Tryangled Solutions web designing tips tricks

One of the things I really enjoy about games is their physical presentation. I’m much more likely to enjoy one that has had a lot of thought put into the design of its box, rules and components. Often there will be a clever idea or method used that makes you wonder why all publishers don’t do it that way. With this in mind I present the following list of ideas and suggestions that I think greatly increase a game’s appeal.

When deciding what to include here, I’ve limited myself to ideas and concerns that do not (for the most part) require extra expense beyond time. Using hand carved wooden pieces would be great but the cost could hardly be justified. Similarly, advice along the lines of “use only fabulous artwork” is not all that helpful. Rather, the points I’m trying to state fall into the category of things that cost exactly the same to do the “right” way as they do the “wrong” way.

Further to this, it’s not my intention to make a definitive set of “rules” for good design. There are some suggestions made here that will not be practical for all games. For example, Murder at the Abbey contains a lot of information on its Monk cards and it would be impractical to index it on all four corners. Instead, I think it best to view this as a check list, either implementing the suggestion or deciding why it would be impractical to do so.

Mobile devices are so popular nowadays that the traffic that mobile search brings can no longer be discounted. Because of this plenty of websites now offer mobile versions of their website. If you already have a mobile site though you should make sure that you stay informed about the changes/improvements done by search engines in relation to mobile search to ensure that your mobile site is optimised for mobile search.

One of the improvements in mobile search that you can expect Google to focus on in predictive search. We know this because of a paper published by two Google employees, Maryam Kamvar and Shumeet Baluja, titled Query Suggestions for Mobile Search: Understanding Usage Patterns. The paper revealed that:

* users rely heavily on query suggestions, and that;
* users will accept a correct suggestion quickly

Because of these findings Kamvar and Baluja concluded that:

1. Mobile search results should show as many suggestions in a small list as possible
2. Suggestion lists should show a constant number of suggestions (thus maximise space usage compared to instances wherein only a couple of results are suggested)
3. Suggestions viewed 3 times should NOT be displayed as a suggestion again and should instead be replaced with another suggestion
4. Suggestions that result in lots of key presses should be replaced

While these findings and conclusions mostly are the concern of search engines (since they’re the ones who have to figure out a way to implement the changes) web designers and SEO will do well to prepare for the upcoming changes.

For web designers what this means is that they should ensure that the mobile site is designed for efficient navigation so that the number of key presses are reduced once the user arrives on the website. This means concise content and an efficient information architecture.

For SEOs what this means is that they should ensure that mobile pages are optimised for really relevant keywords. You wouldn’t want to be listed for not so relevant keywords because if you get listed 3 times without being clicked on by users if Google listens to this paper’s conclusion it would mean that your site would be replaced by another suggestion. Another reason why you should be more careful in keyword selection is that you would want users to be directed to the exact page they want to be in or at least just be a couple of clicks away. Again as the research suggests links that lead to an increase in key presses will be replaced by a link that does not lead to as much key presses.