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Wednesday, April 30th, 2008

Design Ethos

My personal design ethos is focused on three aspects that I think are commonly overlooked. Simply put, websites should be easy to navigate, accessible to people using a wide variety of different browsers and configurations, and fast loading. All of these qualities are attainable without skimping on design quality.

Simplicity and Usability

Occam’s Razor can be effectively paraphrased to state that when faced with multiple solutions to the same problem the simpler solution will be the best. Albert Einstein said the same, and the KISS Principle (Keep it Simple, Stupid) has been used by designers working on projects as diverse as the US Apollo program in the 1960s to Disney animation. Yet this is still not a commonly accepted aspect of web design, with a seeming desire to showcase the web-designer rather than the content. I seek to focus any visitor’s attention on presenting the content of pages in an attractive but easy to read way, using modern graphic design techniques to develop navigable but good looking sites. To a large degree my other priorities, accessibility and speed, stem from an overall desire for simplicity of design and ease of use.

Accessibility

Websites are visited by people using a wide variety of computer set ups, all of which have the potential to impact their browsing experience. There are a wide variety of different browsers in use, with the main three being Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7 and Mozilla Firefox, all of which have their own little glitches or peculiarities. People browse from a PC or a Macintosh, and increasingly from mobile technologies such as phones and PDAs, and will have various set-ups in terms of screen resolution etc. The issue here is that a website might look exactly as intended on a particular computer set up (most probably the computer the site was designed on!) but break in some way under other conditions. I make significant efforts to develop websites that have wide browser compatibility and which design is not adversely impacted by alternative set ups.

I also focus on widening accessibility to those who might have difficulties accessing the web for non-technology related reasons. Most specifically I develop sites that are accessible to those with visual impairments or learning difficulties by ensuring as far as possible that my sites can be used in conjunction with screen reader software.

I work hard to adhere to the generally accepted standards of the World Wide Web Consortium to ensure accessible design, however I am also aware of the flaws in these guidelines and the need to take a more current view of accessibility and usability.

Speed

It’s important to be aware not only of the overall aesthetic value of a website but also how easy it is for visitors to load it in the first place. Speed is basically how quickly and easily the website will load. Leading web usability expert Jakob Nielsen’s research concludes that at least a third of visitors to a site will wait no more than 8-10 seconds for content to load before clicking away to an alternative. Large graphics files, extensive Flash animation and other complexities can make website files much larger, and although broadband download speeds might seem the norm it is worth noting that in the USA over 30% of users still access the internet via a dial-up connection, with the ratio far higher in less developed countries. Many websites seem to be designed with the expectation that visitors will have broadband, which can make the site difficult or impossible to access to a very significant proportion of the potential audience.

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