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