Facebook head of design says it's the end of websites

Jon Lax, Director of Product Design for Facebook recently said that with the current trend of technology, we are slowly moving away from the concept of websites and investing time in designing the web pages. The trend and practice is moving towards working on digital designs to solve the problems faced while navigation or content discovery instead of purely aesthetic values. Lax emphasises on the fact that it is important to build things to scale them up easily with the efficient and easy design and robust functionality during the interview the game to Mashable Australia. Technology shifted to websites in the early 2000’s and  then after the iPhone, gradually to apps and now will move to other forms of information aggregation and services in form of bots. This will enhance the outlook to focusing, not on how the services look; but instead on how they are executed and the business is conducted. Such approach will enhance the engagement level and empower the smaller businesses into straight away setting up for example a Facebook page and build up an audience rather than building it up from scratch without any technical skills. This will help them focus on their business rather than worrying about the backend. Another thing Jon pointed out at the data where most smartphone users only have at most 10 apps on their phones, he added that most smartphone users only use 7 of them. He states that it will be astronomically difficult task for app developers, companies and designers to have their app among the top 7 despite the combination of apps varying from person to person. So it is better for platforms like Facebook and Twitter to work on solutions where they can provide the functionality of hundred apps through that one app, something that is evident through the Bots for Facebook messenger. Jon concludes by saying that the web designers should move and adapt to this shift just like print designers did when the world shifted from print to digital, adding that though websites won’t die completely and still remain just like Vinyl records.