Design is most effective when executed with knowledge of psychology. Knowing how people react to visual stimuli allows the crafting of an effective design, with out psychology you are guessing. Psychology itself is a vastly fluctuating and massive subject, but that doesn’t mean you need a PhD to use it in your design. There are […]
Logic and statistics drive many usability discussions. How many users accomplished a task? How long did it take on average? What labels caused delays? Likewise, emotion is often discussed in context of interactivity and aesthetics. Emotion and usability sound like separate topics but they closely intertwined, so much so they are impossible to separate. I […]
One of the beautiful things about working at the forefront of technology is seeing the world being shaped by your profession. Sometimes these changes are big and obvious; Continually evolving mobile internet behavior for example. You can literally watch the mobile phone evolve from a communication tool to a swiss army knife. Other changes are […]
Most discussions of speed and websites focus on response time, download footprint and rendering performance. While all aforementioned elements are important, there is another aspect of site performance to be aware of— the speed of the human mind. It’s safe to say the human brain processes information faster than any computer, browser and of the internet, so it […]
Earlier last week, I was pleasantly surprised when Jacob Nielsen posted a report on mobile web design which closely mirrored my own philosophy. The key takeaway of the article is that mobile specific sites are more effective than full content sites with mobile friendly presentation. After reading the article, I hoped the findings would put […]
Over the past fifteen plus years of designing websites for other people, I have received countless requests to remove elements from a design because they are “redundant.” The perception is that if something is included on the page once, especially in an obvious fashion, there’s no reason to repeat it elsewhere. Further baffling, it’s my […]
Few websites are designed with bad intentions. If the designer or stakeholders care about the project you can be sure every element on the page has been analyzed, reviewed and tweaked. This sounds obvious, but it should be disconcerting. Let me explain further. If most websites have had thought and care put into them, why are […]
I see more web professionals specializing these days. There was a time where web designers literally did everything. If you worked on the web it meant you did coding, design, photography and any backend work. Now many become so specialized they hyper focus, often on a specific platform. There are fewer Javascript experts and more […]
With design, there is no universal “best approach” that will apply to all situations. Those using the site, how they got there, their goals and the objectives of the site owners will all influence the most effective design approach. The best advice I can give is to empathize with the users, understand that they know […]
I have been a web accessibility advocate since as early as 2005. Since then I have done presentations on its importance, written articles about it, co-hosted a podcast on the subject and even included it in my upcoming book. Recently discussion has arisen around how the practice of accessibility should be better encouraged. One of the concerns, is […]