Joyful web design

I think about joy when I make web pages. If you hover over the mascot on my blog, its eyes will open. The typeface of my blog title on my home page is the same one Taylor Swift used for her evermore album. If you explore my website for long enough, you will find an Easter egg. I write and publish stories that I am proud of.I want this site to be a constellation of moments of joy.At Beyond Tellerrand this week, which followed IndieWebCamp Düsseldorf, Tantek and I got talking about the idea of joy and the web. Tantek shared the idea “joyful web design,” which immediately caught my attention. This got me thinking: given the success and memetic power of responsive web design, should we crystallise a definition for joyful web design? I think we should. Joy should be a design goal.Joyful web design has two tenets: first, the joy that you, the site author, feel when making web pages; second, the joy that a visitor has when encountering what you have made.As a site author, you might feel joy…