Ajax and Design

Alice Toth, Monday, February 19, 2007 @ 4:54 pm

Some random thoughts on Ajax and design.

Don’t design your page around Ajax. Armed with the same user-centric methodology you’re (hopefully) using today, you’ll first design the page and then see where Ajax can be added to enhance the interaction behavior. Start with the wireframes, which detail the page structure and content layout. Detail the wireframes by adding in the page and/or element behavior as you’ve always done. From there, evaluate the design and determine where Ajax can be used on the page to enhance the user experience.

One thing to keep in mind is that Ajax is best leveraged as an enhancement that gracefully degrades whenever possible. First defining the behavior of a page and then adding in the enhancement is one way to ensure it'll work in user agents that don’t accept client-side scripting, such as some mobile devices.

So why use it? Well, one nice thing about Ajax is that it gives the illusion of speed. It allows the browser to display information onscreen while continuing to query and receive data in the background. The user doesn’t have to wait for a page refresh before seeing new information. Because the browser didn’t have to wait for the entire results set before rendering data, the users perceives the site as being quick.

This illusion of speed, however, can backfire by confusing the user since they might not realize anything actually happened. Here’s where some basic usability needs to be tied into Ajax. Let the user know when something changes on the screen. Display a success message, highlight the new information, change from form elements to text, etc. What you do, of course, depends on the widget involved, page design, etc. My point is that you need to visibly indicate to the user that their action was received and acted upon.

user experience design

Comments: 1 so far

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1. 

   Alice,

   I thought your post was very wise. So I highlighted your comments in the first post in a series that I’m just starting on “Ajax Wisdom”.

   –Chris

   Comment by Chris Loosley, Monday, March 12, 2007 @ 3:56 am

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