Web Design Patterns
18 May
I’ve been working on developing websites for about 8 years now and I’ve seen the technology come a long way in this time. One of the most interesting aspects of web design to me is usability: how easy it is for users to use and understand the site. Thousands of studies have been made in the effort to find out how users read websites, how they react to different layouts, colour schemes, fonts, navigation systems, etc. There are hundreds of factors to consider when trying to design a site that’s user friendly. This is quite a time-consuming exercise and requires many hours of testing.
Luckily we now have web design patterns. Christopher Alexander was the first person to write about design patterns – for the field of architecture. He wrote “Each pattern describes a problem which occurs over and over again in our environment, and then describes the core of the solution to that problem, in such a way that you can use this solution a million times over, without ever doing it the same way twice”
Many web design patterns emerge from frequent application of a particular way of doing something, so frequent that most web users recognise them immediately and have a sense of comfort in knowing how to use them – in other words, conventions. One example is the use of a shopping trolley / cart graphic. I don’t need to tell you what that symbolises. But if a site used a text link that said “Your basket”, I’m sure you would spend some time thinking not only about what’s behind
“Your basket”, but also where your shopping cart is. Other web design patterns emerge from the recommendations of usability experts. Traditional design patterns cover navigation hierarchies and menus, form layout, tabs, site maps, layout, etc.
In the current age of the indefinable “Web 2.0″, web sites are able to do more and more. With Ajax, we now have dynamic image manipulation, the ability to move content around, autocomplete, dynamic content, and all sorts of things that can occur without having to refresh the page. Three sites that spring to my mind that make clever and fun use of such features are Flickr, Amazon.com and Google. Of course you’ve heard of them, who hasn’t? They are at the forefront of Web 2.0 and they are responsible for many a new design pattern. Web 2.0 design patterns revolve around keeping the user informed about what they can do and what is dynamic, helping them with their tasks with downloaded information and drawing attention to changes in the page.
Web design patterns do not replace the need to think about usability or perform usability testing. Indeed, there can be more than one design pattern to solve a particular problem and the alternatives should be compared and considered carefully. There are also many ways to implement a design pattern so you still need to consider the usability of an implementated pattern. However, unless you are a designer looking to create a particularly unique, interesting or perhaps just plain non-conformist site then design patterns can take away the headache and cost of redesigning the wheel and they can help you build a more user-friendly site if you are not a usability expert.
You can find many web design patterns at:
