What is design?
When I do a design work, I always trying to remember these words, “What is design?”. People always think that a good design is a heavily graphical content, especially for the clients. We think that if our website or other printed materials have a very awesome design then we have a good website or company profile. That’s why many designers has been pushed to show all their design skills.
In earlier year of my career, I couldn’t more agree with that. I always use as much as graphical elements for my website or my clients’. I feel that I’m a good designer. It will be awesome if we have a fully flash websites. We don’t care about our audience. Being an award-winning designers are our dream.
After I learn about XHTML and CSS, I start to discover the web usability and accessibility. Honestly, I’m interesting in the user-experience. How to put our audience or user at the first priority. How to make the user as comfort as we could. How to make our user come back over and over again.
That’s why, before we make the design, it’s the most important to us to define every aspect of the development process. Starting with define the user requirement, gather every information about the project, including who is the target audience, what is the purpose of this project, etc. That’s why I always do these steps before I made the design. Based on those information, we can achieve our goals and our expenses turn into investments.
It’s time to change our point of view. Never rely on great graphic interface. If we want a good ROI, either it’s a website or other marketing medium, think about our audience first, because design is how to communicate the message.
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you’ re right !
I was thinking design was the priority too before i learned about css, now i’m an accessibility defender ^^.
Users comfort must be the most important thing, design style isn’t as important but is a way to represent the site content and to show to your users your likes and maybe your skills :-)
Amen to that, brother ^^
I feel like an accessibility evangelist right now, educate my clients and other prospective clients about why we should put the user-experience in the top list. people in here still captured in the old paradigm: what they like, not what their user/audience like. i can’t agree more with you, design style is a way to represent the content and show what our likes and our skill.
anyway, thanks for dropped by :-)