I have helped clients improve user experience through the implementation of the following:

  • Project Management and collaboration – The creation of wireframes, style tiles, mock-ups and prototypes
  • Content Strategy – A planned approach to the management of content across distribution media
  • Information Architecture Design – Designing how information is organized into the pages and views
  • Information Design – How the information is presented within a page/view
  • Interactivity Design – The design of interactivity within an application such as links, buttons, drop-down menus and online forms.
  • Usability & Accessibility Design – Testing how easy it is to use the website and redesigning to accommodate all audiences including users with special needs.

Project Management and collaboration

Defining a well-documented project flow is particularly important for larger projects and projects with high user interactivity. Production documents and tools I have used to communicate visual design, interactivity and flow include:

  • Wireframing – Sketches that illustrate the components relevant to each page/view as well as how the pages/views flow from one to another
  • Style Tiles – Collections of graphic elements that define the general look of components within a page/view
  • Mock-ups – Detailed graphic representations that illustrate how pages/views will look.
  • Prototypes – Fully or near-fully functioning versions of the application

Content Strategy

Thinking about and planning how a website will contribute to the marketing of an organization has become increasingly important. Integrating a website with social media and planning how content will be created, edited and maintained typically requires a strategic approach that might include the following:

  • Identify audience & goals
  • Identify existing content
    • Content Audit
  • Identify content that needs to be created/edited
  • Define how content will be structured
  • Identify content owners/authors
  • Define workflow and governance
  • Create/edit content
  • Moderate & maintain
  • Analyse and re-strategize

Information Architecture Design

The information architecture of an application typically becomes increasingly more important and difficult to design as the amount of content increases. Key considerations include:

  • Creating a hierarchy of content that is easy for users to understand.
  • Defining labels for content that are clear and universally recognizable
  • Defining chunks of content that define a single topic where each chunk is not too large or too small.

Information Design

Information design is all about how the information within a page/view is designed and structured. Key considerations include:

  • Layout – The organization of information within a page/view
  • Hierarchy of content – How hierachy is defined within the content using colour, size, typography, etc.
  • Consistency – How consitent content is thoughout the application

Usability studies have shown that website users tend not to read but rather scan pages in an ‘F’ pattern for the information they are looking for. Avoiding large blocks of text helps make content more scanable. Breaking up text using images and graphics as well as using lists and headings makes content more welcoming and easier to read. Putting important information at the top and on the left makes it more discoverable.

Interactivity Design

Typically, one of the primary considerations of interactivity design is reducing user frustration. It is important to know how users typically interact with an application and ensure the application behaves as the user might expect. These expecations are always changing and specific to different user groups.

Typical suggestions for navigation bars include:

  • The main navigation bar should be at the top of each page, easily identifiable and clearly labelled.
  • Link labels should match page names.
  • Limiting the number of links at each level helps make the scope of the site more memorable.
  • Providing different ways to navigate the site supports an increasingly diverse group of users.

Usability Testing

Testing how real users interact with the website is an important part of the design process. Usability tests are easy to do and require fewer test subjects than one might think. Many organizations choose to skip this process only to discover serious difficulties with the usability of a project after it has been completed. In adopting an iterative approach to usability testing, issues can be identified and fixed early in the design and development process.

Accessibility Design

A well-designed website is easy to use and accessible to all users. It should convey information about an organization to its audience effortlessly.

Adhering to web usability and accessibility standards is good for business and ultimately results in an improved experience for all visitors. If a website is hard to use and does not meet accessibility standards, the organization is likely losing customers.

Accessibility Testing

Testing a website for adherence to accessibility guidelines is an important step in ensuring the website is accessible. There are many automated testing tools that can test adherence to some of the guidelines. However, most of the guidelines can not be tested using these automated tools and require testing by someone with expertise in web accessibility.

I have conducted accessibility audits for several organizations and have adopted best practice with regards to accessibility for all websites I design.