Yesterday afternoon i sat in meeting with someone who understands about user interface and user experience and we discussed how bad most of the israeli web sites are looking like in general. At the same time Michael Eisenberg covers the same matter in a great post i invite you to read carefully. He nails the issue: Israel is great at creating technologies but not some much at translating in a great visual interface.
This is something i have talked about in this blog a few times: Israelis are not good enough at consumer product design. There are more and more exceptions which is encouraging. But overall the level of execution is not good enough. I am not referring to the local israeli websites that i believe are not even worth talking about (yad2co.il, walla.co.il, haaretz...)
We are now living in a era of Design, more than technology and Israel has never been great at Design. Michael suggests that the entrepreneurial community has not been raised with the right tools (mostly Microsoft tools). I would argue that this is a cultural and educational issue.
I am not counting now the number of times someone asked me if i knew a great UI/UX guy (UI= user interface / UX= user experience). This typical question translates perfectly what i am trying to say. There is NO such guy. He does not exist. Or rarely exist. UI/UX is the result of several skills involved in a working process that is hard to define perfectly. UI/UX is not about graphic design only, web design, product definition, consumer psychology, ergonomy, development are also very important and they are never owned by 1 guy only (or very very rarely like this is the case with Tweetie, the great twitter client for mac/iphone)
The fact that someone ask about a great UI guy, just means he does not understand what it takes to create a great UI. In my meeting yesterday we mentioned the fact that most of the time the problem starts with the fact that the founders/entrepreneurs don't really know what they want. They expect someone to magically solve that issue. Spotify has a magic interface. And this is the results of hundreds of iteration cycles between different people owning different skills.
The only way to find the right working approach is to start, make mistake and fix them. Daily. But that's not all
In all the projects i have been involved in, i always came to the conclusion that a good result comes first with a clear vision of what you want. Even if you are not a developer or a designer you need to be able to explain how you see your product. There are great tools to help you refine visually your thought: my favorite is Mockflow
But the bottom line is that in Israel there is not enough awareness of what it means to create a great user interface. The lack of awareness comes from the lack of education. And even if they are great institutes to learn graphics and design this is not enough. UI/UX should be taught in all engineer schools and all business schools. This is a cross disciplinary matter and i believe this is what is really missing in Israel
A few tips to start
I would encourage strongly entrepreneurs interested in the matter in reading about this subject religiously trying to self educate yourself.
- One suggestion i have is to read daily SmashingMagazine (there are more blogs about UI/UX that are great but this one is a great start)
- I would also encourage non-techie entrepreneurs to play with tools like Mockflow, or Balsamiq which do not require any special skill to build a wireframe of your product. Just a good sense of drag and drop.
- If you want to build a simple SiteMap i would suggest SlickPlan.
- If you start building a working process with a designer, a developer and yourself (or someone of your team), you'll need to work with a great feedback tool to facilitate answers: i suggest you use NotableApp.com
I have very strong hopes that the average Israeli web sites will have amazing design soon. Look for example at ZVZ.co.il
There are also great websites made by some israeli startups: SeekingAlpha, Ekoloko (i am advising), ... and many more. But the ratio is still small.
The key is in awareness and therefore in education.
Btw if you know people who know how to deal with a great UI/UX process i am interested. shoot me an email on [email protected]