Designing With An Eye For Usability
by Ric Allendorf, Creative Team Lead
07/10/2006
As web technology evolves to yield new opportunities for effective user-experience, the enduring principles of good design remain the keystone to success or failure of any interactive project. The most effective design principles in online marketing extend beyond color, placement and style to incorporate key elements of usability such as hierarchy and mapping. A site design that fails to captivate your audience, communicate your brand, and compel the user to action will rapidly impact your business by undermining your image and credibility, and alienating potential customers.
Experiencing without thinking
Usability is the brass ring of most discussions of web design today. Consistency and accessibility are inarguable traits that everyone strives for. But too often in interactive projects, these are the last items to be considered and the first points to fail. In these situations, the responsibility for correcting the problem falls on the visual elements; namely, the design. As repairs are hastily applied, the end-user is mired down in changing visual cues, redundancies in the navigation, or competing calls-to-action. Consequently, the flow is broken and the user-experience suffers.
Striving for a design that reinforces rather than intrudes on the task at hand should be every business owner’s mission. Just as a person might walk along a wooded path and never be consciously aware of the flurry of birdsongs that surround them (or even a specific song’s purpose), so too should a web interface keep design choices transparent in structuring a positive user-experience.
A Baseline for Good Design Planning
For an interactive designer to achieve true “ease of use”, the design strategy must first define the user groups who will use the site (including their capabilities or constraints). Next, the client and designer should outline the user’s goals and expectations, the business goals and offerings, and how the site will guide its users to the intended destination. The designer then proceeds with composing a layout that balances the hierarchy of content types, supporting graphics, navigational tools, and branding assets. The resulting structure should feel natural and “just so”, never requiring more than peripheral awareness or investigation by the user.
Regardless of the scale of the project, the user-experience should be consistent with your value and purpose, and an advocate for your brand promise. The key creative components that will affect this goal include:
- Concept: not to be confused with cleverness, this is the theme or idea underlying the user experience. It should be logical, self-explanatory, and not distract the viewer. If it’s excessively self-important or takes prominence over the key messaging, the focus is in the wrong direction.
- Context: this is how the site positions you among your competitors and the standards of your industry. Are you taking advantage of all your strengths and opportunities? Does it satisfy your core business goals?
- Messaging: what are you trying to communicate? Is the voice and tone relevant to the target audience? Is the content credible? Are the calls-to-action motivating?
- Brand Cohesion: this is where your primary assets are utilized, and the perception of your company is encountered. Are the rules of your corporate style guide being obeyed? Does the site relate to who you want to be? Have you addressed your brand equity?
- Images, Type & Symbols: all graphic elements will convey a feeling about your site and your company. Do the photos and visual cues make sense? Are they too cliché, metaphoric, or narrative? Do they relate to your other marketing materials?
- Aesthetics: this is the most subjective piece of your site. Color, texture, balance, visual flow, etc. will all invoke a response from the viewer. It’s this emotional trigger that will dictate the perception of your brand and the comfort with your website.
Conclusion
Whether you are planning a new employee training portal, refocusing your site to speak to investors or new prospects, placing a stake in the ground for your online marketing, or updating an outdated site to reflect a change in your business mission, the best way to channel your brand promise to the interactive space is to build around a core design framework that speaks to the individual needs of your audience. Placing your users at the vanguard of your online business goals is the surest way to achieve net results.
