Practical Design for Developers

presented by David Verba

Resources (book):

The Non-Designer's Deisgn Book by Robin Williams (Contrast Repetition Alignment Proximity)
Information Acrhitecture for the World Wide Web by Rosenfeld and Morville
The Elements of User Experience book by Jesse James Garrett
Observing the User Experience (book)
About 2.0 - The Essentials of Interaction Design by Alan Cooper (book)

My Summary:

Looks matter! Make sure you present an attractive web site that is consistent in presentation of links and actions.

My Notes:

what are users context, motivators, challenges?

The Elements of User Experience book by Jesse James Garrett

• surface
• skeleton - discoverability (make finding things easy), recoverability (actions should be w/o cost), context (sense of time, place and meaning), feedback
• structure
• scope - functional spec
• strategy - what are we getting out of the site? the users? look for the overlap by first getting to know your stakeholders. what are the objectives for the site? get to know the users and determine what their current application usage is.

think about things in modules

make sure you have consistency (one phrase for the 'about us' link, for example)

The Attractiveness Bias (Kennedy/ Nixon debate where radio listeners thought Nixon won and TV viewers thought Kennedy won) - first impressions are made in less than 1 second and have lasting impression on user's opinion of the site

personality in error messages and design helps