Web 210 Chapter 2 Lecture Notes

In addition to reading Ch. 2 of our main textbook, read Ch. 1 of Jakob Nielsen's "Designing Web Usability".

Objective #1: Design Web pages for the computer medium rather than printed pages or other media.

• Look and feel
  • Yahoo has a much different "personality" to it than Google
  • Activity: Explain the "personality" of one of your favorite web sites
• Portable
  • site must work in many browsers on many different platforms and operating systems
  • site should work if served on a different server when site is inevitably migrated
• Low-Bandwidth
  • realize that as more people get broadband, more people may try to access your site from PDA's
  • reuse logos & other graphics to take advantage of the browser's cache
  • content is king, not graphics, and usually content is text
  • Activity: Turn off the graphics in your browser and test whether you can make use of a site
• Clear presentation & easy access
  • realize that user's use a web site differently than a book or even a magazine or newspaper so design with that in mind
  • use the "seven plus or minus two" rule in mind which says that user's can only keep in mind five to nine pieces of information at a time

Objective #2: Design the whole site rather than individual, disconnected pages.

• try to come up with a theme and use metaphors, symbols, etc. if possible
• smooth transitions from page to page; you want consistency through a web site with small doses of variety
• use a grid (i.e. an HTML table) for visual structure
• active white space to decrease eye strain and draw user's attention to certain elements
• Activity: Identify active and passive white space in a few web sites

Objective #3: Design Web pages specifically for your audience.

• Easy interaction; you must think like your audience when planning page and site design
• Locate essential elements on a page properly
• Guide the user's eye where you want to move it on the screen
• Flat hierarchy; content should not be too "deep" within the site
• Less is more (content-wise) on most individual web pages
• Accessibility; do a Bobby check

Objective #4: Design Web pages specifically for the computer screen.

• landscape orientation rather than portrait like paper
• lower resolution than print
• be careful with text and background contrast