Thursday, February 17, 2011
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Week 4 Reading
A websites homepage can make or break a user ever coming back to your site. You want the users to be able to easily navigate your site and know exactly where they want to go. Like the last blog post, having a 3 year old navigate your site would be a wise way of thinking about building your site. You don't want to over complicate things by adding in unnecessary information, but if you have to have promotional banners they should be accompanied to your site accordingly. There are many ways the structure of the site can make or break someone coming back to your website, if you have a massive mess of a page like many of the websites that came out when the internet was first created, then good luck getting large quantities of viewers. Use as much space as necessary to complete the goals of your website. Keep the jargon and long paragraphs down to a minimum, bullet things creatively if you need to. Refrain from using drop down menus unnecessarily, keep them for forms or specific products. And if you do use drop down menus, make sure they are alphabetized for convenience. If you design to use a roll over bubble, make sure the bubble is in a close range of where you rolled over. For user purposes it is really inconvenient to have to look at the lower left hand corner of the screen to read something, just to have to look back up again to figure out where you need to roll over next.
Week 3 Reading
Decision wise the web and reality is a lot alike. Take Krug's Sears example; when we walk into a store and are looking for something specific in a millisecond we decide whether or not we will ask someone where to find the object we are looking for or take the stubborn route and look for ourselves. This is the same with navigating a website in the sense that when we get to a sites home page we instantly decide if we are going to browse or if we are going to search for the subject we are looking for. Web designers use the term persistent navigation to describe the set of navigation elements that appear on every page of a site. If this is done right the website should be saying to us "The navigation is over here. Some parts will change a little depending on where you are, but it will always be here, and it will always work the same way." Keeping the navigation consistent between pages is a good idea for user ability to go smoothly however there are two instances where this rule can be changed; with the home page and the forms. The home page has its own set of responsibilities, which means it is ok and sometimes makes sense to not use the persistent navigation here. Also on a page where there is a form that needs to be filled out, the persistent navigation can add up to being an unnecessary distraction. One thing that should remain persistent with the website is the Site ID or Logo. When we walk into a store we only really need to see the store name once, because we know that unless we have walked back out those doors we are still in the same store. However, websites can be tricky with misleading links that can take you to other webpages unexpectedly. This helps to maintain the sanity and security of the user to ensure them they are still where they want to be.
Persistent Navigation So good that even a 3 year old can navigate it.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Week 2 Reading
Hierarchy is important to the design process because as humans we learn to recognize the hierarchy. If any source of media doesn't have a clear hierarchy we're reduced to processing the page at a much slower pace, by scanning the page for any revealing words or phrases and leaving our brains to decipher the code. Another key factor in the design process is making things user friendly; no noise, clearly clickable items, a sense of convention. No one wants to have to learn to navigate a website, by keeping things conventional it makes media more user friendly. In chapter 4 Krug's gives an example of users possibly confusing NAV and "Norton AntiVirus", people at Symantec know they are the same, but it can be a leap of faith for others who aren't as computer literate. The lesson I will be taking away from this example is to keep it simple stupid or to at least provide a clear and concise navigation through any website. Keeping it simple also involves no jargon or over excessive use of the english language. If at anytime you can hear your conscious saying "Blah blah blah blah blah…" you know you have gone too far.
Thinking With Type is a site discussing hierarchy with typography.
How well does your design communicate? A website dedicated to helping you discover visual hierarchy.
Good Website Navigation This one is self explanatory. =D
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