Graham

I agree with you that content is king and that not enough effort gets focused there but I don't really agree that the art experiment is all that relevant.

The brain will always process the content of a picture quickly (eg Mona Lisa = moody looking woman with long hair!) but if I saw your website for 10 miliseconds, could I make an informed decision about the 'content' (in this case meaning words)in that time? Surely not. And that's no reflection on your site - I think your content's great. But with a website, surely one's understanding of the content will lag behind that of the style, for minutes - the complete opposite of the art experiment.

So there will be a few seconds or minutes when people's perception of your site is based largely on the design. Granted though, the proof of the pudding will be in your content, but the design does play a part in projecting a professional, credible image and encouraging people to read on (the Jakob Nielsen example on yesterday's post is a prime bad example of this!)

You also mention site structure as something which most people discuss at the early stages. I think structure SHOULD be discussed at the outset. It's more a function of the content than it is of the design in my opinion. I'm currently in the middle of a user-centred redesign of our site and the research stage of that has shown that people want to know they're in the right place, or can get there easily if not. They take a keen interest in looking at what else you do by looking at what links you have. They might not click on any of those links - they just like to know what else you do, as this forms part of their perception of you.

Needless to say, the site structure's also important for when people do follow links too, as they need to be able to find other relevant information quickly and easily and avoid anything irrelevant.

I agree though, forget the colour schemes, fonts and all that until your content's in place. The design should serve the content, not the other way around and even the flashiest design won't salvage bad content.

Rob, thanks for your comment which adds useful material to my post. I agree site structure is important, but I do tend to get people to focus on the content more, simply because once they start thinking of structure their mind wanders into what that structure will look like and they are off down the design avenue again.

I'm confident, though, that the art research would be applicable to the web. You can show people a web site for a fraction of a second and they can tell you quite accurately what it was about - if it has words on it. We appear to process the words first, then look at how those words are organised in terms of design afterwards.

Even so, I agree content and design are an integrated mix, but if people just focus on design and forget the content, they are missing out an essential component.

Hi, I have to agree with the user above. The research here isn't applicable. Content and pattern recognition is different in media. In web design (and print design) the psychology is about making people decide they want to read and the content is about making people read.

In an art gallery you can process what the image is (human, sheep, landscape) in design you would only process it as a web page. that design HAS to draw you to content. There are many studies that show layout affects readability.

Understanding of content comes much after.

This association does seem like a non-sequitur. As you state, 'being confident' has nothing to do with research into web design which shows how people recognize patterns and recognize layout.

Thanks for your comment Lee-Jon. However, I disagree. Readability is clearly affected by layout, that's true. Research on newspaper layouts, for instance, and on book layouts, has shown what you say to be the case. However, readability and understanding are deeper processes that come after what I'm talking about.

The decision about wanting to read something has to come from the content, not the design. Otherwise we would all end up reading all sorts of stuff that we like the look of, but which is not relevant to our needs. Remember that text is stored as patterns so we are using pattern recognition to work out the content.

Furthermore, there are several badly designed web sites which get millions of readers and make millions of dollars for their owners. The readers are content focused, clearly.

It is, inevitably, a mix between content and design. However, several studies point to the fact that content is processed before design; indeed that has been the case in print, long before the web came along.

Though your conclusion is sound, believe that your art example is misused.

Images are much more different than text. I doubt that people would ever glance at a huge block of text in 10 milliseconds tell you the topic of the text. They could however tell you that it is indeed text, and a large block of it, and probably if it was left or right justified. But they couldn't tell you what the topic was.

I believe that it works for images because of our ancient need to use sight to spot threats, we can quickly tell you what something is, but we don't get into the complexities of the matter until our reflexes designate it as 'mostly harmless', or 'potentially dangerous' once we get through that then we look into the details.

For paintings that translates into identifying trees and faces. For websites, that involves credibility... visually. I remember several instances where I clicked away from a website of a fairly reputable company because i thought it was some internet poker website or made by a 10 year old, only to discover months or years later that it was reputable.

These people probably never actually considered the design and how it would affect the visitors.

But your conclusion is correct. Ultimately, design doesn't make for success, content does. Many of these horribly designed pages later got recommended to me purely for their content. However, the amount that design affects your website's popularity will mostly depend on your audience.

As far as the process goes... it is irrelevant what comes first. Under the assumption that your content will be relevant, there are two ways you can begin the website building process. Linearly (from what the visitor will see/think first to the point when they close their window) or Goal oriented, (why, ultimately, are they here?). Every good designer should take their final design and think about it both ways, because their users will approach it from these two ways (new users will be linear, returning users will be direct/goal oriented)

Also, you forget one key conclusion that could be interpreted from the Art example. People focus on pretty pictures first because we pick up on images first (face... rock), and we focus on complex things like content second, because more complex things like design features second.(assuming design features include why x girl in x painting is sad, and the careful composition of the clouds)

Kat, thanks for your comment. I'm glad we agree. You make some useful points. However, research from as far back as the 1960s shows we can recognise words pretty quickly. Indeed, assuming all the words are in context we can recognise around eight words in 50ms, meaning we can actually see the words before the design. Your face recognition example is interesting because studies of babies show they can differentiate between different faces before they can see properly. It appears they are seeking specific items of facial content - namely eye positions and relative distance to mouth. They cannot see the "design" features of a face, but can see the "content". Even in facial recognition, content appears to come before design. We appear to be able to recognise words much faster than the art study showed we recognise design features. So I'm sure that we are primed for content first, then design second. Indeed, your evolutionary point is about content, not design.

This is all good stuff and everybody is right. Perhaps this is because of semantics. 'Design' is not about pretty pictures and colours, which are clearly can be secondary to 'content'. A better word to describe that process would be 'decoration'. 'Design' is something else.

In the human face example the actual 'design' is key - it is the arrangement of the content (eyes, nose etc) that allow us to recognise it as a face, to be able to read it and not see random organs. In the art gallery, the 'design' is actually the gallery.

Design is the presentation that allows us to see the context of the content.

This is why so may websites fail: many web designers are only interested in features, many graphic designers are only interested in decoration and many copyrighters are only interesting in wonderful prose.

'Design' is the whole.

Unfortunately it is not a linear process. Structure, content and context need to be begun as one, together.

Ayd, thanks for your comment; I agree wholeheartedly. However, I think non-designer business owners think that the "decoration" is the important thing, when clearly it is only part of the story. And I suspect for good web designers they can't get the right brief to do the "whole thing" because their clients are so focused on the decorative aspects.