- Nov 2016
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techwritingf16.robinwharton.net techwritingf16.robinwharton.net
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Make important elements larger than less important display elements (Edwards and Goolkasian 1974), Larger elements are more easily discernible in peripheral vision, which guides subsequent foveal (central vision) fixations. People also typically fixate longer on larger elements in a display (
I learned about this in the article and during one of our class discussions. It's simple. Emphasize the content you know your client deems important and vital for your audience with size and font, but don't get too carried away! Serif is always a great option. Everything else can be in san-serif.
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A closely related issue affecting designers’ decisions about the allocation of space on a Web page is the issue of information density (or “display loading”). In other words, how much information should be put on a screen? Screen density is expressed as a percentage of the total space available on a screen that is actually occupied by visual elements. Typically, suggestions for optimum screen density range from 25 percent to 60 percent.
Tech writers need to consider how long the content on your client's site will take to load. Ideally, when you land on a page, you should be able to see the main points without even having to scroll very much or at all. If you managed to fill a page with so much information that you're client can't even scroll through because it's taking too long to scroll, than thats's going to turn away traffic and your client isn't going to blame the audience's internet provider but you.
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Simply, elements that are logically coordinate ought to be treated graphically in the same way. Subordinate elements ought to appear less prominent than superordinate elements, and elements that are closely tied to one another logically ought either to be grouped spatially or share some other perceptual attribute such as color.
The quote above explains basically how to organize the content you want to emphasize or how to make certain information standout over the other. Headers are considered superordinate elements and those should be easily distinguishable to the eye from the information below it. Although some information below the header can still be considered as superordinate, make sure you use different fonts (as instructed in the other reading) in order for your audience to get a feel of what's important and should be understood over the other general information.
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The good news is that despite conventional wisdom, there is actually little evidence that display size or orientation has much effect on viewers—at least in terms of their ability to read text from a screen (Dillon 1994). Screen size and orientation, however, may affect how the designer breaks up or “chunks” content, both logically and visually, to reveal to the viewer how the content in the Web site is structured.
I found this to be quite interesting because I always thought that orientation had a lot to do with user preference. But when you really think about it, most smartphones and tablets function perfectly well both ways and it's up to the user to decide which orientation is their preference. But one thing for sure that technical writers must watch out for is a website that doesn't support both orientations. I personally hate it when I twist my phone to a landscape orientation and the website breaks off in a weird way or the content loses its structure and the sentences are all on top of each other. Always take into consideration the technical issues that can arise when it comes to mobility and multimodal usage of your client's site.
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Finally, it’s important to acknowledge in the design of information to be displayed on a screen that screens differ from pages in some very fundamental ways. Screens, for example, may be smaller than pages, at least in the sense that they often display fewer lines of type than a typical paper page. Screens are also customarily oriented differently than paper—they are typically wider than they are tall. The images displayed on screens are also often more crude than those printed on paper, and, unlike paper, screens transmit light rather than reflect it. Issues of screen resolution and luminance are addressed in a later section on typography. Screen size and orientation, though, affect the designer’s decisions about the arrangement of visual elements on a screen and so are considered in the context of our discussion of desig
When it comes to mobility, it's important to consider how your client's website will look through a smartphone screen. Most people are always on the go and hardly have enough time to pull out their laptops or sit at their desktops, so iPads and smartphones are everyone's choice. It is important to consider what your client's site will look like on a mobile platform. Lack of an easily accessible or lack of a good structure on mobile platforms will lead your audience to believe that you're not up to date with technology and they'd rather take their money or motives else where. There's just too much competition online for your audience to be struggling with your non-mobile website.
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Importantly, the processing that occurs in this first stage of perception—a stage that takes only a few fractions of a second—occurs automatically and in such a way that interpretation of the display is dictated largely by the characteristics of the display itself rather than by the viewer’s prior knowledge or expectations (Bruce and Green 1990; Goldstein 1996; Wade and Swanston 1991).
This is so true! When I click on a link to a website, within the first few minutes I am processing the layout of the website and the more unorganized and jumbled all of its content is, the less I want to stay on the website or even scan it. You lose credibility points when your website or your business card isn't cohesive and doesn't let you hit the main points easily. In an age where millions of websites and sources exist, the last thing I want to do is put extra effort into content that's already someone else's job to sort and organize and emphasize for me.
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Good design reveals structure when it visually mimics the logical relationships that exist among elements in a display. The human visual system attempts to find the structure of information—whether in a scene, on a page, or on a screen—very early in its efforts to process it, and it does so by looking for visual patterns.
The quote above does a great job explaining how the mind works when an audience is navigating your client's site. As a tech writer, we must time after time think about how our client's audience will navigate the site and how they will process the information displayed. It's a psychological fact that human's prefer patterns and easily pick up on them. That is why a lot of successful websites or technology like Apple uses a minimalistic aesthetic because it's easy to navigate and the brain can easily process its patterns.
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1.2 Avoid “busy” or distracting backgrounds.Any display of information, whether on a screen or on a page, should assist viewers in their efforts to distinguish objects from their backgrounds (that is, to distinguish “figure” from “ground”) and from each other (that is, to discriminate). In fact, these are among the first perceptual tasks addressed by the human visual system in its attempts to make sense out of the scene or page or screen it is viewing. It begins this process by locating discontinuities in the visual field, which typically result, for example, from changes in lightness, color, texture, and orientation. These changes are interpreted by the brain as edges or boundaries. In a very' simple sense, the brain does the equivalent of drawing a line where boundaries exist between dissimilar areas and, subsequently, of combining those lines to form figures (Bruce and Green 1990; Goldstein 1996; Wade and Swanston 1991). “Busy” or heavily patterned backgrounds (see Figure 2)
We discussed this during one of our client meetings with GCCA. At some point one of my group members wanted to change the color of the site's background in order to add more life to the site. But I along with the client agreed that we wanted to keep the background white because we didn't want to distract our audience from the information offered on the site. It's important to consider what kind of tone your client has set for themselves as far as their company goes and GCCA is a serious organization that wants their potential members to take them seriously and trust them with their money. I don't know if a baby blue background on their site would give off that vibe...
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f a display must consist of very' small colored elements, however, the detectability and discrim- inability of those elements can be improved to a limited degree by displaying them on a black, rather than white, background. (Thorell and Smith 1990).
All of the information on the last page before this quote makes perfect since, "make sure your content is visible and visibly distinguishable". This is similar to the other article I just read on fonts where it also said that it is important to distinguish between information by adding different fonts to the content that have the undertone or give off the feelings you want your audience to get from the content. This article isn't only focusing on fonts, but is more multimodal in which it also wants you to consider font size, color, backgrounds, image position, etc. that allows for your audience to easily access the information it needs and you want them to focus on.
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