This week in class we delved into UX. UX stands for user experience, and it is of the utmost importance when building a website. Put simply a well designed website keeps the user experience foremost in order to create a website that is effective and offers a satisfying experience. Considering most websites would like the visitors to do something, such as buy a product or make a donation, the website must be designed in such a way as to make this process extremely simple and obvious. UI stands for user interface and deals with all the elements on the page a user interacts with such as buttons, sliders, or menus. Again these should be as obvious and simple as possible. Part of making a website easy to use is a clear organization of the content. IA, or information architecture, deals with organizing the content in such a way as to enhance the usability of the site.
So we have some buzzwords, but how do these apply to creating a website, you may ask. Well, there are some basic human tendencies that are important to keep in mind. First, people don’t usually read websites they SCAN. This means writing should be limited to the essentials. You don’t want to scare people away from your site! Important information should be placed first so if a user stops reading s/he will get the most crucial message.
You also may have noticed that people like to do things the way they know even if there is a better way out there. So make your SITE EASY TO USE in order to keep people coming back. Nobody likes to waste time trying to figure out how to do something on a website; they get frustrated and opt for another site, one that will be a joy to use and make the user feel competent all at once. Be that site. If you want the user to buy products have easy links to find the items they are looking for and a shopping cart on every page to keep track of everything the user wants to buy. Links should look clickable, buttons should be prominent, icons self-explanatory. Have a search bar and a home button in case the user gets lost on your site.
This is all great information and I had though about some of these concepts previous to learning them in class. I am sure everyone has their pet peeves regarding websites. Has anyone experienced pages with pop-ups asking you if you really want to leave the page or ads with videos that start playing – usually at a most inappropriate places? And it is always frustrating as a user not to be able to find the information you are looking for. But how can the designer know what a user will want from the site? This brings me to another concept we discussed which I really hadn’t considered before, and this is user personas. These are just all the different types of user you can think of that may want to use your site and what they may want to get from it.
In addition, it is wise to create user flow chart, site map and a wireframe. The flow chart will detail how a user goes about performing the important actions. The site map shows the hierarchy of the pages on the internet, while the wireframe will display the layout of all the elements on each page. Each aids the designer in thinking about how best to make the site simple and effective.