Color
Considering I've been back on the aesthetics bandwagon the past few days (further carving out a niche as someone put it in an e-mail to me) I began to think about color. First thing this morning, an article about choosing the right color for your website - which got me thinking about the right colors for learning spaces online. Typically, I see white backgrounds with black text and maybe some selected images (much like this blog I suppose!). I'm fairly certain that the reasoning for this is twofold. One, it harkens back to text, and particularly textbooks - so by designing with a black and white scheme and fonts that recall texts, online spaces gain a level of authority. Two, typically, black and white design has been viewed as "classy" and it's easier to get something to look good with a limited color palette (black, white and grey).
Of course, that requires an understanding of complimentary colors and color theory. Color Matters has a good page on color theory which for some of you will recall grade 5 art class. If you don't want to be bothered with the theory, just want to get down to brass tacks, Color Scheme Designer will give you a good selection of possible combinations to use in your designs.
Neither of those sites really talk about the psychology of color. The more I dig into it there isn't much research that I would bet the house on, but Pantone has a good article about it as well. Well of course, Pantone will... they're the biggest marketers of color (and consistent color) in the world. Is there real evidence of color psychology or is it just smoke and mirrors?
Type
As part of the ongoing aesthetic interest I have, I discovered a link to this blog post that discusses the basic properties of type (and fonts). As I was reviewing it, I realized that a lot of textbooks are set in serif fonts (such as Times New Roman) and wondered if that had some psychological effect on how people viewed sans serif (such as Arial) type. Will my blog seem more "professional" or "academic" if I use a serif font? Recently George Siemens redesigned the elearnspace blog, moving from a sans-serif font to a serif font. I wonder if that has changed initial opinions of his blog?
Another conflicting idea is that online spaces should have fonts set in sans-serif type, because on screen resolutions are low, and serif fonts are not always displayed with the same clarity. When doing web design (not so long ago now), I usually defaulted to setting clients websites into Arial, Helvetica and sans serif. I wonder what impact that had on the end user?
More About Visual Literacy
I originally pulled this link from my Twitter feed via @VenessaMiemis which talks about information aesthetics, and of course, visual design. I 've embedded the same video below, because I think it's a well done, quick hit about the importance of visual literacy. I guess I should start getting those Tufte books...
First Impressions
I've harped on a lot about how good visual design helps manage the first impression someone constructs. Here's a link to the article that discusses the way we process first impressions (in PDF format) and the Guardian article that discusses it. What's fascinating is the conclusion that we process our first impressions of people the same way (and the same part of the brain) that we process our first impressions of objects. Now, I'm slightly skeptical of the methodology - they used pictures of people on a screen rather than real people - which to me is perfect to study how people make first impressions of pictures, maybe not ideal otherwise. Additionally, it's interesting to see that part of this is done by an area that controls emotion, so logic is out, emotional responses in.
Design Literacy: Understanding Graphic Design
Design Literacy Understanding Graphic Design
I've been reading this book on Scribd, pretty good so far. I really like the idea of linear and non-linear designs. and have been thinking about how a non-linear design might be appropriate as a learning approach. I won't have much time to reflect on it in the next few weeks with semester start-up looming.
5 Things To Do To Improve Your Visual Intelligence
I'm using the term visual intelligence to refer to an ability to produce an aesthetically pleasing photograph, document or web page. Much like any other skill, experience is king. You have to learn by doing. The inspiration to do is sometimes a key problem. Here's a couple of photography exercises that will help your visual intelligence.
1. The 365/10 project. On Flickr, take a photograph everyday and post it with the 365/10 tag. I'd go one further to geo-tag it and give it descriptive tags to help people find it.
2. The Dailyshoot is along the same idea, shoot something every day/week, but this time grouped around a theme. It goes one further to post a link via Twitter. Sometimes having someone give you constraints is a good way to focus on technique rather than finding something interesting to shoot.
3. Digital Photography Challenge is another photograph on a theme challenge, but it's also a contest where you can vote on best shots.
4. Running From Camera is something Alec Couros posted on Twitter moments ago, but a cool task for a different shot. Of course, looking through the entries, some of them are composed very similarly. I wonder if you could work within the constraints of "running away" but shooting on a diagonal? Would the picture still work?
