Doug and Wylene Lengel wrote:
>
> snipped all to heck:
> I must agree with Rainmaker. Yes, relevant pictures can be very helpful.
"Relevant" is an interesting word. Defining what's relevant to your
audience sometimes holds some interesting surprises. Its not wise to use
your own internet habits as a yard stick when trying to guage what
people will want from a web site. For one thing I'd suggest that most of
the people on this list are considerably more comfortable with the net
and computers than are most of the people who will soon form the bulk of
internet users (if they haven't already). What we use the internet for
isn't typical anymore.
The use of images can add a lot to the ability to transmit information,
sometimes on a level that isn't conscious. A comparision might be
paperstock on a memo. If you get something that's been typed on
photocopier paper it'll have one impression, get the same message on a
letterhead and parchment, it may have an entirely different impression.
In both cases the text will be same but the reader will get a different
message because of the embellishments on the document. We can't
duplicate that on the web, but we can use images to achieve some of this
effect.
A good exercise for anybody that's designing information that is going
to be accessed by people who are "browsing" is to just sit in a bus stop
and watch people go through magazines and newspapers. Pay attention to
what stops their browsing and holds their attention.
One great thing about the web is the ability to track how users are
going through content. A wise desinger will take advantage of that
ability and explore ways of getting a good handle on how their users
prefer to get their information.
Images that don't require long downloads or otherwise interfere with web
pages can contribute a lot to the usability of the information. On the
ecommerce article that started this thread, I'd contend that one of the
main goals of the designer was to add mood to an otherwise long piece of
text. I can't speak for him, but I'd guess that one of the goals was to
get readers to go to the end of the article. Faced with a block of pure
text that long, I'd suggest most people won't. I've tried some
experiments along this line and my log files clearly showed that I got
more hits on the last pages in a set that was embellished with images
than I did with a similar set that were pure text. Clearly people were
more likely to get to the end of the documents. For some people, it may
have simply been that it didn't look like as much reading when images
broke up the text.
> I thought this thread tied nicely with
> Kathy's submission of the editorial on overdesigned web sites.
I don't think it tied in at all. The article Kathy submitted discussed
overkill using the latest bells and whistles. It had more to do with of
standards on the web than it did with graphics.
That was way too much typing... next time I'll send a picture ;-)
Rolf
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