Design - Written by Kerry on Saturday, April 19, 2008 21:28 - 7 Comments
8 Highly Effective Habits for Web Design
Bought my first issue of Dynamic Graphics: Design ideas for the real world (FEB-MAR 2008 V13N1). I must say there is a little more depth than meets the eye. I bought the issue for one of the main articles - 
8 Highly Effective Habits for Web Design - from which this post is named. Take some time with this one because is says alot about the user experience and why building relationships with potential customers can be hindered when we turn people off with our designs and desires.
8 Highly Effective Habits for Web Design:
- DON’T: Talk about yourself so much.
DO: Listen to your users. What are they telling you? - DON’T: Send in Flash to do the job of HTML.
DO: Use Flash to do what HTML can’t. - DON’T: Get in the way of visitors, especially if you’re selling something.
DO: Mark the path clearly and consistently. - DON’T: Put visitors through a gauntlet of endless registration forms.
DO: Be generous. Presume the best. Build a relationship. - DON’T: Become too attached.
DO: Realize that successful sites change, grow and adapt. - DON’T: Copy successful websites.
DO: Emulate successful websites. - DON’T: Presume that since it looks good on your computer, it’ll be fine.
DO: Test, test, test and test again, on everything. - DON’T: Make it a monologue.
DO: Make it a destination.
Enjoy
7 Comments
This is something designers should read because I constantly preach to my friend about his excessive use of flash on his layouts because when you look at the source code, its just embedded flash. And #7 is something we should all become habitual in, I can’t tell you the amount of times I had to keep fixing things because I didn’t test EVERYTHING possible.
-Mike
@Mike - I know this may make me sound old but #7 was huge back in 1995-98 (I know, practically dinosaur years for the web) even when there were only two main browsers (IE & Netscape - Mac of course had theirs) there were several versions at once and people didn’t upgrade as quickly as they do today. So, IE2,3,4,5 & NN 3,4,5,6,7, they all had to be tested. And they were all major upgrades so there were hugh differences in each release. It was even crazier than it is today if you can believe that. Just having as many browsers installed on your computer as possible didn’t give you the ability to test everything. Today there is one more challenge that wasn’t eminent in 1995 and that is mobile browsers. Each phone has their own implementation. It will never end. Like the article states - “TEST, TEST, TEST” and test some more.
back@Kerry- I remember 1995 as the time when I wasn’t allowed on the internet because men in white vans would supposedly kidnap me. Sorry for making you sound old. 
i agree that #7 is very important and also to do cross platform testing so that something that works on the mac looks as good on the pc too.
it’s bad news to spend hours making something work and then 2 days later your mom tells you “why does the big graphic on the top of your site look like it is falling off the screen?”
arg!
gotta test and test again.
@dennis - you have to think development for large websites requires a massive QA with MAC/WIN and then every flavor of browser known to man. What a monumental task. It is the lowly blogger 
who may not have the means to have every single browser and OS combination that sort of loses. Emulation would be great but native testing would be the best.
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Apr 20, 2008
12:09 pm