Usability, Architecture, and Mocking

Well, at least two thirds of this reading assignment was right up my alley! As a student directing their studies toward User Interface development, the Williams article on usability design and the Limeback article for mocking and prototyping (though granted, Williams touches on mocking a bit as well) really hit the nail on the head with my favorite aspects of web development.

I really enjoyed the section Limeback had regarding deciding your navigation layout. Sometimes I become so caught up in drawing prototypes or developing the content, that I forget to set the navigation structure in my mind to paper to ensure it's the most usable approach.The to-do list that Williams suggested of web tasks is also great. I definitely do a lot of design sketching and planning for web development in my mind, but reading these articles reminded and inspired me to remember the importance of really fleshing out those ideas on paper before just jumping excitedly at the code.

The Web Architecture article really threw me for a loop, and it's definitely one I'm going to be revisiting to review for a while. I had never really heard of URIs before this point, and the concepts the paper is conveying seem interesting....but I think it will take a while to sink in because it's so new to me. I feel like I understand the basic principle of what the URI is (every resource on the web can be directly accessed by linking to its specific location in the search/go bar...at least, that's the easiest way I can think of it), but I know this is a topic I'll be coming back to and trying to improve my understanding on. It was definitely interesting, new, and unexpected for me to say the least.

I found this website containing some great additional usability tips that go a little more into the design of the content rather than the layout itself. It's a little bit like the one we read previously in class for design principles, but adds a few more insights that are worth noting.

Another really great resource that it's taken me FOREVER to find because I have no idea where Google has tossed it is these Google HTML/CSS Tutorial Videos. Because the channel is no longer managed and Google Code Academy is for some reason not displaying the page anymore, you might have to dig a little for more of them, but they're absolutely great. They hit home with the ideas we've been discussing these past two weeks of creating a sound structure for the code, and explain the ways the HTML and CSS should be used to facilitate that. I watched a number of these during my summer internship, and they helped me reshape my thinking about web design.

"If you find an element of your interface requires instructions, then you need to redesign it." - Dan Rubin