The Dark Side of Graphic Design: a Source of Disturbance

* Images not understand or misleading: a major error committed some web designers is to rely on icons to suggest surfing to certain parts of the site. Indeed, the significance of the icons leaves wide room for individual interpretations, and therefore there is significant risk that many users do not associate with an image that the user had planned for it. This is particularly true when a site tries to replace the “de facto standard” of the user interface (such as lifts in the scroll bars) by its own GUI elements (often on sites in flash): the how the site becomes difficult for the user, or worse, leads to misinterpretation: nothing is worse for a visitor to believe that his click will cause an action, and another occurs . Similarly, a visitor does not click a link and be on a different page than he expected: a study by J. Spool has shown that such sites increased among users the feeling of loss of time.

Broadly speaking, it seems that both in terms of ease of perception, in terms of efficiency, the hierarchy of the best ways to create links is as follows:

1. blue underlined text links (perfectly standard – effectiveness depends on the quality of text)
2. text links highlighted in a different color text, rather than blue
3. buttons or text links are not underlined blue text
4. underlined text links of the same color as the text (quite disturbing)
5. rather than blue text links are not underlined (to avoid)
6. links icons fixed with a reminder text (ranking varies depending on the quality of the text)
7. Fixed links icons without text (to avoid)
8. links by gifs (forbidden)

Conclusion: how to include elements of visual design in your site.

As with every element of your web project, you need to be rigorous about the integration of Graphic Design elements in your website. For each of them, you must ask the following questions:

This choice helps chart he strongly:

* Identify the sender of the site?
* A professional site?
* Clarify the different areas of content and functional pages of the site?
* Provide sufficient content?
* Cleverly illustrate the content?

For each item, you should also ask if it is not disruptive:

* By loading time it requires,
* By eye strain caused,
* By the multiplication of signals

and you must determine if its meaning is understandable in the same way by anyone, and will not mislead the user.

You should remember every time solutions that maximize the benefits and reduce the disadvantages. If a graphic element does not receive any positive response frankly the first five questions, then consider it as a disturbance and banned it from your design. From experience, the bias of the most sober and simple (but not simplistic) that give the best results. Here are two examples in my view successful: grenouille.com, service-public.fr

And do not forget that once these choices, only a test user (cf.veblog, why and how to test your site) you will know whether they were relevant. An excellent design on paper can be bad for the user, even if you think you have put all the methodological advantages on your side. Finding the right compromise between visual appearance and effectiveness of the design may be a need several trials before reaching the ideal balance.

Article Part -2

By:- Custom Web Design Chicago