Appeal means that visitors enjoy and become engaged in the site. We have already
established that a web site must be easy to use or visitors won’t find it appealing.
But what are the characteristics of the visual design that can make a site appealing?
It should be aesthetically pleasing, a unique experience, and evocative. Let’s look at each characteristic in turn.
- Aesthetically pleasing. The site should “look right” for its purpose, its branding,
and its audience. It could be fun, or professional, or cutting edge, or elegant,
or futuristic, or grungy, or hip, or friendly, or formal, or down-home, or no-nonsense,
or cozy, or fl ashy, or silly, or childlike…you get the idea. It all depends on
purpose and audience. Once a style is nailed down, then every single element
on every single page should sustain that style. It’s worth repeating that visual
design isn’t just decoration; it colors the visitor’s view of the product, the organization,
and the site’s credibility. Much of the rest of the book will be devoted to
determining how to make a site aesthetically appealing.
- A unique experience. The experience should be unique to the medium.
Avoid trying merely to duplicate the print medium, because you’re missing an opportunity to leverage web technologies like color and interactivity. The buzzword
these days is “experience design:” Use the experience to draw the visitors
into the site. Think of a restaurant like Olive Garden, where the food, the décor,
the printed menus, and the service are all a part of the experience. The experience
becomes immersive, captivating, and intriguing.
- Evocative. The site should, if possible, bring up positive emotions, whether
satisfaction in a job accomplished, pleasure from viewing an artistic design, or
eagerness to read a fascinating article.
Most of the remainder of the book concentrates on how to use the tools of site
layout, color, graphics, typography, and input forms to create appeal. Before we get
to specifics, however, we need to introduce a few broad design concepts that may
help to create that appeal. We will discuss the use of metaphor and then examine
several overall design hints.
Metaphor as a Design Tool
The use of visual metaphor is pervasive in web design, particularly for navigation.
For instance, a computer desktop, complete with icons of fi les, folders, and a recycle
bin is a familiar metaphor. Navigation buttons often look like real buttons that
we could press to accomplish some task in the real world. Adding a rollover effect
to “depress” the button heightens the effect. A few other common web metaphors
are navigation controls that look like file folder tabs and icons that look like printers,
computer disks, and shopping carts.
We can employ metaphor in a more global way as well, for the site as a whole. If you
can identify an organizing metaphor that lends itself well to a visual interpretation,
the entire design task becomes easier. For instance, a hotel’s home page might look
like the lobby of a hotel, complete with a check-in desk, the entrance to a restaurant,
and a concierge desk. Each of these elements could be clickable, leading to
reservations, a restaurant menu, and local attractions, respectively.
The benefit to visitors is that common metaphors can convey immediate understanding.
To be effective, though, a metaphor needs to be appropriate both conceptually
and visually. For instance, it’s appropriate for United Airlines to use a globe as a logo,
because their airplanes do indeed circle the globe. It’s not appropriate for a pet supply
retailer to use a globe, just because it has a presence on the “world wide” web.
Although engaging to visitors, metaphors can also be dangerous, particularly if the
metaphor can’t extend to cover all the necessary categories. If some of our categories
must exist outside of the metaphor, we’ve introduced inconsistencies in our
visitor’s mental model, something we generally try to avoid.
Overall Design Hints
Upcoming articles will deal with design hints and guidelines, organized by article
topic. Here, though, we need to discuss a few more global hints that aren’t limited
to specific topics:
- Less is (often) more. Although some designers have diffi culty embellishing a
page enough to make it interesting, most have the opposite problem: They try
to cram too much on a page. If you fall into this second category, review your
designs for elements that can be eliminated or streamlined. For instance, rarely
does a page look good with 15 different typefaces on it; it instead begins to
look like a ransom note. Keep in mind that simple isn’t always boring often it’s
modern and elegant instead.
- Maintain a “tickler fi le” of ideas. Make note of images, color schemes,
layout plans, interesting typefaces, and snippets of code that do interesting
things. Other web sites can generate ideas, of course, but so too can magazines,
books, opening credits of movies, or displays of color-coordinated bedding
and towels in a department store or mail-order catalog. Keep your eyes
open for inspiration at all times.
- Use restraint. For instance, gratuitous animation can be annoying and
increases download time, perhaps so much so that visitors become impatient
and abandon the site. You may also have to use restraint by ditching a clever
idea that you absolutely love. Sadly, sometimes those clever ideas end up not
really sustaining the purpose of the site you are currently working on. In that
case, table the idea for now, but stash it in your tickler fi le, and consider it for
your next project. (Admittedly, deciding to abandon a beloved “pet” idea can be
one of the most gut-wrenching decisions that a web designer has to face.)
- Check out competing sites. Don’t pass up the opportunity to leverage the
experience of others. View competing sites as free prototypes. Analyze those
things that the competitors do well, and the things they do poorly. Contemplate
how you could avoid merely equaling the competing sites, but instead surpass
them. Then consider whether you want to use a design style very similar to the
competing sites (on the theory you shouldn’t fix what isn’t broken), or radically
different (so that your site is memorable). Either choice can be a legitimate one,
depending on the circumstances.
- Cross-browse. When browsing in bookstores, frequent the art and design
section as well as the web development shelves. Some web-related books seem
to appear only in the design section Krause’s Index series (Layout Index, Color
Index, and so on) and Rockport Publishers’ Color Harmony for the Web come to
mind. Of course, non-web related design books can be inspirational, too.
- Be judgmental. At last, a situation in which you are encouraged to do this! Take
note of and learn from the characteristics you personally like and dislike on the
web sites you visit yourself. What annoys you? What delights you? Those same
characteristics have the potential to annoy or delight your visitors as well.
- Focus on solving design problems. Keep in mind that although design is an
art, it’s not just art for art’s sake. An artist creates something that is purely
appealing, that doesn’t need to have a purpose or satisfy an audience (well,
unless the artist likes to eat). She can paint or sculpt whatever she chooses.
The only constraints are those of the medium, whether paint or clay or fiber.
A designer, on the other hand, must solve communication problems that have
inherent restrictions: budgetary guidelines, business goals, existing branding,
target audiences, and the organization’s management. In the design field, pure
art often gets in the way of communication. Designers who were artists first
and entered web design later seem to have a particularly hard time dealing
with these issues. |
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