What makes websites attractive?
Think of your favorite website. It probably offers some unique content, but there’s even more beyond this. You probably enjoy using that site as a whole, and I’m sure browsing it is a pleasant experience.
When you visit your favorite website, you’re perceiving the results of a good web design process.
Good design is invisible, because when it works, you can rarely see it. It’s a delicate balance. It allows your view to flow from one element to another, occassionally stopping while admiring an eye-catching photography or while studying an insightful chart. As you read the website, you perceive the content hierarchies that attracted you to a headline, and then moved you through easy-to-read text fonts. Elements are distributed with the right amount of space that lets them breathe: the page doesn’t feel empty, and it doesn’t feel cluttered, because it feels just right.
Yes, I agree that the good design of an interface can make such a big difference.
That thought sent me to take some additional graphic and web design courses after I had already graduated from engineering college. And that was just the beginning of the journey.
Software engineering meets web design
Modern websites have never looked as good as they do now.
In my daily routine I find myself working with responsive design, mobile design, material design, and frameworks like Bootstrap or Foundation. We never had so many powerful tools in our hands as the base to deliver amazing user experiences, across so many different platforms.
But it is also about polishing the content, and making it attractive by itself. There are several graphic design tools that I routinely use as well: from Photoshop as a way to let those website images really stand out, to Illustrator as a way to create infographics and interface drafts.
Combine this with advanced HTML, CSS and Javascript, and the final experience reminds more of Rich Internet Applications than of traditional websites. It’s a seamless blend of programming, graphic design and UX optimization.
My experience in both the programming and designing sides has allowed me to make other designer’s drafts become live websites that work as they envisioned them, to wrap other existing applications in interfaces that is a pleasure to look at, and even to directly tackle all phases of website / application development.
And thanks to such design phase, it’s beautiful to see the results. It’s hard to believe it all started with a wireframe.
Make your projects and applications be as enjoyable to use as your own favorite websites. Contact me if you need software engineering that also cares about visual design.