Designing for web site usability

Web site design is popular and prolific, meeting the communication needs of a large user community. Many of these sites are poorly designed. This paper contends that it is not enough for educators to train designers in the mechanics of HTML, tool usage, and modern web site design techniques. Effective web page design needs to put usability first, before tool mastery. Designing usable web pages requires an understanding of the site’s audience, category, content, usability goals, and how to measure to achieve these goals. Web page design classes need to include iterative, order-independent, user-centered and evaluation-centered web site design processes to encourage the design of effective web sites.