In the past, I have designed websites and taken into consideration many of the design issues and elements brought up in the toolkit that are very significant in for development and construction of a site. While webpagesthatsuck.com provides examples of the eyesores and poor usability websites that exist in the realm of cyberspace, it also reminded me of the Smashing Magazine website – a great resource for tutorials on web design, templates and other design-related issues.

I think the storyboarding exercise that suggests making a drawing of the initial structure is another helpful thing to do with web design. It really helps outline the vision and, more importantly, organize where different elements such as navigation, content and imagery will appear on the page. This is actually something I am trying to create for a work project at the moment, especially since the storyboard can also act as a proposal to present at meetings and help other users understand the functionality of the web site. As well, it also helps determine whether or not the site can work within an existing site/structure (in the event that it has to) or if the site itself can go into a different or new site.

To further understand how storyboarding works from an information architecture standpoint, there is a tutorial at Web Monkey that shows a layout grid and how various elements could be spaced out. More advanced web development elements to consider is the 960 grid which uses a 960 px width for a more flexible framework that can adjust to different browsers and platforms. The grid itself is defined by either 12 or 16 columns that help separate different elements of the storyboard layout.

Overall, web design can be a very complicated and often, time-consuming process with many variables to consider. However, taking into consideration most, if not all, design elements can really help save time and costs.