January 27, 2009

Brian Gardner has written a short post to show how he is improving the usability of his themes. He also says he intends to increase the widgetisation of the themes. The two images on this post shown so close together made me wonder if themers are taking widgets too far?

If you were designing a website (platform aside) for a customer you wouldn’t dream of just asking them to plonk the content where they wanted it. You would consider the available content, the interaction between that content, probably do some information architecture work on their existing content and present your final design as a fait accomplii, or near as damn it. You can’t do that with themes, but does that mean that all responsibility should be dumped on the consumer?

Seeing Brian Gardner’s UI for selecting categories made me wonder if the widgetised areas of the best themes would start to become more limited, with more thought given as to the optiminum positioning in any given layout. Say for example that you can choose the layout that you want, and then instead of choosing each individual widget you choose from combinations of content. For example, A main menu that works in a particular way is paired with a sub-menu in the sidebar, a search option in the header and lists of archives in the footer.

Might these themes also start to dictate the way the blog works, instead of the other way around, to help with visitor retention, or to drive focus to adverts, depending on theme? Consider a hard coded list of favourite posts. The blogger would be faced with the option of selecting their own favourite posts or leaving the list blank. If the theme was chosen for its carefully researched strategy surely he would go with the former?

I’m not suggesting that all themes would be widget free, but, just that uber-premium themes might win over normal themes because they do not provide control, they provide a strongly researched framework to help the blogger achieve their goals in the area they are targeting and limit their options for self fulfilled failure.

What do you think? Will themes continue on the never ending road of providing ultimate flexibility and removing structure, or will someone stop this merry-go-round with the intention of providing more?

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