5. In addition to shooting more, critique more. Be very critical and selective about shooting and framing. Be reflective in your practice, think about what you could do to improve your shot selection. If you can't come up with what you can do to improve your shots, review the basic theories that govern design, and choose one to work with exclusively.
10 Pages For Composition Education
I've decided that I'd be totally remiss if I didn't try to compile some sort of list of resources. So here they are (in no specific order):
1. Composition and the Elements of Visual Design is a well written article giving some basics around different techniques for composing photographs, but these techniques extend to document and website design as well.
2. The Principles of Design discusses several key issues in web design, and how those issues are echoed in print design. Pulling from the classics (balance, rhythm, proportion, dominance and unity), this article gives you a good overview of web design.
3. Composition and Design Principles from Goshen College is an interesting case - I nearly didn't put it in the list because it's an atrocious website (for instance, I'm not fond of mixing serif and sans-serif fonts on the same page for body text), but the information is great. As Google is fond of saying, "content is king". It's primarily targeted at people who might be teaching art, but my audience being mostly educators, so you should be able to relate. Also, you can sometimes learn from what not to do, which brings us to the next site.
4. 5 Common Visual Design Mistakes outlines some basic errors that designers make. Of course, rules are made to be broken, but when you are trying to communicate a message you need to ensure that rule breaking is consistent with the message.
5. Principles of Design from About.com is a decent tutorial with examples and questions to cover the basics of design.
6. IBM's Design Principles Checklist gives you 17 aspects of visual design that they intend to use in software design, but I think they translate to the web and page as well. To me, the last point is critical; cluttered design is one that will only confuse and distract from the content.
7. The Artist's Toolkit provides a quick tour through the elements and principles of art, which also are applied in design and user experiences. After all isn't what we experience with art a "user" experience?
8. Art, Design and Visual Thinking is an interactive textbook from Cornell University. Well, it's interactive if you consider clicking on links an interaction (also the design is dated). This online book is tailored more to the art student, but the first few sections are an excellent and go into areas that other suggested sites don't cover. Gestalt? Color psychology? Important concepts, but often glossed over or overlooked in primers on design. This site will give you language to dive deeper into an area of design that interests you.
9. Design Psychology is a blog article I've referred to a couple of times over the last year or so, as a lot of what I do is web design dressed up as e-learning. While Andy Rutledge appeals to the commercial designer, the message shouldn't be lost on educators. Educators are competing with commerce for attention, while we have content down pat (in fact content coming out our ears!) we may not design things in such a way as to hold attention or keep it. This post is a touchstone for me, essentially re-centering me when I'm far out in left field.
10. Aslam Memon's Blog has 45 blogs and twitterers that provide design inspiration. That's the biggest piece of composition education, looking at and analyzing designs you like, and seeing what was done to create them.
Aesthetics, AV and User Experiences
I've been reading a fair bit about UX (User Experience) and it's role in website design, and by proxy, online learning spaces. I've been thinking about how aesthetics have been important in this relationship and recently I've come to re-think my definition of aesthetics. Previously, aesthetics online only meant the visual: the look and feel of the website in question. Now, I'm thinking that motion and sound will become increasingly more important as we move from a static web to the motion web. YouTube is great for allowing people to share videos, but really, the skin that they wrap their videos in is horrible. Ugly. Vimeo, on the other hand has a much better looking (and in my opinion designed) interface.
Does that mean that design is an indicator of popularity? No, but eventually either YouTube will allow you to change the default skin (and they already allow some minimal customization) as a feature for it's users or a competitor who allows more customization will begin to eat away at the dominance. If only YouTube allowed an easy migration path to switch between hosts? The real killer for YouTube is when it can no longer support the bandwidth required and people have videos interrupted or become basically unplayable. At that point, if it comes, people will switch to the better looking alternative.
To the same end, audio will need to be presented in a good looking player. Not only that, but it needs to be clear and audible. A lot of the problems I've encountered with poor audio have been with two aspects, the first is in the production of the audio (generally characterized by a flat AM radio sound) and the second being choppy intermittent transmission. Both do things that disrupt the user, by either being a distraction or an interruption to the processing of the core information. Ugly interfaces are often accepted as long as it works. When it doesn't work... well things get bypassed entirely.
