Designing for the scroll, not the screenshot
Pages are experienced in motion and in fragments. Most of them are still designed as flat pictures.
Category,
Web Design
Ines Vogel
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Most web design is still reviewed as a series of static frames, which is roughly like judging a film by its poster. The page is experienced as a sequence, at a speed the visitor controls.
The unit of design is the transition
What happens between two sections is a design decision as real as either section. Does the next block announce itself early, or arrive suddenly? Does the header change state? Is there a moment of rest before a heavy section, or does the page just keep shouting?
Reviewing in a static tool hides all of this. It also hides the parts of a page nobody sees in the artboard: the third scroll depth, the empty state, the long list, the page on a slow connection.
Review in the browser, early
Move the critique into a real browser at a real width as soon as there is anything to look at. Half the notes you would have given on a static frame stop being relevant, and the notes that replace them are the ones that improve the page.
