Designing thoughts
First, I don’t think we will ever reach a point where reading on the computer is as comfortable as reading something written on paper, no matter how good the color, font, etc. get. With that in mind, this is a completely different medium than print. The way it is used is different; the way people read web sites is completely different. Should we really be modeling web sites off design in print? I am just not sure that it makes complete sense to attempt to transfer design of one medium to another. Of course, maybe this is the best idea we have right now, since the internet and websites are so new, and it is hard to come up with a completely new design or style.
Websites started out looking garish, and like the “Ten reasons to learn and use web standards” blog entry says, you want to look professional and move on from that type of design. Last year I received an email announcement about an internship, with a link included for more information. I clicked on the link, which then took me to a site that was the least professional looking site I think I could find in existence today. The worst part was that it was supposed to be an internship for a government agency. The site used every bold, bright color available, making it difficult to look at or take seriously. I obviously want to avoid making a page that would have that effect on someone, and will take the advice that Cohen and Rosenzweig offer, as boring as grays may sound. (As an aside, I looked into the internship more, and the contact numbers listed, and I think it was fake. It asked for all information about you, including ssn, to be submitted online, without security, and the phone numbers, according to 411.com, were cell phone numbers, not office and fax numbers.)
The section of Digital History about accessibility was very interesting to me. It brought up legal issues I had never considered before, and has prompted me to take the accessibility prompt that pops up in Dreamweaver more seriously. I never thought about the need for accessibility online, it always seemed like something relegated to the real-world, not the virtual world of the internet. It makes sense that we should do this for people, but it isn’t necessarily something you think of if you don’t need it yourself. I hope to one day work for the government in some capacity, and it will be very important to pay attention to sections 504 and 508 of the Rehabilitation Act Amendments.
March 20th, 2006 at 5:32 pm
That’s really interesting about the fake internship. Funny that simple design structure could tip you off that it was possibly a scam. I wonder if other scam sites have the same format…. bright colors to attract attention, hoping that other people won’t be smart enough to look into it. It brings up a ton of questions to about legitimacy and the web. What will assure the audience that our sites are legit? Is it enough to make it tasteful? Clearly, we need good information but how does anyone really know that the information is dependable?
March 21st, 2006 at 4:01 pm
I agree that reading on the computer will never be as comfortable as reading a book–at least in our lifetime. While I think there are some aspects of book design that are just as ueful in web design (margins, high contrast between text and background, etc.), perhaps we should stop comparing the experience of reading on the computer with that of reading a book, and instead admit that reading on the computer is a different kind of experience. Some of the aspects of web design that Cohen and Rosenzweig, particularly the practice of “chunking” text, might provide a way to make reading on the computer an enjoyable experience in its own right.