Importance of Good Design

Readers prefer well-organized websites with good design.

(Source: webtoaster.net)

As mentioned by Reep (2006, p. 135), 'the principles of design are qualities important to any visual presentation regardless of topic or audience'. The general principles that should be considered when applying to all documents are:

• Balance
• Proportion
• Sequence
• Consistency

Correspondingly, Bernhardt's (1986, p. 72) law of gestalt has also stressed on the importance in document design. The four laws of gestalt emphasized are:

• Equilibrium
• Good continuation
• Closure
• Similarity

Both principles place importance on good balancing and continuation for a screen design.

Let us have a look at the three screen shots from my presentation slides.

Slide 1

The slide above consists of a heading which acts as an extra point to the screen design as Reep (2006, p. 154) mentioned that headings can help readers find specific data and show them where changes in topics occur. Although the overall design is simple and brief, it is clear enough to notify the audience about the topics which the presenter is going to present. The points are short and straight to the point.

Slide 2

According to Nielson (1997), readers scan through and pick out individual words and sentences in the web pages rather than read them word by word. Therefore, I would say that Slide 2 shows a bad designed document. The points are too long. The improvement that I could make is to shorten the points and highlight the keywords to assist readers in focusing on important points in the slide.

Slide 3

In an effective document design, words and visuals support each other (Reep 2006, p. 134). Visual helps to stimulate readers' attention. Thus, Slide 3 could be considered a good design as it shows a balanced composition of both image and text. However, the flaw of this slide would be the size of the image. The size of the image should be reduced while the size of the text should be enlarged so that the words can be seen more clearly.

Effective design draws readers through the page from important point to important point (Reep 2006, p. 136). Therefore, a good design is crucial for any document. Apply the correct principles and readers will stay and read the document.

Reference

Bernhardt, SA 1986, 'Seeing the Text', College Composition and Communication, vol. 37, no. 1, pp. 66 - 78.

Nielson, J 1997, 'How Users Read on the Web', useit.com, viewed 19 April 2010, < http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html >.

Reep, D 2006, 'Chapter 6: Document Design', Technical Writing, 6th edn, Pearson/ Longman, New York.