MFC 215: Guiding
Principles of Web Design
Professor: James Gerland
Programming for the Web I - Spring 2016
By:
Rahul Tripathi
Person#: 50138355

Guiding Principles:
The book “Don’t make Me Think!” by Steve Krug is an excellent book for beginners summarizing the guiding principles of front-end web development and design. In this essay we will briefly go through the guiding principles mentioned in the book.
● Usability (Don’t make the user think): According to the author the first law of usability is “Don’t make me think”, i.e. when a user is looking at a web page he should be able to find what he is looking for without a lot of thinking and pondering. This means that the design should be simple, self-explanatory, and intuitive.
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Users are in a hurry: As rightly said by the author, most of the users don’t read through the entire website but just scan through them. It is therefore vital for web designers and developers to make sure that the user “gets” the web application/page. This makes sure that the user quickly finds what he is looking for, doesn’t get lost, and understand the web application better. To make an application that is easy for an average user to understand one should follow the following steps:
○ Create a clear visual hierarchy: Proper font weight and nesting helps grasp the page quickly. A designer can also use features like navbars and location bars to create a visual hierarchy, they help the user know their location and display other important sections of the application.
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Take advantage of the conventions: Following conventions can make an application seem familiar, and the user will be easily able to find what he is looking for.
○ Reducing Noise: A web page should not contain irrelevant information, and data. This is important to make sure that the user is not distracted, and annoyed. This will make sure that users find what they are looking for quickly. After all, people use the internet to save time, and it is important that we help them do that.
● Avoid Happy Talk: According to the author, happy talk is the introductory text of a site that is supposed to welcome us and tell us how great the site is. Happy talks are unnecessary because they do not convey any relevant information. Users want to get to what they are looking for as soon as possible and hence all happy talk must be avoided.
● Avoid Instructions: A good website does not need any instructions. It should be self-explanatory, and the design should be intuitive.
By applying the above mentioned principles, we can make a webpage extremely user friendly. If one goes through some of the popular well designed websites one can see and feel these principles in action. We have tried to apply the principles to our webpages that we built as part of this course.