The Truth about website design
User experience principles have never mattered as much as they have today.
Image from the Interaction Design Foundation.
Signifiers and affordances in website content and general UX design are some of the most crucial and detrimental aspects of what is needed to design a good website. Without some of these basics, websites often lack much of what is needed for the user to be able to successfully navigate the site.
Affordances are the relationship between the properties of an object and how it should be used and the capabilities that it has. Signifiers communicate with the user and the object on where the action of the object should take place. Things like buttons to click on a website, menu drop down tabs and hyperlinks can all be examples of affordances and signifiers on a website and are all meant to be designed and used differently with the user’s experience at top of mind.
Companies like Adidas and Nike, two incredibly popular clothing and accessory companies, have very well-designed websites. Since they most likely have many people working on them at a time and have the budget to make a great site and sub-sites, it is not surprise that their websites are top notch. The buttons on the main page of both sites are well designed, and the user knows how to use them and where they link to. There are also many drop-down menus featuring there many products for sale along with strong visual content in terms of photos and videos on the main home page and other pages.
Along with affordances and signifiers, other UX design principles can be used here to further analyze these websites and others. Mapping and feedback are two more principles that help someone understand UX design and what makes a successful, well-designed site. Mapping is the relationship between the elements of two sets of things. Mapping helps to show the steps and thoughts behind user decisions when on a website. Feedback is the communication the user receives back from a website like after clicking on a drop-down menu or clicking a button. Another good feedback example is what happens from the website to the user after placing an order on a site or buying digital content from a site.
Both Nike and Adidas’ websites offer good mapping and feedback as well to the clear affordances and signifiers. How does one make the decision to buy a certain product over the other product is a crucial question that can be used for both sites and can be solved with mapping techniques. Both website’s offer instant feedback when buttons are clicked, orders are placed and drop-down menus are looked through and examined. Without any feedback or dead or broken links on these sites, the user would be left confused on what to press or where to go next to find what they are looking for.
Successful websites like both Adidas and Nike’s websites, show how the use of certain affordances and signifiers can be crucial to making their websites bloom. Everyone should note their use of certain drop-down menus and buttons across their websites and take notice of the overall feel and look that they have because both are exceptional.
You can see my full presentation on these websites at the link below.
https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:VA6C2:7d429fc3-4c6e-4972-a26e-a845590a6da5
Norman, Donald A. The Design of Everyday Things. MIT Press, 2013.
