NationStates Jolt Archive


How important is design?

GBrooks
30-01-2007, 09:42
No, not the so-called Intelligent Design, but web page design. If a web page has a green background and large orange type, are you going to give the information on it as much credence as a web page that appears to be more professionally done?
The Alma Mater
30-01-2007, 09:47
No, not the so-called Intelligent Design, but web page design. If a web page has a green background are you going to give the information on it as much credence as a web page that appears to be more professionally done?

I tend to check the source first - and the website of a university professor specialising in the subject, however poor designed, still beats that of a random stranger with advanced php& design skills.

But where two more or less equally reliable sources are concerned, my subconcious will probably prefer the well designed one.
Damor
30-01-2007, 10:13
No, not the so-called Intelligent Design, but web page design. If a web page has a green background and large orange type, are you going to give the information on it as much credence as a web page that appears to be more professionally done?I wouldn't read it in the first case because it'd hurt my eyes.
Sure, it's the content that matters in the end, but it has to be legible too. Plain black on white with some decent margins would do (for god's sake, don't forget the margins).
IL Ruffino
30-01-2007, 10:20
Apperance is important.

If you have an ugly website, people wont stick around to read the information.
Ifreann
30-01-2007, 10:46
I'd say design is the most important part of web page designing.
Rejistania
30-01-2007, 11:24
I'd say design is the most important part of web page designing.
I'd say the information is the most important part... if the green-orange is the more reliable source, I'd start up my lynx to get the info.
The Infinite Dunes
30-01-2007, 11:25
Very important. Infomation should be easy to access, so if you make it too hard for me to find the infomation that I want from your site then I won't bother.

I've found sites that just send you round in loops saying to go to another page. In the end I google searched the site to find what I wanted.

Simple, legible fonts, whether they be serif or sans-serif. No fancy fonts please. Except ocassionally for titles.

Simple, pastel colour schemes. Black, yellow, and purple is not a good colour scheme. As a general rule of thumb you should not use colours with a high saturation and a medium luminosity.

Presentation and accessibility are very important. It has doesn't have to be fancy, and oft being fancy is bad.
The Infinite Dunes
30-01-2007, 11:27
I'd say the information is the most important part... if the green-orange is the more reliable source, I'd start up my lynx to get the info.Whilst colours schemes aren't so important, design and presentation still is. If someone does not know how to link ideas together or how to present ideas then is likely that they have a poor understanding of the subject.
The Alma Mater
30-01-2007, 11:30
Whilst colours schemes aren't so important, design and presentation still is. If someone does not know how to link ideas together or how to present ideas then is likely that they have a poor understanding of the subject.

Or pathetic html skills.
Pure Metal
30-01-2007, 12:05
i design websites as part of my job. its not my main job description and i've taught myself over the last 5 years or so, moving from shitty old frontpage98 templates to the database integrated shtick i use now. still no PHP cos that scares me, and i need to use more CSS, but am always looking to get better.

some of the principles i use are:
1. branding... make the site recognisable. re: simple banners, and distinctive colour schemes.
2. keep text legible... in fact, keep content text on a white background in a dark coloured font. so while i tend to use heavy background colours, a white box for content is always present
3. keep the information to hand... no less than 1 or 2 clicks away. preferably have the information users want right there on the home page (but not all of it necessarily - ie. the imagemap or search or dropdown list on the frontpage)
4. navigation.... SOoooooooo important to get right. i pretty much start designing a website from the point of view of how users are going to get around it


thats what i try to do, and my sites tend to be ok. they don't look as snazzy as some others out there, and i use iframes too much these days lol (creates browser problems grr) but i'd say they are well designed and better than many :)


I'd say the information is the most important part... if the green-orange is the more reliable source, I'd start up my lynx to get the info.

hehe lynx actually kicks ass :P
Compulsive Depression
30-01-2007, 13:20
I hate websites that're all pictures, colours, animations and wasted megabytes. Flash websites, particularly, are abysmal; they're always slower and less functional than a simple plain-HTML site that you could knock up in Notepad in half an hour.

I don't care how pretty your website is, I'm going there for some reason. I want to know something (this will be largely text), not watch your website designer masturbate all over my monitor. I want to get to the file I need to download, not wait for animations, images, redirections, adverts and all sorts of bollocks.

Plain text on a plain background with images where actually necessary; diagrams, for instance; that is good website design.
Rejistania
30-01-2007, 13:27
I hate websites that're all pictures, colours, animations and wasted megabytes. Flash websites, particularly, are abysmal; they're always slower and less functional than a simple plain-HTML site that you could knock up in Notepad in half an hour.

QFT!
Pure Metal
30-01-2007, 13:28
I hate websites that're all pictures, colours, animations and wasted megabytes. Flash websites, particularly, are abysmal; they're always slower and less functional than a simple plain-HTML site that you could knock up in Notepad in half an hour.

I don't care how pretty your website is, I'm going there for some reason. I want to know something (this will be largely text), not watch your website designer masturbate all over my monitor. I want to get to the file I need to download, not wait for animations, images, redirections, adverts and all sorts of bollocks.

