By Douglas K. Van Duyne, James A. Landay & Jason I. Hong
Review by: Alex
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Are you a website designer or are you a website developer? It isn't a straight forward question anymore is it? These days website developers have to understand at least the basics of design otherwise their websites may end up looking like something from the 1990's. As for designers, if you do not know the concepts of website development you will be unaware of what the webs limitations are. For most developers the idea of web style guides and design conventions feel as complicated as rules on mark-up and accessibility. This is not actually far from the truth, even before the internet the whole field of art and design had rules based on making information more presentable and viewable for the public, however its only since the boom in website development that making sites more graphically pleasing to the eye has become more important. The Design Of Sites is a very expensive book and you may wonder why its even being mentioned as a possible book for a beginner or student, well the truth is that this book is unmatched on design conventions, while the book previously reviewed (Web Style Guide) has a lot of good general information, the "big red design book" is the only title I have seen which covers design conventions in such great detail with information on design patterns, style guides and with plenty of screenshots and real world examples of design conventions in practice. The best thing which can be said about this book is if you want modern design patterns which apply to how users interact with design in the new Web 2.0 era then this book is something you may wish to add to your collection, its only downside is the price you need to pay for a copy of this book though in most cases the knowledge within will make it worth its price tag.
The chapters in this book include the following... Chapter 1 introduces you to the concepts of design conventions and patterns for site design. Chapter 2 explains what website design patterns are and how you can make the most of them. Chapter 3 details how you can get to know what your customer’s requirements of your website are and how this can improve your site. Chapter 4 shows you how you can involve your customers in the design process. Chapter 5 mentions the process of making user centric designs which are customer cantered. Chapter 6 goes through the design patterns mentioned in the book and how you can use these to accomplish good designs. Finally there is an Appendix which contains usability information, evaluation plans, online research and forms which you may find useful when producing site templates.
This book is suitable for the following types of people interested in website development:
- Website design students who wish to understand design conventions and patterns in site development.
- Website developers who wish to have an understanding of what goes into making a website design.
- Anyone who has an interest in the evolution of the web and guidelines for making good websites.