How to Recognize Good and Bad Design

In her excerpt, Robin Williams writes about how to recognize (and avoid) bad web design.

She identifies four principles: Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, and Proximity.

As a memory aid, a better way to remember these four principles, might be:

CRAP.

Contrast is, of course, “contrasting elements” that are designed to help “guide your eyes around the page, create a hierarchy of information, and enable you to skim through the vast array of information and pick out what you need.”

Repetition aims to “repeat certain elements that tie all the disparate parts together.” Each page in a web site should look like it belongs to the same website, company, concept.

Alignment, simply enough, means that “items on the page are lined up with each other.”

Proximity refers to “the relationships that items develop when they are close together, in close proximity.”

Williams uses lots of examples to demonstrate when these principles are working well and are working not so well.

It’s always a good place to start by observing when things go horribly, horribly wrong.

Let’s start off with this outrageous example. Check this out.this In terms of the four principles, what isn’t working here?

Unfortunately (or fortunately) often web design issues are a bit more subtle. Let’s look at the Twitter home page today.

Now, we’re going to continue putting these terms and skills into practice by seeking out other websites that do (or don’t) use these principles successfully.

I would like each group to seek out a series of different websites—sites that demonstrate the successful use of a design principle and a less-than-successful use of a design principle.

Since Williams identifies four key principles, you’ll need to find eight examples. I’d like each group find examples of sites that both successfully and unsuccessfully employ Williams’ four design principles: alignment, proximity, repetition, contrast

More importantly, I’m going to ask you to articulate WHY these websites are (or are not) successful. The better your are able to write about what constitutes good or bad design, the better you’ll be able to apply that to your own work, especially for Project Two.

I’d like to you then write a few sentences for each example, explaining why your group thought that this was successful or not.

When your group has found, discussed and written about your websites, I’d like each group to share your findings with the class.

Good luck and have fun!

How to Recognize Good and Bad Design