"Websites are for people, people like you and me. Some we might use every day and others we take occasional brief rambles through.
Using a website, we get to know the organisation and feel their character. We decide if we want to have a relationship with them and whether we will come back.
So, think of your website as an extension of yourself. It is a reflection of you in the role you have and the context of your world.....You and your website are not separate things."
Visitors purpose:
- To purchase (air tickets, books, toys, CD's)
- To look at (leisure, reflection, visual entertainment)
- To live in (regular daily business, transactional)
- To communicate (group space)
- To visit occasionally (examining bank balances, stock prices)
- To explore (information, education)
Organisation Purpose:
- Selling (e-commerce)
- Obtain involvement
- Reduce daily overhead costs
- Relationship, marketing, communication
- Provide most cost-effective financial services
- Sell information
The needs of the user and visitor are connected, however each has a different point of view. Both of these viewpoints must be satisfied and honoured to create a mutually satisfying relationship between the two. The need of both the visitor and the organisation must be met.
Designing for use produces products that are comfortable, powerful, useful, creative, constructive, intuitive, relevant, sensitive, used immediately and learned without tears.
The most easy-to-use products are the ones you don't notice.
User-Action-World-Understand-user-action-world-understand
Awareness, Understanding, Action (AUA) model is so important to use centred interaction design. Everything you do in your relation to the world is an ever-evolving attainment of purpose, based on awareness, understanding and action.
Design is the process of creating an artefact with structure or form which is planned, artistic, coherent, purposeful and useful.
"Usability is being able to do the things you want to, not the things you have to" - when someone is struggling to use a product, doing things they have to in order to do things they want to, this is bad design. Don Norman gave examples in his book: Psychology of Everyday Things of users having to read a sign telling them how to open a door, instead of just knowing how to open it.
Usability is the search for ways of creating excellent communication between two objects: websites and human users. The aim is to provide efficient, effective and satisfying outcomes for everyone involved (eg. customers, businesses, designers, marketing etc). Usability identifies and understands both the users' psychological, physical, social and activity requirements and the organisations objectives, and designs a usable system for both parties.
Schneidermann's five attributes of usability, according to his book Designing the User Interface:
1) Learnability - easy to learn, so the user can quickly get work done
2) Efficiency - users should be able to use it productively, once learnt
3) Memorability - easy to remember, so a unfrequent user should be able to use it again without having to relearn it
4) Errors - a low error rate, so the user feels they're making positive progress and are in control. If they make errors they should be able to recover quickly. Catastrophic errors shouldn't occur.
5) Satisfaction - pleasant to use, users should be subjectively satisfied when using it
Other key attributes have since been added:
6) Control - users feel in control rather than the system controlling them
7) Skills - users skills and expertise are supported, supplemented, and enhanced
8) Privacy - information is protected belonging to the user or their clients
Benefits of user-centred design:
- Increased usefulness - the more evidently useful a product is, the more the user will desire to use it
- Increased efficiency - helps users work in the way they prefer so they can be effective and efficient
- Improved productivity - because the user is more effective and efficient, they concentrate on their job not the user interface
- Fewer errors - a lot of human error can be the result of badly designed user interface. Understanding the way the user is aware of what they see, how they understand it and how they will act can significantly reduce human error
- Reduced training time - consistency, support and reinforcement in a user-sensitive manner can reduce learning time
- Improved acceptance - a quickly accepted interface leads to a system the user will trust and enjoy using.
Source:
CATO. J., (2001) User-Centred Web Design. Addison-Wesley: Great Britain.
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"Successful web design means taking a different tack, considering the user experience first and embellishments second to create a dynamic, provocative, active destination."
"Web design is about creating an active experience for your visitors, so it is paramount to not only research what your audience wants but to really pinpoint the specifics."
"Content is the most valuable resource any site has. The more, the better, just make sure it's good and always keep it updated. Content is the hook, and keeping it updated will keep users coming back.
A site can have the greatest, most innovative content ever, but without an intuitive site-navigation system, it will all be lost on users. Users simply won't spend time hunting for information - they know there's always something somewhere else. The key is to keep the access to your content as intuitive and linear as possible. Link and cross link information, so there's more than one way to find it."
"The site should be a point of interaction - where users become active participants. This could include feedback forms, interactive games, or registering visitors and using their preferences to deliver a personalised experience."
