Understanding Web Design Overview Big ideas Goals & Audience Theme Navigation Technical Overview Conceptual Web Design Tables vs. CSS Jon Kolko Savannah College of Art & Design IDUS315 - Human Computer Interaction | 1 IDUS315 - Human Computer Interaction | 2 Big Ideas Goals & Audience Designing for the web is different than designing other types of software. Consider designing an automotive parts website & an interaction design portfolio website. Why? What’s the difference? Automotive Interaction Parts Design Portfolio • Infinite complexity What is the purpose of your ? ? • No boundaries website? • No beginning – no ending Who is your intended ? ? audience? • Who is the user? How can you be sure? What is their domain ? ? knowledge? What kind of ? ? vocabulary do they use? How advanced are their ? ? computer skills? What are their ? ? goals? IDUS315 - Human Computer Interaction | 3 IDUS315 - Human Computer Interaction | 4 Theme Theme ashford.com alloy.com Who is the intended audience? Who is the intended audience? How can you tell? How can you tell? What is the goal of the website? What is the goal of the website? What is the goal of the user? What is the goal of the user? IDUS315 - Human Computer Interaction | 5 IDUS315 - Human Computer Interaction | 6 1 Theme Theme marthastewart.com Theme is the emotional quality produced by the content, layout, colors and style of a site. Who is the intended audience? How can you tell? Which theme is most successful? What is the goal of the website? What makes it What is the goal of the user? successful? Which is least successful? Why? IDUS315 - Human Computer Interaction | 7 IDUS315 - Human Computer Interaction | 8 Navigation Navigation : Common Elements Rules of thumb: People have no clue where they are on a website People have no clue how they got where they are on a website People generally “wander around” on the web, totally confused about what’s going on Why? What is it about the world wide web that is so disorienting for people? IDUS315 - Human Computer Interaction | 9 IDUS315 - Human Computer Interaction | 10 Navigation : Common Elements Navigation : Common Elements IDUS315 - Human Computer Interaction | 11 IDUS315 - Human Computer Interaction | 12 2 Navigation : Site Maps Navigation : Site Maps 4 steps to a successful site map: Stuff Stuff and Stuff and things and things Stuff things and things Stuff 1: Brainstorm the content that the site will and Stuff things and Stuff Stuff things and Stuff and have, using sticky notes. Write one piece of things and things Stuff things and content on each sticky note; put the notes things on the wall. 2: Organize the sticky notes into logical header header header header groupings, based on the content of the Stuff Stuff Stuff Stuff notes (not on preconceived notions of what and and and and things things things things the groupings should be) Stuff Stuff Stuff and and and things things Stuff things and things Stuff and 3: Within a grouping, stack-rank the content things based on priority. Merge content that is very similar. header header header header 4: Create a visual tree to show how content item 1 item 1 item 4 item 4 item 2 item 5 item 5 relates to the groupings. item 3 item 6 IDUS315 - Human Computer Interaction | 13 IDUS315 - Human Computer Interaction | 14 Navigation : Site Maps : Let’s Do One Navigation : Takeaways Create a site map for an online, multi-disciplinary design firm. Assume your users are lost What types of content will live on the site? Provide a map, but assume they won’t use it What section names make sense for this content? Give your users as many navigation cues as possible Select a navigation scheme that relates to your intended audience IDUS315 - Human Computer Interaction | 15 IDUS315 - Human Computer Interaction | 16 Technical Overview Typical Web Design Process Routers & Servers. $$ Scattered all around the world. $$ You, at home, Packets of data, Internet Service Provider. looking at porn. being sent over the SCAD, America Online, MSN, A single designer phone line, cable, AT&T .. cellular, etc. Executives make a does lots of good A team of software strategic decision research, process, developers spend and assign a new drawing, and many months project prototyping and creates several implementing the photoshop screens screens The designer is sad because the end result looks nothing like what was intended, but (More people Root Server. 