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Visual Literacy Affects Site Usability
In the content management world, the difference between data and content is often described as the human factor: is it read by humans or is it read by the system for “housekeeping” purposes? Human-readable data is usually described as content. Bits of data that lack context without the surrounding content - a price, for example, that lacks meaning without knowing what item the price is attached to - is usually described as data.
In the “content is king” pursuit for good content, visual content often gets overlooked. Every visual cue has a meaning, whether it be a color combination (when does red and green not indicate Christmas?) or shading (we’ve all experienced the frustration of the option we want being “greyed out”) or a strategically-placed line (how many of us stopped scrolling when we hit a “false bottom” of a web page?). Visual literacy may have become commonplace for the generation we call digital natives, but reading visual content doesn’t come naturally to the older generations of online users. The need for a design to create a conversation with site users is critical to helping them navigate through the site.
Ken Walters discusses aspects of visual communication in Design Is Content, Too at Web Content 2009 Tampa Bay.
