justdrew

Web not innovating on pace with consumer expectations

Ever since the first time I started coding with Javascript, I have been astounded at the amount of untapped technology that has been available on the web but utterly ignored. That is simply money left on the table. Not only in terms of unbilled consulting and development time, but in the lack of real value creation in the space.

For example, in 1996, I was challenged to build a computer component configurator for a local firm who had no back-end web infrastructure. I was delighted to realize that I could, even at that time, design and build a working web app run entirely in the front-end using JavaScript. Although it was admittedly inelegant, its shortcomings were due to my own ignorance of how to fully exploit the functionality I had stumbled over.

I was even able to obfuscate the code so that, even though it was sent to the browser, it would take a determined hacker a lot of time to reverse engineer my client’s proprietary software and their business rules.

Over the years, the emergence of things like Ajax and the phenom of social networks have flowered- the seeds of their technology have been germinating for what seems like a very long time. Most of the functionality expressed in today’s websites has been technologically possible since the mid 1990′s. Now that might seem like only yesterday to some of us, but in technology years, that’s an eon.

This article drives home the realization that collectively as web creatives, we’re not doing everything we can to truly push the innovation envelope.

Sadder still- from my perspective, there’s all kinds of things we could be doing to leverage the potential of existing technology- it’s not like we’re waiting around for ways to publish and distribute interaction across a wide network of people and computers in a way that was cutting edge science fiction only 15 years ago. We have so much of this functionality today!

We’ve been theoretically able to do things like show new content on a page without refresh for simple things like form validation and slick slideshow transitions for over a decade- but so few websites even do this well, or with a good (from the visitor’s perspective) reason.

In the end, innovation isn’t just something that’s cool or makes the client say “wow”. True innovation is giving your target audience something they really, really want or need- even though they didn’t realize they wanted or needed it before they saw it.

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