User Interface focuses on anticipating what users might need to do and ensuring that the interface has elements that are easy to access, understand, and use to facilitate those actions. UI brings together concepts from interaction design, visual design, and information architecture. In the past three decades, screen based technology (and most recently user interaction technology that does not require a screen like Alexa) has evolved rapidly. User Interfaces were once primarily on large desktop computers however this has now minimised to incredibly small formats like the handheld smartphones and even wearable technology like the Apple Watch. This has meant that designers must adapt to the ever changing climate, creating appropriate application and webpage design that can be viewed with clarity on any device. Trends of User Interface are also changing. During the 1990s, websites were full of a chaotic assortment of elements like Gifs, bright text and images and banners as developers explored the possibilities of HTML and CSS. However, in 2021 companies like Apple want to create a much more organised and timeless minimal design that does not overwhelm the user. Minimal design elements are also a lot easier to adapt to all different devices and attracts a wider, more diverse audience.
Using Google’s Material Design site, I created a User Interface Card which to focus on the strict guidelines that corporate designs follow when producing webpages and other material for companies. The Card is similar to information which would be displayed to a user on a music streaming application like Spotify and includes buttons like a twitter link which many companies use consistently in their design. I continued to use grid and typography tools (larger font size for title, paragraph alignment) to create a balance, organised visual hierarchy.
HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is the universal markup language used on the web. HTML allows a developer or designer to format text, add graphics, create links, input forms, frames and tables, etc., and save it all in a text file that any browser can read and display. Tim Berners-Lee (b. 1995), an English software engineer who is considered the inventor of the World Wide Web, produced the first version of HTML in 1993. Since 1993 there has been many versions of HTML with the most recent being HTML5 which I will be using to produce my first website.
Using Github, I created my first HTML website entitled Baskerville containing content organising into paragraphs and headings. Using Github (a code hosting platform for version control which would allow me to keep track of different edits I make to my website), I was able to create a repository. The repository is the project’s folder; storing every single project file, its documentation and its revision history of every document. Once this was created, I was able to begin creating my HTML on Visual Studio Code.
In this first markup I was able establish paragraphs and titles using tags. An HTML tag provides direction for visual content that can be seen on the final website. Using the paragraph (<p></p>) and heading tags (<h1></h1><h2></h2>…) I was able to create a visual hierarchy of information by establishing my main titles with large fonts and spacing according to their heading tag. Using these pieces of markup language, I was able to create a basic website with a visual hierarchy which defined the websites title and subsequent paragraph titles.
