You Don't Know JACK

In evaluating JACK, the Harvard Kennedy School’s employment resource website, I found its content to be useful and laid out in a relatively effective manner, I did however find several areas in which if they were effectively incorporated into JACK’s design language, they would create an enhanced experience for its users. Specifically, I focus on the use of color palette content readability, and design/brand consistency.

Color palette

JACK uses primarily a gray color palette that fails to differentiate between visual assets, while also not utilizing Harvard or HKS branding and color themes. Branding is not always about marketing of a product, in web design clear branding is of vital importance as users will often base their trust level of a website within the first few seconds, and branding plays a large part in the trust process. By not following the larger Harvard/HKS branding theme Jack fails to leverage the work of the larger Harvard marketing effort, losing both marketing value and brand trust.

The use of cohesive color palettes is often an overlooked and an underutilized tool that web designers can engage in keeping a website on brand while also adding value to the user experience by differentiating between visual assets and website content. I will not go into details of color theory either from a graphic design or web design perspective here as there is ample literature and research on this topic already. Rather I bring it up as a point of interest and necessity in good web design in that an effective color palette selection can create beneficial user experience outcomes and should always be prioritized when creating a website's design language.

Content Readability “Think Hemingway not Joyce!”

When creating content for a web page web designers should think Hemingway and not Joyce. Hemingway Who was known for short and punchy sentence structure, was able to convey a great deal of emotion and sentiment with a minimal amount of words. On the other hand, Joyce utilized a stream of consciousness style that would meander to and fro in a less concise if not more poetic language structure. While Joyce’s literary work is no less meaningful then Hemingway’s, their opposing styles still convey a great sense of emotional and informational content. When translating to web design Hemmingway’s short, punchy and to the point prose provides a user experience that is not as taxing on the users time or ability to navigate pertinent information and content within the web page effectively.

Regular Brand and Design Consistency Audits

Website owners and designers must account for design creep. As a website ages, it has the potential for branching in inconstant ways, Iterating graphic design elements. This can often lead to clutter and off brand design elements, and web pages within the site not reflecting a uniform theme. this is important as it can become confusing and offputting for the user creating a sense that they are no longer on the same website, And ultimately either a direct or subconscious distrust of the web page.

In a survey by the Stanford Web Credibility Project, 46% of respondents reported they assessed website credibility based on the design of the website, including layout, font type, and color themes.

Design creep can be further complicated when multiple designers own different parts of the website or if there is regular turnover of design team members. Within several iterations and team member transitions, a website can become a mishmash of design languages and off brand themes. web page stagnation can also result in inconsistent branding. When a web page or website is part of a larger organizational ecosystem if the target website does not iterate at the same pace as the rest of the ecosystem it can be left behind also resulting in non-consistent branding.

Many of JACK’s can be solved with two process-oriented implementations.

1. Web designers and team members should agree on a design convention or common visual language that incorporates design best practices and brand unification across all web pages on the website, and if applicable the larger organizational ecosystem.

2. Regular and routine design audits should take place in which one or more product owners or managers evaluate all web pages contained within the website to ensure that design principles and agreed upon conventions are being adhered to.

3. regular meetings should take place by the design team ensuring new features and/or new pages not only adhere to the agreed upon design language and branding, but that the conventions also have an iterative process. Good web design is not static and the web page that is design forward and user centric today will look out of date within a relatively short period of time. this means web designers must continue to grow with design trends that allow the web page to grow holistically well also remaining Design trend relevant. this does not mean developers need to be designed avant garde but rather somewhere in the middle but constantly iterating forward.