Understanding the F-Layout in Web Design. Today we're going to examine the "F Pattern Layout". Rather than trying to force the viewer's visual flow, the F-Layout gives in to the natural behaviors of most web surfers and it uses scientific studies to back it up. This tutorial will walk you through the principles of the F-Layout, why it works, and how you can create your own. Republished Tutorial Every few weeks, we revisit some of our reader's favorite posts from throughout the history of the site.
Attaining a better grasp of how different layouts can change user behavior is one of the central principles of creating an effective user experience. This post marks the second in a series where we’ll be examining the wide variety of layout paradigms that exist in the world of web design. Introducing the F-Layout The F-Layout relies upon various eyetracking studies for it's foundational concept. Let's take a peek at a heatmap using Webdesigntuts+ as the example: Allow me to walk you through the general behavior pattern: Not bad right? How I Structure Site Content. For the last few weeks we’ve been looking at information architecture. First with 8 principles of usability and then with some thoughts about setting up your site structure so search engines could find and understand your content.
When I started I promised I would offer my own process for setting up the content structure on a site. First here are those other posts about information architecture to get you caught up in case you missed any. Bear in mind that much of what follows is the process I use when I have complete control over the information on a site. That usually means it’s one of my own sites. When clients enter the picture they’ve often already done a good deal of the work in terms of deciding what content will be included on the site and how some of it needs to be organized. I’ll make suggestions, but in the end they get to decide. My Process When it’s entirely up to me what content will be included on a site and how that content will be organized I run through the same process. iPad: Scroll or Card? By Oliver Reichenstein How do you navigate content on the iPad? Scroll or flip? In 1987, the biggest neck beards in tech held a conference on the Future of Hypertext and there were two camps, “Card Sharks” and “Holy Scrollers”.
They had an epic battle over the following question: Should you scroll or flip pages on the screen? Who won the fight? Let’s first look at how the discussion went. As happens in every new field, a struggle is already taking place over which hypertext methods are the best, with creators defending their philosophies. In practice, it’s pretty clear who won the debate: 99% of all websites scroll and most desktop applications scroll when they display a lot of information.
Cards have a fixed-size presentation canvas. Source: Jakob Nielsen How do we know when to pick which model? When to Use the Scroll Model The scroll model allows you to easily separate content and design. When to use the Card Model When not to use the scroll model When not to use the card model. Should You Copy a Famous Site's Design? (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox) How to Create Useful FAQ Pages. Showcase of Interesting Navigation Designs - Smashing Magazine. Advertisement Everyone is always looking for interesting and effective ways to organize their website and allow users to move about and find things. But there’s a fine line between unexpected and unusable. Three points to consider in any navigation scheme are consistency, user expectations and contextual clues. If page is long and provides different levels of navigation, will users be able to find their way through the site and use proper navigation quickly? Forcing visitors to use certain keystrokes to navigate, rather than what they’re used to, might be novel, but is that effective if you have to explain instructions prominently on your home page?
Here are some examples for your reading pleasure. Made by Water A JavaScript-Powered Vertical Fun The large bold headings and modern color palette on Made by Water1 feel fresh and fun. 2Vertical navigation buttons with icons. The other problem with the navigation is the yellow “up” arrow that is displayed in the footer of the page. Made in Haus. Free Wireframing Kits, UI Design Kits, PDFs and Resources - Smashing Magazine. Advertisement To mock-up the user interface of a website, software or any other product, you’ll need some basic UI elements.
And this is where wireframing kits and UI design kits come in handy. When you want to create a low-fidelity prototype for your projects, you can use these kits to give your idea a certain shape, keeping it abstract and not losing yourself in details. In this post, we’ve prepared an overview of useful web and mobile user interface kits, handy PDFs and resources that you can use in your projects. We’ve carefully selected the most useful kits and resources to get you going in the early stages of a project. Free Mobile GUI PSD Android GUI PSD1 This Android GUI PSD is based on elements of the Android 1.5 GUI and was made to help the open-source community with its Android application mock-ups. RIM Blackberry PSD2 A complete PSD file with layer styles, this has 135 layers of Photoshop goodness.
Android Sketch Stencil Version 1.03 A Sketch-style Android OmniGraffle template. 11 Principles of Interaction Design explained. As well as matching peoples expectations through terminology, layout and interactions the way in which they are used should be consistent throughout the process and between related applications. By maintaining consistency users learn more quickly, this can be achieved by re-applying in one part of the application their prior experiences from another. An added bonus of keeping elements consistent is that you can then use inconsistency to indicate to users where things do not work the way they might expect. Breaking consistency is similar to knowing when to be unconventional as mentioned above. 3. Functional Minimalism “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.”
Albert Einstein The range of possible actions should be no more than is absolutely necessary. Avoid unnecessary features and functionsBreak complex tasks into manageable sub-tasksLimit functions rather than the user experience 4. Cognition is the scientific term for the “process of thought”. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Elastic lists. Background: Facet Browsing Facet browsers make different aspects of the underlying data accessible in parallel. Selecting one of the metadata values, and thus filtering the result set, restricts the available metadata values only to those occurring in the results. Consequently, the user is visually guided through an iterative process of query refinement and expansion, never encountering situations with zero results. Facet browsing applications impose no restrictions, in which order, or in which granularity filters are applied on a result set. Elastic Lists Elastic lists the navigation principle of facetted browsing, but enhance the information presentation with respect to the following features: Visualize weight proportions In many situations, it is informative to immediately see which are the predominant values and which cover only a minor part of the data set.
Emphasize characteristic values Animated transitions Sparklines. Pagination, a thing of the past? | James Mansfield. Traditional pagination Pagination, those 1 2 3 .. Next page links at the bottom of a page of search results or content. Are they dying a slow death? I think so and when you step back and think about it, it makes perfect sense. Why do we need it? If you scroll to the bottom of a page of content surely that’s indicating you want to see more?
