Content is king, design work

If content is at the top of the food chain, why do we spend a lot of time talking about better designs? Every day, we are debating, experimenting, and discussing topics like aesthetics, empowerment and layout, but rarely talk about content. However, we have to admit that the current content is king, but that does not mean that the design has depreciated.

The user experience of life and death by the user on the site's emotional depth of decision, which seems quite reasonable. But it's not. From a design standpoint, our mission is to maximize the value of each visitor, whether they love or hate the content. The role of the user experience Designer is not just to make everyone feel warm and comfortable. A rich network experience should include emotions such as happiness, humor, dissatisfaction, sadness, anger, and insight. A well-designed website can make our emotions come back to the source and empathize with them. User experience designers should know why and how to use the principles and techniques they have learned to support the site's valuable content.

Evaluate user Experience Design

Investing in user experience design as an amplifier of premium content is not an easy process. In many industries, as long as the product can meet a certain demand and work well. Many of us don't care about the feeling of a pen or a computer monitor, as long as it's available. This view is reflected in many places on the web, because customers and project managers are not aware of the value of the user experience.

The site is a much more complex product than the ink pen, which requires a different measure of customer satisfaction. It is only a product that satisfies demand and works properly, and is not worthy of a highly interactive and penetrating medium. As designers, our task is sometimes to convince others of the value of getting users involved in the content of the site. Fortunately, we have examples where some companies do a good user experience and their success is enough to illustrate their value.

As a geek who likes to assemble computers, I think the new egg net is a good representative of a company dedicated to delivering a good user experience. In the early days, the new egg net became a frequent place for it people to buy computer components, with reasonable prices and lightning-fast delivery speeds. It's a good thing to do, but it's even more surprising that users can share the advantages and disadvantages of the new egg online.

This feature is particularly helpful for new users because they are more likely to believe in peer experience and advice. As a result, the new egg net builds a huge team of geeks who produce content and provide invaluable experience to the user. If your device or component is running a problem or is not working, go to the new egg net to see if someone has already shared the cause of the failure and even given a solution.

The new Egg network has rightly used this opportunity to highlight its most valuable content through design. Perhaps its design is not the most ingenious and modern, but the new egg NET provides an excellent experience, and thus has a high degree of user satisfaction. Peer rankings and comments have become the driving force of the new Egg web design, and can be seen on almost every page. As the design has been optimized for many years, product reviews appear on almost every page, and the comment system has evolved in depth and functionality. Through a round of nationwide advertising competitions and new designs, the new egg net will be a higher level. All of this occurs because the new egg net knows what is going to help improve the user experience and to strengthen it, and which forms should be extended to each project.

Finding out what makes the site stand out is just the first step in solving the problem. What we really need to do is to apply the knowledge of color theory, lines, shapes, and visual communication to the content, not just to decorate it or to highlight it, but to achieve a purpose and deliver a message. Just as the main function of the petals is to attract insect pollination, good design can make the site grow. Excellent design, not only to use in the content, but also to use in all aspects of the layout.

Design: Tasty Sandwiches

Basic on each website, good user experience design can be divided into three parts: initial knowledge, consumption and feedback. The content is the core, like the meat in the sandwiches, and the sides are sandwiched between the various projects that are carefully designed.

User first

The network world pays attention to the first impression, the good person all excels in this way. The user's impression of a website has been formed within seconds of its loading. That is, the way colors, layouts, and headings are presented is evaluated before the content is approved. Users browse the content first until they find something interesting and they will read it carefully. Whatever the specific content is, it is the design that determines what the user sees first and how it moves between the pages.

While looking for interesting information, users will also determine the credibility of the site. Although we have been taught not to judge a book by its cover, all are affected by the following three factors: our familiarity, our peers ' perceptions, and our estimates of the time and money spent on their construction.

Group buying website Living Social will use this to many aspects of its design. By selecting a location and entering an email, you can find a few carefully designed places to resonate with your users as you browse the homepage.

The most shocking possibility is the background picture. In every city where living social provides services, there is a background map that users can think of. When I found out that the place in the picture, not far away, I passed every day, I suddenly feel that this site a lot of cordial.

Living Social also pays attention to detail. From the title to the content, the entire page has a clear hierarchy; The purchase button is the most visible element; Other interactive elements are also within reach. The counter tells you the number of buyers and the rest of the time, but also makes you feel the pressure is not small.

After all that can be done, Living Social also completes the initial part of the design investment, which is of great significance to the content. Living Social and other group buying sites are based on high traffic, meaning that their survival depends on the user's first impression. The impression aspect of the design is to highlight the content. Living Social tailored a design for what it wants to highlight, rather than thrust it into a design concept. But this is far from the end.

Content consumption

Content consumption

Even in the process of consuming recommended content, design still plays a significant role. Typography controls the user's reading experience. The same picture and video, different aesthetic design, give a person's feeling will be greatly different. If your content is generated primarily by users, then the ability to interact with users, users, and Web sites depends on the interface you design.

