Balancing Visual and Structural Complexity in Interaction Design

Usability is based on principles such as 'Less is more' and 'Keep it simple, stupid'. But there is more to simplicity than meets the eye. By reducing visual complexity at the cost of structural simplicity, you will give your users a hard time understanding and navigating the content of a web site.

GUUUI (2003). Design>Web Design>Interactive>User Centered Design

The Banality of the Radical

As more Web designers begin transforming their sites from the tables-fonttags-single-pixel-gifs concoctions to stripped-down CSS chic, more observers are asking the questions: if the promise of CSS and standards was liberation from the tyranny of warring browser lords, why do all the CSS designs look the same? If this is the radical shift that will allow the Web to realize its potential, why does it appear so dull? Implicit in these questions is an increasing consensus that, in the words of Chris Casciano, 'Your CSS Bores Me'.

Kaminski, Chuck. Western Civilization (2004). Design>Web Design>CSS

Banned from Other Blog Sites

Freedom of expression is not ruling the blogosphere, because insecure bloggers will block your attempt to post comments, or even read their blog, should they decide you are "too controversial" or "too different from me". Opinionated blogs are the worst culprits of cowardly post blocking.

Streight, Steven. Blogger.com (2004). Articles>Web Design>Writing>Blogging

Banner Blindness, Human Cognition and Web Design

Benway and Lane have studied 'Banner Blindness' – the fact that people tend to ignore those big, flashy, colorful banners at the top of web pages. This is pretty interesting stuff, for the entire reason they are so big and obnoxious is to attract attention, yet they fail. Evidently nobody ever studied real users before -- they simply assumed that big, colorful items were visible. This paper, shows once again the importance of observations over logic when it comes to predicting human behavior. People behave the way they behave, not the way our logical analyses and wishes would have them behave. People follow their interests, their needs, their customs. They are driven by curiosity, boredom, emotion. And the 'they' refers to 'we': us.

Norman, Donald A. JND.org (1999). Design>Web Design>Usability>User Experience

Banner Blindness: Old and New Findings

Users rarely look at display advertisements on websites. Of the four design elements that do attract a few ad fixations, one is unethical and reduces the value of advertising networks.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2007). Design>Web Design>Ethics>User Centered Design

Banner Blindness: Web Searchers Often Miss 'Obvious' Links

Suppose you are designing a web page where one particular link among many is likely to be the most used by visitors. For example, perhaps you have a web page for sending text messages to pagers. 'Send a message' is likely to be a very popular link, and it is important that all users notice it. On a travel reservations page, the designer wants to be sure that users notice the link for 'make a reservation.' Web guidelines usually recommend that to make an important item stand out, it should be near the top, and be large and/or brightly colored.

Panero, Jan Benway and David M. Lane. Internetworking (1998). Design>Web Design>Usability

Barrierefreies-Webdesign

Barrierefreies Webdesign - manchmal auch Zugänglichkeit oder Accessibility genannt - ist die Kunst, Webseiten so zu programmieren, dass jeder sie lesen kann.

Hellbusch, Jan Eric. Barrierefreies-Webdesign. Design>Web Design>Accessibility

Basic Flash Concepts and Terms

Macromedia Flash uses a movie-making metaphor in how they define their concepts and areas of their interface. The basic terms used to describe the animation are the movie, stage and motion.

Kurtus, Ron. School for Champions (2002). Design>Web Design>Multimedia>Flash

Basic Search Engine Optimization Guide And Tips

Search engine optimization or SEO is very important to get your website listed in search engines. Even if this is the first website you have built there are a few basic and easy steps that will help you with optimizing your website without being a pro.

DevBay (2005). Articles>Web Design>Search>Search Engine Optimization

Basics

Using web sites should be easy and pleasant, just like a great experience in a shop, hotel, or library. I believe that the all Web sites can be made lovable - easy, rewarding and pleasurable to use.

Hunt, Ben. Web Design From Scratch (2006). Design>Web Design>Usability

The Basics of Navigation

You can have all kinds of great attractions on your site, but if your visitors don't know how to get to them, they'll just collect dust on the server. Worse yet, if visitors find your site's navigation confusing or convoluted, they'll simply give up and head off to explore the rest of the Web, never to return. So, good navigation design is an essential ingredient for any successful Web site.

