Within its cardboard goodness contained four titles from the good people at HOW. I took advantage of one of their incredible sales. I strongly recommend signing on to their email list.

Anyway, one of the titles that I purchased was The Essential Principles of Graphic Design by Debbie Millman. The title is somewhat misleading; it is a compilation of case studies by some great designers and strategists. They write about projects and give insight into their process which is always welcome information. On the whole, it’s a fantastic book, even better at only $9. She’s aces in my book; her favorite design color is orange.

One of the contributors, Hillman Curtis, wrote about his process for creating the design for the  New York Metropolitan Opera website. One of the points that he made was to design/wireframe the sub pages first and  do the home page last. His reasoning is that through small design changes on the sub pages, the character of more important pages will be more clearly defined. He has a point and I am expanding my rationale for doing so.

I am now a convert because I’d like to devote more design and strategic energy to the pages that people actually use. When those pages are perfected, then the kicking it up a notch for landing/home pages will be much easier as the personality of the site has already been established through the sub pages; color schemes, font usage, proportions, etc. will tend to reveal themselves.

Another benefit of this “reverse engineering” is to create a site where content is paramount. Pages are designed to fit their content, not to fit a style established by a  tricked-out home page. Secondly, the home page design will reflect the actual content and the navigation can be built with that consideration in mind, not just the  aesthetic.

If anyone designs this way or adopts this method, I’d love to hear from you.

The digital space can be a scary place. Lots of bad people are are sending you emails from Nigeria or Kansas asking for your banking information so that the can send you millions of dollars. Companies are asking you to fill out a form so that you can download a PDF of fairly useless information. It’s enough to make you uninstall your browser.

I have long told my students my axiom: brand=trust. So how can a business make that true on the web, which is a low-trust environment? More importantly, how can you get a user to perform a task that he/she is inherently reluctant to?

Transparency

So many times as a youngster, I asked my parents “Why?!?” is response to their requests. Your users are asking the same thing…so tell them! What does it cost you to be honest with your user and tell them why you are asking for information? Better yet, what can you gain in loyalty to be up front and honest with them about the information request and what you plan to do with it? If cast the ask in terms of a benefit for the user, chances are they will comply.

Demonstrate that you value and will protect the exchange of information.

Make sure that you convey to your use that the information that you collect from them is safe in your hands. Have a privacy policy. Make sure that the user knows that you have a privacy policy and, most importantly, let them know what to expect from that exchange of information.

Trustworthy design

Ever bought fish from a beat-up station wagon or a generic white van? Of course not. Equally, shabby/confusing/cookie-cutter design does not lead to user trust and actually deters them from making the purchase/engagement decisions that you want them to make. Need I say more?

The bottom line is that users expect shady behavior in the digital space. Pleasantly surprise them and never make them feel that they are not in on the joke.

I have many small business clients that cannot afford to stage shoots or purchase original images from the artist. Some rights-managed images can amount to thousands of dollars on a website or medium-sized direct mail job. So I turn to stock image vendors. There are a zillion of them, but I happen to like iStockphoto and Veer for images and Thought Equity for video.

The key to good use of stock photography is to find images that support the content; those that help move the story along. My techniques is to use the same keywords for image research as I do for SEO and see what comes up. I refine the results based on color, size, subject matter, the visual story, etc.

So now I will get theoretical on you and give you some guidelines on how properly used stock photo helps a design:

The image is demonstrative. The image shows the typical use of the product or service being used. Imagine a woman using a facial cream or a couple sitting down at a third person’s desk getting home buying/insurance/estate planning advice.

The image is atmospheric. The image conveys some sort of mood that jibes with the tone of the site. Think of a beach scene for a travel site or the Andes for a hiking shoe company.

The image is aspirational. The image conveys an imagined result of following the call to action. Imagine a man in a hammock sipping lemonade for a financial planning website.

The image is illustrative. The image is a visual representation of a key selling point or value proposition. These can be tricky and where many people can get sidetracked because the meaning of an image can be misinterpreted. Imagine an image of a well-decorated room for an interior design service or furniture company.

