- Precedence (Guiding the Eye)
Good web design, perhaps even more than other type of design, is about information. One of the biggest tools in your arsenal to do this is precedence. When using a good design, the user should be led around the screen by the designer. I call this precedence and it’s about how much visual weight different parts of your design have.A simple example of precedence is that in most sites the first thing you see is the logo. This is often because it’s large and set at what has been shown in studies to be the first place people look (the top left). This is a good thing since you probably want a user to immediately know what site they are viewing.
But precedence should go much further. You should direct the user’s eyes through a sequence of steps. For example you might want your user to go from logo/brand to a primary positioning statement to punchy image to give the site personality to main body text, with navigation and a side bar taking a secondary position in the sequence.
What your user should be looking at is up to you, the web designer, to figure out.
To achieve precedence you have many tools at your disposal:
Position – Where something is on a page clearly influences in what order the user sees it
Colour – Using bold and subtle colours is a simple way to tell your user where to look
Contrast – Being different makes things stand out, being the same makes them secondary.
Size – Big takes precedence over little (unless everything is big, in which case little might stand out thanks to Contrast)
Design Elements – if there is a gigantic arrow pointing at something, guess where the user will look?
