Personalization, properly implemented, brings focus to your message and delivers an experience that is visitor-oriented, quick to inform, and relevant. Personalization, poorly implemented, complicates the user experience and orphans content. This article describes what separates the freshness from the noise.
Continue readingCategory: Design Principles
Designing for Limited Resources
When resources are limited, the design must be optimized to make the best use of all resources. To account for this complexity, it is important to have a clear understanding of both sides of the design equation—what you have to work with and what you are trying to build.
Continue readingWe Are All Connected: The Path from Architecture to Information Architecture
We’ve all seen blueprints–formally known as contract documents–which architects produce and builders use to construct. No one person knows all the details of the design; the end result is entirely a product of teamwork. But there is one axiom: architects do not build.
Continue readingNatural Selections: Colors Found in Nature and Interface Design
The web is awash with sterile design solutions. IBM, Dell, Microsoft, and countless others are virtually indistinguishable from each other. Though one might say this makes browsing easier by virtue of a standardized interface, in reality such sites create mundane experiences for their users and fail to make a positive connection with their audience.
Continue readingSemiotics: A Primer for Designers
Semiotics teaches us as designers that our work has no meaning outside the complex set of factors that define it. The deeper our understanding and awareness of these factors, the better our control over the success of the work products we create.
Continue reading