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Form or Function?
Recently, when designing a website, my client in Coolum on the Sunshine Coast needed the ability to add her own photo albums and update her website. Adding web design elements must fulfil the needs of the client and the needs of your audience.
At 12website.com we developed an economical & easy to use solution. Angela has since added 2 photo albums of surfing competitions at Coolum and is about to add a photo album of the Coolum Kite Festival.
Never put form over function. Why? Because it's crucial that visitors actually be able to USE your site. Everything you do must be designed to be as easy for the visitor to understand as possible.
Everything should be functional first. If you put form before function, you sacrifice your visitor's best interest for your own preferences.
By definition, putting form over function means you sacrifice function, you make it harder to perform whatever task is supposed to be performed. You give up ease of use or simplicity in order to make it look nicer. Basically, you wind up with a lot of icing and no cake.
Don't get me wrong, form often accentuates function, just like icing accentuates a cake. Something that is visually pleasing often increases the usability by making it more attractive or by using visual elements to increase understanding. Creative web design can often be used to make a task easier to perform. It can entice the visitor to take whatever action you want them to take.
However, on the web, there are frequently contests between form and function. Designers make choices between whether to make something look nicer or make it simpler and easier to use.
For example, these are common ways of sacrificing function:
- Using an uncommon style of links that makes it hard to recognize the links.
- Putting a textured background behind the copy, even though it will make the text harder to read.
- Choosing a font color that doesn't have enough contrast with the background color.
- Using a font face that is difficult to read.
- Using an uncommon name for a common link. For example, "Talk" instead of "Contact us".
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