Posts and Articles that discuss how to plan your website, and what you should know before you start a website or redesign.
You’re thinking about redesigning your website (or maybe need a new one from scratch). You have a high level idea of what you want, but the specifics escape you. We might use websites constantly, but planning a website isn’t easy. There are hundreds of decisions to make and the critical decisions aren’t always obvious. Building […]
One of the biggest challenges in interface design is deciding what this visual layer needs to communicate and how it should make users feel. Commonly referred to as “look and feel,” this terminology glosses over an important caveat–something can be aesthetically pleasing while communicating the wrong message (i.e. a website for kids could look beautiful […]
The term “usability” receives a lot of attention in the web design space and with good reason. Usability implies users can effortlessly accomplish the goals that brought them to the website in the first place, and is the primary metric in determining whether a site is successful. Implementing usability in terms of simply meeting user […]
Congratulations on starting a website redesign process. If your business or organization is like most, your website is a critical marketing asset. If it’s been awhile since your last redesign I can imagine that expectations for this site are high, which can make your job managing the process stressful. After over a decade of managing […]
Have you ever tried a new product expecting it to be difficult but found it simple? Or how about the opposite? — using something that should be easy but isn’t. In the latter case, the product wasn’t designed with an understanding of how you think. Design intuitiveness is determined by the difference between how you […]
Being a designer means channeling your soul into bringing something new into the world… only to have a group of strangers tear it — and your self worth — apart. Critiques are an unwavering part of any designer’s life and are easily the worst part of the job. Formally educated designers leave the womb of […]
There is no greater factor in website success than the planning phase. You might be tempted to start planning with consideration to time, budget, and functionality, but doing so is putting the cart in front of the horse. Before you can figure out what you need to spend, how long it will take and what […]
When I was approached by a large publisher to author a book on design I was humbled by the notion. I spent a great deal of time researching things I already knew but didn’t limit myself to only web-design topics. I explored all different design niches, from industrial to fashion. During this time I came […]
Anytime you design there exists a choice to do so intentionally or intuitively. The intuitive approach uses one’s instincts to feel out the needs of the design. They piece together the layout, information architecture, and visual style based on what feels right. It tends to be a trial-and-error process. Intentional design, on the other hand, […]
Two years ago I authored a simple project visualization plugin dubbed “Project Status.” The inspiration for Project Status, was a simple question I heard frequently. Over the past ten years of client services, I’ve received numerous e-mails and phone calls with the simple and reasonable question… “Where are we at?” It turns out, even with […]