The image is representative. Here, the image is an archetype of the target market. Attractive singles for a dating site, perhaps.

Some images may be more than one type, but only in rare circumstances should an image be used more than once in any given project.

Avoid overlap. Do your homework! One of the most distracting things about a stock image in digital or print creative is if it has appeared somewhere else. Istock will indicate how popular a photo is, so try to avoid the very popular images to prevent that happening to you. Veer tends to have more exclusive images, so you should be fairly safe there. To be absolutely safe, Google images with the same search terms that you used on your stock image site(s) and see if they pop up on sites other than the stock site.

If push comes to shove, then try/ask your creative to apply a treatment to the image(s) to make it less ordinary.

NEVER mislead the user. if your stock image creates an expectation that your product cannot fulfill, then you have done more damage than if you had no image at all.

Used properly, stock images and graphics can be a creative’s (and their client’s) best friend.

Yes, that’s Montel Williams. I’ll save him for another post. Right now I’d like to pick this site apart and show you why this is a great design. And I want to state for the record that this is an objective observation that I am making about this site. There is no judgement cast upon anyone other than the exploitative company and its spokesperson.

First, let’s take into account the audience. They are people that first and foremost consider the terms of Money Mutual’s services to be reasonable.

Second, they likely saw the commercial on TV and are now acting on the call to action. So we can gather that this is a decision that is made in relative haste.

Third, we can likely conclude that the target audience is not the savviest of web users.

Fourth, this audience is likely to be an African-American female. Thus Montel is the spokesperson. Before you flame me, Montel’s show was very popular with black women. So nyahh.

So okay, we have determined our target audience. Onto the site.

Blue is a color most associated with trust, dignity, authority, intelligence, masculinity and professionalism. Many financial institutions use the color blue in their brands to evoke those sentiments in their audiences. So Money Mutual’s color scheme and, if you look closely, their logo are designed to resemble a bank’s.

Montel Williams is a television personality that they have seen before and probably has high numbers in name recognition and trustworthiness in the target market. He has lent his name to other products aimed at this particular market. So we have his photo prominently displayed in the first read.

Okay, so through color choices, they have gained the user’s trust. Good. I mean bad.

Let’s look at the big, honking, APPLY NOW.

It drowns out every other design element on that page in importance other than Montel’s face. That face didn’t have to be Montel’s; we are biologically trained to recognize and focus on human faces. So those that are in a hurry and need the product that Money Mutual is selling will find it easy to complete the task that Money Mutual has set for the user: apply now and enter into an agreement. The large green button at the bottom of the form tells the user that they are on the right track. Go for the green!

Notice that the other navigation elements are tiny in comparison and are in such low contrast that they fade into the background. We don’t want people poking around and finding information such as the interest rates that make usury seem like a back rub. Oops, there I go judging again.

Should the user have any questions, they are off to the right and will take you to answers that are on the same page. Why? Because the site’s architects don’t want the user to leave the page with the big APPLY NOW. Moreover, we tend to file pages that we have been to as past activity, so it is too easy for someone to drop off if and go to another site or just give up altogether if they actually leave the page.

Lastly, let’s look at the content. The target market has questions and the one that is top of mind is “Can I do this?” The answer is front and center, just under the big APPLY NOW call to action. In the green panel to the right of the call to action is a listing of the benefits that using this product will provide the user. If you read them closely, they are a listing of things to fear: embarrassment, penalties, late charges, bounced checks, etc.

According to CNN Money, in 2009, just 10% of consumers paid 90% of overdraft fees. So this is a very real concern for this target market. Kudos to them for developing the content that will resonate with this target market and get them to act now before it is too late.

In sum, despite my opposition to the product and its predatory nature, it is well presented to it’s intended audience and is masterfully designed from a UX standpoint:

• They understand who their target market is and what motivates them
• They created an interface that makes it extremely easy for the user to complete the call to action
• They used design to convey a subconscious message.

I try to get my small business clients to develop that kind of understanding of their target market so that they can provide their creative consultants with the information and insight to create a site that is as effective as I imagine this one to be.

Too harsh a title?