Timberlake, Sean. EFuse (2000). Design>Web Design>Information Design

The Bathing Ape Has No Clothes

I do this because, well, I love design. More to the point, I crave design talk: who’s influenced who, what tools do you use, what trends do you observe, what rocks your world, and so forth. I get a lot out of this discourse. The signal-to-noise ratio of this particular subset of the Internet has always tilted strongly towards meaning. Until fairly recently, that is, when I started to notice a new feeling creeping into the sites I frequented. In what were nominally gathering places to discuss and celebrate online design, design seemed to be just about the last thing on anyone’s mind.

Greenfield, Adam. List Apart, A (2002). Design>Graphic Design>Web Design

Battlecat Then, Battlecat Now: Temporal Shifts, Hyperlinking and Database Subjectivities

Like all media forms, the blog is not transparent. The technological code of the software contains affordances that filter and, in part, determine the constitution of the private/public Self represented in any weblog. And so, what kind of Self (or Selves) are made possible or enabled by typical blogging practice?

Jarrett, Kylie. Into the Blogosphere (2004). Articles>Web Design>Writing>Blogging

Bazzmann|Mag

Bazzmann|Mag si occupa di design molecolare, accessibilità, usabilità, web e UI design, standard W3C, semantic web e architettura dell'informazione.

Trevisan, Marco. Bazzmann. (Italian) Resources>Web Design>Usability>Blogs

Be Open to Closed-Loop Marketing

Though it's sometimes tough to implement, making marketers feel as if they're going in circles, closed-loop marketing can help you adjust marketing campaigns to deliver highly targeted content and advertising.

Allen, Cliff. Allen.com (2001). Design>Web Design>Marketing

Be Succinct! (Writing for the Web)

The three main guidelines for writing for the Web are: be succinct: write no more than 50% of the text you would have used in a hardcopy publication; write for scannability: don't require users to read long continuous blocks of text; use hypertext to split up long information into multiple pages.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (1997). Articles>Web Design>Writing

Beating the Checkout Blues

Depending on which research report you read, roughly 25% to 75% of online shoppers abandon their shopping carts before consummating the deal. Despite the disparity in numbers, all the research firms agree on one thing: that's way too many.

Greenwood, Wayne. Cooper Interaction Design (2001). Design>Web Design>Usability>E Commerce

Beating the Rap on User Interface Standards  

When your manager asked (told) you to write a user interface (UI) design standard, was it a no-win proposition? Apparently many developers feel that way.

Schaffer, Eric M. Human Factors International (1996). Design>Web Design>User Interface

Beauty is Only Screen Deep

What happens when web designers really 'get' designing for the web? Sarah Horton, co-author of the Web Style Guide, ponders the meaning of beauty and quality in the context of being a good web designer.

Horton, Sarah. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Design>Web Design>Aesthetics

A Beginner's Guide to HTML  

Answers to questions like: where do Web pages come from? What are all those brackets in the text, anyway? How much HTML do I have to learn? How can I get started quickly? What kinds of HTML authoring tools are available to me?

Quesenbery, Whitney. STC Proceedings (1997). Articles>Web Design>HTML

A Beginner's Guide to HTML and Web Design  

The best place to learn about HTML is on the Web itself. A few of the best resources for exploring HTML design are listed here.

Quesenbery, Whitney. STC Proceedings (1998). Articles>Web Design>Standards>HTML

Begrippenlijst

Uitleg van relevante termen over het communicatiebeleid rondom webprojecten, het ontwikkelen van een functioneel ontwerp en het inrichten van het content management.

Hartman Communicatie (2001). (Dutch) Reference>Dictionaries>Web Design

Behavioral Separation

Breaking up is hard to do. But in web design, separation can be a good thing. Content, style, and behavior all deserve their own space. One of the greatest advantages to designing with Cascading Style Sheets is the potential for separation of style and content.

Keith, Jeremy. List Apart, A (2006). Design>Web Design>CSS

Being a Trusted Expert

Find out how to become a trusted expert on your website and watch your online credibility soar!

Usborne, Nick. Webcredible (2006). Design>Web Design>Usability

The Benefits of an Accessible Website - Part 1: Increase in Reach

The Disability Discrimination Act states that service providers must not discriminate against disabled people. A website is regarded as a service and therefore falls under this law. Some organisations are changing their websites, but many are seemingly not making the adjustments. Disabled people don't access their website, they say, so why should they care?

Moss, Trenton. Webcredible (2004). Design>Web Design>Accessibility>United Kingdom