Content more than anything else to lay the tone of a website. This is a professional content, with the Comic Sans font, such a tragedy we have seen too much. fonts, sizes, and colors play an unimaginable role in how the site presents the key content to impress the user, and they guide the user to the final piece of the sandwich. Following these guidelines, your framework for the entire site gives users clues as to how they should react emotionally.

We see that this design approach is being developed in the Web site that designers are designing for their peers. Personal information, design-related applications, web and conference-type websites are built on the basis of the tone. Of course, it's counterproductive to not be overly intent. There are exceptions, and it is desirable to use the most advanced HTML and CSS techniques to present content in a conference project on HTML and CSS.

Like many technology and design conference sites, the combine website in Bloomington, Indiana, is full of design sense. In addition to the use of sophisticated HTML and CSS to arouse the professional resonance, but also deliberately used to reflect the small town of Bloomington illustrations. It shows the location of the meeting and is easy for users to identify.

User Feedback

This is perhaps the highest level of cognitive design behavior in the site, and its value is enormous. How users react to content is critical to the success of the site. Nowadays, it's not enough to just spread content. There are thousands of information on the Web to choose from. To be successful, a site must use forwarding, linking, and even making public opinion on social networks. If the site wants to stand out, users will need to share our content with friends, or contribute their ideas, feedback and content.

The YouTube example is highly operational in terms of user empathy to construct the experience. YouTube created the concept of viral video, but to achieve the desired effect, the site must be designed according to the content. As we all know, there are countless videos uploaded to YouTube every day, but the degree of transmission of each video depends on how much the user is motivated and how easy it is to spread the experience.

Normal people can see these designs on YouTube pages: from the lack of recommended videos and related videos, to the sharing of video to social networking sites or to the options embedded in other sites. Of course, these designs are not things foul goods. Again, content is the most important, and the design elements that resonate with the user are designed to share or discover more content.

In a world driven by likes, labels, tweets, sharing and voting, the follow-up of Web content is an important factor in its success or failure. The user who reads the content and then leaves does not produce any value in this respect. For this reason, in many blogs we will see these situations: intentionally or unintentionally placed related content, after reading a video, there will be recommended video, ubiquitous sharing and save the button. All of these actions have been carefully designed. The color, shape, size, and position of the link and button determine whether the user can see it at a glance. But not everyone will play the role we set for it.

Designed for Experience

Although design plays an important role in the user's perception and empathy for content, there is still controversy that the user experience cannot be designed. Yes, only the user can decide whether to buy the design. If the purpose of the design is to convert every user into a customer, failure is inevitable. However, we can design this experience by being close to the target audience, conveying information with clear tones and clear goals, and finally encouraging users to give feedback.

We want to design an experience for those who are buying it. Now that users are willing to come to your site, they are probably already interested in the content, which means they are willing to incorporate into your design experience. If a user is trespassing, bringing them to the feedback phase of the experience is more of an additional reward than a goal.

There are various ways to push users to participate in content online. If you have recently visited a blog site xheight, you may find that they are trying to prioritize content. In addition to minimalist design, designers have used other methods to highlight content. If the mouse is idle for a while, the other elements are hidden and the page is left with what you are looking at. (Translator note: Only chrome browsers are supported.) ）

While the debate over whether the law is a way to improve the reading experience or distraction is still ongoing, the goal is clearly to highlight what the designer wants to spread.

The Livestrong site is obviously using another technique. When a user finishes reading an article, clicks on the browser's address bar, or somewhere else wants to leave, a window full of related content pops up. Interestingly, this window is only placed in the Bowen, but not misplaced. Designers know that, like such a rich content and loud brand of the site, the article most of the traffic is from the search engine. Their goal is not to let visitors back to Google to search for other content, but to continue to participate in the content.

Editor's note: It seems that the LIVESTRONG website has canceled this function since we published this article.

Life is endless, design is more than

Nowadays, many companies have realized that good design and a solid user experience are of great value. User experience design is to design a roadmap for users, encourage some behavior, and build a user library that participates in content.

The key to driving this engagement is to ensure that we have the right design values, that design is not a simple template, theme or color, but a support system for critical content. We can use design to make a website unique and easier to remember. There are three ways we can achieve this: to make a good impression, to promote accessibility and meaningful content consumption, and to encourage users to participate in content. These three parts are an opportunity to deliver a user experience.

Other resources

The visual design of excitation and defense

Analyze our emotional responses to various aesthetic elements in depth.

Affective design: Why do we like/hate everyday objects?

Donald Norman's book focuses on the emotional impact of product design.

Pleasing and minimalist in UI design

This paper analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of minimalist design and beautification design, and teaches you how to find a balance in the project.

Author Introduction

Jason Gross

Jason Gross is a freelance designer, focused on the design of a simple and experience friendly website. He recently lived in Indiana, and you can contact him through his Twitter account, @jasonagross, or his personal website.

Source: http://article.yeeyan.org/view/136960/228662