When you go about your day browsing through websites and social media sites one thing that gets overlooked easily is the site design. From what colors you see to the design layout, everything has a purpose to grab and keep your attention. To me understanding the science of this is one of the most interesting parts of the online world we live in. A big concept that I found interesting was the science behind using certain colors to invoke certain emotions while on the website/app. For example the use of the color blue in the interface design in many of the most popular websites (Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, etc…) to make people feel comfortable. One thing that I found really interesting to explore was the website redesign in which my group decided to update blackboard and make it more simple and easy to use. For us the sole purpose was to make the important features large and easy to access, which is in direct contrast to how it is currently set up. One big theme that seems to constantly reoccur when talking about website design is that simplicity is key to creating a well rounded and useful website/app. In one of the readings it states that users are only able to keep 5-9 items in short term memory before forgetting or making errors, this leads to cluttered websites becoming confusing and making the experience for the user not a good one. The main reason that I find all this so interesting is because I am planning on becoming a website designer after college, so having this information is extremely important to me if I want to be successful in my career. Lastly one thing that I found interesting to think about and try to understand was the “information ecology” venn diagram that talked about the combination of 3 main things: Context, content, and users. This perfectly describes how all three of these things interact to create a user experience.
Videos:
Billy's DTC 101 Blog 