Social Psychology of Web Architecture:
The Who and the What Behind the Web

For whatever reason you have stumbled across my page, I am very glad you did. This paper is an in depth review of everything I've gone through in my attempt to learn about web page design and how it effects people from a psychological perspective. I've learned a lot through this experience, and hope that you can get something out of reading this. I have a lot further to go before I think I can truly refer to myself as a web designer, right now, I'm what I'll call a web absorber. I'm absorbing as much information as I can now, so later I'll be able to produce the results I want. Good luck in your attempts to create your own web page. Be forewarned, this page talks a lot about my mistakes. Remember that old saying, to try, try again, when you make a mistake? Trying again and again is a key factor in learning about anything, including web design. I hope through my experiences you can have an easier time.

Web Designer Principles As I See It: Can't I Have It My Way?

This is a main underlying point that I found in the glover.com site. What this man does is present his view of what makes a "Sucky" or "Savvy" page, while realizing and expressing that ultimately it is the designers choice. Mr. Glover has a lot of experience with computers, programming, and design that he shares in his page, but he always describes what he's saying as a guide. Basically, this is a great place to go to give you an idea of what is generally considered good or bad design in the vast cyber-space community.

A lot has changed in with glover.com since I first visited the site. But the parts which I got the most out of were definitely the "Sucky" and "Savvy" pages. This gave straight forward information on what just doesn't look good on a web page. It was hard to swallow, because some of those things described my feeble attempt at designing a page to the "T." On a "Do's and Don'ts List" I found:

DON'T Create just Links and an E-Mail address. Meat. That's what people want to see on a web page. Not just a gob of links. I can't tell you how many times someone's told me, "Oooh! I have a Web Page! Here's my address". Then when I go there it's about a billion links and, sometimes, not even an E-Mail address! Have something to say! We can get links anywhere.

Well now I knew I was in trouble. I mean, I really, really wanted to make something cool, but it was taking more time to design things than I had. So here I was, basically committing a cyber-space crime when I realized something. I may not have the time today, right here and now to fix things up, but I can use the information that is here, to try and learn about what I should do when I have more time. So I went on and read the "Do's and Don'ts" list and learned a lot. I never realized that screen size varies among computers and that it is helpful to try and create a page that will fit nicely in a small frame. I also found information in glover.com about stealing graphics, loud backgrounds, and animations.

This leads me to Glover's "Top Ten Ways to Improve your Homepage." This was, by far the most useful thing I found in glover.com simply because it gave information on what may not be suitable for your homepage and what you can do to fix it. The section most useful to me were the ones one backgrounds, thumbnail graphics, and height and width tags. In the background section, Glover goes into detail about using Adobe Photoshop to lighten a background. He uses the Photoshop program again to explain how to shrink a graphic into a "thumbnail graphic." And here's how Glover explained the importance of height and width tags:

Using Height & Widths tags will significantly enhance the way your pages load. If you use Height & Width tags, Navigator & Explorer will know exactly how big of a "hole" to leave for the graphic before it loads and will continue displaying the text down the screen. This gives the appearance of your page loading faster, when in reality it still takes just as much time to load the entire page.

Even Glover's "Top Ten Ways To Tell if You Have a Sucky Page" was helpful in it's own way. It's a fast generalized guide to things that tend to irritate people the most about homepages. Most of these tend to deal with one underlying notion. You really want your page to load quickly and still look good. If you're a computer whiz, just take a look at this list, it will all make sense to you and you already know what it takes to fix it. If you're like me, read this, but then take more time looking at the explanations that will help you understand what each of these things mean, and how you can fix it.

Psychological Aspects to Web Design: There's No Place Like Home

So you've made your homepage and you're totally stoked. You have some cool icons you found and you even made your own signature icon for your e-mail button. But why are you so excited about this "homepage thing" and why did you do it? This brings me to my Professor, Dr. Leon James . He wrote a paper, Social Psychological Principles of Home Page Architecture , about this kind of stuff.

