How to Recognize Good and Bad Design Designing for New Media
Dec 24, 2015
New Media Design
VocabularyIn her excerpt, Robin
Williams writes about how to recognize (and avoid)
bad web design.
New Media Design
VocabularyIn her excerpt, Robin
Williams writes about how to recognize (and avoid)
bad web design.
She identifies four principles: Contrast,
Repetition, Alignment, and Proximity.
New Media Design
VocabularyAs a memory aid, a better way to remember these
four principles, might be:
New Media Design
VocabularyAs a memory aid, a better way to remember these
four principles, might be:
CRAP.
New Media Design
VocabularyContrast is, of course, “contrasting elements”
that are designed to help “guide your eyes around
the page, create a hierarchy of information, and enable you to skim
through the vast array of information and pick out
what you need.”
New Media Design
VocabularyRepetition aims to “repeat certain elements that tie all
the disparate parts together.” Each page in a web site should look like it
belongs to the same website, company,
concept.
New Media Design
VocabularyAlignment, simply
enough, means that “items on the page are lined up
with each other.”
New Media Design
VocabularyProximity refers to “the relationships that items develop when they are close together, in close
proximity.”
New Media Design
VocabularyWilliams uses lots of
examples to demonstrate when these principles are
working well and are working not so well.
New Media Design
VocabularyWilliams uses lots of
examples to demonstrate when these principles are
working well and are working not so well.
It’s always a good place to start by observing when
things go horribly, horribly wrong.
New Media Design
VocabularyLet’s start off with this outrageous example.
Check this out.
In terms of the four principles, what isn’t
working here?
New Media Design
VocabularyUnfortunately (or
fortunately) often web design issues are a bit
more subtle.
Let’s look at the Twitter home page today.
New Media Design
VocabularyNow, we’re going to
continue putting these terms and skills into
practice by seeking out other websites that do (or don’t) use these principles
successfully.
New Media Design
VocabularyI would like each group to
seek out a series of different websites—sites
that demonstrate the successful use of a design principle and a less-than-successful use of a design
principle.
New Media Design
VocabularySince Williams identifies four key principles, you’ll
need to find eight examples.
I’d like each group find examples of sites that both
successfully and unsuccessfully employ Williams’ four design
principles: alignment, proximity, repetition,
contrast
New Media Design
VocabularyMore importantly, I’m going
to ask you to articulate WHY these websites are (or
are not) successful.
The better your are able to write about what
constitutes good or bad design, the better you’ll be able to apply that to your own work, especially for
Project Two.
New Media Design
VocabularyI’d like to you then write a
few sentences for each example, explaining why your group thought that
this was successful or not.
New Media Design
VocabularyWhen your group has found, discussed and
written about your websites, I’d like each group to share your
findings with the class.