Web Design

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 11 may 2016

Online education is continuously evolving and over the years have gone through many iterations. In recent years, MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) have been trying to change and tranform online education with active involvement of traditional education providers and their expanded reach to global learners. Although, inspite of their popularity with millions of users, providers are still struggling for success as the learner drop-out rates are high. Instructional designers, faculty members and education providers are experimenting with improvements in learning design environments to provide better value to learners. Prof. Curt Bonk of Indiana University is the author of the book, 'The World is Open', and conducts research in the field of self-directed open learning environments and online motivation. According to him, 'The MOOC is just one idea of many that are causing us to reflect on changes in higher education today. There are a lot of derivatives of MOOCs, and there will continue to be more. Community-building, sharing and peer support are three key aspects of success in building new types of course experiences.' In a video chat hosted by consultant and futurist Bryan Alexander, Prof. Bonk shares his own online learning experiences, his research and explores trends in the design of open courses. He says that in future, the majority of learning is going to be informal and self-directed. But government is still emphasizing on traditional education and less attention is paid to adult learning and informal learning. To better design learning environments it is important to understand self-directed learners and their experiences. According to him, 'Professional development could be what changes the discussion around open education and MOOCs. This could be for doctors, dentists, lawyers and physical therapists. They could take modules in the summer at their own leisure as part of a cohort that does community-building. That is the game changer.' He emphasises on a feedback process, collaborative approach, continous design improvements and redesign, if the need be, for better online course development. Commenting on faculty and their use of technology, he says, 'Instead of focusing on the technologies themselves, focus on what the faculty members want to do to foster feedback, goal setting, relevance or autonomy.' On using videos in learning, he says, 'We are moving from an age of Wikipedia to Videopedia.' Read on...

Campus Technology: The Keys to Designing Successful Open Course Experiences
Author: David Raths

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 28 apr 2016

As web technologies continue to evolve along with user expectations, businesses have to keep pace with them for successful digital marketing and search engine optimization (SEO). User experience optimization (UXO) and user experience design (UXD) are at the core of online marketing and SEO strategies. UXO keeps customers hooked to the website and UXD is the process that is used to create the website with customers in mind. Optimal UXD utilizes best usability principles to provide best user interface by keeping customer interactions at the core of design. Dan Makoski, VP of Design for CapitalOne and most currently Chief Design Officer at Garage Partners, says, 'Experiences are personal moments felt by people, something that can't be owned by designers; however, we can design for it. The experience of the people we design for is what determines the success of the products, services and relationships that we create.' Don Dodds, Managing Partner and Chief Strategist at M16 Marketing, suggests a list of 38 tips for website design, content creation and online marketing strategies for better user experience. Here are some selections from the list - (1) Top of the page is critical for user attention. (2) Make sure content is visible and readable for everyone including colorblind users. (3) Provide symmetry in object placement. (4) Place objects in logical order for better user flow. (5) Keep site navigation panel consistent. (6) Design for ease of use and easy comprehension. (7) For better loading use content before images. (8) Keep pages as short as possible for ease of content utilization by user. (9) For long pages use sticky menu that moves with the scrolling. (10) Make sure your pages load quickly, preferably in couple of seconds. (11) Make it easy for users to undo an action or back out of a navigation option. (12) For mobile content, do not require a double-click to activate an element. (13) Pay attention to contrast when designing your mobile content. (14) Link anchor text should tell the user exactly where the link will take them. (15) Use fonts that are easy to read. (16) Most website visitors scan your content first before reading it. Use elements like bold text, headlines etc to attract attention to the content that is most meaningful to users. (17) Avoid pop-ups, banners and slideshows as much as possible. (18) Always be truthful regarding what you can offer. Avoid false advertising and misleading information. (19) Use icons that are simply designed and easy to understand. (20) Establish a brand image and include it everywhere you've established a presence online. Read on...

Huffington Post: 38 Design Tips for Creating an Amazing User Experience
Author: Don Dodds

