I’m redesigning my website. I want to add more texture and subtlety and tighten up the typography. Here’s where I’m at right now. You like?
Redesign in progress
Category Archives: Process
Not everyone sees things the way you do
At the SCIP event last month, the group leader asked the community organisations if they had any specific problems they wanted addressing.
“Accessibility,” said one man. “What do you mean?” “You know, blind people, that kind of thing.”
Ian shifted in his chair, and then spoke. “Do you have a problem with the site? Are people coming to you, complaining that they can’t access it?”
They weren’t, and a conversation developed. What kind of people visit the site? For what? It’s a radio website, so would partially-sighted people be coming through the site, or through streaming players, or iTunes? Is there any evidence of people using screen readers to reach the site?
How useful is it to focus on blind people when we think about accessibility?
Not everyone sees things the way you do
For us, accessibility is a broader concept. It’s about all the different ways people might want to access your site. If you have events, will people want to view them on the move? Do you need some mobile pages?
Is there lots of good information on your site? Will people be wanting to print it out? If so, you should have good print stylesheets to make the printed pages look good and not waste paper.
I like to use a computer-based calendar. I don’t want to visit your website to find out about new events. Can I subscribe to your calendar?
And what about news? I like to read mine as email. Can I get news from your site through email?
This is accessibility. Making sure your site is accessible to all your users in the way they want to interact with it. And that means blind people with screen readers. But it also means a great deal more.
Stealing best practice
We’ve been doing some interface design for Magic Studio, a multimedia tool used by schools.
In one task, the students have to decide how significant they think economic, social and environmental factors are for a variety of objects (in this case, buildings).
Ian’s been facing the problem of how to represent the results. Three separate screens? Live feedback? Perhaps the icons should be coloured or varied by size to convey their different axes?
Eureka! I’ve got a great idea for an online business
Ian took a call recently. It was a man who wanted an e-commerce website. He wanted to know how much it would cost. Ian asked him why he wanted a site at all.
This flummoxed the man. He’d called a few design agencies, and none had asked him this. In fact, they hadn’t asked him much before giving him a figure.
“What’s your competition?” I heard Ian say. “Have you done a competitive analysis?”
I was feeling sorry for our potential client. I wanted to give him a figure, but Ian was right. An ecommerce site is a shop. Behind the shop is a business, and it’s the business that matters. Continue reading
How to evaluate software for a client
When we’re working on a project, we often have to compare complex things – features/services/software – and work out which one is the best in the given situation. I use a spreadsheet and create a matrix. This is what you should end up with.Click on screen shots to see the next step. There’s a brief explanation of each step underneath.
Open a spreadsheet, and in A2 type Criteria and then copy and past your criteria list beneath that, one cell per item.
Select cell B1 and type in Weighting. Assign a Weighting value to each criteria. The value represents the level of importance this item has within your overall decision. It doesn’t matter what range you use as long as you’re consistent. I used the range 0.1 (not important) – 1.0 (essential).
Tips on writing a web design brief
If you are thinking about commissioning work on your existing or new website, you’re going to want to write a brief to give to your developer/designer at some point so they know what you want. Here are some topics to get you thinking in the right direction and help you do just that.
What do you need a website for?
It may sound like a daft question, but it is at the top of the list for good reason. Even if you have an existing website, ask yourself the same question again. What do you need it to do for you? What are your short and long-term business goals? Do you need to raise awareness of your product? Increase sales by widening your audience? Get your brand message across to a new audience? Once you’ve really know what it needs to do, we can start to think about how we can achieve it… This question will help us define what the key design and functionality needs to be.