Visibility of system status

Designers usually read usecases, requirements and they know a lot about system. The interface looks familiar to them. But for the users it is not familiar. If something goes wrong - they suspect the service fault in this problem. They became scary. If designers want to avoid problems - they try to make inner processes (upload, search, update tec.) visible. We are going to talk about viability of a system in this article.

EDI (electronic document interchange) system user interface and user experience design

The paperless business became a popular idea in late 90th. But technologies was very low and people used to make deal with papers. Nowadays this idea is not still realized to the end. What do we have today?  I am going to check a service for electronic document interchange (EDI) - docusign.co.uk.

How to make good promo site

If you have developed nice online system you have to have nice promo site also. Users need the first page to enter the system. It is a web page where you have to give some kind of good impression for your existed and future customers. You don’t need something extraordinary with plenty of information. It has to be simple. Web designers usually put there big photos of happy people, motto and registration/login form. Social networks are good systems to explore this kind of promo pages.

The cheese e-shop web design mistakes

Here is a Dutch cheese internet shop. I think the main aim of any e-shop design is customer’s purchases. We have to put all parts of web site in right order to force them click on “Buy” button. Let’s have a look on this site.

Hamburg web-design studios (part 2)

I am going to continue my inspection of Hamburg web design studios.



http://perfectdayhamburg.de
The web site of this studio is simply and minimalistic. They implement Dieter Rams’ rule: “Good Design Is as Little Design as Possible”. There are long vertical slider with studio projects, main menu and useless weather plugin in the right top.

Hamburg' web-design studios sites analysis

Many web-designers prefer work hard than write articles. They have many successful and unsuccessful ideas but never share these in public. Many designers work alone in different studios all around the world. Sometimes their art-directors can force them to show interesting projects on some festival or inspiration site. But mostly layouts are not shown for colleagues. Customer’s web-sites are in permanent motion and brilliant ideas can disappear in time. We are losing many beautiful designs everyday.

The casual projects may be not so brilliant, but personal sites of design-studio have to be brilliant any way. I hope the best ideas are integrated in these promo-pages. Let’s try to analyse them. I choose some sites from the google first page list on search request “Hamburg web-design studio”.

On Victory day

On Victory day I decided to have a look at Russian web-sites about Second World War. Russians celebrate Victory (in Europe) not like other nations on 8th of May but on 9th of May. The final of the Second World War is very important for them because it was their last big victory.

Design is founded on previous experience

The art for many years uses the same ideas as the engineering also does. The most of customers’ wishes are the same in whole the world. Thousands of designers were executing the equal tasks as we are doing. It would be stupid to ignore their experiences. If customers need a transport with two wheels that has to move with human legs, we can run to reinvent a bicycle. Or we can take a already existed concept of bike and make our efforts to improve it. At least we can take some parts or ideas and develop them. If your task is to make a blog’s design – just look through best examples of them and take ideas. This way saves a lot of time. The efforts that designer would make to reinvent design, better use to improve existed one. May be he will find a new solution and next generation designers would use it in their projects.

Design likes variations

Designer’s vision is always very subjective. He is much better in web design than his customers. 50% of them would approve anything that is made right without mistakes because they believe designer as a specialist. On the other hand they would reject anything without explanations in 50% because layout is not proper to their aesthetical conceptions. Both decisions are bad for the designer. He doesn’t get any development in the first case and doesn’t get money in the second one. The only protection from creative stagnation and finance lack are variations. The more we do the better we are. Designer can understand what one is better in process of looking on some variants. So he can control the quality of his job by himself. Customer tends to choose some when he has variations. Don’t be upset if customer chooses the worst one. A clever designer puts good variation into his portfolio and will use these ideas in next projects.

