So I think it's about time we had some blog action. Since we're getting into our unit on using and designing Web sites, here are some guidelines from the business/usability perspective. Ellen Lupton gives us very solid and reliable graphic-design perspectives, but Jakob Nielsen's nuggets on the habits of Web users and the need for designers to take note are useful. Please look at as many of these points as you can; some are quite surprising and could be explored further.
Also, thanks to Brian McNely's students who put together a Google Doc with some notorious "Layout Sins." Most of these are hilarious and will make an interesting contrast to some example 213 student sites we'll look at soon.
Here are some questions we can work on both in this blog and in class discussion of design. Feel free to add your own questions if you want:
->What is essential to basic Web/screen design? (For example, does it begin with text, or with graphics?)
->How important should "usability" be to Web site creators? Do you want your "readers" to "use" your site, to "read it," or both? How much of a given page do you think the audience will seriously read? Does "using" sometimes mean skimming and linking?
->How "personalized" should design be? In your own context of literacy, what are the ways you express meaning on screen (or want to, if you haven't done much of it yet)?
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