Principles and Standards of Web Design
Prior to this class the concept of web design seemed like an abstract notion that I generally believed I fully comprehended. Along with the other concepts like, web development, sketching & prototyping, user experience design, and the many more that I have developed a better understanding of through this course. Through some past knowledge and experiences of the topic web design, I unconsciously shaped a preconceived understanding of many of the topics and subtopics that we became familiar with. I can honestly say, many of the concepts that I thought I had a complete understanding of, proved to be much more complicated and meaningful. Taking my knowledge of web design to new depths has cultivated a greater level for appreciation for the process of web design and both web designers and web developers alike.
Design vs. Development
My first major learning breakthrough with this course began with the popular topic of web design vs. web development. Specifically, what the difference, what roles do designers and developers play, and even what kinds of tools or software are used by each type of creators. Even further, I realized the difference between web design and front-end development. While the the specific tasks carried out for both roles may vary depending on preferences and desired skills, however, the overall framework for both of these crucial aspects of web development are fairly streamline and distinct. Also, through reading about building trust with our audience and the different digital behavior of users, I developed a new perspective when viewing some of my most visited and even new websites. I have began to break down different aspects about a website and critically think about the layout and certain design aspects. Changing the way I now view websites has dramatically increased my ideas and concepts for websites that I plan on constructing in the future.
The main concepts of web design that quickly accelerated my understanding of website foundations were the coding processes of HTML & CSS. Specifically in HTML, the foundational basic tags and the discovery of semantic elements allowed me to understand HTML as essentially a tool for marking up a website’s structural content and constructing the initial layout. With the constant discovery of new HTML tags, my level of familiarity with this markup language is constantly being tested and pushed. Along with my learning of HTML, CSS provided a multitude of possibilities and options to design and style a given website. This very open ended arena of creativity seemed daunting in the beginning stages of initial adoption, however, as I learn new design strategies and understand the stylizing more in depth, I believe my abilities in CSS in unison with HTML will fuse together to complementarity build progressively higher and higher quality websites.
Sketching & Prototyping
One of the most overlooked and yet most meaning in the creative initial processes of designing a website was the sketching and prototyping phases of design. Looking back, I viewed sketching as a non-essential and mostly an introductory exercise of how to visualize a website and turn that vision into basic image. However, after using sketching in a few projects, especially assignment 15, I really value sketching and now view it as a must in the design process. Along with sketching, my view on prototyping has also changed significantly. I now realize how important prototyping is to the process of designing anything from a website, application, and other digital content. One of the major takeaways from learning about sketching and prototyping is how important it is to solidify and continue challenging your fundamental skills. Also, in theory the concepts of sketching and prototyping seem simple; that has also taught me that even the most basic practices in web design can also be extremely powerful. Lastly, one more major aspect of web design that I never put too much though into was images on the web. In the past, I viewed images as just another element of a website and nothing more. Discovering how much variety in the different kinds of images to the pixels, sizes, percentages, and even how compression plays a vital role in images in the web was a very interesting and highly practical learning topic. Learning about images and the web has changed the way I view images and definitely enriched my knowledge of web design even more.
User Experience Design
As I stated earlier, many of my preconceived notions about several of the topics and subtopics lacked depth of knowledge and experience with these topics. This was very evident with User Experience Design. UX is a massively important part of any design for improving several aspects of user satisfaction for any product. I found the articles about usability and designing the web with individuals who have disabilities in mind extremely interesting because in the past I had never viewed a website or an element of a website thought about how someone with a disability would interact and use this website. Also, reading about the Nielsen heuristics provided a very calculated approach to viewing a website and how functional it is for all users despite and disabilities. With these heuristics, I can view any website and make highly intelligent assessments of the website’s overall usability and proper function.
In addition to the extremely insightful articles about website accessibility, the articles that breakdown ux, design, and even go into the roles within the field of user experience provided a wealth of highly informative insight into the ux arena. Specifically, showing how user experience plays an extremely vital role in the areas of design, tech, business, and how all these areas intersect with user experience at the core. Also, dissecting user experience and design into two separate concepts really helped me wrap my head around the fact that they are different concepts, but complete each extremely well to produce very well designed products that result in high user satisfaction. Finally, the article that shows the multitude of roles in a given user experience design team, really portrayed just how much more complex and immersive user experience really is.
Through the lectures, articles, discussions, projects, and weekly group conferences, I developed new ways of viewing and overall how I interact with websites. I recently found myself out of curiousity viewing one of my most visited sites in the chrome developer tools to see the HTML and CSS that was used for that specific website. This growing curiosity will provide the constant learning and discovering within this field to grow from my current beginner stages to an extremely efficient web designer/developer.