Visual Design characteristics and Usability

The visual design, or aesthetics, of a web site is the primary focus of this article. Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary defines aesthetics as “artistic” or “a pleasing appearance or effect.” Aesthetics for a web site encompass anything with visual communication characteristics: color, layout, graphics, fonts, input forms, and navigation. We use visual elements to clarify the site’s underlying structure and to provide an appropriate look and feel, or context. The design should provide a visual identity and visual consistency that carries throughout the entire site. Just like a design for a building or an automobile, the visual design for a web site must be appropriate.

Why are aesthetics so important? Well, we do judge a book by its cover (envision the cover of a romance novel versus a book of photography of Ireland), a restaurant by its exterior (think McDonalds versus Olive Garden), and, ultimately, a web site by its design. If visitors are looking for children’s toys, they are probably going to spend very little time on a site with a dull visual design, all in shades of grey.

Visual Design versus Usability

There have been two starkly opposing viewpoints when it comes to the visual design of a site. Usability gurus like Jakob Nielsen (www.useit.com) have traditionally expounded that web sites should be usable, not pretty. Almost anything done just for visual effect, he believes, gets in the way of usability. Starkly functional minimalism is the goal; images, colored backgrounds, and fancy layouts should all be avoided. Black text on a white background with few or no graphics would be the ideal web page. To be fair, the usability folks have softened their position a bit in the last few years, but nonetheless, the stricter advocates still favor “plain vanilla” web sites.

The opposing viewpoint promotes the web as an “experience.” Consequently, web sites should take advantage of the uniqueness of the medium…stretch the limits of the medium…challenge/engage/mystify/amuse/enthrall the visitor. A terrifi c visual design creates meaning, provides context, and evokes emotion. It can engage a visitor and reassure him about the professionalism and reliability of the site.

It can also establish focus, create emphasis, establish relationships between site elements, and guide the user to accomplish his mission. All of this is important for the visitor’s experience as well as his understanding of the site. The fl ip side is that the “web as an experience” folks, left unchecked, might well deliver gorgeous web sites that are mystifying to navigate, diffi cult to decipher, and nightmares to download.

Fortunately for all of us using the web, neither side of the argument is totally right, nor totally wrong. In fact, usability and aesthetics don’t have to be at odds on the web any more than they are in architecture. After all, a talented architect can craft a building that is both eminently functional and beautiful to behold. In the architecture of a building, form (the visual design) can indeed follow function (the building’s usability). Why can’t the same balance apply to the web? Why can’t we have beauty and functionality?

After all, the web is, as we said right off at the beginning of this article, fi rst and foremost a communication medium, much like print media. If we encountered a magazine with no pictures, in most cases we would dismiss it as an amateur production, cheaply made. So too it is on the web. And over time, this idea of balance is starting to inch toward the mainstream. In fact, some usability gurus (notably Jared Spool, www.uie.com) have grasped the fact that that web site form and function are not necessarily at odds with each other.

So let’s do our best to balance form and function. If usability factors make a site functional, visual design makes it memorable. We aim for both.