Plain text on a plain background with images where actually necessary; diagrams, for instance; that is good website design.

what do you think of this (http://www.monthoftaste.info/) one? its probably my favourite of the ones i've designed cos its pretty yet functional :) (imho)

however i totally agree with you about flash sites :mad:
Isidoor
30-01-2007, 13:28
No, not the so-called Intelligent Design, but web page design. If a web page has a green background and large orange type, are you going to give the information on it as much credence as a web page that appears to be more professionally done?

when it is just an informational website; for an organisation, about a scientific subject etc. it's not important, you should focus on content then.
but when you make a website for a band or a product design is more important.
Rejistania
30-01-2007, 13:32
but when you make a website for a band or a product design is more important.

I surf websites for products for information, I surf websites for bands for mp3s... I am annoyed about the so called 'webdesign' there.
Rejistania
30-01-2007, 13:35
what do you think of this (http://www.monthoftaste.info/) one? its probably my favourite of the ones i've designed cos its pretty yet functional :) (imho)

however i totally agree with you about flash sites :mad:

crappy! the calender is not really displayed anything like correctly: its iframe(?) is FAR too small, the content-table is too small, the text-background is not set (yes, there are people, who use a color-scheme with non-white window-background)
Underdownia
30-01-2007, 13:39
I'll allow for pretty much any design for a webpage except those ones with adverts which start playing sound and fill a large area of scheme if you accidentally move your mouse over them. More and more sites are doing this, and it strengthens Baby Satan.
Pure Metal
30-01-2007, 13:47
crappy! the calender is not really displayed anything like correctly: its iframe(?) is FAR too small, the content-table is too small, the text-background is not set (yes, there are people, who use a color-scheme with non-white window-background)

do me a favour and post a screenshot

:(
Compulsive Depression
30-01-2007, 13:50
what do you think of this (http://www.monthoftaste.info/) one? its probably my favourite of the ones i've designed cos its pretty yet functional :) (imho)

however i totally agree with you about flash sites :mad:

It's not bad, not bloated or anything. It'd be useful to be able to see things based on region rather than date.
The only complaint I can really level is it's very tall and narrow - it seems fixed at about seven hundred pixels wide (and most of the info is in a tight column), but it goes on for pages; you can't widen it to fit it all on the screen at once. You also have quite a big empty space on the first page; on a short display (1024x768, say) you might not notice that there's anything below the gap.

One small point that you might find useful in future: It expects the background colour to be white, but doesn't set it; it looks a bit odd for those of us who use a different colour (I tend to use a pale blue or green by default, as too much white for too long hurts my eyes).

I hope this doesn't sound like I'm bashing it, just trying to offer a bit of constructive criticism!
Pure Metal
30-01-2007, 14:03
It's not bad, not bloated or anything. It'd be useful to be able to see things based on region rather than date.
The only complaint I can really level is it's very tall and narrow - it seems fixed at about seven hundred pixels wide (and most of the info is in a tight column), but it goes on for pages; you can't widen it to fit it all on the screen at once. You also have quite a big empty space on the first page; on a short display (1024x768, say) you might not notice that there's anything below the gap.

One small point that you might find useful in future: It expects the background colour to be white, but doesn't set it; it looks a bit odd for those of us who use a different colour (I tend to use a pale blue or green by default, as too much white for too long hurts my eyes).

I hope this doesn't sound like I'm bashing it, just trying to offer a bit of constructive criticism!

thanks, i appreciate that :)

i do need to get better at working with different screen resolutions. i tend to stick with a fixed width as designing for variable width tends to throw up more problems than it fixes :-S

as for the height, the content is set in an iframe, so the index around it only has to be loaded once, which i like. but that makes the height of the iframe an issue. usually i use a SSI to dynamically resize the iframe in IE, but in other browsers it don't work.

because my web design has mostly been problem/task orientated ("we need a site to do x or y"), i've never learned to do it 'properly' :(


/hijack
Rejistania
30-01-2007, 14:13
do me a favour and post a screenshot

:(
here, posted a part, which is showing both problems...
http://666kb.com/i/alen9eigkuwxilv2d.png
Pure Metal
30-01-2007, 14:31
here, posted a part, which is showing both problems...
http://666kb.com/i/alen9eigkuwxilv2d.png

ok. mostly problems to do with text size

http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/3769/motsf2.th.jpg (http://img214.imageshack.us/my.php?image=motsf2.jpg)

^^ how it looks for me in Opera


i hate browser incompatibilites
Rejistania
30-01-2007, 14:47
still, the main frame is FAR too small for my taste!

In case you're interested: I use Konqueror.
Smunkeeville
30-01-2007, 15:26
poorly designed websites annoy me to no end, unfortunately I end up looking at a lot of them because they do have information I need. I could show you some really ugly ones.

In the end PM is right, tell me what I want to know, don't send me through a maze of links to find it, and always link back to home (in case I google and end up coming in on the middle of your string of crappy websites)

oh, and quit putting links on the page that link to "in construction" if it's not ready yet don't freaking link to it.......how hard is that?!