User interface directions for the Web

T he Web is about to face its own Y2K crisis—one that has a great deal in common with the problems facing the mainframe industry. We know it’s coming, the solution is easy in principle, but difficult in practice due to sheer mass. And, we can safely predict that much of the problem will remain unsolved by the time it hits the fan. The Web’s Y2K crisis is due to the number of Web sites that will go online in the next few years. Figure 1 shows the growth of the Internet and the Web during the present decade. Since the diagram has a logarithmic y-axis, the curves represent exponential growth. If the growth rate does not slow down, the Web will reach 200 million sites sometime during 2003. Since the Web will have about 4 million sites by the time this issue of Communications reaches subscribers, we can conclude that about 196 million new sites will go online during the next five years. The world has about 20,000 user interface professionals. If all sites were to be professionally designed, and if a site design did not require more than a single UI professional, we can conclude that every UI professional in the world would need to If you think it’s crowded now, just wait! The Web is heading toward its own year-end calamity unless some skillful maneuvering is applied—quickly. USER INTERFACE DIRECTIONS FOR THE WEB