House of Gar Enterprises

Know Your End User

Goal-oriented design  “is concerned most significantly with satisfying the needs and desires of the people who will interact with a product or service.

Alan Cooper argues in The Inmates Are Running The Asylum that we need to take a new approach to how interactive software based problems are solved.The problems faced with designing computer based interfaces are fundamentally different to the challenges we face when designing interfaces for products that do not include software (e.g. hammers). Alan introduces the concept of cognitive friction, whereby we treat things as human when they are significantly complex enough, we cannot always understand how they behave, and computer interfaces are sufficiently complex as to be treated this way

Goal-oriented design as explained in The Inmates Are Running The Asylum advocates for the use of personas, which are created after interviewing a significant number of users.

The aim of a persona is to “Develop a precise description of our user and what he wishes to accomplish.” The best method as described within The Inmates Are Running The Asylum is to construct fabricated users with names and back stories who represent real users of a given product. These users are not as much a fabrication as a byproduct of the investigation process. The reason for constructing back stories for a persona is to make them believable, such that they can be treated as real people and their needs can be argued for.

Personas also help eliminate idiosyncrasies that may be attributed to a given individual

Progressive Enhancement consists of the following core principles:

• basic content should be accessible to all web browsers
• basic functionality should be accessible to all web browsers
• sparse, semantic markup contains all content
• enhanced layout is provided by externally linked CSS
• enhanced behavior is provided by unobtrusive, externally linked JavaScript
• end-user web browser preferences are respected

Use of White Space

Whitespace is more than the CSS property, it is a function of your layout. You should be aware of the whitespace on your pages and how it affects how the content is viewed. Whitespace is just as important in a Web layout as it is in a paper layout. In color theory, a color scheme is the choice of colors used in design for a range of media. For example, the use of a white background with black text is an example of a basic and commonly default color scheme in web design.

Color schemes are used to create style and appeal. Colors that create an aesthetic feeling when used together will commonly accompany each other in color schemes. A basic color scheme will use two colors that look appealing together. More advanced color schemes involve several colors in combination, usually based around a single color; for example, text with such colors as red, yellow, orange and light blue arranged together on a black background in a magazine article.

Color schemes can also contain different shades of a single color; for example, a color scheme that mixes different shades of green, ranging from very light (almost white) to very dark.

Stick to a Simple Design Layout

The reason that the 3-column layout is so popular on Web sites and newspapers is because it works. You might think it’s boring, but you’ll keep more readers if you stick with something simple that they can understand. Find the Points of Interest on Your Page

Points of interest are the focal points of a design – the places where your eye is drawn to. By changing the spacing around those points of interest you can affect how those items are viewed on the page. Use the whole space, but don’t be specific in your use. In other words, use relatively sized layout sections on your Web pages, so that they expand and contract to fit the browser window.

Keep Navigation and Search Features Easy to Find and Cinsistent

Idealy the search bar is located at the top of the page, either in the header area or the top of the right or left navigation columns. Based on the F layout principle it is recommended that the search bar be placed in the upper left corner area, the first place web surfers look. The “F” principle relies upon various eyetracking studies for it%u2019s foundation. These scientific studies show that web surfers read the screen in an %u201CF%u201D pattern %u2013 seeing the top, upper left corner and left sides of the screen most%u2026 only occasionally taking glances towards the right side of the screen.

These eyetracking studies argue in favor of placing the most important elements of your site (branding, navigation, call to action) on the left side of the design.

Browser technology moves at a rapid pace as does coding and language methodology, new versions of website browsers may cause your site to be fully functional and readable one day and then not the next. Test your sites regulary using he popular browsers; internet explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google chrome, Safari.

Additionally, outbound links to third party sites are not always reliable, check your links to be sure the third party link is not broken and that the sites the links directs to still exists.

Your ultimate goal of web design is to provide the used or visitor with a positive, interesting and captivating experience. By keeping your design simple, easy to understand and current you will avoid annoying your visitors and potentially losing traffic, customers or leads.