Design for the user
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by: Ranold Anton
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Word Count: 570
Keep your design efforts centered solely around your user. Knowing your
audience answers almost all design questions-if it sever the audience,
keep it; if it is potentially distraction or annoying, eliminate it.
Find out what users expect form your site. If you can, survey them with
an online form. Create a profile your average user by compiling
responses to basic questions. What do users want when they get to your
site? Are they trying to find customer support and troubleshooting
help, or do they want buy something? DO they want to read articles or
search for information? Once you know what your users want form your
site, you can evaluate how the San Francisco Web design reflects the audience profile.
Compare the main pages form the following sites and consider their
target audiences. E online is an entertainment news site. The four
–column main page contains competing content that draws the user’s eye’
such as animations, a Java text scroll, bright colors, and familiar
shapes. The overall effect decidedly similar to television – familiar
territory for E online‘s’ audience.
Pen & Ink’s Web site projects a strong smell of printer’s ink.
Other than the black and white photo, the main page components are
textual. The prominent logo features a text element-the ampersand.
Strong contrasting colors highlight the links. The layout evokes quill
pens and lead type, which is exactly what the literary-minded user
would link in an online journal.
California Web design suits
the audience’s visual expectations, which is the look of the site. But
you also should consider the ways in which users interact with the
content, which is the feel of the site.
DESIGN FOR INTERACTION
Think about how the user wants to interact with the information on your
Web page. Design for your content type, and decide if the user will
read or scan your pages.
suppose your page is a collection of links, such as a main page or
section page. Users want to interact with these type of pages by
scanning the content, scrolling if necessary, pointing to graphics to
see if they are hyper linked, and clicking linked text. Design for this
type of user interactions by using meaningful column headings, linked
text, and short descriptions. Organize links into related topic groups
and separate groupings with white space, graphics. Or background color.
Suppose the page is an article that contains large blocks of text. Your
user is accustomed to interacting with pages of text by scrolling and
possibly clicking hyper linked words of interest. The links may be in
the body of the article or contained in a sidebar. Design your pages
for this type of content by keeping paragraphs short for online
consumption. Make reading easier by using a text column that is
narrower than the width of the screen. keep your text legible by
providing enough contrast between foreground and background colors.
Provide links that allow the user to jump quickly to related content.
Two screen form the web monkey site illustrate the read/scan concept.
Shows a page designed for scanning. Users will look through a variety
of links to find a topic of interest. Once they choose a link, they
jump to a page designed for reading, as illustrated in Note in both
pages the user location identifier. This simple path statement lets the
user quickly see their place in the hierarchy of information.
website:-http://www.flyingcowdesign.com/
About the Author
The author is an experienced Web designer specialized in building Search engine friendly websites. He is with Flying cow , a web design las vegas, california web design and san francisco web design silicon City based company.
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