Design Consistency and Redesign
October 14, 2009
An important design lesson was reinforced by a visit to my Walmart Neighborhood Market. Walmart has recently changed their packaging design.
As I looked for some items that we frequently buy, I had to look a lot closer because I was not able to use the visual cues that I have come to associate with these items like color and look of the former packaging.
I was reminded how important visual consistency can be. You can really disorient visitors to your Web site if you drastically change the visual interface.
Several of the design experts I follow advocate realign or making small incremental changes rather than drastic redesigns. One of the reasons is the very thing I experienced today–I was a bit disoriented because the visual cues I relied on to find products quickly had changed. The same thing happens to users on your Web site. They get use to page elements being in a certain place. Color can serve as a cue. The consistency creates a mental modal that you break if you make too many drastic changes.
As many designers do, I like the challenge of a redesign. I am more familiar with my design than anyone and I can get bored after a while and want to redesign. But it can do a big disservice to the audience of the site. I like the thinking of Cameron Moll because he challenges designers to have really good reasons for wanting to change the look of a site in a dramatic way. It is much more effective to make small changes over time.
What do you think? Do you like to redesign? How do other site redesigns affect you?
Helpful resources:
- Cameron Moll’s Good Designers Realign
- Jared Spool’s Podcast Avoiding Redesigns