Some good examples I’ve seen of this are on Forrst (screen recording below as it’s an invitation only site) and the new Google image search (go give it a try). The future of pagination - none! Note the back to top button top right in the screencast as well, nice touch! Homepage. Web Design Articles & Tutorials. InShare9 One of our goals at Web Design from Scratch is "Everyone's website works". We're working towards a world where all websites are pleasant, easy, and appealing to use. Ben Hunt has been sharing his particular insights into what makes websites work here since 2004. Announcing Ben’s New Course… Facebook Marketing Made EasyWith Ben's new course, you can get all the insights you need to start earning good fees simply by promoting clients' businesses on facebook!
Key Information Architecture Concepts Every SEO Should Know. The goal of effective information architecture (IA) is to make the products, services and information on your website easy to find. Sound familiar? This is same goal that an SEO professional has. But the skills of an information architect are quite different from the skills of an SEO.
Four fundamental skills that information architects have are: CategorizationOrganizationPrioritizationLabeling Let’s look at these skills individually, and how each of these relate to the field of search engine optimization. Categorization All sites need a primary hierarchal structure, or a primary taxonomy, which ultimately becomes primary navigation on the website. Without a primary hierarchical structure, orientation is difficult (remember, searchers orient every time they view a new web page). I like to call this primary hierarchical structure a canonical taxonomy, or the primary taxonomy. Most taxonomies are based on a controlled vocabulary, which is a carefully selected list of words and phrases.
John Graham-Cumming: The Elevator Button Problem. User interface design is hard. It's hard because people perceive apparently simple things very differently. For example, take a look at this interface to an elevator: From flickr Now imagine the following situation. You are on the third floor of this building and you wish to go to the tenth. The elevator is on the fifth floor and there's an indicator that tells you where it is. Most people probably say: "press up" since they want to go up. Much can be learnt about the design of user interfaces by considering this, apparently, simple interface. 1. So, it's quite natural that some people won't have learnt the user interface of an elevator. 2. Actually all you need to know is that the elevator system has responded to your request and an elevator is coming. 3. Typically, you have to tell the elevator your direction because an arriving elevator may already have people in it who have already instructed it to go to a certain floor.
Labels: pseudo-randomness. Usability is in the Details. Although usability practitioners love to show examples of big usability issues with websites and applications, the vast majority of usability issues are typically in the details. By forcing your application users or website visitors to be constantly bothered with more detailed usability issues, you eventually wear down their patience and force them to decide whether to continue being annoyed, or to try a different application or website.
So, you may be asking, “what’s a big usability issue versus a minor or more detailed usability issue?” Here’s my definition of a minor usability issue: Craig says:“A minor usability issue is an issue that is small enough to not cause task failure by itself, but is significant enough to cause additional cognitive load, errors, or an increase in time-on-task.” Examples of usability issues in the details The good news: detailed usability issues are typically easier to fix The details: Several common usability issues Conclusion: Usability is in the details Google+
Faceted Navigation: Layout and Display of Facets. This is part of a series of posts on faceted navigation design. Previous related posts include “Showing More Values Part 1” and “Part 2.” Also look out for posts written after this one. Overall, my interest in faceted navigation stems from the development and organization of workshop material on the subject. The intent is to address the primary questions designers face and identify possible solutions and directions. This post focuses on two aspects of the initial layout and display of facet filters in a results list. Where are the facets located? In terms of location, there are 5 approaches we can identify: This is perhaps the most common position and seems to work well for obvious reasons. Hoovers.com is an example of a left-hand layout for faceted navigation: Figure 1: Left-hand faceted navigation on Hoovers.com There is no guarantee that users will notice and interact with this arrangement, though.
Figure 2: The Flamenco faceted navigation interface with dual column values Location: Guidelines for Writing a Good About Page. The About page—just about every single website has one. The About page is where site users go to learn more about the site they’re on. If you want to convert visitors to users, capture opportunities to work with people, and give your regular users a deeper appreciation of what your site does, a well written About page is your ticket. The About Page’s Mission The About page is the section of a website where people go to find out about the website they’re on. Readers will visit this section for many reasons and with various questions they want answered, but your objective is the same: to inform them why they are on the site or why they should be on the site.
Who Reads About Pages? It’s helpful to define the audience you’re writing your About page for. Group 1: First Time Visitors This group may have been referred to your site by a friend, or may have stumbled upon one of your web pages through a search engine result or social media service. Group 2: Regular Users Who are you? Who are you? 10 Marketing Resources Every App Should Provide | Web.AppStorm. This is for all you web app developers out there. There are ten resources every app should make easily available to members of the press, including bloggers, via their website. These are resources for people interested in sharing information, reviews or thoughts about your web app — with a few being tremendously helpful for your users. If you offer a web app or service, you need to check this list to see what kind of marketing you’re missing.
Why? These are the top ten application and service resources, for both web and desktop, I find commonly missing. I would like to point out that this is coming from someone who evaluates 15-20 or more applications and services each week. 1. It might seem obvious, but a [relatively] high resolution logo is often hard to find when I’m reviewing an app or service. Logo The typical blogger almost certainly won’t contact you for a quality logo and will use something crappy, reflecting poorly on everyone. 2.
Icon 3. Descriptions 4. Video Demonstration 5. 6. 7. My five commandments for wireframing « Boagworld. iA » Designing for iPad: Reality Check. Designing for Social Interaction. Faceted Finding with Super-Powered Breadcrumbs. Log in or sign up? - Leah Culver's Blog. Components of a Great Website Footer. Creative Places to Ask for Feedback.