Beautiful Disaster.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

In this post, i will discuss design issues for the online environment.

Blogs, like websites, are considered multimodal texts. Multimodal text, according to Walsh(2006, p. 104), are "texts that have more than one 'mode' ". This simply means the intended message is communicated with the use of different modes to the target audience. These modes may include static pictures, animated images or icons, music, sounds and even videos.

People visit blogs for countless reasons. Sometimes it is to gain information on something they are interested in, at times they could be just browsing for leisure. Either ways, it is important to create an online environment your reader is comfortable to stay in, and possibly make a returning visit.

{ Challenges of Online Environment }
There are 3 challenges according to Parker(1990, p.270).

Reading from the screen is harder than on print because the brightness and contrast level is higher on screen thus causes eye fatigue sooner than on print.
Reading from screen is "restricted to a horizontal view", thus the page is only revealed partially.
Since we cannot be sure if readers will print the page out, we must design our blog as we are designing for print so that readers can read with ease on screen, making it even easier when printed out.

{ Design Considerations }

Layout
The proper use of layouts and typographic principles will facilitate the reading process for readers.

The text box on this blog has been kept to a single column. The width of the text box has also been kept at a comfortable length. Parker(1990, p. 273) advises against multiplecolumn layout as up-and-down scrolling hinders with the flow of reading. Also having blank spaces on the left and right margins of page adds contrast to page. Readers will not have to make as many eye movements as when it is longer.

By using bullet points, information becomes easier to notice, especially within a blog with lots of words.

Typography
There should be contrast within text to increase legibility. Titles should have the most emphasis. Headings should be more prominent than subheadings (Parker, 1990). Example:

Title

Headlines

Subhead

Bodytext

Emphasis can be created by formatting text in bold, increasing the font size or using a different color. This way readers can scan headlines more quickly. The space between the lines serve as a guide for the eye when advancing from line to line. Increasing the leading of text will also facilitates reading.

Just like for print, do not use more than 2 different fonts within a single webpage. Avoid using all caps or scripts and decorative typefaces.

Graphics
Ensure images are compressed for web usage. You do not want your readers to wait too long for the page to load.

Quoting from Schriver (1997, p. 386), the issue should be 'how the communication is designed', and not so much which medium is used. With reference to a transmission model of communication(Shannon and Weaver, 1949), i conclude a well-designed website maximises the intended message to be transmitted to the reader with minimized noise.

4:53 PM