Ok, I feel a little bit bad posting this, since the people who create/maintain/host web sites for gifted kids are doing the public a great service.

On the other hand, why are so many Gifted-themed websites stuck in the mid-1990s when it comes to web design? Why do people accept it when they would not accept poor spelling, grammar, or sloppy formatting on an essay?

Money can't be the sole reason. Plenty of individuals maintain crisp, well-designed web pages just for themselves -- and there are free templates that take the guesswork out of it. Is it something about the gifted psyche? Or what?

-ULH

Well, as a proportion, I'd say that this has much more to do with compensation than anything else.

Why? Because there are a lot more shoestring/support websites with this problem than there are those which are "well-funded."

The other factor is that branding/redesign work isn't actually web-design, per se. It's graphic design and marketing work as much as technical web design.

So yes, outdated color/font/layout is a problem in a lot of websites. Most gifted websites fall under that umbrella as well. Then again, most "fringe" support for ANYTHING does.

Unless... it has $$$$ behind it. Then the pros get involved. Otherwise, it's mostly volunteers, and volunteers have limited time and energy to devote to these things. I also strongly suspect that graphic design/arts and marketing are not areas which draw gifted in large numbers, or when they do, those people are often doing several jobs at once, leaving little time to apply those skills on a volunteer basis. As we all know, there isn't much $$ in gifted education.

I've also noticed (and this is just anecdotal) that the overlap between technical skill (even rudimentary) and that marketing/design savvy on the human/soft side is relatively RARE in any population of people, gifted or not.

The other factor at work here is that the entire notion of webdesign has veered toward social media clearinghouses like FB, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.

The result is that even with established "brands" there isn't a lot invested in periodic redesign or updating to message boards, stand-alone informative sites, and the like.

Managing an active message board is actually more work that it looks like, leaving little left over for prettying things up on a regular basis with a small (or all-volunteer) staff.


Of course, momentarily Jon will come and post that it's due to gifted people being Retro (and therefore cool) without even trying.

The GeoCities look isn't cool anymore? Oh, crud.

My bet is that most of the sites are developed and supported by volunteers and parents who are a lot tech-savvy than they are passionate about sharing knowledge that they think would have helped them with their kids.

Gifted people are able to look beyond fashion, which is a much better parallel for website design than spelling and grammar are?

I still like the idea of HTML as it was intended, so every web-site I do looks outdated, because I refuse to force graphic design elements, and I try to keep the accessibility up.

I suspect the reason most gifted sites aren't populated with shiny objects is the same reason my house isn't full of doilies and porcelain animal figurines.

Cats?

Nailed it.

Shiny websites attract cats, and I'm browsing with a mouse, so...

not to brag, but check out: www.egifted.org -I think it is the best one out there. E-gifted is young (started in Jan) but they have experienced experts.

Because graphics are slower to load, not everybody has high speed, and some people browse on their phones. (?)

Some people hate with a passion black background with white letters...I know it is a personal preference and some people love it and others find it too harsh to read.

Egifted is nice but I won't return.

Visited out of curiosity. I'm afraid I find it completely unusable (on a nexus 7 under Chrome) - things dancing around so I have no idea where I am or should be. I didn't bookmark it.

The pitch black background reminds me those hacker's websites my DS used to visit. Apparently you hired some professional photographers, but not the same level of web designers. They did not match up well.

I find it interesting when people consider 'design' something frivolous.

Well... but relative to things like debugging so that a site keeps running,



it is slightly lower on the priority list.

I mean, I consider my own area of expertise/passion to be Absolutely Essential to the Human Condition.

It has lately come to my attention, however, that this perspective is decidedly unusual, as innately powerful and elegant as my reasoning may be.

Different people also have different sensitivity to different design elements, I will also add.

In running a message board, some people find the dynamic user-interface (or specific elements of it) the most important, some find color-scheme to be critical, and for still others, it's all about the font or images. All of that falls under "design" and all of it is "the most important thing" to someone.

It's subjective, in other words.

I do maintain that none of that is AS important as the ability for users to actually access a site to begin with, however. So yes, a server crash caused by a code problem is a far greater disaster than the right hex color to complement headings, or where to put your Twitter feed box or Facebook button.

Besides, what I like and find particularly user-friendly, someone else is bound to hate. As noted above.
LOL.

Sometimes it is, and sometimes it's not. It depends on whether the design serves a purpose or not. It's very easy for a design element to detract from the overall functionality while increasing costs.

Take, for example, the Saturn V rocket. There are many design features that are brilliant... 3 stages, separate service module, the 2-stage LEM. When I saw how that rover could fold up and fit into that tiny compartment on the LEM, I thought that was one of the most brilliant designs ever.

