Brainstorming 3.2

What types of choices do web-designers make that demonstrate less effective web-design?

After viewing several poorly designed sites, I feel there are two primary concerns when it comes to ineffective web design: organization and visual design.  While some sites are aesthetically pleasing, they often lack organization, which will ruin there usability.  Others are simple and easy to navigate, but they lack proper design, making them extremely unappealing.

As we see through the nksd.org website -- which we have chosen for our Website Redesign project -- a website can have a lot of content but still be ineffective.  The creator of the website has decided to cram dozens of links onto the homepage, causing it to seem more like a Hub rather than a homepage.  The clustered format of a site like this compromises its usability.  Instead of trying to cram as much information as possible onto a single page, the creator must properly organize and present his or her data in a effective way.  By decreasing the amount of links and information on a single page, the web-designer can make his site much easier to navigate.

Visual design -- as in the aesthetics of a website -- is perhaps the most noticeable portion of web design.  If a website is visually unappealing, it will never be effective.  For example, the nksd.org website has many pages comprised of nothing but blocks of text.  Not only is the text dense, but the color choice of the creator makes them almost impossible to read.  The awkward-gold font on a black background made my eyes sore after about a paragraph of reading.  These pages are frequent and are a major detriment to the site's effectiveness.