Why interface design?
November 20th, 2005, By Ovi Demetrian Jr
I’ve always worked with more than one area involved in designing/developing a website. My main focus, however, has always been on the initial design of the website. It’s what I consider the most crutial part of the process.
The design defines how the product or service is viewed on an emotional level. The visual has to be both appealing and usable. Finding just the right balance is the key and sets the tone for the site’s overall message.
One way to break down a well-designed website would be thusly:
- Visual Appeal – Attractive look and feel.
- Simple Interaction – Intuitive interface.
- Organized Layout – Straight-forward information.
The Visual Appeal is always an important part of any kind of advertisement and the same idea applies to a website. The Simple Interaction is the most crutial part of making the overall design of the interface work. And an Organized Layout of the content defines the rest of the site and makes the message easier to understand.
The more I realized how important this aspect of a website was, the more limited my method of developing the underlying structure seemed. That was until about two years ago when I discovered CSS and XHTML. At first, the approach looked like an obvious way to setup a web page. By that point I had already been standardizing my own methods for keeping my HTML code clean and organized, but having ‘web standards’ was about time.
The part that really got me excited was the seperation of design and content and how much control it gave to someone like me. An approach to development that made sense to me the same way the interface design aspect did.
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Tags: advertising, css, design, interaction, web standards
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