Characterize your web application!

What do you do to characterize your web application?

I’m not talking about building a specific service, having a great concept or catching the latest trends. I’m talking about the feeling and character of your web application, what do the users feel and think about it? Does it have any character at all?

One of the things I’ve experienced as a web designer is that, as long as the graphics looks good, it’s cool. But from the time where the designer is done in Photoshop till the actual site is up running, a lot of design decisions is probably made without approval from the designer. Unfortunately, animation and control of forms, effects, buttons etc. is not available in Photoshop yet (THERMO will hopefully solve that problem), so the programmer is left with different design decisions unless he’s told anything else. Therefore (no offense programmers), the right feeling and character of the web application often get lost in the code, so to speak.

Besides all the visual elements, characterization is also about knowing your target audience. Which kind of worldview are they carrying? Are they into rock, fuck and roll? Or are they more the kind of jazz, conversation and chill? If you don’t understand your audience and their worldview, how can you design a useful web application for them?

A woman who practice characterization is Denise Wilton, designer at Moo.com. In this talk, at Future of Web Design London 2007, hosted by Carsonified, she talks shortly about some of the fields of characterization of web applications.