One of the more informative articles I’ve read thus far was one that centered around what is known as Information Architecture and the role it plays in site redesigns. I’ve taken a class on information architecture a few years ago and this was a nice refresher course on just how critical it is to think about the long-term sustainability for a site your planning on rebuilding. Building a website without first gathering data (personas, site maps, wire frames, etc.) and creating the blueprint of what is regarded as a solid framework of the site cannot be stressed enough.
In Marissa Mayer’s article, “More Evidence that Speed is Key to User Experience,” I believe she was right on the dime when she stated, based upon her research, that slow loading time on a website will have adverse affects on the amount of traffic it will generate. I am one of many Internet users out there who absolutely feel discouraged from visiting any website that takes a long time to load. If I was visiting one of those fancy editorial websites just to read their review on a movie and it took more than several minutes to load the page, I’m more inclined to not stick around and decide to look elsewhere. I find it to be very annoying to have to wait so long in order to gain access to any type of content, especially when I want it immediately. You have to make the user stick around as they are not obligated to your site — their interest in viewing your site will trifle away. When designing a successful website, the designer should pay attention to accessibility and usability. The speed it takes for a website to load is very much apart of the two and designers should take this into consideration. Not everyone has a fast internet connection and having many graphics on a website will decrease the speed it takes to load a page. If the website is design heavy, the key to having good load times is to use the right amount of images and content on a page. I think progress indicators can help relieve the frustration of having to wait for a website to load because it lets you know that progress is being made.
The article that I found most helpful was “Principles of Effective Web Design.” The author here provides ten guidelines to follow when designing a website that would be considered practical for the user. I especially liked how he covers user habits along with how the user shouldn’t have to stop and think how something on the site works. Everything should be self explanatory and shouldn’t in anyway confuse the user. This was stated in many other articles that I had read about effective web design and while it isn’t really new to me — I find that it serves as reminder to me and to those who need recalling. I pretty much got the drift on how the users want instant gratification, how they don’t read but scan through pages in a “F” shaped pattern, managing the user’s attention with minimal to moderate visual elements and having a good sense of where certain objects are placed. etc. It’s practically stuck in my head now. I absolutely love how the author states that “users appreciate quality and credibility”. Its a proven fact that sites like YouTube can get away with having an ugly design and obtain huge traffic due to the great content the site brings to users. I love how the author offers bullets that further helps the reader grasp the concepts he tries to conduct. A few more interesting tidbits in this article include the author encouraging effective writing with examples of using words like “sign up” rather than “start now” as promotional style of writing won’t be read. I thought that was quite intriguing.
Another article that caught my attention was from Derek Powazek’s “Calling All Designers: Learn to Write!” He definitely offered some good advice to designers about the importance of knowing how to write. The author made some very good points about how writing along with the design are both in relation to one another. Just because your a web designer doesn’t mean you shouldn’t deal with the writing aspect and focus entirely on the “pixel” work. Writing plays an important part in conveying communication between the user and the website just like design. You would think that having a good design increases your credibility as a business is enough. It shows that your site means business and it is logical to think this way but it is not sufficient. Having great copy and offering great service is what sells you website. We as designers rely on “Lorem Upsum” far to often during the design process but we really should think about what interesting words should appear on a site and why it’ll will help keep the user’s interest alive to revisit the website in the future. While it isn’t necessary our job as designers to think about the writing, we are responsible for the user experience design and we need to make sure all things flow well along with the design. As the article above stated, the content of the site is more significant than the design (which acts only as the support that bridges the content and the design). I suggest any designers out there to read that article as they would greatly benefit from it.
