My recent post, 50 Common Web Design Mistakes elicited this comment from Wild over at Digg:

These are programming mistakes. Not DESIGN mistakes.

Maybe I sound a bit arrogant, but their [sic]is a difference between a web designer and a web programmer. Its [sic] one the industry needs to understand as it leads to a lot of confusion when it comes to hiring people.

I suppose, if my definition of web design was limited to arranging pixels, I might agree with him but there is more to web design than making pretty pictures on a monitor. According to (who else) Wikipedia, design

…normally requires a designer [to consider] aesthetic, functional, and many other aspects of an object or process…

It’s the “functional, and many other aspects” of web design that people like Wild ignore. In this area I grudgingly give credit to the “experience design” movement for recognizing that the ultimate purpose of design is not to create a printed piece of paper, an attractive arrangement of pixels or an imposing building. The purpose of design is to create an interaction with, or experience for, the end-user using those created objects (real and virtual).
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Note: Most of you won’t be going on to an exciting career in graphic design (of course I’m not talking about you, just the students around you).

First a bit of background

During my senior year studying architecture at the University of Illinois, one of my professors informed the class that less than 10% of us would wind up as practicing architects. In spite of our protestations he was, of course, correct. Within a year of graduating, I was back in school taking art (and the occasional design) classes. And, the few classmates I’m still in touch with aren’t practicing architects either. They’re working for contractors, managing construction projects and more but they aren’t designing buildings.
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