Design has to be light

Web design has to be user-friendly from the first glimpse, without reading.  Users like simplicity and intelligibility in site layout. They are afraid of a large number of details and information. Plenty of images and decoration elements make website heavy and ugly. We have to think about real functions of decoration elements before using them. Users are afraid of web pages that are full of information. Using the white space and margins is the way to solve this problem. White space brings effects of lightness. Users are afraid of fonts and colors variation because it damages perception. It is not recommended that web page has more than 2-3 fonts and 2-3 colors. Gradients and patterns, gif animation, blinking and running text were popular in 1990^th because it was modern and progressive computer based style. The goal of old school web design was to amaze users with modern decoration. But now it is just a trash that hides information.

Design puts information in order

Good design makes information acceptable for people. The difference between text on sheet of paper and designed text is in perception quickness of the last one. Designer controls the readers’ attention with boldness, colors, placements, font sizes etc. We have to divide information into groups and detect more and less important of them to put in right order. For example, all the contacts on the web page have to be in one group, one style and one place, image caption in the article has to be in the same group nearby its picture etc. Complicated design makes readers tired. We have to predict how users would perceive information and send them in the shortest way.

Design is the unity of dissymmetry and symmetry

Most of people favor symmetric placement of objects in layouts. This is natural feature of mind. People also favor when human body is symmetric, hands, eyes and legs have the same size. Any disproportion makes body ugly. Preferring of non-symmetric bodies is kind of perversion. That is why we have to make the alignment and distribution of layout parts. Objects have to be kept on the same distance one from another. The gap from left/top has to be the same size like the gap from the right/bottom. This rule can make any website acceptable for the most of users. On the other hand the inner world of human being is beautiful if it is non-symmetric. When people think symmetric they are boring. Symmetrical design makes layout stable and dead. We have to put disproportion in weight of webpage objects to make it dynamic. But these parts still have to be symmetrically distributed and aligned in the same time. Neglecting of symmetrical borders and distances between objects can be used for design perversion of website.

Design makes information readable

One of the main design goals is broadcasting information. Designer has to use some rules to make information readable. First of all, design has to be contrasting. Red text on blue background is not good because they have the same saturation. You can read it but it is hard. It is easy to check your layout if you convert it into grayscale. Colors with the same saturation became equal. It is better to use colors with different saturation: red and yellow, red and white etc. Don’t put under the text gradients and multicolor images. Decoration have to help people easily percept information instead of attraction. Good designer can use the same principle in other parts of his/her job. If you are choosing the font for main text you have to remember that handwriting fonts or gothic will be hard for that.

Design uses customers stereotypes

Designer has to reject quasi-scientific knowledge about the secret meaning of decoration elements such as colors or shapes. You can construct a web site using Feng Shui principles. But it has sense in case when customers are in this Chinese culture code. Some people think that colors have some meanings. Black means death, white – life, red – aggression etc. These are only stereotypes that depend on the country you live in. I can broadcast sadness, love and happiness using black because color is just an instrument. Some designers say that serif fonts are better for users to read, others say it about sans-serif fonts. It is better to use your own sense of the beautiful. Stereotype is not the archetype. This is the knowledge people accept during their life. Most of them are wrong but sometimes they are our only way to communicate with taret group. Otherwise you don’t have to make a conflict with your employer. If he believes in Feng Shui – don’t make any sharp shapes in web site.

Design has its goal

It is very important to understand the goals of future website design. The purpose can be useful – for example “logout” button ought to be clearly visible. Or it can be esthetical for better connection with culture code of auditory. For example car body design has nothing close with engine characteristic. But we feel that heavy design can be marker for strong vehicle and streamlined shape tells us that car is very speedy. Constructing serious website you have to try heavy design. If your goal is to attract attention, the website has to have decoration that will shock users. There are no celebrities on ads luxury watches any more because people remember not the brand of watches but celebrities. It is very important to detect your auditory and choose the goals of the site.

Design has no rules

There are no rules for web design. We have only some theoretical advices how to make layout better for people majority’s perception. Design is in the middle between art and engineering. On the one hand it consists of rules to improve perception of information in traditional way. It can make web site decoration acceptable with 95% of people. On the other hand it is creative job. Design has to amaze users with non-ordinary original decoration. Unusual solutions can make the web site more interesting and attractive. Rules of design sound like rules of sex – for the first time it can help, but later it makes the process boring.