Home is where the ? is.

The browsing experience of the internet is largely visually ugly and often frustrating to navigate. From the research I have done so far I have found that there are many people out there trying to improve the web through introducing standards and methods of good practice. In particular Steve Krug's book 'Don't Make Me Think' is a fantastic common sense guide on how to design websites in accordance to how people actually use the web. He illustrates that there are a vast amount of misconceptions and preconceptions about the way we think people use the web. For instance, there are still many people who type www.whereiwanttogo.com into the search box of a search engine, in the end they will get to where they want to go but it becomes an inefficient process. There are billions of instances of this around the web creating little frustrations for everyone therefore it is problem that is not going to be solved easily. Educating the web designers of the future and trying to change the ways of current designers is a start but not a solution.

I now have less than a year to try and make a difference during my Masters in Design course and I'm not suggesting that I will come up with the solution to fix all of the Internet's problems but my aim is to make the web just that little bit more enjoyable.

If we look at modern computer operating systems, they are now successfully based on the metaphor of the desktop. This metaphor has influenced the way we navigate, store information, visually represent digital artifacts and it helps with the user's perception of space. So how do we move this from the desktop to the internet? The home page.

The homepage is everyone's first point of contact with the Internet through a web browser. People currently use a variety of different homepages: a news site, a favourite site, a search engine or a web portal. The first 3 offer standard web pages with a commonly used activity for the user whether it be checking the news or making a search but there are no options for significant customisation or personalisation. The most common web portals are My Yahoo and iGoogle, these offer a range of widgets for you to put on your homepage to allow you to check the weather, rss feeds, play games etc. etc. These sites are often over crowded with information and although they offer a high level of customisation they offer little personalisation.

'Experiences should ultimately, change and modify themselves to be more appropriate for users'
Shedroff, N. (2001) experience design 1

I want to reinterpret the homepage to bring it inline with the connotations of a home environment by making it a much more personal and unique online space. Through my research over the next few months I am going to be looking at how to re-invent to home page, so that it is a place they can look forward to entering, a place they can make their own and one that will adapt to them over time.