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Lesson 3: Design

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Proximity

Put simply, like goes with like. Items that perform the same function, are part of the same group, or have similar meanings should be put next to each other. Because your brain identifies and processes items by their group, placing similar items eases reading and facilitates understanding. This is called chunking. Each chunk is initially identified, categorized and then processed into its comprising parts. The better organized your web page, the easier it is for your user to find the information they need.

Chunking Text

Due to the nature of web sources, large blocks of text are difficult to read and are usually skipped by the user. Think of your students, most of which are web savvy, when reading a textbook they consistently want to skip over the non-essentials and head straight to the answer. The web reinforces that idea, and like it or not your pages need to be designed the same way. Look at the text on this page, for example. Each section is fairly short, clearly titled and grouped by topic so you could skip to the parts you found more interesting.

The Next Winning Lotto Numbers Revealed Here

Ok so I don't have the next Lotto numbers, but this does help prove a point. If you skipped the paragraph on chunking text (which I would bet was more than half of you), read the section above and ignore the following numbers.

4 8 12 19 26 36

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