Good web design and usability – in a nutshell.

Tuesday 30 August 2011 - Filed under Usability News

This is a must. Creating the right design and level of usability has never been more important. In my career I have witnessed companies improve productivity and profit often as a result of simple design or navigation changes. I have seen companies save money as good design and usability can ultimately save short-term operating costs.

What makes good web based design?

It’s safe to say that to understand good web design it ultimately requires a good understanding of how users use your web interface.

Your client is the most important part of your website and although many larger e-commerce sites have agonised over this understanding for years, many others have undervalued it completely. Answering these questions will allow you to create user focussed design. It’s not an easy generalisation to make but following specific steps can make it possible.

The first stage in understanding this process is to identify what characterises your user? What characteristics are embedded? What are they pre-programmed to do? True understanding of this comes in the form of Usability Testing. This doesn’t have to be a complicated process and can allow you to access to real world testing with real users who can can give you valuable insight.

Apart from getting to know your client you must get the grips with the actual business function of the website. It must meet its design objectives. Ask yourself the questions, what are the objectives of the systems? How would the user expect these business functions to be carried out? Start by establishing the basic business functions and the tasks required of the user to get there. Use a mental model to pattern the users activities, analyse them and use a conceptual model to plan your business functionality.

The next step is an understanding of what makes a good interface. The most important feature is probably the screen design itself and going back to the subject of what your users expect, look at what will suit their needs and also what suits their capabilities, after all its no good having a website aimed at small children that requires a reasonable knowledge of website logic to operate.
Also look at both the limitations and capabilities of the software or hardware your using are and also what the implications of this are for your client or user. This sounds like simple stuff, and for the most part it is. Often though it gets overlooked in the design process and already after asking these few questions you should already have a number of general design guidelines.

Now lets look more in-depth. The next step looks at the system menus and navigation of the site itself. Most systems which display graphics and most websites for that matter rely heavily on menus for navigation. They are a way to issue commands that relate to a specific object, window or document. When your looking at your design interface in the previous step, look at what would be the best menu design for you. Relate this to what is best for your client or user. Think how you could relate this to navigation aids, links on your site and the search facilities that will allow for the best usability.
Once you have decided on your system menus look at the devices for interaction themselves. Of course pretty much any website relies heavily on a screen and keyboard, but think about other technologies and capabilities. Will your website allow for interaction with say a touch pad? Will it be able to interact with other tablet devices? Think about what your users require and what your budget will allow for. Get this area right as getting the control mechanism problem solved will lead better productivity with quicker, more accurate performance.

Create Graphics that mean something. When deciding on icons and images think about what influences their usability. They must be easy to recognise and ideally be representative of your company or organisation. This can extend to other multimedia you have to design like video, animations, photography and audition. Link this to the use of appropriate colour distinguishing. Colours can act important tools for distinguishing certain parts of the site, they can emphasis on important features and ultimately make the displays more usable and attractive. Surprisingly colour choice has become a big problem for web designers as he wrong choice can result in Visual fatigue having big consequences for the web sites usability.

2011-08-30  »  Sam