Let's start with this idea about "home pages." Lots of us are into this new found cyberspace craze. We get e-mail, we get a home page, we go to home pages, but why is it called a home? We don't live on the computer, even though many people spend more time on the computer then in their real homes. As Dr. James points out,

My Home Page is my other house. It sits in cyberspace. I had a difficult time explaining why I call a bunch of computer files on my drive by the name of "my house" or "my home." He had a bunch of folders and files on his computer and he didn't see why he should call this his house. Well, that's not it. I don't use the term "my home" for just any bunch of computer files around.

Now that we've established why our home pages are a type of home, let's think about why we like them so much. Is it the way we have all the information in the world available at our fingertips? Is it the way we are able to learn new skills preparing us for the future? Or is it just a means of expression. Dr. James explains his feelings when his friend first looked at his page,

I was proud the way the whole Page fit into one screen. There was even a little space left at the bottom. I worked hours to get that little extra space. It brings out the shading in table border and best of all, it lets you know that that's all there is. You don't have to wonder or try the PageDown key or scroll the bar. It all neatly fits into one screen full, giving you a chance to relax your hand and take in the information.

I don't know about you guys, but this doesn't exactly sound like a person primarily concerned about skills and information. It's exciting. We can show off our skills at designing a page. Who cares about the actual learning involved, what you are searching for is the perfect initial look. The one that totally describes you and you alone. Yes, we are gaining skills in the department of HTML, but you don't see that when you go to a home page. You see the result. I think this really means a lot to people. They want to be able to show off their page, and have people really like it. We know, as web designers, how tough it is, but isn't a compliment worth it all? This isn't a scientific breakthrough, this is basic human feelings.

But just as much as we want to look good, when is it really enough? Can we over-develop our home page, just as contractors can over-develop the land. I think the answer is yes, absolutely. In cyber-space there are certain rules of thumb, like how big to make your graphics, or how long is too long to wait for someone's page to load. Take it from Dr. James

Above all, be sure that visitors don't end up waiting impatiently for your Page to load. No spiffy background effect or spectacular images will be appreciated by cybernauts who have to wait precious seconds for you to load just so you can show off!! So how much is too long to wait? In my opinion, the shorter the better. As a rule of thumb, I would say that anything more than 10 secs. is too long to wait for a Home Page. This rule is different for long text files with no images. These can be tolerated since they yield text or content, not just appearance.

So, you have ten seconds to make it all happen. I know for me, I'm a little more lenient. I even offer caution to you cyber-nauts out there. Just think about it for a moment. If in today's day and age, we can only spare ten seconds, one sixth of a minute, for someone to show their page, where are we going? Could you describe yourself completely to someone in ten seconds in person? I think not. So give your fellow neighbors in cyber-space a break. Yes, I have seen pages which take way too long to loud, I even waited over five minutes for a good friend's page, but let's not go too far with this. Remember, we have twenty-four hours in this day, which makes 86,400 seconds. Surely you can spare more then ten.

I know what you're thinking, "Okay Kristin, what's the point?" The point is, we have this cyberspace world that is multiplying every day. It needs some kind of control and some kind of guidance to keep things in order. But, just as we don't like unfair rules and regulations in our personal and political lives, the same holds true for our cyber-lives. I don't want someone coming in telling me what I can and can't put up on my page. But realistically, I want to know how long people will wait to see my page and what I can do to improve it. There are a lot of places out in cyberspace designed to give this type of information. Glover's page is one of them. It is ultimately your choice whether or not you will look into improving the speed and visibility of your page. I think it's safe to say that some people just don't care. But for those of us that do, with the interest of improving in mind, look around, try out your own page, and don't be afraid to try again. We all are in a constant state of learning, no one knows it all. Try your best and have fun doing it, after all, when your page is done loading and it's all there for the world to see, it's your name that we'll see, and you decide how we will see it.

What it's Like to Become a Web Designer: Does It Work Yet?

