Basic Design Principles

When designing a site, it is important to understand your objective.  Will this site be used to provide instructional materials, supplemental information, class resources or a combination thereof? The purpose of the site will drive its design.

Ideally, a user-centered design will cater to not only the goals of the site or page, but to the experiences and expectations of the user.  Based on your course, you should have a rough idea of what kind of audience (students) that will view your site. Will they view the site from home or class? Are they younger, technically oriented students or non-traditional students with novice computer skills?

The library’s website is an example of a user-centered design. If you notice, we use natural language such as “Find Books” and “Find Articles” instead of library catalog or database search. This natural language makes these sections intuitive for students.

Websites should be intuitive. After all, the content on the page is what should be learned, not how to access it.

One example of a well-designed website is Google.com. It contains only one field and a button. Even if the user has not used Google.com before, it can be easily understood on how to use it.

Resources

Krug, S. (2006). Don’t make me think 2nd ed.. Berkley, Ca.

City Tech call #: TK5105.888 .K78 2006