Web Design Philosophy

My philosophy for designing, developing and maintaining web sites (or other multimedia products) includes these principles:

• Use systematic design methods and documentation to carefully plan, to improve consistency, to promote usability, and to increase maintainability.

"There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult."--C.A.R. Hoare

• Use research-based design principles, including those guidelines set forth by the World Wide Web Consortium and those priorities addressed by the Web Accessibility Initiative.

World Wide Web Consortium: www.w3.org

Web Accessibility Initiative: www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/full-checklist.html

National Cancer Institute's Research-based Web Design and Usability Guidelines: usability.gov/guidelines/

• Conduct systematic usability testing.

Usability Special Interest Group of the Society for Technical Communication: General Digital Resources for Usability: www.stcsig.org/usability/resources/toolkit/toolkit.html

National Cancer Institute's Usability Testing Guidelines: usability.gov/methods/usability_testing.html

Jacob Nielsen's How to Conduct a Heuristic Evaluation: www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/heuristic_evaluation.html

• Keep sites, pages, and navigation simple, clean, and consistent.

12 Navigation and Usabilty Rules: www.technoweenies.com/nav/

The Basics of Navigation: www.efuse.com/Design/navigation.html

Some Tips On Navigation: infocentre.frontend.com/servlet/Infocentre/Infocentre?page=article&id=90

Navigating a Web Site: www.clickz.com/design/site_design/article.php/829491

• Make sure
  1. files are optimized,
  2. users can choose to NOT download large files (particularly over modems), and
  3. pages are understandable and navigable even when images are not downloaded (e.g. use of alt tags, text-only options).

For more information, check out more resources that reflect my design philosophy.