Web Design and the User Experience

Wedi cwblhau'r modiwl dylai'r myfyrwyr fedru:

1. Critically evaluate the usabilty of a web site.
2. Describe responsive design, design for accessibility and design for internationalization.
3. Describe the usability issues of rich content.
4. Describe the process of good user interface development.
5. Produce a design of a small, rich content web site interface.
6. Evaluate usability data using suitable statistics.

This course deals with the issue of how web sites should be built in order to make them attractive, understandable and accessible to users. Principles of good interface design are introduced and applied to the issue of creating the user experience.

The course considers the big picture of user experience development, from strategy and requirements to information architecture and visual design, and also considers methods and tools for achieving good interface design.

Many of our students go into employment as web developers and need a good feel for web design, and almost all software requires an interface. This module covers some of the basic theory and tools that are likely to be important in creating a good user interface. The module should enable a student to work in a development team to produce and evaluate a fully responsive and accessible interface providing good user experience.

1. What is your goal?
Fundamental principles of the user experience. An overview of the user experience as it fits into the objectives of an organization or business.

2. User evaluation of site design
Making prototypes and getting feedback. Usability evaluation of web sites.

3. Beyond design: web analytics and your users
How can you keep track of what your users are doing?

4. What is a user?
Human cognitive abilities, attention, short-term memory, accessibility issues.

5. What is design?
Principles of design, Standards. Checklists. Is your system usable and your content findable, desirable and accessible? Rich pictures. Use case analysis. Dataflow diagrams. State diagrams. Hierarchical Task Analysis. Wireframe designs.

6. How to deal with rich content for the web –
Your design will inevitably involve multimedia. How do you create attractive and appropriate material? How can it improve the user experience?

7. Web site aesthetics
Planning appropriate use of colour, typography. The Golden ratio, using proportions.

8. Responsive design and advanced CSS: the present and the future
Creating dynamic changes to the appearance of a website - an approach to the problem of designing for the multitude of available devices. Designing for novel interfaces

9. Accessibility
Discussion of the web initiatives to make web content accessible. This will look at international guides on producing accessible sites. Of particular focus for anyone working on projects funded by the public sector.

10. Internationalisation
How do you make your site available outside the UK and to non-English speakers?

Mae'r modiwl hwn yn cydymffurfio a FfCChC Lefel 5