• Posts Tagged ‘web’

    30 Jan

    Creativity in Web Design

    Posted by: Ralph Tags: ,
    in Articles | No Comments »

    Creativity is probably a misleading word, if I were to be accurate I would title this post ‘Being Clever and Witty in Web Design’ but that doesn’t make a very good title now does it?

    When I say creativity I mean being funny. It doesn’t have to be laugh out loud funny, a smirk is just enough. It makes your website more likely to stick in the mind which is a good thing, I’m sure you would agree.

    Most web design is pretty boring (this blog included). Its just a load of boxes with a few shiny graphics and this makes for a boring experience. If you have something that makes your user smile, that surprises them and ultimately connects with them on a human level then they’re going to enjoy your website more.

    Obviously you can’t be amusing everywhere. Banking websites, for example, need to look official, people want to feel safe putting money into them and its not going to be reassuring if you have a formal bank making wise cracks on their website. You might also have a hard time convincing your clients that this is a good way to go. With this in mind its probably best to play with this on your own site first.

    So, what do you do? Where do you start? It might be as simple as having an image change when you refresh the page (click Mr Wooters at the top-left there and you will see what I mean). It doesn’t have to be a big change, it could simply be playing with a characters expression or making something move when you mouse over it. It doesn’t really matter what it is as long as when the user does it they give a little smirk.

    This wouldn’t be a complete post without a few images, I’ll let you work out how to take this mentality and apply it to the web.

    Ralph.

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    10 Jan

    Touch Screen Devices and the Web.

    Posted by: Ralph Tags: , ,
    in Articles | No Comments »

    Among the many thoughts that have floated through my brain this week there was one that was the tinniest bit interesting. How will the web handle touch screen devices?

    If you are up on your tech events – after all, who isn’t – you will know that CES was this week. A week where blogs likeEngadget work themselves silly to cover all the new electronic devices we will see over the next year or two. Among the wave of e-Readers and weird looking mice, touch screen devices seem to have been a rather large trend this year.

    While you can browse the web perfectly fine in your iPhone or Blackberry its not exactly a great experience. Some websites are better than others and include CSS that is  targeted at phones which is ok but you don’t get any of the benefits a touch screen gives you. What I’m talking about is gestures. I think it would be pretty damn cool to flick through a slideshow using a gesture rather than poking at a button on the screen.

    Of course the addition of gestures isn’t going to make a massive difference but its the little things that make the experience better. There will be other changes, making click areas bigger and not storing important information in hover states come to mind.

    So how will gestures come to the web? The iPhone has a touch API and there have been experiments with Flash and Javascript but nothing that is really mainstream yet.

    Ralph.