"Less is more"... "Content is King"... Use well structured, well thought out navigation...
These points were stated over and over again in all the readings and I have to agree. Crummy websites can be frustrating and actually work to repel the intended audience. A web site should work to your advantage and attract people to become more familiar with your brand, your product, your information, and your connection to him/her. The information, the design, and the intent of the site should be clear and purposeful.
One thing that I to keep reminding myself while reading the provided articles is that a website that is simple doesn't have to be designed poorly. A site (or any type of design project for that matter) does not have to be complex in order to be great. One profound, well-placed, picture can be more effective than any number of poorly placed, busy ones. I have a friend who is very good at this. He communicates clearly, and effectively with very simple designs. He doesn't overflow the viewing area with gradients, drop-shadows, and filters, but instead he purposefully makes the images, text design, color scheme, and content all work together in unison.
Last year I had the opportunity to redesign our school's website. It was based in a HORRIBLE content management system where usability, function, and simplicity were tossed out the window to maintain a state of control over the users. Anyway, I had the arduous task of redesigning a website and simplifying everything. Basically, I was given a crash course in effective, purposeful web-design. A simple, intuitive navigation scheme is of the utmost importance. Users will become frustrated or the worst case is that they won't find the information at all with poorly thought out navigation menus.
Provide users with the information, service, or query that your site is purposed for quickly and easily. There are lots of very cool looking sites that don't communicate anything because of the cluttered information or just the enormous quantity of it.
My friend, whom I was referring to earlier, hates Adobe Flash. He says there's no place for it in good web design. He feels that Flash clutters everything up, makes a site difficult to edit, and navigate. He has also been burned by the sheer amount of Flash Poo... Stupid ads, endless intro movies, etc. For the most part I would agree with him, but Flash has a great many uses for web design and development. There are a great many uses for Flash and the number of computers that have flash player already installed is mind numbing. Flash is probably not the best tool for web sites but is an excellent tool for web applications, and *what i call* web experiences. A web site is for content, a web experience is for... well.. an experience. This is not always the case (be careful when you see always, never, etc.) Look at these two well designed flash web content. The first is a well designed, web site and the second is a very cool web experience. The content is paramount in the first site and the user's experience is first in the second. 1) Grooveshark 2) M. Night Shyamalan Homepage
I'm working on this in all my designs but these are the principles that I've been trying to develop while trying to find new ways to be creative and effective.
don't panic
mt
don't panic
mt
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