When designing websites and other applications are there ways we can guide users to make correct choices, help them interact with our systems, and generally make our systems more usable? A variety of strategies exist to improve our interface designs and today we’ll talk about 2 of them.
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Category: Web Design
How To Minimize Errors And Create More Usable Websites: Part I
Errors happen. It’s inevitable that any system will fail at times. Often failures are attributed to human error. Most, though are really due to design errors. As designers what can we do to minimize errors and their effects on our sites and in our applications?
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Thoughts About Redundancy In Web Design
Redundancy is the use of more elements than necessary to maintain system performance in the event that one or more elements fails. It’s probably not a word you think about much when creating a new design, but it’s an important principle of design and one you use all the time, even if you aren’t thinking about it.
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How To Use Size, Scale, And Proportion In Web Design
Loud and soft, dark and light, big and small. Each is a relative measurement of some quality on some scale. Day doesn’t exist without night and up doesn’t exist without down. Each exists in contrast to the other and contrast occurs on a scale.
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Is Design A Commodity?
Last week I was reading an article in How Magazine, titled “An Irreversible Movement,” by David C. Baker. The article was actually two essays, one by Baker and one by Debbie Millman, with each author taking a different side on crowdsourcing and it’s impact on design and designer’s. Baker had a quote within his essay about design being a commodity
Design is or (soon will be) approaching commodity status, but the management of the design process is difficult, misunderstood, and undervalued.