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Day 24 - Sensory characteristics

Providing information and visual cues to a visitor should be in multiple formats and not rely on shape, sound, color, or location alone.

These sensory characteristics could be easily overlooked especially if you were involved in the planning, design, or creation of a website. Over time you become used to how things are done on the website through repetition or internal knowledge. A first-time visitor to your website does not have this knowledge and the goal is to ensure interface elements do not rely on sensory perception alone.

Example

Two screenshots of website interface elements, the first is a search box with a magnifying glass as the submit button, the second is a form showing instructions that the asterisks denotes required fields

Screenshots of interface elements with visual and text explanations

In the examples above, the first search form has a submit button that is a magnifying glass symbol, it doesn’t explicitly say the word “Search”. Since the “Search” term is in both the form label and input placeholder, the icon is a visual characteristic to help draw a user to the search box.

The second example shows a form with red asterisks to denote required fields. Because the asterisks could mean multiple things without supporting text, an explanation is provided at the top of the page to explain what the symbol means in the context of the form.

Task

  1. Visit your homepage and start reading the page
  2. Look for area references to instructions that reference the visual layout, “use the menu on the right”
  3. Correct those instructions to deference the information without the use of directional cues
  4. Look at the interface elements, are there any standalone items that may not be common?
  5. Are there enough visual and text elements or cues to ensure the visitor has clarity around the interface elements, requirements, and options available?
  6. Are any elements relying on color alone?
  7. Move on to an internal page within the site and repeat steps 2-6

Considerations

  • This review may take a second or third person to review the page content. Due to internal jargon and being so close to the initial content you may overlook items that may seem obvious to you but could be confusing to another person.

Further resources