How your design feels (edUI2009)
Today, I had the pleasure of listening to Dan Rubin, author of several books about user interface design and CSS (cascading style sheets). Hope you find this summary useful.
- Design exists to support the delivery of content. (Susan: “Repeat and believe: design exists to support the delivery of content.”)
- Patterns make it easier to do the more important stuff (I know where my car keys are because I put them in the same place every day.) Best way to see the importance of patterns in web design is to see a site without them (Dan’s opinion).
- Using relative text sizes creates an instant hierarchy and creates balance (smaller text is less important). (Susan: “That’s why page titles, teasers, and heading 6s feels right in the W&M design.”)
- we can read faster if we eliminate all upper-case letters; it’s easier to scan and makes web reading even faster. we know web users have a short attention span. (susan: “let’s do it!”)
- Use grids (vertical grids, columns, are typical) in even or odd numbers.
My Twitter feed has more – @susantevans
- Susan T. Evans