Source:
BAGGERMAN. L., (2001) Web Design that Works: Secrets for Successful Web Design. Rockport Publishers, Inc.: United States of America
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"A beautiful website engages more visitors, and an unattractive website gives off the impression of unprofessionalism, making users turn away as a result." pg 9
"Distinctive design showcases and attempts to reflect the need for a balance between beauty, usability, and awareness within the pages' unique layout." pg 9
"Making things overly complex irritates users, and unless you genuinely need a function or a visual representation in the interface, don't add it." pg 18-19
"...the goal is to achieve maximum impact on users." (about designing for web) pg 4
"Check out this list of finite resources:
Time - There's only 24 hours in a day, and users rarely spend all of those browsing a single site. How much of this precious resource a visitor uses on your site depends on the value of the content.
Space - The freedom to browse a sit without inhibition is important to the overall user experience. If users feel restricted or forced into jumping through unnecessary hoops they may exit!
Relativity - The relationship between content and sites is important to the web. If a site's content connects to a concept or subject introduced by another site, it main gain added attention.
Money - Services with defined costs have to work even harder than free or ad-supported sites for attention. Since the content is provided behind a "paywall", money is needed to gain visibility.
Patience - The average visitor feels a great variety of emotions when browsing a site (some of which you can manipulate). If barriers to entry are high, the willingness to continue may be lost.
Attention - Objects on a page are always vying for a user's focus, and in polar opposition, users are themselves trying to get the attention they require from objects. This must be accounted for.
Loyalty - By providing good experiences and reducing the levels of background noise, users are more likely to return to our sites.
Trust - Use of a site is based on the value of it's content and how reliable users deem its source. If your content is full of lies or inaccuracies, the content's value is lowered.
Energy - Users are expected to undertake so many activities within a page. Clicking, typing, and perhaps even more! Tiredness can work as an inhibitor when browsing the web. Don't make the users exert themselves." pg 6-7
"Distinctive design influences the time it takes to locate important details within a page. It also sets the tone for how tedious or enjoyable finding that information is (and by association causes relativity to take effect). Understanding the connection between the actual amount of time visitors devote to your site and the perception of time they devote to your site provides you a rare opportunity to stand out, which, in turn, gives visitors the desire to return." pg 8
"When you remove emphasis from a page, what remains will increase in strength....In many ways it's like a talent contest. When fewer people enter, it's much easier to identify the most talented individuals, but as the numbers increase designers rely more on comparisons and elimination (perhaps unjustly) to give ourselves the best chance of finding the stars amongst the masses." pg 14
"...distractions on a page can reduce the visibility of key information..." pg 15
"Consistency is an important aspect of a web interface. With regard to your visitors and audience, learning new things can be a particularly scary idea if they are forced to use trial and error to find what they are looking for. One of the main reasons why most websites don't have a totally different look for every page is that visitors need to effectively navigate around a page without getting lost (imagine the learning curve if every page is visually different)." pg 20
"Visitors often scan a page to proactively seek what they are interested in....They are more likely to use a mixture of guesswork and quick responsive selections to find the closest match to their needs. If they don't find what they're looking for, they'll return to the original starting page to try again. They are even more inclined to guesswork in an attempt to speed up the results." pg 20
"If they feel something is too hard or inconsistent (and you have competition), they leave to find an easier source of information!" pg 20
"Part of the justification for emphasis within a website is to lead your visitors by the hand and guide them to the content that matters most to them. Titles within page sections aim to give visitors an idea of where certain data is located; images and navigation menus help visitors get to a resource they require; and even conventions like the underlined link....help visitors establish whether they need to click or continue reading!" pg 21
"No visitor wants to endure the frustration of trying to adapt their skill set to match you site's requirements. Allowing a visitor to drift among the elements of your site undisturbed requires the capability to navigate around a site "brainlessly" (without thinking twice). A user's satisfaction increases if they have few obstacles to work through, and the barrier to entry is as unobtrusive (or intrusive) as possible, so it's worth the effort." pg 22
Source:
DAWSON. A., (2011) Distinctive Design: A Practical Guide to a Useful, Beautiful Web. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd: United Kingdom
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"Designing for the small screen first means every browser is left with an accessible design, regardless of the size of it's screen." pg 129
Source:
MARCOTTE. E., (2014) Responsive Web Design. 2nd Edition. Jeffrey Zeldman, A Book Apart: New York, United States of America
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