huevos con vino

When I’m not tasting and reviewing wines, I typically work as an information architect, or information designer, or information developer, or experience designer, or assistance developer…I could go on, but I’m bored just looking at that list.  No matter what I call the job itself, I spend a lot of my professional time creating and organizing information. 

For example, I might design a Web site for a research group.  Or I might work on a user interface for a new software application.  Or I might develop the interaction model for a new consumer product.  I have been doing this sort of thing for a long time; I have 12 years of Web design and development experience at this point, which is pushing the upper limit of how many years of “Web” experience anyone can really have since HTML itself is only 14 years old.  I have 10 years of professional experience working in the capacity described above.  I have 5 years of university-level teaching experience, 4 years of advanced research experience, and 2 engineering degrees in technical communication (including a masters degree resulting from thesis work on Web site design).  So when I break rules of grammar, or style, or organization, it’s for a good reason…or else I might just be typing too fast.

I mention all of this snooty background information to make a simple point: When I look at a winery Web site, I believe I look with an extremely critical eye.  I can’t help myself at this stage of my career.  My training was so rigorous, I see typos and errors in places where most people don’t.  I find myself pausing my TV every time I catch a typo in the fine print of a commercial, which seems to be a never-ending source of amusement for my wife.  I hope.

So when I look at the Kendall Jackson Web site, for example, I typically see more than the information I was looking for.  I see the way the graphics work with the text to form a cohesive organizational structure.  I see how the three graphics on the home page emphasize a sense of attachment between the consumer and the winemaker, and between the winemaker and his vineyards, and between the product of the vineyards and the dining table.  I think about how the content on that home page might look to members of other cultures, or how the photo of the winemaker might suggest a certain power distance relationship between the consumer and the winery.

In essence, I find reasons to criticize nearly every Web site I see.  And winery Web sites are no exception.

Now, for quite a while I have thought about writing some design guidelines for winery Web sites.  But there’s a big problem.  I may be qualified to write such guidelines, but usually the best way to compile a list of “do’s and don’ts” is to show lots of examples of existing designs and explain why they suck.  I am reluctant to do that with winery Web sites for a couple of reasons:

• The big wineries can afford professional Web design firms, so the finished product usually looks pretty good.
• The small wineries tend to produce very small, limited Web sites that do not deserve lots of design scrutiny because, frankly, it’s a miracle they have Web sites at all.
• Excellent winemakers rarely seem to be excellent Web developers too, so it’s a little unfair to judge Web sites created by winemakers using the same high Web design standards that I apply to professionally developed sites.

I have a plan, though.  I am going to compile a list of all the US-based wineries that have been honored in the Wine Spectator Top 100 wines of 2006.  I’ll cross-reference those US wineries with their Web sites, which will result in my favorite thing: a new spreadsheet!  Once I have those sites listed, I will start visiting them all to see whether there are any consistent design decisions occurring within the sites, whether the sites were made by pro Web design shops, and so on.  Ultimately, I should be able to develop a good sense for current design and usability trends within “influential” winery Web sites, and once I’ve done that I can weigh in with my professional opinion on the relative merits of each trend or design decision.

One trend I already know that I hate is the use of Flash for Web site “intro pages.”  That’s so 2002.