Designing for Usability

What does it mean to design (or develop) a website?

We do have to know how to use code, software and graphics applications, but ultimately, we have to understand the purpose behind the website, and more importantly, who is going to use it?

If we are making the website for ourselves, and no one else is going to see it, then we can make it as wild and interesting as possible. Of course, we made it, we know where all of the links go, and how clever we were when designing it.

But most of the time, we are making websites for others to use. And those others have a variety of needs.

If the user can’t navigate the site, they will get frustrated, and perhaps go away and go to another site. Then you won’t get the conversion, and the mission of the website has failed. No matter what the website was for. That user had a sub-par User Experience, and that’s what we’re trying to prevent as web developers.

An optimal User Experience (UX)is the goal (or should be) for every website developer, and one way to achieve this is to make a site that is highly usable, by incorporating a well-designed User Interface (UI).

To repeat: optimal usability combines a positive user experience and one method to ensure that is to incorporate an excellent user interface.

Here’s a nice article about usability by the hosting company A2.

Take Senior Planet. Senior Planet used to look like this. The big bold font usage, and contrasty look was perfect for aging eyes, but as more and more seniors started using iPads, they would see this (figure 1).

My company was hired to redesign the site to work on mobile devices, cell phones and more importantly, tablets such as iPads. They wanted to keep the same look, however.