Designing websites with user experience design

When you visit a website the images, text and navigation are the first thing you see, but designing a successful website comprises of a lot more than those visual elements. Websites must be designed with the user experience in mind.

There are several stages of website design and they begin with a strategy. The strategy consists of the goals for the site that come specifically from the people who will use the website. The site owner’s own objectives are then balanced against user needs for the site. The strategy is always the first thing that is developed, before any visuals are created or other stages are planned. 

Each stage of the development of a website is dependant on the one before it. According to Jesse James Garrett’s book ‘The Elements of User Experience’ the stages in the development of a website are; The Strategy, Scope, Structure, Skeleton and Surface. If you try to create a website out of sequence, for instance creating the surface visual design before the strategy, you can end up with some awkward problems or poor design.

Garrett says there are two basic types of websites; the informational Hypertext System that contains information and hyperlinks, and the Software Interface that is mainly concerned with tasks (the site is considered as a tool or set of tools that the user utilizes to accomplish tasks). The stages of design for each of these types, depending on which your working on, is basically the same but the scope, structure and skeleton have slightly different needs addressed.

When designing a Software Interface the Scope addresses the functional specifications of the site (a detailed description of the “feature set” of the product). The Scope of the informational Hypertext System addresses the content requirements. The Structure design of the Software Interface looks at the interaction while the Hypertext System focuses on information architecture - the arrangement of content elements on the page. The Skeletal design of each of these types of sites both includes information design, which is how the information is presented so users can understand it. The Software Interface would concentrate on the interface design and user interaction though, while the Hypertext System focuses on navigation design of the site.

I consider the development of a website for the user’s experience extremely important and it should never be overlooked. You take a high risk of losing touch with your audience or prospective customers or clients when you broadcast your own needs and desires on your site without considering how the users will experience the website when they visit it.

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