What makes a website’s design a good design?

 

1. Good design should make a task easy
We interact with design every day. In the morning I walk to the train station and wait at the lights for a green man to give me the signal to walk across the road. I arrive at the station and a green light points the way to the ticket gate where a ticket is needed to continue the journey. Blue screens indicate the train times. A noise indicates the arrival of the train and so on. Such guides and directives continue to assist me throughout the day. A good website design should assist with the same function - it needs to communicate with the viewer and guide them through a journey.

2. Good design should communicate
A good website design should guide the user through the journey via graphical indicators. As with the green traffic light man telling us when to walk, graphical indicators should become the language between a user and the website interface they're utilising. This will enable a smooth journey.

3. Good design should make you happy
Good website design should create an emotional reaction, obviously a positive reaction is key. If the journey throughout the website is an easy, you have done your job as a designer.

4. Aesthetics

This should be integrated at the end of the process. Once the journey is designed then elements should be emphasised to created a hierarchy of importance throughout the design.