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We use the following standards based Web design principles in
all of our projects...large & small:
Used
with permission from
WEB STYLE GUIDE, 2nd edition (Copyright 2002 Lynch and Horton).
Graphic user interfaces were designed to give people
control over their personal computers. Users now expect a level of
design sophistication from all graphic interfaces, including Web pages.
The goal is to provide for the needs of all your potential users,
adapting Web technology to their expectations and never requiring
readers to conform to an interface that places unnecessary obstacles in
their paths.
This is where your research on the needs and
demographics of the target audience is crucial. It's impossible to
design for an unknown person whose needs you don't understand. Create
sample scenarios with different types of users seeking information from
your site. Would an experienced user seeking a specific piece of
information be helped or hindered by your home page design? Would a
casual reader be intimidated by a complex menu scheme? Testing your
designs and getting feedback from a variety of users is the best way to
see whether your design ideas are giving them what they want from your
site.
Clear navigation aids
| No dead-ends |
Direct access |
Bandwidth & interaction |
Simple & consist |
Design integrity & stability
| Feedback & dialog
Most user interactions with Web pages involve navigating
hypertext links between documents. The main interface problem in Web
sites is the lack of a sense of where you are within the local
organization of information:
Clear, consistent icons, graphic identity schemes, and
graphic or text-based overview and summary screens can give the user
confidence that they can find what they are looking for without wasting
time.
Users should always be able to return easily to your
home page and to other major navigation points in the site. These basic
links should be present and in consistent locations on every page.
Graphic buttons will provide basic navigation links and create a graphic
identity that tells users they are within the site domain.
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Web pages often appear with no preamble: readers can
make or follow links directly to subsection pages buried deep in the
hierarchy of Web sites. They may never see your home page or other
introductory site information. If your subsection pages do not contain
links to the home page or to local menu pages, the reader will be locked
out from the rest of the Web site:
Make sure all pages in your site have at minimum a link
back to the main "home" page or, better yet, a home page link along with
links to the other sections of the site.
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Users want to get information in the fewest possible
steps. This means that you must design an efficient hierarchy of
information to minimize steps through menu pages. Studies have shown
that users prefer menus that present at least five to seven links and
that they prefer a few very dense screens of choices to many layers of
simplified menus. The following table demonstrates that you do not need
many levels of menus to incorporate lots of choices:
|
Number of menu items listed |
Number of nested menus |
5 |
7 |
8 |
10 |
1 |
5 |
7 |
8 |
10 |
2 |
25 |
49 |
64 |
100 |
3 |
125 |
343 |
512 |
1000 |
Design your site hierarchy so that real content is only
a click or two away from the main menu pages of your site.
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Users will not tolerate long delays. Research has shown
that for most computing tasks the threshold of frustration is about ten
seconds. Web page designs that are not well "tuned" to the network
access speed of typical users will only frustrate them. If your users
are primarily general public browsers "surfing" the Web via dial-up
modem connections, it is foolish to put huge bitmap graphics on your
pages — the average modem user will not be patient enough to wait while
your graphics download over the phone line. If, however, you are
building a university or corporate intranet site where most users will
access the Web server at Ethernet speeds or better, you can be much more
ambitious in the use of graphics and multimedia. Many home computer
users can now use high-speed DSL (digital subscriber line) or cable
modems to access the Web. However, industry observers expect that it
will be at least another five years before Web designers can count on
most home users having access to high-speed Web connections. In general,
be conservative with Web graphics. Even users with high-speed
connections appreciate a fast-loading page.
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Users are not impressed with complexity that seems
gratuitous, especially those users who may be depending on the site for
timely and accurate work-related information. Your interface metaphors
should be simple, familiar, and logical — if you need a metaphor for
information design, choose a genre familiar to readers of documents,
such as a book or a library. Highly unusual, "creative" navigation and
home page metaphors always fail because they impose an unfamiliar,
unpredictable interface burden on the user.
The user interface for your Web site should follow the
general navigation and layout conventions of major Web sites because
your users will already be used to those conventions. Users spend most
of their time on sites other than yours, so avoid highly unusual
interfaces if you wish to attract and keep a large audience.
The best information designs are never noticed. An
excellent model of interface design is the Adobe Corporation Web site.
Graphic headers act as navigation aids and are consistently applied
across every page in the site. Once you know where the standard links
are on the page header graphics, the interface becomes almost invisible
and navigation is easy.
For maximum functionality and legibility, your page and
site design should be built on a consistent pattern of modular units
that all share the same basic layout grids, graphic themes, editorial
conventions, and hierarchies of organization. The goal is to be
consistent and predictable; your users should feel comfortable exploring
your site and confident that they can find what they need. The graphic
identity of a series of pages in a Web site provides visual cues to the
continuity of information.
Even if your site design does not employ navigation
graphics, a consistent approach to the layout of titles, subtitles, page
footers, and navigation links to your home page or related pages will
reinforce the reader's sense of context within the site. To preserve the
effect of a "seamless" system of pages you may wish to bring important
information into your site and adapt it to your page layout scheme
rather than using links to send the reader away from your site (be sure
there are no copyright restrictions on copying the information into your
site).
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To convince your users that what you have to offer is
accurate and reliable, you will need to design your Web site as
carefully as you would any other type of corporate communication, using
the same high editorial and design standards. A site that looks sloppily
built, with poor visual design and low editorial standards, will not
inspire confidence.
Functional stability in any Web design means keeping the
interactive elements of the site working reliably. Functional stability
has two components: getting things right the first time as you design
the site, and then keeping things functioning smoothly over time. Good
Web sites are inherently interactive, with lots of links to local pages
within the site as well as links to other sites on the Web. As you
create your design you will need to check frequently that all of your
links work properly. Information changes quickly on the Web, both in
your site and in everyone else's. After the site is established you will
need to check that your links are still working properly and that the
content they supply remains relevant.
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Your Web design should offer constant visual and
functional confirmation of the user's whereabouts and options, via
graphic design, navigation buttons, or uniformly placed hypertext links.
Feedback also means being prepared to respond to your users' inquiries
and comments. Well-designed Web sites provide direct links to the Web
site editor or Webmaster responsible for running the site. Planning for
this ongoing relationship with users of your site is vital to the
long-term success of the enterprise.
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