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design
2006 August 19 • design, usabilityBranding and the Online User Experience
video: Jared Spool on online branding and his research on the intersection between usability, designing for branding, and advertising.
[credit: Web Design Blog]
What users hate most about Web sites
article InfoWorld article about the web annoyance users hate most. Based on an interview with Theresa Cunnington a usability consultant from iFocus.
[credit: Monkey Bites]
What users hate most about websites
article: Anyone who develops websites is also a web user, no doubt, so it's surprising how many sites contain things that annoy their users. Perhaps it's just too easy to forget in the midst of development.
[credit: ETC.]
Breadcrumb Navigation Study
research: Breadcrumbs are used if a breadcrumb label happens to match what the users is looking for. This suggests that breadcrumbs were not used for orientation or back-tracking, but rather a means of moving forward.
[credit: GUUUI]
Affordance
article: Affordance is one of the more important elements of design; one closely tied to usability. Without proper affordances the rest of the design doesn’t matter - it will simply fail, partially or entirely. An affordance is a property of an object or environment that indicates how it can or should be used.
[credit: xBlog]
Ideasonideas
blog: ideasonideas is a blog that invites dialogue on issues relevant to communication designers and brand strategists.
2006 June 17 • design, usabilityEight Usability Problems
article: Ten years ago Jakob Nielsen found all kinds of problems that prevented website visitors from getting the most from websites. Even now, most of those problems still occur on far too many websites. Webmonkey reports:
Areas that still cause major problems include:The article expands on the eight points, explaining each problem and why it’s a problem. Definitely worth reading.
- Links that don’t change color when visited
- Breaking the back button
- Opening new browser windows
- Pop-up windows
- Design elements that look like advertisements
- Violating Web-wide conventions
- Vaporous content and empty hype
- Dense content and unscannable text
[credit: TiKouka]
2006 May 29 • design, usability
Don't customise the look and feel of form fields
article: Browser form fields may not be the prettiest things in the world, but people are used to and comfortable with them. It's not surprising that sites I with custom-designed forms often have significant usability problems. — credit: 456 Berea Street
Improve Readability
article:
How to use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to improve the accessibility of your web pages. Includes a link to a study that compares readable text in different layouts, as well as a link to a study examining the effects of white space in online reading.
[credit: reachcustomersonline]
Design Pattern Library
website: Yahoo! opens their Design Pattern Library. A pattern describes an optimal solution to a common problem within a specific context.
[credit: elearningpost]
Web Design from Scratch
website: A great resource that covers the fundamentals of web design. If you like what you see there, you may also want to check out Digital Web Magazine's area on the Basics of web design.
[credit: Digital Web Magazine]
Home Page Goals
article: The home page is your first impression and, like the saying goes, you only get one chance.
[credit: Column Two]
Designing for the Web
articleb: If you’re a new or traditional designer thinking about exploring the world of Web design, dive into this primer on resolution, browsers, Web-safe color, graphics compression and fonts.
[credit: Digital Web Mag]
Patterns in Web Design
website:
WebPatterns.org is a place to discuss, document and collaborate on patterns for web design and development. Also see Martijn van Welie's Patterns in Ineraction Design.
[credit: Digital Web Magazine]
Sensible Forms: A Form Usability Checklist
article: Usability problems with online forms can be infuriating. Solve the problem with a checklist of form-usability recommendations.
2005 December 16 • designAnatomy of Web Fonts
article: If one aspect of design has suffered most in its transition to the Web, it is the art of typography. For years, Web typography involved little more than choosing a typeface and font size.
[credit: xBlog]
Elements of Typographic Style
website: The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web steps through the working principles of the classic book, explaining how to accomplish each one with techniques available in HTML and CSS.
[credit: SIGNAL VS. NOISE]
Dynamic Resolution Dependent Layout
tutorial: Building a liquid layout that resizes itself dynamically based on your visitors’ browser size.
[credit: design PRINCIPLES]
Compare fonts
tool: Typetester is an online application for comparison of screen fonts. Its primary role is to make a web designer life easier.
[credit: xBlog]
How Men and Women View Web Sites Differently
article: Test subjects rated the personal Web pages of 60 people for usability and aesthetics. Women seemed to like pages with more color in the background and typeface. Women also favored informal rather than posed pictures. Men responded better to dark colors and straight, horizontal lines across a page. They also were more pleased by a three-dimensional look and images of ‘self-propelling'’ rather than stationary objects.
[credit: TiKouka]