2.2 Great reminders about usage (a.k.a. channeling simplicity and usability)

In reading chapter two of Matthew MacDonald's Creating a Web Site: The Missing Manual, I got a good reminder about all the different elements that must combine to make up a successful site, ranging from basic pages and hyperlinks to fancy extras such as animations and decorative buttons. However, the most important point made here is perhaps the most difficult to follow: Keep it simple.

I am unsure why humans tend towards tackiness in design when given the chance. I have mentioned several times that I prefer the look of clean, open design and yet when I do a print layout I initially tend to add more items than necessary; I also get sucked into all the different possibilities when confronted with animation and multimedia capabilities. (We are almost all dazzled by eye candy.) A significant step in my design process then becomes paring down elements. I know I am not alone in this because I have read over and again in design literature that if something doesn't serve a purpose it probably functions as excess. MacDonald further points out that too much glitz isn't just poor quality from a graphic standpoint, but that a lot of extra nonfunctional elements can actually alienate your viewers. This is a powerful message.

Beyond the look of a website, simplicity can also equate to better functionality. MacDonald focuses on consistency as an important element in helping users to understand the logic of a website. This is so important and yet so easy to overlook when you get caught up in your own thought processes. Single navigation bars, similar headings and page structures are essential to adding unity to the design, as well as to helping users navigate with ease. The Internet has made information available at a click, and it has also made us more impatient and less willing to look around. If the structure doesn't immediately make sense many people will leave the site; all the carefully crafted contents in the world don't matter if nobody sticks around to view them. That said, simple and elegant navigation and design does not have to mean simplistic. A beautiful website that takes a few clicks to understand is fine, as long as the navigation is then consistent within the site.

In talking about simplicity, it is important to mention standardization as well. The W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) is a group dedicated to developing protocols and guidelines that help to create high quality standards for the web, mostly dealing with web technologies. This is important for ensuring widespread access to contents. For example, the W3C is constantly seeking to address discrepancies in how websites are displayed by various browsers. Of course, complying with certain standards on the designers end can only help make pages accessible and functional to the widest audience, which is an obvious goal of putting information on the Internet in the first place. The website for the W3C is a great resource for learning more about web standards and updates to those standards, all of which are clearly explained. For example, the recommendation on Cascading Style Sheets reads:

2.1.3.4 CSS – Cascading Style Sheets

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a mechanism for changing the appearance of HTML or XML elements, by assigning styles to element types, self-defined classes of elements or individual instances.

Stylesheets can be used to consistently define the appearance of an entire site. Following the introduction of CSS, the W3C recommended that layout-specific features in HTML be phased out and replaced by stylesheets, creating a simpler and more structural World Wide Web.

Even if you aren't as interested in keeping up with the latest recommendations, the W3C website is a great place to learn some of the language associated with web design. They are in the process of adding an extensive number of pages that define terms such as HTML or internationalization. Each page follows a template that offers a basic definition, examples, links to learn more about the topic, and information on the status of W3C activities related to the topic. This information is written in an accessible form and seeks to bring much-needed simplification to the techno-jargon associated with web design. This is an incredibly useful and extensive resource, and the tutorials offered through the W3C schools help solidify this terminology into practice. 

Check out the websites here:
http://www.w3.org/

http://www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp

So, the conclusion I've drawn here is that it is essential to remember to keep user needs and compatibility issues at the forefront of your design concerns and to remember to keep things simple and elegant so that your message can come through.