Now, if they'd added chrome plating, a psychedelic paint job, and gull wings to the Saturn V, that would be frivolous. They may look nice, but they contribute absolutely nothing to the function (and in some cases detract from it), at an increased cost in fuel, materials, schedule, manpower, etc.

With that metaphor in mind, taking a second look at egifted.com in Firefox, I see a scrolling bar of photos below the embedded Youtube video, labelled "What is trending now in education!" It's full of pictures without context, and no hypertext to provide any... it just says "Go to link" for every pic. Except for idle curiosity, there's no reasoning provided for any user to click on any of those links.

It sure does look nice, though.

The fifth slide on the slideshow at the top of the page has the same problem. We're treated to a very nice picture of the back of two heads staring at an image of the earth... which is appropriate, since the hypertext of "Go to link" will leave the audience asking themselves, "What on earth...?"

Oh, and I can't say for sure which is the design element causing the problem, but the homepage fails to load entirely in my version of Internet Explorer. This is a fully-functional laptop here, not some tablet or smartphone, and it's running some of the most common browsing software.

So yeah... chrome plating and gull wings.

Well, I am browsing on a smartphone. But egifted loaded in six separate chunks. I counted to 23 between two of the chunks of design elements loading on the page. By contrast Hoagies loads in full before I can count to 2. I get it that egifted is online classes, so it's a different crowd and purpose. For example, we tried Aleks and they said, "this will take a while to load". I'm glad the forums load quickly and look simple. I don't have Roadrunner, but I do have wifi and the fastest internet that AT&T sells in this area.

I read their other post here:
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/148169/E_gifted.html#Post148169

They seemed to be offering a product, not asking for advice... but., I would say If that business doesn't take off the way you'd like then consider selling (leasing (?) your classes to ALEKs, CTY, Connections, K-12, etc., who already have marketing and a student base.

There's a whole job nowdays converting classes into great online courses (forgot what it's called, read about it online, of course). The point being that while e-gifted is run by Uber- Gifted educators with great credentials and experience, and it's ran from a college, that they could find it more productive to offer their classes to/thru one of the established companies and have a student base, the more efficient marketing, and the school's already on top of ironing out/maintaining software glitches. jmo

thanks for the feedback for E-gifted. I promise our technology for the classes is much better. We will definitely look at each piece of feedback and tweak. Thank you so much! We really appreciate it. If you want to provide any more feedback, we are all ears. We will try to update our website to address all these concerns by mid-Sept. So check back! www.egifted.org

-Jennifer Gordievsky

Err. Here's some feedback. I just went to the site and it displayed a purple background with two black bars at the top. Nothing else, and that took a while to load.

And it made IE freeze.

I just checked it too in Firefox ... loads ok but I find the graphic really hard on my eyes. The white font on black background especially ... and the red tabs too. It screams at me too much and then I tend not to look at the actual content on the site.

AGREE!

I asked the same question as the OP when I first came here. (But must have deleted it; I didn't get a satisfactory answer, apparently.)

MY op about this site's design: VERY NICE!

Seriously. There are very gifted web designers (probably reading this now) who would make this a site that feeds our full senses.

Ultralight, I totally agree too! I think design is one of those things (like copy editing) that if it's done properly you don't notice it

because if you do notice it, it's not design at all. it is... décor.

Usability of websites is a hard problem, and made harder by the lack of agreement on website standards in the industry. But I'm trying to bring my personal website into the twenty-first century. I need a budget to hire experienced website maintainers, which the free information on the website doesn't necessarily support.

Turning this question around, what is an example of a good website for parents of gifted children, with usable and good-looking design?

I like the Sengifted.org website. Summary topics link from the front page a good hierarchy of short dropdown menu options. Pretty modern design, not too busy, appropriate use of fonts and colors, all make for smart UI decisions.

Yikes, you are making me nervous. I hope that my website doesn't fulfill your criticisms of looking outdated! I created it myself this summer, for my advocacy business.

I think it comes down to form versus function and the relative priorities assigned to each given any situation. Personally, I think that for a forum like this pretty pictures and snazzy razzmatazz are completely frivolous.

The most important things to me are speed to load on a suboptimal connection, ability to search, read and edit text. I am here to read and learn form what others have written here and to offer what little I have learned myself along the way.

As a dyed in the wool geek I find that function itself when presented elegantly is beautiful in its own right. A tool that you can look at, know what it's for and see that it is the perfect tool for the job is a delight to behold. That's how I find this site - it does the job perfectly - why gild the lily?

The beauty of design is that it has a subjective component to it... so, "bad" is not necessarily totally distasteful for everyone.

I took a graphics design course years ago, and I have to say I don't find design frivolous at all... if done correctly it can have a tremendous persuasive effect on the viewer (resulting in a quantifiable impact to a business's bottom line). Colour, lines, layout, white space, etc etc... all influence the way we see what we're looking at, whether we want to continue looking, as well as what we notice and remember...