Exploring Web Design

Concluding thoughts…

I have enjoyed the course overall, and I feel I’ve learned a lot about the design process. Web, e-learning, or otherwise, I think I can take some of these things with me in my career.

The thing I’ve appreciated the most is the blog – it’s given me the opportunity to explore design resources on the web and think critically about them, not just glance at them and say “cool” then move on.

The readings have also been tremendously helpful to me, since I’ve been doing some sort of design work for quite a while, but without any formal instruction. The readings have helped me solidify my thoughts about how a web site should look, function, and feel, rather than relying solely on my own intuition.

I also liked the progression of the assignments. Being asked to come up with the site architecture in an early assignment, and then apply a visual treatment in a later assignment, really helped me to understand how to separate these two tasks. I didn’t feel overwhelmed or “frozen” when I went to design the site, since I’d already done the legwork in a previous step. I guess I never knew that I was trying to do both things at once, and now I’ll consciously consider each as a separate step in the process.

Lastly, the Kuler color site was incredibly helpful, and it’s a resource I’m sure I’ll return to again and again. Lacking anything more than a “feeling” about what color looks good with another, this introduction to color theory gives me a space to experiment, as well multiple starting points for palettes of my own.

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