titled "Inclusive Web Design for the Future." Please tell us a little more about what you plan to cover in this session.
In a nutshell, Steven and I will cover how to create Web sites that will work in any browser, including the browsers of tomorrow, by using strategies to separate each layer of the document (markup, presentation, and behavior). We will discuss how markup semantics permeate all layers, from bare HTML and XHTML/XML, all the way up through CSS and the DOM, and make it possible to provide truly information-rich documents without sacrificing power, flexibility and accessibility.

Tell us more about what you do when not working on Digital Web Magazine.
Same as everyone else: early in the mornings on the weekend, I head up to the local mountain, find the steepest powdered slope I am willing to take on, strap a board on my two feet, then hurl myself down the mountain as fast as I can go and hope I don't hit a tree, fly off a nearly bottomless cliff or worse yet; catch an edge. No amount of programming genius is going to save you up there.

What are your favorite websites at present? Particularly, we're interested in sites that you may have found that have not yet been discovered by the masses.
Well, I am often amazed at how few people know about some of the great sites out there. One site that comes to mind is WebTender.com. While this site may not be winning any best design awards for UI any time soon it is highly functional. This is a good example of information architecture hard at work. The content is what the user wants to access and they provide multiple methods of finding that content including personalization features. For example, I can go in to the "In My Bar" section and define all the items I currently have that could be used to make mixed drinks. From there the site will allow me to determine if I want all recipes that I can make with those ingredients or I have the option of listing recipes that may require one or two additional ingredients. When I talk about a utilitarian web, this is what I mean: well organized information that is presented according to what the user's needs are.