Jakob Nielsen = God

I very much rely on the writing of Jakob Nielsen in my job as a web writer. He has a lot of great tips about how people read text on the web (they scan pages) and how to write so they get needed information (bulleted lists instead of large blocks of text). These articles about design usability are also excellent. We use breadcrumbs on our website at work and I find them very helpful because they show exactly where you are in the architecture of a website and you can jump up to higher levels very easily.

The article about links was good because it brought up things I'd never even thought of when designing for the web -- such as using underlines if your link colors are red or green so color-blind people can see them. Genius!

And, of course, top ten lists are always great. I admit guilt on several of these -- namely, opening pages in new windows (I thought that was good!), not changing the color for visited links and fixed font sizes. I will be mindful of integrating these usability standards into my designs from now on. And a pet peeve: I hate when links open PDFs and there is no warning. At work we have a little PDF logo that automatically appears next to links to PDFs so you know what you're getting yourself into. But I still try to minimize the practice of linking to PDFs because they are not at all user-friendly. Yuck.

Designing a website

It seems from this presentation that we will soon be starting our final project. Yay! I'm truly looking forward to this. I've been piecemealing (is that a word?) my knowledge of web design for so many years now, that to create a site from start to finish in the proper way (comps and all) is very exciting for me.

So this presentation touches upon stuff I've recently talked about here, such as designing for your intended audience. Very important and something I'm always aware of because of my line of work. I also always design a site on paper first so I can visualize what I'm planning to design.

The slide on website structure and establishing a flow chart reminded me of a presentation I recently attended at work about using sticky notes to organize your thoughts and navigation on a website. Really cool if you want to check it out.

Developing a storyboard is not something I have a ton of experience with so I am looking forward to learning how to integrate that process into web design. I also liked learning about page content hierarchy: things like subtitles being in a different color, the average readable font size and consistent placement of images. These are all things I've thought about, but not always included in my designs.

This presentation and everything else I've read/viewed this week have instilled in me some great principles of usability that I will definitely always use in my future designs. I'm really glad to have learned about them. Now I'm excited to apply them to our class projects and any future personal projects I do!

Content is king

I said it before and I'll say it again.

The article on Peachpit, "Why Bad Site Design Succeeds," is the kind of stuff that applies to my work (as in, my full-time job) every day. I work in PR, mostly writing for the web, on environmental issues in the Chesapeake Bay. I've been through a web redesign where I had to rewrite ALL of the content on this site, so I spent a lot of time reviewing web writing articles and tips to make the content effective for our web users.

In particular, this part about MySpace resonated with me: "MySpace offers content, which we all know is the most important factor on the Web. Without quality content, no site can get very far. And MySpace’s content is extremely relevant and valuable to its users because it’s all created by its users and by friends of its users. If every piece of content you see on a web site is relevant to you, you’re going to keep going back."

Content is king. You can have a great design, but if people can't find what they are looking for they are not going to come back to your website. That, to me, is the #1 principle of web design. Of course, this is a design class, so related to content is usability, which we touched on with the "Web Sites that Suck" videos. Not only must you have the content people want, but web users must be able to find that content on your site.

I really appreciated the part of "Usability: The Key to Good Website Design" on audiences, because it's so essential to what I do. Before I start anything (and this mostly pertains to writing because that is what I do), I have to know my audience. I usually think of the person that might end up reading what I am writing, and write to that person. I think that train of thought is applicable to design as well: when you're designing, think of the person who might be visiting your site -- inexperienced, elderly, etc. -- and how they would use your design to get the information they need.

Rollovers

Check out my rollovers. Not very groundbreaking. I was glad to learn how to do this in Dreamweaver because it's incredibly simple but adds a nice touch to sites that are kind of plain. I will definitely add this feature when I redo my online portfolio layout (sometime soon, hopefully!).

Have a happy period

I thought I would use one of the absolute worst marketing slogans that deals with that special time of the month to introduce one of the worst examples of navigation for a website on the same topic.



I actually gasped out loud when Vincent Flanders pointed out the sideways navigation on the Tampax website -- though I am glad he did, because if I had gone to that site on my own I would never, ever have seen it.

I think all of his videos -- from the hilarious Crumpler Bags to the PDF links on Dorset Police -- were really good examples of the need to balance an interesting or innovative website design with the fundamentals of navigation and usability -- because, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter what your design looks like if people cannot find the information they need. Particularly with the Dorset Police site, which I would imagine services people who are coming for an important purpose: finding information that pertains to their security at home, at school, etc. As they say, content is king.

Also interesting were sites like the Diners Club, whose "mystery meat navigation" of pictures of doors that led to pages on airport lounges and customer service made no sense.



While design is subjective, you've still got to keep your audience in mind when designing. Many of the top 10 worst websites of 2007 were further examples of this. I found the Zune website to be really bad because it's for a mainstream product, one that is trying hard to compete with the iPod, a model of usability and simplicity.