Neocities & UX
I went down the rabbit hole of exploring “the indie web” and “personal sites”. You should too. This post summarizes the insights I gained on web design from my adventure.
The reason why Neocities is a compelling case study for UX design is because the “site masters” don’t have to design for the “other”. It is anything goes for content and form. This trait of the indie web answers the core problem of UX, which is how to design an identity.
What I Learned
UI Still Matters
Even if you are designing for self-expression, some basic conceptual rules still apply since people have to “visit” the site. A glaring problem is how these websites are not mobile-first. The UI of these sites is often extremely muddled, with the navbar sometimes having up to 10+ options.
An important lesson learned is not to try to do everything in the same domain. Splitting up the navigation options into their own “subpages” with their navigation hierarchy prevents overload. This rationale is why websites with different functionalities split them up into subdomains.
Performance is an Aesthetic
Performance is a vague term when it comes to UI/UX. The definition includes the navigation being learnable, intuitive, and <100ms load time. I say this because some of the websites I visited transferred 10 MB+ in images. In some cases, it’s not the best idea to bloat “new features”.
Why your website should be under 14kb
Be Different
In order to be different, you have to understand the technology you are working with and what is possible or not. Throughout my deep dive, I encountered sites made fully in WebGL, sites without any CSS, sites with only images, and sites which broke conventional design rules. These pages played with the boundary of web design on their own.
Like an artist who selects oil paint over watercolor for a specific effect, a web designer who understands HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and beyond can make more deliberate design choices rather than relying on templates or trends.
Closing Thoughts
Even though I wrote a blog on it, UX still feels a bit amorphous to me. My best interpretation is understanding UI as “lintable” and UX as semantic. UX captures more than the UI. If anyone out there has a better conception, please do tell me.