The Geek Audience

There's been a lot of discussion online lately about early adopters of new web start-ups and the audience for these new services. It recalls something that happened in a class of mine a couple of weeks ago, when we first started critiques of our projects.

A discussion emerged while I was presenting the concepts for my web application resource site. No one in the class understood the concept because no one had heard the term "web application" before. They thought I was talking about shareware. My initial interface was unclear because the visual language I used was foreign to the people I was addressing. I tried to explain concepts like folksonomies, using del.icio.us as an example, only to be met with blank stares.

I was initially taken aback, for I figured that since these were all web design students, surely they knew about all the buzz surrounding web 2.0. Even if they believed it was all hype. And by trying to explain these concepts, I ended up sounding like an arrogant know-it-all. A stuttering geek spouting techno-babble and feeling superior about it. I was writing a site that catered to others like me. This is when I started to realize that not everyone in the world was excited about these things, not even future web professionals. How many outside the "geekosphere" are bothering with social bookmarking? Should a struggling new designer even bother with this stuff, or just learn Flash instead?

The ways in which we use the web are very personal. A lot of us are online for several hours every day or more. We check our e-mail, get directions, play games, tell our stories. As a web geek, I get worked up about the latest cool service or application. I sign up for the beta, play around for awhile, and often move on to the next new thing. The really useful ones I continue to use, but the number of new services is hard to keep up with. How much time and energy should we invest in new services? How do we know they'll still be around in six months? Do too many of us get caught up in the technology, the "wow" factor?

How do designers and programmers break past the early-adopters and into the mainstream? From a business perspective the best way to market a product is to convince potential users how much it can improve or simplify their lives. Is there big money in the "geek audience" in the long run? A lot of people are betting that there is. To many, "web 2.0" is a marketing term anyway. Time will show if the innovations we are seeing now are sustainable. Some will prevail, while others will be forgotten.

I receive a lot of good feedback regarding my project from my peers. My initial design did not include much in the way of instruction, for example. It relied too heavily on assumptions-that the potential new user was familiar and comfortable with an interface like del.icio.us. Much re-tooling was done to come up with a more open, clear design. There's still a long way to go, and the critique process has been extremely helpful. These are people who have chosen the web as a career path. They are a diverse group, with different goals and ambitions. Just like the rest of the web.

Explore posts in the same categories: Web 2.0, Web Design