Shaun Inman, web development guru and exceedingly smart guy, has launched the 9th version of his personal site this week. What makes this particular redesign noteworthy is the new dimension he’s added to an otherwise no-frills blog: each post and comment is associated with the moment in time that it was created and, as in the natural world, it “decays” (i.e. fades in colour) as time passes. Posts a year old are noticeably lighter than posts written last week. I think it’s a real innovative twist on the typical notion of a blog and something that is perfectly suited to what Shaun writes about - technology and the web. It’s pretty much a given that something written two years ago is probably out of date and becoming irrelevant, so why not make that immediately apparent in the design when a visitor stumbles onto an old post on your site via a direct link on Google?

Shaun’s always been on the cutting edge and I think he’s clearly demonstrated he’s a step ahead once again. I’m certain that this low-level, almost subconscious approach to navigation - something that Boxes and Arrows’ Ross Howard recently dubbed ambient signifiers - will become more and more prevalent on the web. Especially in the social media landscape. However the key to its success, I believe, is the adherence to a universal standard or set of best practices when it comes to how we as designers communicate to users on this level. For example, if one site darkens its colour palette slightly when you’re logged in and another lightens theirs slightly, the inconsistency will muddle the message and users will be forced to fall back on design cues that force them to think - icons and text - rather than feel their way along.