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Re-Organizational Technique: Card-Sorting

Thursday, August 5th, 2010
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As your website grows and expands its content and user base outside the initial scope for the project, it often becomes necessary to consider a re-design or re-organization in order to keep navigation intuitive and get the most from your content, preventing it from getting lost in a hard-to-navigate-to location. Usually a content re-design starts with your sitemap and grows from there, but when you have too many pages sometimes it’s quite difficult to simply re-organize them in your head or even on paper. The Card-Sort method is a great way to fluidly alter sitemap organization on paper to achieve the most intuitive organization for your users when re-designing. It all starts with a stack of index cards, and a big black marker.

Designing On A Grid

Wednesday, June 9th, 2010
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Before the invention of movable type and printing, simple grids based on optimal proportions had been used to arrange handwritten text on pages. One such system, known as the “Villiards Diagram,” was in use at least since medieval times. Interior designers arrange rooms based on a grid system, and city planners work on a grid too. It’s a wonder what took web designers and developers so long to show interest in a system that has been essential to the printed word since the ‘30s.

Getting your site footer to work for you

Thursday, April 29th, 2010
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The footer on your website is often the last thing your visitors are going to see. That also potentially makes it the last opportunity to keep users on your site. Often in the process of web design, a footer might be the last element to be addressed, and it’s often quite tempting to speed through it with common elements like a sitemap and copyright or legal information. While a sitemap makes sense, since it gives users the opportunity to learn how your site is organized, or give them a better idea of how to find what their looking for, it’s not very entertaining, or engaging. It might be a good practice to put less emphasis on a second navigation area for your site, and more emphasis on content the users came to your site to see in the first place.