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Deployment Planning Template explained (09/25/2008) ...
Instead, this article takes a top-down approach, first identifying the primary elements that
make up a complete deployment solution.
You’ll find, however, that no matter the size or scope, all deployment solutions consist of
one or more of the following main concepts: hardware logistics, usage management, item
deployment, system deployment, postimaging tasks, and system maintenance.
Hardware Logistics
How are you going to physically deliver the computers to your users or get them onto
their desks or into the lab? And delivery is just one part of the physical deployment. You
must also consider your deployment’s load on your infrastructure and its physical security
and consider the replacement or disposal of your existing system.
The concept of hardware logistics is covered later in this article....
Accessibility in web provides a huge degree of usability (09/25/2008) ...
The Disability Discrimination Act 1995 includes requirements for providers of
information services which of course includes web sites to enable these services for
unimpeded access by disabled users. Making your site accessible is not just good
practice, or a way of maximising customer service, it is a legal requirement, albeit one
that is little enforced as yet.
The HTML design suggestions below are drawn from a variety of sources. Their
implementation need not add significantly to the design or management costs of a web
site even less so if they are designed in from the outset. Each adds a little to the
universality of the medium....
Link State Possibilities in a Web Site (09/25/2008) ...
Active State
An active link is one that was just immediately clicked. The latter effect shows only
briefl y, while the new page is loading, but it does give useful feedback to reassure
the visitor that the click was recognized. Red is the default active color for text links
and image link borders in most browsers, but it can be changed in the <body> tag
with the active attribute, and virtually all link attributes (color, underline, etc.) can
be styled with CSS’s a:active pseudo-class.
Visited State
A visited link is one that has been recently visited....
Make Sure the Navigation is Flexible and Expandable (09/25/2008) ... A search engine or another site might have sent the visitor directly to a lower-level page (called deep
linking), or the visitor might have entered via a bookmark to a subsidiary page. You
should display site and page identification on every page in the site, so that visitors
aren’t lost or bewildered, stuck on some unidentified lower-level page.
- Contact information, or an obvious link to the page containing contact information.
Contact information should include not only email contacts but also phone
numbers and postal address. Even though we might prefer to deal with electronic
communication from our visitors, many of the visitors have come to distrust sites
that refuse to reveal a physical presence in addition to a virtual one....
Design a good website navigation to archive better results (09/25/2008) ...
- Help the visitor find what he or she wants: “You want to go there.” After all,
that’s the point, isn’t it? A logically-structured hierarchy with clear categories
and labels, along with secondary navigation aids such as a search function and
site map, help to render the visitor’s quest painless.
- Make the visitor aware of other offerings on your site: “You could go there, if
you’re interested.” The navigation should point out other intriguing content
on the site. Think of the navigation as serving the same function as a table of
contents of a magazine; both provide an introduction to what is available on
the pages the stuff you were looking for, and the stuff you might be happy or
surprised to find as well....
Organized website structure is a must in web design (09/25/2008) ...
And some categories are so large that they beg to be broken down into
subcategories and sub-subcategories. Such categorization is indeed both a science
and an art.
Many designers find it helpful to put all possible labels on index cards and then
perform a card-sorting exercise to group them by category. It can even be helpful
to ask two or more designers to sort the cards independently to compare the similarities
and differences in their groupings.
Categories can provide context for our content....
A preferred label is ideally a single word (09/25/2008) ... In a conversation, we
augment our words with gesture, facial expression, or tone of voice; we gauge if our
conversation partner understands by interpreting the other person’s facial expression;
and our conversation partner can ask us to clarify what we mean. None of this
normal conversational interaction is available to a web site visitor. Consequently,
web site labels must be clearer and less ambiguous than our everyday spoken language
if they are to be truly useful.
Devising labels is a process of fi rst doing a content inventory and then brainstorming
for every possible label we can imagine. To come up with an initial list
of labels, we can:
- Extract meaningful labels from the content for the site, especially from headers
and subheaders....
Architecture of a web site explained (09/25/2008) ... If it’s strong, functional,
easy to navigate, and aesthetically pleasing, it’s because an architect put a
lot of thought and effort into discovering the user’s needs and designing the building
to fulfi ll those needs. Similarly, in the web world, a strong, functional, and aesthetically
pleasing web site is the result of thoughtful information architecture.
For the purposes of this article, we will narrow our terminology to site architecture
the organization and navigation of information within a web site.
Site architecture is a fuzzy blend of information architecture and interaction design.
It involves:
- The content, or the fragments of information, buried in the site....
How to create content for my website Tips for webmasters (09/25/2008) ...com. If the site is primarily for marketing, the organization’s
Internet Internet advertising staff generates most of the copy.
Nevertheless, there may be times when you, the designer, may be called on to suggest
content, write the content yourself, or critique and edit content you have been
given. Keep the following in mind:
- The employed writing style should match the voice of the site, whether formal,
hip, humorous, chatty, or stilted. You wouldn't use a formal, academic writing
style on the Disney site any more than you would use a casual, chatty style on a
site that posts the latest physics research for college professors....
Three goals we strive for in the development of a web site (09/25/2008) ... On the other hand, if we
are willing to increase the budget, we might be able to create the site quickly and
still deliver high quality. In a nutshell, the site can be cheap to build, fast to build, or
of high quality, but usually not all three.
Cost-benefi t analysis (deciding if the benefi ts provided are worthy of the attendant
costs) plays a big part in the process of identifying constraints. Obviously, we want
the benefi ts to exceed the costs. When the benefi ts are lower than the costs, however,
that doesn't automatically mean we need to abandon the project....
Target audience identification guide (09/25/2008) ...
It’s not suffi cient to say, “Our audience consists of people who want to buy
computers, stereos, and appliances.” We need to be more specific.
What are the demographics of the target audience, in terms of income, age, education,
family status, and health conditions? What problems do they have? What
appeals to them? What do they need? Unless you have a very clear defi nition of the
audience, you cannot design a site to appeal to that audience.
Here are the characteristics to defi ne during the process of nailing down your
target audience:
- Physical demographics Gender, age range, health status. Females and
males tend to prefer a different look for a web site....
Accessibility Guidelines and Interaction design (09/25/2008) ...
This is why a program’s user interface cannot be complex to achieve simple results,
but it can be complex to achieve complex results (as long as such results aren’t
needed very often).”
Introduction to Web Accessibility
One of the ongoing themes of this article is accessibility, also called universal design,
which refers to providing access for all users regardless of physical abilities. As we go
through each article, we will look at accessibility guidelines that relate to the topic at
hand.
Nonetheless, before looking at specifics in the following articles, we need to
understand the overarching principles that underlie those specifics.
We can, with thoughtful universal design, provide access for everyone....
How to create a web site with appeal (09/25/2008) ... 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....
Branding is Important for your identity (09/25/2008) ... Most importantly, it’s memorable.
Let’s look at some examples of effective branding:
- Oreo cookies. We can recognize an Oreo from just a small piece, and most
of us immediately think of an associated glass of milk, and twisting the cookie
apart (or not).
- Jaguar. The name instantly conjures up an image of a cool, high-performance,
luxury vehicle with the evocative jungle cat hood ornament....
Visual Design characteristics and Usability (09/25/2008) ... 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....
Usability testing should be incremental (09/25/2008) ... The end result of such an overblown testing
mentality is that testing was rarely done at all. Today, though, the belief is that more
informal, less involved testing (termed “discount testing”) can produce huge benefi
ts certainly more benefi ts than grandiose testing scenarios that aren’t done at all.
Major usability issues tend to become quickly obvious even with informal testing.
How do you do discount testing?
Choose three or four testers with widely different
technical abilities for each round of testing. Avoid using team members as testers;
only people who are “off the street” and have not actually helped to create your site
can give you unbiased, laypersons’ opinions of what will and will not work with real
visitors....
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