Archive for the ‘Design’ Category
Aug
14
2011
at 12:54pm
In my last post I offered a critique of the (not-so) new University of Waterloo home page. The next question is, how do these things happen?
Before I get started, I’d like to be clear that the points offered up in this post are gross generalizations, and certainly wouldn’t apply to all universities. These are just some of the issues I experienced at Waterloo—there are others that I won’t go into. I’m sure people who work at UW or other universities can think of additional factors to add. These points are also referencing the home page, although most of the factors listed apply to the rest of the web space as well.
Those of you who are familiar with web design in higher ed have surely seen the infamous venn diagram cartoon from xkcd:
When this was originally posted I remember seeing some talk about “web managers” not understanding usability. At least in my experience (as a former university web manager), that’s not the case at all. There are several problems at the root of this: Read more…
Posted in Design, Usability, Web Culture | 2 Comments »
Jul
27
2011
at 11:07pm
I’ve recently come across blog posts from earlier this year about redesigning on spec, and redesign and problem solving. This is timely, because I’ve been working on this post about the uWaterloo web redesign for some time now. I think this is a case where there was a lot of “design” done for the sake of impact without actually solving problems. Now that I don’t work there anymore, I’m free to make some honest comments it. How refreshing!
Until recently I was the “web manager” for the central Communications department. I was on maternity leave for most of the redesign process, but I did make some plans for it before I left (that weren’t used, to my knowledge), and worked intimately with the delivered designs after I got back. There are some things I really like about it, and some things I really don’t. I’m going to focus on the home page here, since I think that’s what where a lot of problems are. The other areas are okay, particularly some of the content and information architecture.
I’m going to refer to Jared Spool’s wisdom throughout this article. I attended his workshop on “Designing for Content-Rich Sites” at DrupalCon in March, I think his work is very relevant here. Read more…
Posted in Design, Usability | 12 Comments »
Mar
27
2011
at 11:39am
You’ve seen those posts, right? Someone forwards you an email with a title like “You know you’re a child of the 80′s when…”. Well, here’s one for those of us who have been doing web design for more than a decade. You know you did web design in the 90′s when:
- You poured over pages of free clipart, looking for tiled backgrounds and horizontal rules
- You actually learned how to make an animated gif (and not just for ads!)
- You were thrilled to have a tool for making complex page layouts. And that tool was a table.
- You remember having to use spacer.gif’s to get your table widths right
- You checked Webmonkey for new articles every week
- <font> was your friend
- You have coded html in UPPER CASE (<BODY>, anyone?)
- You remember having only a vague understanding of who the W3C was
- Netscape 4 and IE 3 were your browsers of choice
- Your website directory consisted of a bunch of .html pages and an images folder
- You used Server Side Includes with a .shtml extension
- You displayed shiny “awards” graphics on your site
- You learned how to make 3D bevels and metallic effects in Photoshop
- You installed “CGI” scripts written in Perl
- You had to find out if your server supported PHP
- Your site had a visible counter displaying how many “hits” you got
- You put up “under construction” notices, and asked people to “come back soon!!!”
- Headers? Who ever uses those anyway?
- 10MB on a shared server was plenty of hosting space
- You actually had a chance of getting your first choice of domain name, even with a .com extension!
- Your site had a Guestbook
- You had free web space on Geocities, Xoom, or Tripod (bonus points if you used all three!)
- You had tons of webrings on the bottom of your home page
- You had to do rollovers with JavaScript
- You had to code the same thing twice for IE and Netscape (remember <body leftmargin=”0″ topmargin=”0″ marginwidth=”0″ marginheight=”0″>?)
- You submitted your site to the Yahoo web directory … and actually got in (for free)
Can you think of more?
Posted in Design, Web Culture | 5 Comments »
Feb
15
2010
at 3:58pm
With the Winter Olympics underway I’ve been spending a lot of time on Vancouver 2010 website as well as those from some major Canadian media sources. Some have really impressed me with clean, grid-based design, strong features, and good usability. Others, not so much. Let’s take a look.
I will be looking at four major Canadian Olympics sites:
For each site, I will look at the home page, the event schedule, and a sample sport page (Nordic Combined, since I always forget what that is), as well as a few other standout features or things I come across. Read more…
Posted in Design, Great Websites | 4 Comments »
Jan
06
2010
at 9:00am
This website seems to proclaim that in web design, there is no “fold”. Okay, I do get the point. People do scroll and you don’t need to fuss about exactly how much a visitor sees at first glance, or try to cram all your links into that space. However, I do think there are some things you need to consider about what people first see when a page loads. At first glance a user needs to answer a few key questions. As Steve Krug advises in Don’t Make me Think:
- What is this?
- What do they have here?
- What can I do here?
- Why should I be here – and not somewhere else?
The user needs to have some clue as to whether this page or website will give them what they want (have the information they need, the products they want to buy etc.). In that sense, what appears in the fold – whatever size that is for them – is crucially important.
You also need to make sure that it’s evident that there is more content further down to scroll to. I recently visited this page on the Exercise TV site (screenshot). On my screen the fold ends around Jillian’s mid-thigh. With the blue background, the text ending where it does, and the visual focus on the photo, it wasn’t apparent to me that there is more content further down. I actually didn’t realize it until I clicked on the link to browse videos and realized that it pointed further down on the same page. With widescreen monitors the scrollbar may be out of direct view, so conscious design is needed to tell the viewer that they should scroll to see more.
Via For a Beautiful Web, where Stephen Frein has a useful comment.
Posted in Design, Usability | 2 Comments »
Dec
30
2009
at 8:22pm
The Huffington Post has an article on the “Most Innovative Web Site Designs Of All Time” which is kind of a joke. Hello, mystery meat!
There is a reason why most websites have similar basic elements. It’s called usability. When users are trying to accomplish a task (find information, buy something etc.) they don’t need to figure out an entirely new navigation structure and page layout. They need sites to behave in relatively similar ways so they know what to expect and how to accomplish their tasks.
The Web can be a repetitive and boring place. Many Web sites look the same or are created based on the same basic principles.
That’s actually a good thing 
There is a time and a place for trying something new, and that’s valid, it’s just not something that’s appropriate for most websites.
So, the question is, what are the most innovative web designs of all time? I’ll have to give that some thought.
Posted in Design, Usability | No Comments »
