Elias Interactive

We Grow Beautiful Websites

Josh Colter

Why Design is Crucial for Building Trust

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We’ve been working on a side project here at Elias that will debut in beta for a client next month.  Luke, who is the newest member of our team and has been dubbed “Skywalker”, has been busy putting the finishing touches on UI design.  He recently pointed us to a fascinating article which builds a strong case for “pretty design.” At construction articles you will get different type of home interior design ideas.

The client who will be using our application was going over our designs this week and asked us to put a stronger emphasis on the reporting feature shown below.

Our client suggested we make the thermometer progress bar red, which clearly does not match the color palette.  Why do so many people want things to be red, even when it conflicts with page design?  It may succeed at grabbing the user’s attention, but could it be detrimental to the application’s overall effectiveness?

Luke’s “pretty design” article points to a 2002 study which says that the “appeal of the overall visual design of a site, including layout, typography, font size, and color schemes,” is the number one factor we use to evaluate a website’s credibility.  The author goes on to show the following contrasting images of a gas station near his home vs an impeccable Shell pump:

He comments:

I’ve stopped ?lling up at the gas station on the left, even though it’s closer to where I live. Why? This kind of maintenance (or lack of maintenance) leaves me unwilling to trust them with my best card for miles information. Clearly, appearance does affect trust.

So, how do we create trust in our application interfaces, aside from providing the basics, such as reliable information and uptime? By being attentive to visual design, for one thing. Attention to design details implies that the same care and attention has been spent on the other (less visible) parts of the product—which implies that this is a trustworthy product.

I’ve seen many great design comps get butchered during development. Things such as inconsistent fonts, odd padding, line-heights, and over-compressed images plagued the ?nal release. While this may never come out during functional testing, how might these sloppy UI details affect perceptions of your product?

We decided to avoid the red progress bar and stuck to our commitment to design excellence.  It just seemed more trustworthy.

What to Expect from Freelancers

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Seth Godin posted today about working with freelancers.  In our experience Seth is right.  Since we want every client we work with to thoughtfully consider what they expect from us, here is Seth’s post:

The range and availability of freelance talent is greater than it has ever been before. World class designers, artists, illustrators, photographers, strategists, potters, copywriters, programmers–they’re all one click away.

There are two ways to work with talent.

The first is to give someone as clean a sheet of paper as possible. “We have these assets, we have this opportunity, here is our budget, go!” That’s a great way to build a house if you have a ton of money and brilliant architects.

The second is to give someone as strategic and defined a mission as possible. “Here are three logos from companies in other industries, together with the statement we want to make, the size it needs to be, the formats we need to use it and our budget, go!” If you do this, you’re almost certain to get something you can use, and almost certain not to be blown away with surprise. Which is the entire point.

Confusing these two approaches is the #1 cause of client dissatisfaction when working with talent.

The strategic mission takes more preparation, more discipline and more difficult meetings internally. It involves thinking hard without knowing it when you see it. It’s also the act of a mature individual, earning his salary.

The clean sheet of paper is amazing when it works, but involves so much waste, anxiety and pain that I have a hard time recommending it to most people. If you’re going to do this, you have an obligation to use what you get, because your choice was hiring this person, not in judging the work you got when you didn’t have the insight to give them clear direction in the first place.

Product Image Sizing for Magento

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During the recent launch of Keramikoskitchen.com, our client, Naseem Jarjoura, wanted to allow for product images to be enlarged when double-clicked.  For some reason the image would just not load correctly so that it fit within its allotted area correctly.  Here is an example of what Naseem wanted to do:

When you double click on the knife set, then you get this enlarged image:

Images need to be sized specifically according to their Magento store location in order to pull this off. Here is what Naseem had to say:

In order to achieve the best results the image should be sized to 600 x 600. This size allows for a centered image, zoom functionality and click to enlarge is not overblown. If you notice in the knife sets I incorporated into the art a “click here to close”. Simple solution for people that can’t figure out how to close the screen.