The purpose of design

Now you have a good idea what goals you want to achieve.

There is another type of goal, which is the goal of the design process itself.

At the highest level, the purpose of design is:

Of course, the goals of the communication itself can vary wildly. Published content may be designed to interrupt you, to make you buy something, to make you think, to fool or confuse you. But the vast majority of web content is created for information or interaction.

In any case, design is the communication interface. The better it enables the message to be communicated, the more successful it is.

In order to appreciate how design works, designers need first to appreciate the way people interact with a particular medium.

The fundamental principles of visual design are all about helping communication to be more effective and easier. They achieve this by working with the way people consume content.

While the web medium has similarities to many established media, ranging from newsprint to video games, it also has certain unique characteristics that strongly affect the nature of user interaction.

In order to design good web pages, a web designer must first appreciate these factors in order to work with them. That's what we'll look into next in 'How people use web pages'.

The rest of the course uses that knowledge to present some ways of approaching design work that maximises our chances of success.