Whenever someone from Big Spaceship goes out to speak, they are quick to point out that we aren’t a Flash shop and that Flash is simply one of many possible deployment platforms for us. Dan Mall took that further by challenging the community at large to reconsider when it is and isn’t appropriate to use a specific technology. But Dan is an expert, right? He knows when to use Flash and when not to, and how. So how do YOU get to be that sort of expert? How does one really decide when to use the “appropriate” technology?

It’s a hard question to answer. It’s even harder to execute on whatever decision is made, which is why so many stay isolated in their favorite platforms. But the answer is in basics. I’ll explain through a story.

I went to an old friend’s birthday party a week or so back. I’ve known him since junior high. We took a programming course in high school together, and both of us sort of always knew we’d wind up making things for computers in some capacity or another. He’s remained friends with a number of our former classmates from this programming course. His party thus became something of a high school computer programming class reunion for me.

One of his friend’s (who I’ll call Bob) approached me. My friend had mentioned that where I worked and some of the projects, and he was a fan of some of it. He was particularly psyched about the Oceanic Airlines site we built for ABC’s LOST a few years back. He mentioned that he and his wife were huge fans of the show and remembered spending hours on that site trying to unlock all of it’s secrets.

Bob mentioned that he actually worked as a programmer as well, and the conversation eventually turned toward our craft. Bob asked what my thoughts were on Flash, and I outlined my views — that there are appropriate times to use the player to create a level of immersion not currently possible with HTML, but that it’s a matter of the experience you’re trying to provide. Bob was polite, but clearly disagreed. He felt that learning another platform just for the sake of offering a couple of extra animations and being locked into a proprietary platform was a bad user experience.

My response was simple. The LOST site is half Flash and half HTML. The parts that needed to be HTML to convey a convincing airline site were done with conventional HTML, JavaScript and CSS while the seating chart drew you in with rich animations, mini games and videos. The end result? One of his personal favorite web sites of all time.

We see this the opposite way, too… Flash sites are still coming out today that look poor on a mobile device, don’t account for basic search indexing or deep linking. I can’t wrap my head around it… if you managed to figure out object oriented programming, surely a little web browser markup isn’t going to break your back… right?

I find that whatever the professional rationale in our industry often conflicts with the personal preference, and I find that fascinating and unfortunate. A positive user experience is when a person is engaged the way they’re supposed to be with the the the software. We’re so wrapped up in a self-invented conflict that we overlook the basic needs of our users.

Part of it is that we’re just not willing to get on the dance floor together. The HTML and Flash camp need to start working toward some commonalities… maybe someone out there should organize a conference that focuses on both at once instead of a silo approach.

So… again, we get back to the question. How do you decide? As you’re designing, simply consider what a user would want as they’re browsing your site. Keep an open mind to doing more work for your users for the sake of making the end result better for them. You should feel free to go into the design thinking “This is going to be a [whatever technology] site”, but don’t let your explorations be limited to the thing you know. Consider how it might be built using an alternate technology if a revision or two is made on the final comps (that’s typically the biggest difference) , and weigh that against the possible benefits.

Be confident in the fact that you’re an expert, and that as an expert you should be open to considering other solutions.

Note: This post was originally published on jamie.kosoy.net in 2010.