Website Design and Graphical User Interface (GUI) Differences
Website design and traditional software user interface design is different. In general, the designer must give up full control of the interface, let the users and their clients soft / hardware to determine part.
Of course, website design and traditional user interface design (UI Design) still has a lot of similarities: the most basic, they are interactive systems, belong to software design category rather than physical design.
Diversity of equipment
In the traditional GUI design, you can control each pixel: When you make a dialog, you can determine that it is in the user's screen. You know why you are designing, you know what fonts have been installed. You know how much typical display size is, the author of the operating system tells you the rules for decoration to the window.
On the website, all of the above ideas are mutated. The user may access the website through a traditional computer, or a handheld device that can be clicked with a web, or the Nokia mobile phone, or even their car is an Internet device. In traditional design, the difference between laptops and high-end workstation screens may have only six kinds. Online, we must deal with the handheld device and the screen of the workstation may have thousands of differences between the MODEM and T-3 lines.
Any website design looks great on different devices: obviously, what is going on, it is not a matter, it seems to be a characteristic, not a problem, because the best user experience is required according to equipment Different features are properly adjusted. Very special or low-end equipment, strictly requested the website content to adapt to a specific platform. The only way to achieve this goal is to give up full control of the interface, let their webpage demonstrates on page description, special settings, and client device characteristics.
Designing an abstract UI description for each different platform is much more difficult. Basic HTML rules can provide designers with a good way to achieve their creative, but they cannot provide all the methods to them. The contents and descriptions are generally promoted, using the style sheets definition description, but doing more beneficial to the information content itself instead of interaction.
User control navigation
In the traditional GUI design, the designer can control when can the user go. You don't want a menu item to work, you can let him go gray. You can throw out a dialog to stop the computer's running until the user answered your question.
Online, the user fundamentally controls his or her own behavior. Users can copy a small road without any impact of designers: For example, users can directly enter the site directly from the search engine without having to pass by the home. Users can also control their own bookmark menu and use it to build a personalized interface of a website.
Website designers need to cooperate and support this user-controlled usage. Sometimes you can force users to use a specific path to prevent them from linking some pages, and the website that can be done is excessive, dictatorship. The best designed free move, for example, put a link to the home page in each page, providing a navigation that directly entering the page.
Part of the whole
Traditional application is a closed user experience: Although the Windows system allows applications to switch each other and run multiple programs at the same time, at any time, the user is actually in a single application, and only targeted this The order of the program and some action work. The user has spent a long time on each program and is gradually familiar with their characteristics and design.
Online, users run between different sites, different design (that is, website) running, with considerable liquidity. Few people have spent a few minutes to see a website. They often jump to that station through hyperlinks. In this case, for the user's feeling, all websites are a whole, not a particular website: that is, users need the usage habits of every website, they are their use of the entire network. Part of the habit, rather than every website has its different habits. In the availability studies, users often complain that those websites that use and outrageous are not good. In other words, the network has become an overall concept, and every website is part of this concept. Of course, traditional GUI is also part of a whole, complying with (operating system) manufacturers' design rules are wise. The key is to design all aspects of the website design, and the balance between individual design and overall design tends to be the whole. But we have no website design rules that have been established, and no one tells you how to use the interface element to build a website that meets the overall concept. I actively advise it to engage in a formal website design convention. My advice to the website designer is that your website is not the center of the world: users should also jump on the website, we should make them feel convenient to use any new website.
