Getting Out of Our Ruts

In the early years of the web, there was a lot of experimentation and variation in where to put content on a web page. Then, it seems we all settled into a handful of patterns and stayed there for over a decade. It wasn’t until the arrival of responsive design that new ideas for page layout started appearing.

Now with new CSS properties for layout landing in browsers, we may be about to see a bigger renaissance in layout design patterns.

Learning questions:

• How can we better use the space inside the glass rectangle?
• What layout innovations could help users better find and focus on what they want?

Take a walk through where we’ve been, where we might be going, and how we could better design for the true medium at hand.