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Nov 2-7

Nov 16-21

Visual Design Principles for Effective Websites: Can Design and Usability Co-exist?

• Chicago: Wednesday, November 5
• Amsterdam: Wednesday, November 19

Tammy Liran Guy
Full-Day Tutorial

Finding the balance between aesthetics and usability for best-in-class websites is possible. And it’s also worthwhile: An interface that’s both engaging and easy to navigate will inspire brand trust and revenue growth.

The key to success is collaboration among marketing groups, designers, business analysts, and programmers to reduce rework and costs, shorten time to market, and improve the product.

n this session, you’ll learn how to bridge the natural gaps created by bringing various professions together. We’ll discuss visual design and usability best practices, as well as what you can expect various team members to contribute to a successful website design.

What You’ll Learn

In this session, you’ll learn how to:

• Understand design concepts—such as typography, balance, visual path, color, and design processes—and common design terminology
• Make the connection between visual design, communication, and usability
• Evaluate each site design in terms of its functionality and target audience
• Critique the design and identify what works, what doesn’t, and how to fix it
• Appreciate and prepare for collaborative efforts and phased projects
• Learn what your team members need from you

Course Outline

• Design concepts
• Typography
• Balance
• Visual path
• Space (foreground, background, gradients, depth, transparency, overlapping)
• Color
• Movement
• Consistency
• Common terminology
• Usability of visual design elements
• Fixed screen resolution vs. liquid design
• User preferences and personalization
• Design for the worst-case scenario
• Design for global/multilingual sites
• Form design
• Navigation design
• Banners (static and animation)
• Content display
• Product page display
• Consistency with industry standards
• Collaboration between designers and other team members
• Marketing brief: Target audience, problem definition, time (due dates and project life span), projected ROI
• Collaborative meetings: Interactive relations among marketing, business analysts, designers, and programmers
• Focus group testing
• Developing the ability to critique design and identify what works, what doesn’t, and how to fix it
• Evaluate each site design in terms of its functionality and target audience
• Phasing in progress (design and plan ahead)
• How to create style guidelines

Format

This full-day tutorial includes lectures, exercises, and discussion.

Handouts

Copies of all presentation slides

Who Should Attend?

Business professionals (marketing, programmers, business analysts and web architects) who work with professional designers. This class may also provide an effective grounding point for designers entering the Web design world.

Instructor:

Tammy Liran Guy is the Creative Director at LivePerson, Inc., which humanizes the online experience by providing a real-time chat platform for more than 6,000 companies around the world. LivePerson also provides an online community and marketplace where individuals can chat live with experts in a broad range of categories. Liran Guy’s group is responsible for diffusing user experience problems by applying design theory and usability best practices in a rapidly changing Web environment. Prior to LivePerson, Liran Guy was the Graphic Design Group Manager at the Hertz Corporation, where she art directed all aspects of graphical application development for all of Hertz’s customer facing websites, including hertz.com. Liran Guy holds a B.S. in art, with a concentration on computer graphic design, from Northeastern University, and a master’s of package design from Pratt Institute. Her master’s thesis, Internet Packaging: Rethinking Package Design for the World Wide Web, examined current issues with package presentation on the Internet and suggested new guidelines for package design to optimize Web display.