http://tc.eserver.org/authors/Kahn,_Jonathan A bibliography of works by Kahn, Jonathan in the field of technical communication. en-us Copyright (c) 2005-08 by the EServer. All rights reserved. tclib-editorial@eserver.org (TC Library Editorial Board) webmaster@eserver.org (Geoffrey Sauer) http://tc.eserver.org/images/newlogo.gif http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Kahn,_Jonathan http://tc.eserver.org/28907.html http://tc.eserver.org/28907.html Web design is still a young discipline, and it's generally poorly understood. As the web becomes mainstream, an increasing number of people and organizations want websites--and so more people are involved in commissioning, managing, and designing them. It's not surprising that many of these people aren't familiar with how web design works. Clients, managers, and colleagues often assume that web design is a subset of some other discipline, like advertising, graphic design, or software engineering. This creates a tendency to write it off as a low-value, straightforward process that can be streamlined and automated, like a production line. The result is unhelpful pressure on you, the web designer. You're asked to design faster, using a smaller budget, and without access to key stakeholders--which can make it difficult to maintain your professionalism, leaving everyone unhappy with the final design. The logical conclusion of this perpetual streamlining would be to stop using your judgment altogether, as if you were a piece of off-the-shelf software: a robot.