People don’t read they scan. A Nielsen study from the late 90s figured this out with some extensive user research. I know from my web browsing patterns for this to be a true statement.

I recently read an insightful article on the importance of scannability. Of the handful of points given these two caught my attention.

I often think of the design process as a series of mistakes. Each step is moving toward the right decision and final product. The danger in this process is to make perfection the goal. Instead, the goal should be a viable outcome that has promise. In reading the book The Year Without Pants I was inspired by Automattic’s approach to releasing new products into the wild that were not fully polished. Their goal was to place a focus on innovation and creation. To see how the product performed. Once those metrics were in, they would then invest more time into fine-tuning and further iteration.

One of the declarations from the Cluetrain Manifesto’s Ninety-Five Theses is: Conversations among humans beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice. Similarly, a website’s design is for humans and must look and feel human. Designed in a way that is natural and easy to understand.