I need to start just writing down about half the things I say, apparently. I am constantly finding some other brilliant blog post or tweet that makes me go “of course. We already do that.”
Kate Rutter at Adaptive Path recently posted about no longer using the word “web page.” I think that post went on a bit much about the philosophical underpinnings of the original term, and I’m not loving a lot of the terms she came up with. It reminds me more of some terminology I have created in the past couple months regarding eBooks (settled on “page” as a reference to the original book only, and “leaf” as the unitary, non-scrolling content in the current viewport).
As a general rule, I agree with tossing the term “page” for interactive products. I still think you have to know your audience and I use “page” and “web page” periodicially. It’s okay, as long as you know it’s wrong and work towards the right solution.
And here’s where it matters. Semantics matter, because they carry meaning. Replacing one word for “a fixed piece of content” with another is not that helpful. As I address briefly in my book on design process there is no difference now between applications and hypermedia. The whole concept of a page, leaf or card is suspect. More importantly, it constrains you as a designer.
My terms are along the lines of “state” and “view.”
I’ve started trying to clearly talk lately about the difference between interface design and interaction design – and other types, but these two get confused a lot. And interface design is not bad, but too many interface designers think they are interaction designers. Interface design is good and important, but (as I define it) it’s about the relationship of items within a single view.
Interaction design begins when the view changes, or between different views and states of the system, or related systems. Thinking entirely about decks views lets you loose sight of the basics of interactive design:
- Information
- Interaction
I fell into hating the term “web page” years ago, but not because I felt it was dated or over-used or because someone told me it was. It was a natural outgrowth of thinking about design from the ground up. Flowing directly from problems, to information design, to interaction design, to interface design… and having the revelation that there are no web pages anymore.