While most of those good design elements are self-explanatory, what does it mean by not deviating from common placing of design elements? To put it simply, if your site design it too unique, it it might hamper a web user’s experience of your website. Nielsen (1999) agrees, stating that web users are always on other websites. Web users learn to navigate websites from other websites, so if a more or less standard template is used, then the more comfortable the web user is in navigating them. This agrees with the concept of schemata, whereby readers of a text interact and get meaning from a text through their past experience, beliefs, values, opinions as well as the context of situation when they are interacting with the text (Putnis & Petelin 1996 p. 238). Stray too far from the schemata that a web user and you may risk alienating your audience.
Blogs are pretty standardised in design. Most blogs look like other blogs…if you use the preset templates. This blog itself uses one of the pre-set Blogger templates. Simple top banner, blog content on the left, navigation on the right. I did not change it from the preset template that I had chosen. This suits me and what I’m using this blog for.
However, others have been very adventurous with their blog design. Have a gander at Blogskins.com, where numerous fancy blog designs thrive there. While many are pretty and beautiful, they do not necessarily conform to the standards outlined by VanFossen earlier. One example from that site is that’s her ; upside down by topsy turvy.
Preview of that’s her ; upside down (Source: Blogskins.com)
The screen-cap I’ve chosen for the blog design is the main page that is on the preview for the blog skin. Note that it basically has no information, there is a “Her” placeholder text in the middle to show where the title of the blog goes. This means only the title of the blog is available at the beginning of going to a blog using this design. The navigation buttons are along the top. This is a common element of design, however, there is no explanatory text of where the links go, just pictures with no text. This is one of the big mistakes that Nielsen (2005) highlights, that the links are not descriptive of where they go. This design deviates heavily from standard blog design, where the contents are not immediately available, only the title is seen on the homepage, you have to click on the vague links to get around, and who knows where the archives have gone. Yes, it is pretty, but this design sacrifices a lot of usability for it.
However, at the time of posting, the design has a pretty high score, 4.60 out of 5.00. This means that a number of the site visitors liked the design enough to rate it highly, which is also reflected by the 482 people that listed it as a favourite design. Does this mean that the blog design rules listed earlier are useless, as people like the design? Not necessarily. We do not know what factors are being considered when web users are rating the blog design, so we do not know whether they are taking usability into account when rating. Even if they were basing it on usability, this does not make the design problems found in the blog design disappear or are irrelevant, it just means that the users that think the design is usable found no problems with it, which is not the same thing.
I am all for fancy and pretty. However, I also advocate functionality. That is why the right side of this blog features many easy to understand text links. Of course, that’s my own prerogative. Whether you choose to follow what has been outlined is up to your own discretion, and you should choose a blog template that fits your purposes. Particularly if your blog is being marked.
Putnis, P & Petelin, R 1996, Professional communication: principles and applications, Prentice Hall, Sydeney
Nielsen, J 1999, Top ten mistakes in web design, useit.com, viewed 8 June 2008, <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9605.html>
Nielsen, J 2005, Top ten web design mistakes of 2005, useit.com, viewed 8 June 2008, <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/designmistakes.html>
VanFossen, L 2007, Blogging tips book: The best blog design elements, Lorelle on Wordpress, viewed 9 June 2008, <http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2007/06/06/blogging-tips-book-best-blog-design-elements/>
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