Meeting the Expectations

9th of May, 2006 (Last modified: 9th of May, 2006) Håvard WWW ,

Olav Frihagen Bjørkøy just wrote an article called «Information vs Design» where he talks about how users don't really pay much attention to the design of the site and that they usually find what they are looking for.

If this was indeed the case, then the post I wrote earlier this year called «Users and web page design» would be completely wrong -- which it may very well be. It would also mean that designers all over the world would be superfluous. However, it is my opinion that what matters to the users is not the design or the content of the site separately, but rather the interaction between the two. How appropriate is the design with respect to the content, that's what matters.

When a user sets out to find information on the internet, they have an expectation of what they will find. If the user is looking for a table of scientific data she will have a predefined expectation of what the table will look like and expect to find something similar to that. If what she find is too far off, chances are that she will return to the search engine whence she came and try to find a table that meets her expectations.

So let that be the first step in your design process. Decide if design or information is the most important part of the site.

-- Olav Frihagen Bjørkøy, http://blog.bjorkoy.com/2006/05/09/information-vs-design/

I would like to amend that to

Decide if the design agreed upon is appropriate to the content and message that the site wishes to convey.

This is why the design of a site is likely to change over time. In fact, this is why the design should change as the purpose and message of the site is likely to change.

2 Responses to “Meeting the Expectations”

  1. Olav May 9th, 2006 at 16:48

    Thanks for the reply - and I agree with you. You’ve actually told me what I was trying to say. Interaction is the key word.

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  2. Shanka Aug 25th, 2006 at 21:35

    I think visual representation is very important. For example if a site is about Classical Music and the colours of the pages and fonts are dark, like red and black and etc, etc., it doesn’t make any sense! You would normally expect a site like that to have light backgrounds and round (and big) fonts. So the first step is to get the visual things right. Secondly how the content is presented and how easily can the content be accessed? Here as you said there should be interaction between the design and the content. And linking between one page and another is very important. If a site is small you can link easily. But if a site is big then it is better to sub-categorise contents and present them with a centralised page.

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