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 26 jul 2015

Effective collaboration between private and public entities, by pooling their strengths and resources, can bring better and efficient outcomes of public and civic services for the citizens. An example of such a collaborative approach is the Small Business Portal that was launched in 2014 in San Francisco. For the project, Mayor's Office, Department of Technology, Office of Economic and Workforce Development, Office of Small Business and Tomorrow Parter's (a design firm), came together to create a one-stop portal for people that provides information for starting, managing and expanding a company. The design firm utilized human-centered design principles to shape the innovation strategy and build a website that simplified and streamlined the process of starting a business. They took an 'inside out' and 'outside in' approach to understanding the challenges. Extensive research and focus groups were used and this finally led to establishing six main attributes for building a successful interface. According to Gaby Brink, founder and chief designer of Tomorrow Partners, 'They were filters for us to evaluate our design and establish clear guidelines for the various people developing content to ensure that we had a consistent voice.' The six key principles of digital design that represent their approach are - (1) Do the Right Thing: Sets the overall tone of the project. Sets clear expectations and make the process transparent. Assures the caring attitude. (2) Curate Content: Maintains the quality and availability of the right information to the diverse set of audience. (3) Make It Accessible: Responsive design and customization utilized to provide access to website on multiple devices and platforms. (4) Treat Constituents as Consumers: Users are to be treated as consumers, instead of taxpayers or voters, that civic authorities serve. (5) Dole Out Delight: Make the experience of the users pain-free, simple and as enjoyable as possible with a human approach. Shouldn't be a typical government portal. (6) Increase Trust: Make sure that the users feel that the government is working for them. Assuring that interacting with government is not a difficult and doubtful process. Jane Gong, Program Director of the Department of Technology, says 'From a user perspective, most of the time government thinks about putting together a website, it's copying from municipal code and pasting in some clip art. For the first time we did UX/UI research. This needs to be the approach of all government websites. It's time for government to take a step back and say we're here to serve people and make sure that we're accessible and responsive.' Read on...

Fast Company: 6 Principles Of Digital Design For Civic Innovation
Author: Diana Budds

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 16 jul 2015

Design is an important aspect of web and mobile strategy of businesses. It is necessary that users of the website and apps have ease of access to information regarding products and services, and can effectively interact and engage with it. Usability and other aspects of design become all the more critical when the website is a social platform like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter etc. Continuous improvement and transformation of design on these platforms is driven both by internal and external necessities. The redesigns are generally due to the evolving and dynamic nature of technologies and the changing behavior of users and needs of the customers. According to Amy Parnell, Director of User Experience at LinkedIn, 'Our design principles focus on creating experiences that are approachable, streamlined, personalized and guided. We want to ensure the experience feels efficient and productive, helping our members to achieve their goals.' According to her, redesign at LinkedIn is based on data collected from multiple sources - market research, user research, site metrics and analytics and help center feedback. Internal feedback from employees is critical before the public launch. External feedback from customers is obtained to further refine or modify the design based on user requirements. Valuable content is needed to engage and retain customers. Read on...

Adweek: How Important is Design? Q&A with LinkedIn's Amy Parnell
Author: Justin Lafferty

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 23 mar 2015

Web design is a constantly evolving field. New concepts, technologies and designs give rise to new trends, that some time stay and catch on user's attention while at other times they just fizzle out in popularity. But there are also designs that stay too long in use due their popularity at one point of time but in actuality they have already lost their shine. Repetition of old ideas and trends just because of being comfortable and familiar with them may lead to loss of customers and business. Ilya Pozin, CEO of Pluto TV and Ciplex, explains why the following five web design trends have become obsolete and should be replaced by new concepts - (1) Mobile versions of websites are not cool anymore. Innovative designers are using responsive design that allows the layout to adjust based on the contextual experience of users. It provides fully integrated experience irrespective of the width of the user's device. (2) Text-heavy websites are unable to hold user attention. More designs now have precise text integrated with visuals like images and videos alongwith interactive functionality. (3) SEO copywriting, which was large part of web design and promotion at one time, is now should be replaced by developing keyword informed and user-centric content. (4) Pay-per-click advertising is losing its popularity as new technology tools are available that utilize new mediums and new targeting capablities to reach precise customer segments. Some new concepts are contextual advertising, online video and highly targeted product ads. (5) Designs below 200 pixels per inch (ppi) is getting obsolete as new devices are adopting retina displays. If the design resolution is low it gives poor quality on these displays. Moreover most web design is now more simplified with flat user interface and avoids use of gradients and shadows that provided three-dimensional look. Read on...

Forbes: Let It Go - Say Farewell To These 5 Web Design Trends
Author: Ilya Pozin

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 29 may 2014

In today's digital environment, online presence is a required component of the overall strategy of businesses, governments, nonprofits and individuals, to reach their audience and consumers. Websites are an important tool that showcase the various aspects of the organizations and assist them to connect and interact with their customers. For small businesses, with their limited budgets, it becomes very critical to optimize their online strategy and use a good combination of design and technology in the most efficient way. There are three prevalent methods to build websites - (1) Created and coded by software developers (future alterations are expensive and require more labour hours) (2) Developed through the website building software (less labor intensive due to built-in streamlining tools) (3) 'Off the shelf' or 'Open Source' solution (least expensive if the correct choice of platform was made initially). The technologies and processes that are utilized to develop websites has a long-term impact and results in variable future expense depending on how the website was initially developed. The three important layers of website are - (1) Design layer (2) Content layer (3) Technology layer. Although design defines the visual and front-end aspects of the website and is quite important but back-end technology is a more critical element. So it is necessary to choose and implement website technology that is 'extensible' and evolves with business's requirements. This will help save costs when the website needs alterations and changes in future. Read on...

