Social Web Design: Joshua Porter and Bokardo Design
Over the course of my career, I've dealt with many different web design firms and web design freelancers; and in a growing market where anybody who can customize a MySpace page thinks they can sell their services to companies as a web designer, finding the right web designer for your company is paramount.
At Overmortal, we have a great team of web designers who really know their craft and perform very well. We work with customers to make sure the design accomplishes it's goal and adds to the overall value of the business.
Sometimes, however, Overmortal isn't hired to do the web design, but instead, is hired solely for web or application development purposes. In these instances, we often work together with outside web designers to complete the overall solution. We've worked with great web designers and we've worked with poor web designers. We've run the gamut. That's for sure.
At my previously place of employment - before taking on the CTO responsibilities here - I had the pleasure of working with social web design guru and user experience expert Joshua Porter of Bokardo Design. Josh was hired after I read his book Designing for the Social Web.
Josh understood the differences between web design and user experience design. He understood that when it came to social applications, the user owned the experience and the design should help guide the user, not get in his or her way.
The biggest problem with freelance web designers today (mostly with the MySpace generation) is that they don't clearly understand the difference between a marketing landing page and a user interface. There are a lot of designers out there who simply slap together some pretty graphics - and don't get me wrong; they'll design you a great looking web site - but in the end, the design fails to provide any real business value. You can't design marketing pages with pretty graphics slapped together when your goal is "sign up" and user interaction. Social design is a whole different ballgame.
Josh Porter and his company understand this. He's been at the forefront of user experience design for quite some time, and his designs are always crisp with easily apparent business value and common sense.
Remember. Just because cousin Johnny can customize his MySpace profile, doesn't qualify him to design a professional web site that requires the elevation of business goals. Hire smart.
