Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Week 5 Log 2: Designing a better billboard

When looking at how we can make a site more usable, we can think of it for several different areas; Standardizing, grouping, feedback, and minimal-ization (My own made up word). When making something standard, we think of other sites that work and make sense for the user. Conventions that we see over a wide range of successful web sites. In grouping, we talk about breaking up a page into areas that have a similar subject matter. Users can then think less about where everything is, and more about what the material that they are looking at is saying. Furthermore, using feedback is making the site interactive, or making it easy for the user to navigate through the site. Finally, minimizing the noise, is to make the site minimal and clean. Getting rid of superfluous information. Using color, sound, and movment can be good ways to help the user navigate through a site. This can give the user feedback as to the flow of information.
I will show a good example of what is meant by this:

Wired.com is a good example of a well thought out design. The hierarchy is clear and the design is minimal. What is clickable is animated and changes when the mouse is moved over it. Also, the noise level is almost at zero, only what needs to be shown is shown.

No comments:

Post a Comment