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Designing Websites for Every Audience
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Author: Ilise Benun
List Price: $34.99
Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price
ISBN: 158180301X
Publisher: How Design Books (January, 2003)
Edition: Paperback
Sales Rank: 84,138
Average Customer Rating: 4.62 out of 5
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Customer ReviewsRating: 4 out of 5
Introducing Designers to Web-Design Issues
First of all let it be said that this clearly IS an attractive, creatively designed book. Judging from the reviews (below) it has a lot of appeal for professional designers.
Keep in mind that it is NOT primarily a technology how-to book. And yet there ARE some helpful clues to get a designer-new-to-web thinking about issues of how to implement pleasing, effective web sites: what is "Flash"? a "blog"? CSS? (cascading style sheets) ...there are "browser compatibility" issues?
But once you've been alerted to some of these technology quandries you'll quickly need to turn to further education elsewhere. Fortunately, Benun has a nice selection of sites, forums, and publications listed at the back for your reference.
If you are already well-versed in the technologies of the web, you may find that you can learn most of what Benun offers through a cursory scanning at the library. Certainly the sites (25 of them) discussed here are NOT analyzed "in depth" -- the book is only 144pp after all. Offering a new way to think about the TYPE of audience(s) for which a site is designed is a nice contribution on Benun's part (see elaboration in others' reviews).
If you are just beginning your design enterprise you may be upset to have laid out this much money for just a few starting ideas. For economy's sake you may want to browse a wide selection (and it is wide) at a library or book shop.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Learn from examples
Many people learn by example. When reading documentation explaining the features of functionality, it doesn't always make sense until seeing it in action. For instance, in CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) font type is explained as: {
font-family:
}That isn't going to make much sense to many of you even if you know CSS. What if I gave you an example of: {
font-family: verdana, arial, georgia, sans-serif;
} Obviously, the is represented by the font names separated by commas with the first font taking priority. If the user's computer doesn't have verdana, then it tries arial and so on until it finds a font loaded on the user's computer.Designing Websites for Every Audience starts with a chapter on usability with a focus on understanding users and the principles of usability. That's the only lecture of the book and the rest is case studies. The book has 25 case studies sorted by user goals, which include learners, shoppers, connection-seekers, transactors, business browsers, and fun-seekers. Each case study covers the old site and the transition to the new design. Essentially, a before and after, which is popular these days with interior design TV programs. The case study pages are easy to scan. Every one has the company information, site information, users with their goals and tasks, goals of the redesign, and pictures. Benum uses a variety of Web sites for the case studies and discusses the problems with the old design. Then, she analyzes the new design explaining the common traps that have been disposed of and the action taken to improve the user experience. The book is beautifully colored including color screenshots of the designs. This is a good and a bad thing. Some of the side notes have a color background with black font making it hard to read, but this is the only negative thing in the book after all it impacts the usability of reading the book. We have plenty of excellent books on how to improve the user experience when designing Web pages, but there are few that guide you through actual examples. Any Web designer who learns by example will want this one on the desk for referencing when working on a redesign.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Designind websites tailored to your users
There are a lot of books on the market today that teach website design. Very few teach the importance of creating a web site that is friendly and usable so the visitor has a positive experience and wants to come back. "Designing Websites for Every Audience" falls into that second category. It does not teach HTML or CSS or anything like that but what it does teach is much more important - how to create a website that people can use and want to return to time after time. The beginning of the book covers pretty typical usability information, but starting with Chapter 2 the book separates itself from the crowd. At this point Ilise Benum starts several chapters that not only discuss web site design but also tailors that discussion to specific types of users. A website designed for learners should be different from one designed for shoppers, or one designed for transactors, or one designed for business browsers. Ilise Benum goes through these and other user types as she discusses how websites should be designed just for them. Using specific examples from existing websites, she discusses usability factors before and after changing them. Complete with multiple detailed illustrations and analysis it is a highly recommended book.
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