Designing Websites for User Experience

[web-designer]

User Experience in Website Design fully encompasses traditional Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) website design and extends it by addressing all aspects of a website as perceived by users. HCI website design addresses the interaction between a human and a website. In addition, User Experience Website Design addresses the user's initial awareness, discovery, ordering, fulfillment, support, upgrades, and end-of-life activities. HCI website design constitutes a major portion of the activities performed by a User Experience Website Design team, so the following paragraphs provide an overview of HCI website design.

Human-Computer Interaction, or HCI, is the study, planning, and design of what happens when you and a website interact. As its name implies, HCI consists of three parts: you the user, the website (webserver) itself, and the ways you interact with each other.

The Human Perspective

HCI website design teams must consider these factors in regard to users: what users expect and need, what physical abilities and limitations they may have, how their perceptual systems work, and what they find attractive and enjoyable when they use websites.

When humans interact with websites, they bring to the encounter a lifetime of experience. Even the first time we touch a website, expectations learned in other areas of life can affect how we think a website should work. For instance, because of our experience with other machines, we expect websites to provide immediate feedback when we press the on button. Elevators, automobiles, and other machines provide immediate auditory and visual cues that machine is responding, and so we expect the same from websites. Without this feedback, we wonder if the website is functioning properly.

Since users have various preferences, work environments, and physical capabilities, website designers must also provide alternative ways for different users to communicate with their websites. Information can be exchanged by voice, keyboard, mouse, or other means.

Understanding how people's sensory systems (sight, hearing, touch) relay information is essential to designing a good product. For example, display layouts should accommodate the fact that people can be distracted by the smallest movement in the outer (peripheral) part of their visual fields, so only urgent conditions should be indicated by moving or blinking visuals.

And of course people like website designs that hold their attention. Designers must decide how to make products attractive without distracting users from their tasks.

A Website's Persona

In the natural world, most actions have obvious consequences. When you pick up your clothes from the cleaners', you see the clothes on their hangers, hear the rustling sound of their plastic sheaths, and feel their weight as you carry them. All these experiences serve as feedback confirming that you successfully completed your errand.

A website carries on its business in a much less obvious way. The information a webserver contains and the operations it performs are represented inside the website in a form that we can't directly observe - binary digits encoded as two levels of electrical charge. What a Website displays or presents does not arise naturally from what it is doing inside. Any feedback the user might need must be explicitly planned out and programmed.

To make matters worse, Webservers don't even "think" as we do. They can remember amazingly large sets of instructions, but they have to be told every little thing in simple terms of "if this happens, do that" or "as long as this keeps happening, do that." And things we humans do almost automatically, such as jumping to conclusions or neglecting a trivial matter to take care of something more important, require even more extensive instructions to the website (webserver).

Interaction

So, given all these differences between humans and Webservers, how are we supposed to get along with them and get our work done? In other words, how can we interact with them effectively?

In order to come up with a Website that's easy for people to use, website designers apply what they know about humans and Web technologies, and consult with potential users of their websites throughout the website design process. When they know what their users want and need the websites to do, they collaborate with website developers and programmers. Website developers and programmers know how to write instructions in languages that Web browsers can understand. They also know what webservers are capable of doing. The website designers and programmers look for a reasonable balance between what can be programmed (written as HTML and other Web instructions) within the necessary schedule and budget, and what would be ideal for the users. They have users try out any changes to make sure that the product is still easy, efficient, and pleasant to use.

As you see, website designers and programmers play important roles in HCI, but it's the website users who have the final say about the quality of the interactions.

User Experience Website Design

While User Experience Website Design includes the human-website interface, it is about designing the total user experience, which consists of all aspects of a product or service as perceived by website users.