by David Lee King on May 16, 2013
I’ve been doing a lot of reading on responsive design lately (because my library is headed towards that), and that made me think. When designing websites, we tend to design for devices. That’s what responsive design is all about – it’s coding in such a way that your website “responds” appropriately to different screen sizes (i.e., desktops, tablets, smartphones). We design for things: for a desktop; for a screen; for a browser; for a tablet or smartphone.
Nothing wrong with that – a modern website has to work on all those devices, right?
But I also think we need to shift our focus a bit, to where it really counts. And that focus is not on the screen.
We need to design for people.
What’s that change?
We still need to do all the usual stuff – i.e., use great css, work on making our websites responsive, think about screensizes, readability, contrasting colors, etc.
But let’s also focus on people:
- Put content first.
- Ask customers what content they want … and then create that content!
- Answer the why, what, and who questions.
- Provide next steps and calls to action on ALL content.
- Make asking questions and getting responses easy and seamless.
- This works for our physical and our digital branches.
- What else? Add to my list in the comments…
Simply put – put people first.
pic by Nicola Albertini
Tagged as:
design,
face2face,
humanize,
humans,
people,
people first,
Web Design
by David Lee King on April 12, 2013
Here’s one of my presentations for Computers in Libraries 2013 – great conference! I’m posting this one separately, since there’s some good stuff here. I poked around in Google, and condensed a lot of “web design predictions” posts into this handy list of 15 web design trends for 2013. Which ones are you thinking about?
- Content first
- Design simplicity
- UX Centered Design
- App style interfaces
- Responsive design
- No skeuomorphism
- coding languages (as in HTML/CSS/Javascript)
- Fixed header bars
- Large photo backgrounds
- CSS Transparency
- Social media badges
- Infinite scrolling
- Homepage feature tours
- Sliding panels
- Parallax design
Enjoy! I’ll post links to my other CIL 2013 presentations in another post.
Tagged as:
cil2013,
cildc,
design,
web deisgn trends,
Web Design,
websites
by David Lee King on February 6, 2013
I just read Your 4 Mobile Options by Paul Boag. Good stuff! In the article, Paul suggests that there are basically four options when it comes to having a mobile presence (taken from Paul’s article – you should go read the whole thing!):
- Responsive website: A responsive website is one that adapts to whatever device it is being viewed on. Whether that is a desktop computer, tablet or mobile device, the same website will display the same content using a visual design most suited to that device.
- Native application: Native apps are applications that run physically on the mobile device and are coded specifically for the operating system of that device. These are the applications you typically find in either the Google Play or iOS App Store.
- Web application: A web application shares characteristics with both a native application and a responsive website. As with a responsive website a web application is built using HTML, CSS and Javascript and lives entirely online.
- Hybrid application: A hybrid application is essentially a native application built with HTML, CSS and Javascript. By building it with web technology it is quicker to develop and easier to publish to multiple platforms (e.g. iOS or Android). The downsides are that performance tends not to be as good and they lack the design style of each platform.
Which one of these options should libraries use? Paul says this as a general rule of thumb: “A good starting point is to ask whether users are primarily completing a task or accessing information.”
I’d agree – that’s a good starting point. I’d go a bit farther, and say this – figure out what your mobile users are doing, and how they do it, and more importantly – WHAT they want to do. Then figure out the right flavor of mobile accessibility that best meets those needs. Also, figure out what you can do. For example, when my library was still on Horizon for our library catalog, we chose Boopsie because they could create a mobile version of our catalog (something our vendor hadn’t yet figured out). So we went with an app-driven mobile catalog.
We’re on Polaris now, and it comes with a web-based catalog that works great. Will we stay with our Boopsie app? Not necessarily, since the mobile version of Polaris works well. More on that later this year!
One other thing – if you haven’t yet started to think about the mobile web … why not? Pick something – anything – and start. Your smartphone-loving public is waiting!
Pic of Paul Boag from boagworld.com
Tagged as:
design,
development,
mobile,
responsive design,
web,
websites
by David Lee King on April 30, 2012
I’ve been working on some large writing projects this year, and in the process, came across some great lists of web design trends for 2012 that I thought I’d share. Let me know if you are incorporating any of these into your websites!
Web design trends for 2012
Web Design Trends in 2012
- Responsive Web Design
- Fixed-Position Navigation
- Circles
- Big Vector Art
- Multi-Column Menus
- jQuery/CSS3/HTML5 Animation
- Ribbons & Banner Graphics
- Custom Font Faces
- Infographics
- Focus on Simplicity
15 Web Design Trends to Watch Out For in 2012
- Responsive Interface Design
- Touchscreen Mobile Devices
- Tons of Freebies!
- HTML5 & CSS3 Standards
- Ribbons and Banners
- Premium WordPress Themes
- Online Magazines
- Easy Drop Shadows
- Dynamic Typography
- Image Gallery Slideshows
- Modal Popup Boxes
- Inspirational Lists
- Generated Image Thumbnails
- Oversized Icons
- Exaggerated Hyperlinks
Web Design Trends for 2012
- Oversized Logos/Headers
- Sketch/Hand-drawn Design
- Slab Typefaces
- Typography
- One Page Layouts
- Huge Images
- Change of Perspective
- Interactive/Intuitive Design
- Modal Boxes
- Minimalism
- Oversized Footer
- Retro
- Intro Boxes
- Magazine Layouts
Top Website Design Trends for 2012
- HTML5, CSS3 and JQUERY
- Mobile Compatibility and Responsive Layouts
- Typographic Layouts
- The Grid
- Large Background Images
- Perceived Affordance and Metaphoric Design
- Social Media Integration
- Illustration
- Single Page Websites
- Parallax
- Elegant Modal Boxes
15 Top Web Design and Development Trends for 2012
- Progressive enhancement
- Responsive design
- Flash will survive
- Native support for plug-in features
- Appification takes hold
- Web app fragmentation
- Mobile gets bigger
- A device explosion
- Respect beyond aesthetics
- social battles heat up
- Growth of the two-screen model
- Distributed workforces
- Stronger customer service
- Better value, not lower prices
- Pushing the boundaries
The State of Web Design Trends: 2012 Annual Edition
- Responsive Web Design
- Grid Systems
- Typography
- Technology Pushing Art
- Scrolling, Vertical Narratives
- Like it’s 1983
- Modular Interfaces
So – get busy and start designing like it’s 2012!
image by Mike Licht
Tagged as:
2012,
design,
trends,
Web Design,
website design
by David Lee King on August 22, 2009
When you walk into a dark room and want to see, what do you do? Simple – you just flip on the light switch. Do you think about how it works? Does it confuse you? Do you stop to marvel at the beauty of the light switch hardware?
How many people ponder the intricacies of electricity or the skills of the electrician?
Probably none of the above … you just want some light, so you flip the switch without even thinking about it. It “just works” – letting you get on with whatever it was you were going to do.
How about bathrooms? When you’re in a restaurant and need to visit the bathroom … ? Do you wonder at the amazing wayfinding expert who came up with the clever directional signage? Do you thank the plumbers, the engineers, and the architects who helped create the bathroom? Again, I’m guessing not.
In fact, if you DO have to stop and puzzle out the bathroom or the lightswitch, the designers failed. Those things should be so easy to use that you don’t have to stop what you’re doing to figure them out. The goal is to keep you going (no pun intended), not stop you in your tracks.
Your website needs to be that simple – start designing digital experiences that don’t get in your customer’s way!
pics by Martin Cathrae & Olivander
Tagged as:
design,
digital experience,
Usability