SmartCompany: Why your website technology is more critical than its design
Author: Craig Reardon

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 30 nov 2013

Responsive web design (RWD) provides optimal user experience to customers and visitors to the website irrespective of whether they are using a smartphone, tablet, desktop PC or an internet-enabled television. There are important considerations that have to be taken into account to fully utilize this approach of serving content. Author suggests - (1) Uniformity of content across all user access devices is a necessity. Keep a single URL for the website. Continuously update and upgrade the online content. Keep focus on the mobile content strategy due to the increasing number of mobile device users. (2) Evaluate the current content management system (CMS) and ensure that it is flexible to accomodate responsive layout. To transition to RWD, the CMS focus should be on workflow and the ability to extract uniform content across variety of platforms and that can be displayed into variety of form factors and templates. (3) Ensure collaborative approach to the design and development process keeping the mobile user in mind. Considering the large number of display resolutions of mobile devices it would be difficult to have a 'pixel perfect' design for each one of them. Hence designers have to prioritize and optimize content keeping the key platforms and primary target audience in mind. Provide adequate training to the designers and developers that are part of the RWD team. Read on...

iMedia Connection: 3 reasons you're not ready for responsive design
Author: Scott Kiekbusch

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 11 nov 2013

Customer participation in the design process is becoming an important part of the innovation and creative strategy. Though most organizations are still struggling to fully incorporate the concept of empathy and customer-centeredness in their business practices. In their book, 'Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All', authors David Kelly (Founder of IDEO and d.school at Stanford University) and Tom Kelly (Partner at IDEO and executive fellow at Haas School of UC-Berkeley) share their design experiences and how companies and organizations can build their creative competence. The excerpt from the book focuses on empathy (understanding what people need and incorporating them in products and services) and how over the years they have used anthropological field research at every stage of the design process to empathise with the end users. Authors suggest 'hybrid insights' an approach that integrates quantitative research into human-centered design. They cite a successful example of a bank that utilized these concepts to understand the needs and wants of the millennial generation (GenY) and created specific financial products for this target segment. Read on...

Slate: Why Designers Need Empathy - Designing better online banking for millennials
Author: David Kelley, Tom Kelley

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 15 aug 2013

Use of mobile devices is consistently increasing and in most markets it has already overtaken the sales of computers. This is affecting the internet access pattern also as most of these devices provide internet connectivity to the users. The challenge for individuals and organizations is to provide content and user experience that can adapt to all these different devices. Responsive Web Design (RWD) is one such technique that is applied to create adaptive websites that are user friendly on the myriad devices available in the market. It is based on HTML standards (CSS3), Search Engine Optimization (SEO) friendly and is compatible with most browsers. Although there are complexities associated with RWD implementation but currently it is the most popular solution and is driving the mobile development tools. There are also alternatives that can provide better experiences through customized user experience based on each device's strength. Read on...

VentureBeat: Why responsive design is driving mobile development tools
Author: Gabe Sumner

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 10 jun 2013

With internet and mobile technologies becoming part of consumer's life, the role websites play in their exploring, visualizing and buying products and services has become indispensable. Consumer's first point of interaction is generally a company's website and it substantially influences their decision making process while building a business relationship. Therefore businesses and individuals providing products, services and information online should give importance to their website's usability and design to be able to have low bounce and exit rates and high conversion rates and avoid abandonement and low sales. Article suggests 13 ways to achieve a better web design - (1) High resolution logo design and link it to homepage (2) Use intuitive navigation (3) More clarity and less visual clutter (4) Give users only sufficient information and provide optimum space (5) Use colors strategically (6) Use professional photographs (7) Use easy to read fonts keeping in mind various devices and browsers (8) Every page should be designed as a landing page with relevant and easy navigation (9) Make the best use of the fold (10) Use responsive design and make site usable across devices and platforms (11) Minimize use flash (12) Design appealing buttons (13) Test the design and optimize different elements. Read on...

CIO: 13 Simple Tips for Improving Your Web Design
Author: Jennifer Lonoff Schiff

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