What I Learned This Week (Part 5)
Finally, one of my major pet peeves with Google has been answered. Matt Cutts announced late in October that Google Docs now lets you do a bulk export. I've played with Docs a lot, but never considered it a real threat to Word in my workflow as I couldn't get all of my crap off of the one system in one shot. Now I can. Thank you Google for doing the right thing.
Was listening to Martin Weller's presentation for CCK09 about the Pedagogy of Abundance, and while Martin's presentation content was great, the sound was difficult. It wasn't the quality of sound per se, although it was a bit rough around the edges. I don't know if it's just me, or a combination of my background as a sound engineer and sensitive listener, or if it was just my mood, but the sound was off.
It got me thinking about the aesthetics of sound, and how sounds might be pleasurable or distracting, and how that works in a networked learning environment. Clearly, the aesthetics of the new media environments extend further than the visual realm and will have to be considered when developing e-learning courses and environments. With the ubiquity of good sound devices, we still will have to have quiet spaces from which to broadcast, or record.
I also found out about Sherlock, the Codec Detective. I'm not sure how Apple feels about the possible name confusion (although I'm not sure that Apple's search is called Sherlock anymore either), but this is a great little utility that helps one figure out if they have a video codec installed or not. As everything moves towards Flash video, this sort of tool may not be needed in the future, but in the meantime it's incredibly useful for me, as I switch between several different machines throughout the day and may need to edit video on any of them.
Visualization of data is a huge trend, and in my opinion only going to get bigger as text literacy declines in favour of visual literacy. I'm not saying text literacy will disappear; just that visual literacy becomes more important in the future. Flowing Data posted an interesting contest, to see if a correlation can be drawn between SAT scores and class size. The contest isn't about the correlation per se, but it's about the visualization and what comes of it.
What I Learned This Week (Part 4)
I've been working on adapting a AODA module for Desire2Learn, changing some minor things, tweaking the navigation and other minor bits. It's intended to illuminate some of the issues people with disabilities face in daily life at an educational institution. It's well designed (educationally speaking) but some of the sites I've been to in looking at accessibility have been, well, aesthetically challenged. As we all know, content is king, but I have to say, the way things are presented on some of these sites could use some sprucing up to bring it in line with modern web design that is accessible. Certainly CSS could be leveraged to provide different looks depending on what browser/screen reader was being used?
Along a similar line, this article sheds some light on the issue of teacher's blowing out their voices - one of their main tools in the classroom. Certainly we have seen repetitive stress injuries for athletes and office workers - are we just maybe working too hard? E-learning can assist with this, of course, by recording things that might be said four or five times a week - streamlining teachers to actually get in the trenches and actually work with students to assist in their learning. The end of the article had an interesting thought, "you can't teach French without speaking." I think you certainly can - using a blend of native speakers on YouTube or a more community based site like Language Exchange.
Finally, from Reuters, technology doesn't isolate people. The study doesn't really reveal much, other than people who are active socially offline are also active in publishing and creating content online. I've always believed that technology doesn't change who we are, but it does change who we communicate with. In many ways, this study and article backs that idea up.
Tags Used
Administrate Meta-Phor
Twitter Feed
- "Study found that 51% of major websites violate the most basic design guidelines." from HCI:Designing Effective Organizational Systems 2006
- Just added myself to the http://wefollow.com twitter directory under: #hamilton_ontario #webdesign #education #edtech #criticalthinking
- Ten Years Later (after the dotcom boom) courtesy of Wired Mag: http://bit.ly/cqUh7r
- First time I can remember (for Mohawk College) a Student Election having a fan page on facebook http://bit.ly/9ldoWQ
- @hjarche heh, wasn't that cold this winter (in Southern Ontario anyways...)
Blogroll
- A List Apart
- Bava Tuesdays / Jim Groom
- Clay Shirky's Internet Writings
- Connectivism
- Educational Technology.ca / Alec Couros
- Elearnspace / George Siemens
- Howard Rheingold
- Presentation Zen / Garr Reynolds
- The Ed Rush / Ed Webb
