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A great site is a usable one
In web design, when we think of flow we usually mean "task flows" or "flow charts" but there's another kind of flow that we should keep in mind. It's that impression of complete absorption when you're engaged in stuff you like to do and are not disturbed by frustration or boredom due to steps that are misdirecting, repetitive or overly taxing.
Flow, as a mind state, was first introduced by psychology professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and is described by a incorrect sense of time, a deficiency of self-consciousness, and complete participation in the process at hand. Software developers might feel it when they're writing code, gamers might feel it when running Quake III, Christopher Cross felt it when he started his trip. For design artists, it's just the feeling we hope to achieve in the users of our site.
How do we design sites that promote that feeling? Well, it starts with a site that solves a serious problem and is complex enough to ask for a certain amount of learning by people who use it. The purpose should not certainly be to create a simple page. The purpose should be to develop a site that is intuitive to navigate no matter how complex it really is. But wait, you may think, hasn't there been a usability movement in web design over the last couple of years? Yes, but there's a learning curve for any site that want to solve a difficult task. You shouldn't confuse simplicity with an urge to avoid needless complexity.
The trick to make the complex feel painless is to consider flow in your structure. By developing a site that is smooth and intuitive and inspires flow, you help new users get up-to-speed in a shorter time, lower the chance that current users leave your site and change to another and produce users that evangelize your page to other people. That way you will get more users, increased activity, and bigger awareness of your page.
The first point in designing for flow is to set certain goals for your future users. It's vital to develop both an overarching goal along with smaller, incremental goals. This will help users understand what is their final destination and each step they'll take to get there.
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ArtIcons Pro can find, extract, edit and create Windows icons in color depths up to 16 million colors. Import and export icon images, create and handle icon libraries. It supports the new icon format introduced in Windows XP (8-bit transparency). Download it
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CustomIcons is an ultimate tool for customizing the icons on you desktop, in Windows Start menu and many other locations. Using CustomIcons you can easily replace default Windows icons with the ones to your choice. Download it
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