Effective Web Design is Emotional Design
Web design encompasses a variety of disciplines and skills in the creation and management of websites. The various disciplines of web design include web design; web graphic design; website development, including website coding and user interface; content writing, including keyword analysis and copywriting; web server side design and server-side coding; and search engine marketing and promotion. While web design involves a wide range of technical skills, the most important skill to master is that of usability. A well designed and coded website can lead to increased sales and traffic, but if the site is unusable, then none of the money or the traffic will be spent.
Often web designers are required to undertake a problem solving process when designing a website. Problem solving is an essential part of any good web designer’s skills. This process lays the groundwork for the creation of a website, and involves thoroughly planning out the purpose, features, and functions of the new website. Web designers will often work with clients to define their specific needs before going through the problem solving process. Once a plan is in place, it is often easier to introduce changes and enhancements to the web design.
Web designers will also conduct a number of user research tasks during the web design process. User research helps to establish what type of users will be visiting the site, how they will be finding the site, how they will act once they are there, and what types of features they will find useful and desirable. For this reason, it is vital for web designers to understand user research methods, and use them to the best advantage. User research can range from browsing the web to using different programs and search engines to collecting different types of information.
Another area that web designers often need to undertake is user experience (UX) design. User experience includes everything that a user sees, feels, or experiences while using a website. User interaction design is used to ensure that a user experience is positive, and that users are satisfied with the overall performance of the site. Many web designers incorporate interaction design into web design as well, but sometimes separate these tasks into individual projects.
One of the more challenging aspects of web design is the creation of fonts. Fonts play a large role in determining how readable your website will be. In fact, the emotional design of the fonts you choose can have a large impact on a users overall impression of your website. For this reason, web designers will often spend hours choosing the right fonts. Many fonts will convey different feelings to different people, and web designers will use different fonts depending on their audience. Some common fonts used for web design include sans-serif, serif, and families like script, condensed, or script kerning.
When it comes to making a site user-friendly, color is also an important factor. Web designers need a good grasp of psychology to ensure that their websites are pleasant to use. Most colors used for web design are neutral; however, when it comes to emotions, a good web designer will go with bold colors if they feel they need to. However, when it comes to emotional design, a good web designer will make sure to blend in any bright colors with a soothing color tone.