front and back-end web development, Leeds, UK
Richard's profile, skills and services
Web Design
I am passionate about design and usability, if you run a web based service you should care about it too!
Attractive Usable Web Applications
Don't underestimate the importance of the appearance of a website or web app. I put a lot of effort in making pixel perfect designs and interfaces that look good on all common internet browsers. Making your website look good and easy to use will keep users on your site for longer, get them reaching your goals and returning to you.
A user should know immediately know what you are promoting and how to navigate your system. This is why navigation/design hierarchy and helpful simple choices should be offered. Being frustrated by how to use a website, cumbersome forms which spit out errors and look half broken, does not help the experience of your brand become a positive one.
Your Brand is important!
Your brand and usability of your website is the face of your company if you are not meeting the client in person. Scruffy pixelation of your logo and over compression of key images makes your image look cheap. Having nice colors and style shows that you respect yourself and encourages your users to also.
When I started making websites one of my goals was to impress myself with how much I could make a website look attractive. This lead me into working with print media and DTP where I would strive for design that would make my customers look great.
Beauty
We are designed to appreciate beauty and create beauty, creativity is an outlet for this. I try my hardest to express this creativity in both design and coding, where even beautiful code excites me.
Resources
- A blog post on A/B testing
- A BBC news article on website first impressions
- A follow up to the above news article
- Opinion on how even the big guys can get this wrong!
Recent Blog Posts
- Testing controllers in Lithium 2nd Feb 12, 18:19
- Practical Internationalization in Lithium 31st Dec 11, 02:06
- Using OAuth in Lithium 30th Dec 11, 23:47
- How to add your own Tokens from CCK fields in Druapl 7 17th Jun 11, 04:49
- Weaving Lithium #li3 into a legacy PHP application incrementally 5th Oct 10, 11:54