Let's consider news sites
Posted: Thu Feb 06, 2025 3:53 am
This idea is called “prototype,” defined as the degree of similarity between a product and its competitors in its field. Prototypes often signal to consumers that the item belongs in a certain category.
Think of it like movies. Certain genres have specific codes and conventions, like spooky music and dark atmospheres for horror movies, or upbeat, cheerful music and funny scenes for romantic comedies. We're used to these formulas, we understand them and expect them. So, if you throw some scary music into a rom-com, the audience won't know how to react or how to feel—it can get a little confusing. The same goes for design. Feel free to experiment as much as you want, but if you go too far, you risk confusing your audience.
Their homepages typically have lots of stories, pictures, and algeria mobile database links - this is archetypal convention. It's archetypal because it's a functional format to browse through stories and select the ones you want to read. So if, in the name of "aesthetic design" or "being different," you lay out a news site in a way that goes completely against this tried and true format, you're making it hard for consumers to recognize that it's a newsbrowsing site.
The Google Research blog did a study to determine the comparison and contrast between archetypal and complex websites. The findings showed that "if a website's visual complexity is high, users will perceive it as less beautiful, even if the design is familiar. If the design is unfamiliar — i.e. the website is less archetypal — users will perceive it as uglier, even if it is simple."
Think of it like movies. Certain genres have specific codes and conventions, like spooky music and dark atmospheres for horror movies, or upbeat, cheerful music and funny scenes for romantic comedies. We're used to these formulas, we understand them and expect them. So, if you throw some scary music into a rom-com, the audience won't know how to react or how to feel—it can get a little confusing. The same goes for design. Feel free to experiment as much as you want, but if you go too far, you risk confusing your audience.
Their homepages typically have lots of stories, pictures, and algeria mobile database links - this is archetypal convention. It's archetypal because it's a functional format to browse through stories and select the ones you want to read. So if, in the name of "aesthetic design" or "being different," you lay out a news site in a way that goes completely against this tried and true format, you're making it hard for consumers to recognize that it's a newsbrowsing site.
The Google Research blog did a study to determine the comparison and contrast between archetypal and complex websites. The findings showed that "if a website's visual complexity is high, users will perceive it as less beautiful, even if the design is familiar. If the design is unfamiliar — i.e. the website is less archetypal — users will perceive it as uglier, even if it is simple."