13 of looking at porn) there is no them in the world. time to fix it. IDUS315 - Human Computer Interaction | 17 IDUS315 - Human Computer Interaction | 18 3 Typical Web Design Process Agents & Browsers: What They Do How can we fix this? What is markup? To understand markup, we need to understand agents. The “backend” of a website is the What is an agent? stuff that makes it work. The “frontend” of a website is the Your web browser is an Agent. stuff that the user interacts with. Your cellphone is an Agent. Your tv can be an Agent. Our goal is to never let the software developers touch the frontend. An Agent is a program that accepts data from a webserver and attempts to display it. We do this by learning markup. All web pages are just data. Markup informs the agent about the data, enhancing it. IDUS315 - Human Computer Interaction | 19 IDUS315 - Human Computer Interaction | 20 Agents & Browsers: What Markup Looks Like Agents & Browsers: What Markup Looks Like If your code looks like this: It will print out like this: Markup: This is some data This is some data without without markup. It’s markup. It’s rather plain. • Always starts with a less then sign < rather plain. • Always ends with a greater than sign > • Always comes in pairs <p> </p> <strong> </strong> If your code looks like this: It will print out like this: Your agent can read various types of <H1>This is some data This is some data with <H1>This is some data markup. If it can’t read it, it ignores it. with markup. It’s markup. It’s really with markup. It’s <strong>really</strong> <strong>really</strong> great.</H1> great. great.</H1> The same data can then be shown on a webpage, a cell phone, and a television set, and the agent can format it to suit the display. IDUS315 - Human Computer Interaction | 21 IDUS315 - Human Computer Interaction | 22 Agents & Browsers: Making Markup Agents : Key Points Dreamweaver, Homesite, In theory: goLive, Pagemill and Designers write markup using a common set of guidelines Frontpage are software packages that write Browsers (agents) read that markup using a common set of guidelines markup for you. The user sees the same thing regardless of which browser they choose But they don’t always do a good job. Software developers are people that write markup for you. But they don’t always do a good job. Markup is becoming as ubiquitous as English. You need to know how to read it. IDUS315 - Human Computer Interaction | 23 IDUS315 - Human Computer Interaction | 24 4 Agents : Key Points Languages : Brief Overview Older browsers render markup in very, very different ways. < client servers > Newer browsers are much more flexible about how they display your markup. Runs a web browser Runs software called a Web (Internet Explorer, Server (Apache, IIS, etc) Internet Explorer, Netscape, WebTV, Konqueror, Mozilla, Opera, Mosaic, OmniWeb, Lynx, Voyager, iCab, iBrowse, Netscape, etc) NetCruiser . Developers write code in Java, Receives the data and PHP, Perl, etc. It is very, very, very hard to force even moderately markup; translates complicated designs to look the same in every browser. that into a visual representation (what Application Server compiles code Make an explicit decision about what browsers you intend you see on the and creates a document with to design for, based on: screen). data and markup. •Your audience • The complexity of your designs Web Server serves the data to • The purpose of your site the client upon request. IDUS315 - Human Computer Interaction | 25 IDUS315 - Human Computer Interaction | 26 Languages : Brief Overview Languages : Brief Overview Java looks like this: Perl looks like this: IDUS315 - Human Computer Interaction | 27 IDUS315 - Human Computer Interaction | 28 Languages : Brief Overview Languages : Takeaways Javascript looks like this: They are all similar They are scary, but not that scary If you want to learn them, it’s really not that hard, and I will be happy to teach you. The more technical things you know, the more you can do yourself. If you do it yourself, you know it will be right. IDUS315 - Human Computer Interaction | 29 IDUS315 - Human Computer Interaction | 30 5 Conceptual Web Design Conceptual Web Design All web pages are Up until very recently, content, function and broken into three layout were not separate. conceptual sections: Most web sites you currently use do not separate these items. • Content • Layout • Function The old method was the “table method”. The new method is the “css method”. Our goal is to keep these separate. We are going to learn the “css method”. Why? You need to understand the tradeoffs of the two methods. IDUS315 - Human Computer Interaction | 31 IDUS315 - Human Computer Interaction | 32 Tables vs. CSS Tables vs. CSS Tables Cascading Style Sheets [css] Cascading Style Sheets [css] + Can visualize any design you can - Can visualize moderately • You need to create much simpler layouts - Can visualize moderately make in Photoshop, regardless of complicated designs; complex complicated designs; complex complexity designs are very hard to create • Your layouts needs to be lenient and designs are very hard to create forgiving + Work the