philosophy
Our philosophy is guided by two main forces : the need for effective, useable design on the web; and the
need for sustainability in the development all around us.
design
Regular web surfing is bound to produce some key realizations about what is and isn't good in a website:
- anything that takes a long time is bad
- the fewer clicks the better
- anything that distracts from the task at hand is bad (e.g. things that flash or scroll)
- getting lost is bad
- nothing but black text on a white background is boring
With these truths in mind, combined with the fact that the vast majority of web surfers are using dial-up
connections from not-the-newest computers, we design our sites. The focus is on easily navigable, quickly
learned, easily used, browser and platform independent, and eye pleasing sites that accomplish their goals.
We place a lot of (figurative :) stock in the design ideas of the self-styled "pioneers" of
website design, Donald Norman and
Jakob Nielsen, collectively the NN Group. And though simple,
download-minimizing sites are our usual aim, there can be good reasons for abandoning those principles somewhat, as
in the case of one our favourite not-created-by-us sites, sodaplay.com.
sustainability
All around us resources are being used up at a ferocious rate, with seemingly little heed being paid to the
long-term consequences. We strongly believe that a sustainable ethic must be adopted by all in the Western
world, as it is to us that the rest of the world looks when envisioning their future. Mine All Meyn is an
active proponent of "community" - both physical and social.
In our work we actively seek contracts that will
further sustainable physical communities (as with the
McMaster University Sustainable Communities Research Group), as well as social communities (as with
the Social Planning Council of Peel). While we oppose consumption as
an end, we are happy to help small, community-based businesses develop a web presence. Someone needs
to provide affordable, effective websites to those that are trying to compete with the MegaCorps of the world!
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