I was not, and am not, what one would call a computer person, or even an artist. I did computer graphics on Macintoshes my junior and senior year in Maui High School for our school yearbook. I was one of the editors my senior year. So that about raps up my experience in both of these areas. So here I was, stumbling into a class that I half let Ryan Shintani talk me into. Our professor hands out our exercises. I think I knew how to do about five things on the first page. I knew I was in trouble. And to think, I survived it all.

It basically took me a LOT longer than it should have to catch on to this whole internet thing. I think one basic reason for that was just that I was resisting the whole thing. I think I was a little afraid of just too much information getting a hold of me and that maybe, just maybe I'd turn into a computer geek. I spend a lot of time on the internet, a lot more than most of my friends. I really enjoy all the different possibilities, but it took me a while to get here. After I completely panicked and told my friend in the class that he was wrong and I wouldn't be able to do all of this, I felt better. I procrastinated way too much, but I do that with everything. Once I got over the initial shock, I felt a lot better, and actually started to pick up on some things. I amaze myself sometimes with what I've learned. I have about three friends that I'm supposed to help create home pages with this summer. So all in all, the fear was worth it. Cyberspace is a very intimidating place for a lot of us, but once you let yourself see the welcome mat, it's not so bad anymore.

Right now, I am still not where I want to be with my home page. I have finally settled on backgrounds, and am now searching for a few special icons to spice things up. I've basically been focusing on classwork, and my home page is more of a personal thing to me now. I don't want to rush it, and have to leave up something I'm not happy with. I'm being careful and patient. Just through doing this report alone, I've learned a lot of things that will help me to move on with my designing. Overall, I'm glad I waited, otherwise I'm sure I would've made some of those big errors that everyone would be immediately turned off by and write a big message to everyone else telling them to avoid my page at all cost. Maybe I'm exaggerating a little, but not too much.

Looking ahead, I'm very excited at the possibilities. I have enrolled in Dr. James' Psychology 459 class, Traffic Psychology. We will be working on the computer again, so I'm really looking forward to moving ahead of where I am now. I've gotten over my initial fears, so I really feel much more comfortable with the class now. Besides this class, I'm hoping to keep up with cyberspace, through magazines and what not, and help my dad set up some advertising for his golf club making business. I really have a lot of fun on the internet, and hope I'm able to keep up. Maybe I can even take some other internet-related classes in the future to keep me up to date.

To those of you taking Dr. James' classes, before you freak out, take a deep breath, and realize that it's not that bad. This stuff is going to be overwhelming for a lot of you, because like me, all you may know anything about is e-mail and internet searches. But in actuality, all you need is the motivation, and you can get through it. I don't want to sound redundant and offer advice like, "don't procrastinate." However good that advice is, we all know it, and many of us, dare I even say most of us, never listen. Instead I will say this:

1. Definitely make GOOD friends with someone on the class that knows more about computers than you do. If no one is available, look to your other friends and family. They're out there, but they're sneaky and hard to find, look closely.

2. Never be afraid to speak up in class. We have had some very entertaining discussions in class based on people's opinions and disagreements.

3. Don't give up. There is some way to do what you want. Never settle for the easy way, you won't learn a damn thing. Bug people until you find the information you need and go for it!

Annotated Index to Web Design: Who Cares About This Stuff, Anyway?

Web Issues
This page talks about several issues that a prospective Web Designer should take into consideration. My favorite part is the Copyright section, because I often wondered about whether or not my material on the web is safe.

The Psychology of Web Design
This page has a lot of aspects very similar to this report that you just read. The author talks a lot about what can keep (or fail to keep) a person interested in your page and what it has to say.

Linda Moore's Writing Services
This page takes an interesting look at how you should present the writing of your pages. I think this is good to look at because without writing, our pages would be only graphics. The writing part of web design is, in my opinion, one of the most important things our pages has on it. Maybe we should be taking more care in it as well as backgrounds and icons.