Design@Symantec

Insights from the Symantec Design Community. We will keep you posted on what we are doing and look forward to hearing from you on how we are doing.

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  Updated: Reshma Kumar 02 May 2013

  Designs Trending Towards Flat In The Future

  There has been a lot of discussion recently around Apple's reported push towards flatter designs. Others, such as Microsoft are already said to be bucking this trend with it's Window's Phone metro design, along with Facebook and it's new 'f' icon design. Designs with more 3-D and life-like appeal have been popular for some time. Such designs were highly popularized by Apple for their skeuomorphic qualities. This approach added more realism, richness, and familiarity to design elements and helped bridge the gap between the physical and virtual worlds for users. The trend and chatter now seems to be revolving around the antiquity of this approach and suggests that it is potentially not...
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  Updated: Reshma Kumar 02 May 2013

  Study: Visual Cues Convey Security

  Strategically placed seals indicating that a site is secure increase the perceived level of security on a site. In a study on checkout usability, it was found that visual cues of security like the Norton Secured Seal help customers feel more confident in providing their credit card information online. The study found that positioning also mattered where seals placed next to credit card form fields on a payment page provided an uplift in the perceived level of security by customers. The study concluded that while customers might not understand technical jargon such as SSL or...
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  Updated: Rich Lam 02 May 2013

  Maximizing Visibility With An Auto-Rotating Carousel

  When we initially launched the redesigned homepage, the hero banner area at the top of the page displayed only the first hero message by default. The banners didn’t rotate to the other messages and required users to manually mouseover the banner thumbnails to view the other three heros. As a result, we found that there was a missed opportunity to maximize the visibility of the other hero messages for users.   To address this issue, what we’ve done is transform the hero banners into an auto-rotating carousel which cycles through each of the four hero messages. With a subtle fade transition from one message to another, the hero now has the right amount of animation to draw users’ attention to these key messages without introducing visual noise. And, visitors now have a greater probability of viewing a banner message which was previously buried and likely increase the rate of user interaction. ...
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  Updated: Reshma Kumar 02 May 2013

  New & Improved Cross-Site Navigation

  Last week, we launched a cross-site navigation enhancement to the Symantec.com Enterprise site. We’ve added links to each of our four main sites – i.e. Norton, Small & Medium Business, Enterprise, and Partners – across the top of the site thereby, creating a funnel effect readily exposing our site choices by default and enabling users to more easily navigate to the destination that best fits their needs. We’ve also added a site identifier adjacent to the logo to help users better identify the site they are on i.e. Symantec | Enterprise. This, is in addition to bolding the link label of the site the user is on e.g. “Enterprise” in the site navigation bar at the top of the page. Hope this helps to better cross-navigate our sites.
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  Updated: Jackie Moore 02 May 2013

  Guidelines for Presenting Visual Designs

  Visual designs can be presented in different ways, so it always a good idea to know who you will be speaking to. They can be shown with or without annotations depending on the audience. A business stakeholder is less likely to be interested in annotations, but a technical audience might be more interested in the details of the implementation which can serve as the basis for a style sheet. In my presentation, I might start with the overall concept and how the visual treatments are being applied to unite elements of the page, draw attention to important content and features of the page, and most importantly, enhance the user interaction on your website. The visual design language can include points of balance, symmetry, focal areas, proximity, simplicity, and harmony. I might also address how the visual...
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  Updated: Reshma Kumar 02 May 2013

  New Symantec.com Now Live

  Phase one of our brand new website which we recently told you about has been launched, providing a new and improved Corporate and Enterprise user experience on Symantec.com worldwide. The first phase of the rollout includes the new home page, products and solutions landing page, security response landing page, and global navigation. The new Enterprise site provides a more engaging experience, more dynamic content (integrated social media, video, podcasts, etc), and a simplified display of information. There is a more prioritized global navigation, a better browsing experience with fewer clicks to key pages, and a more seamless user experience. Using the interstitial overlay from the home page, visitors can easily gain access...
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  Updated: Reshma Kumar 02 May 2013

  Symantec.com Ranks #1 In Usability

  We were happy to learn that Symantec.com was named the winner in overall usability by SiteIQ scoring high marks in calls to action, e-commerce and purchasing, and content clarity. This is based on an evaluation by the website best practices firm of leading IT websites on how effectively sites achieve critical design and business goals. The report looked at sixteen issues to determine how effectively sites support the buying process — focusing on product marketing to services marketing to the quality of the site’s sales contact and ecommerce capabilities. SiteIQ stated that they "Find Symantec.com...
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  Updated: Reshma Kumar 02 May 2013

  5 Things Steve Jobs Taught Me About Design

  With the passing of Steve Jobs, Apple Co-Founder, I got to reflecting on what are some of the key learnings and takeaways of his design genius that he imparted on our industry and me personally. 1. Design is powerful. Good design is powerful and something that is well-designed from the inside out has the ability to make a huge impact. Steve Jobs famously said that "Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works." A product that is well-crafted—whether it is digital or physical—can inspire a reaction and action from people. 2. Designs should be tasteful. Sleek, sophisticated, exquisite, and even cute are some of the...
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  Updated: Reshma Kumar 02 May 2013

  Design User Interfaces With Flexibility In Mind

  Designing a user interface which is solid yet flexible has definite advantages. From time-to-time your interface can and will be put to the test - whether it's something that has to go-live immediately, an update to its branding, a request to accommodate something that doesn't quite fit your model, incorporating a new feature or functionality that's cool but tricky, making something work globally, and the list goes on. There are many challenges your interface is likely to encounter in its existence and needs to be able to accommodate. Clearly, doing a full-on redesign every time you need to make a change is neither practical nor possible. The...
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  Updated: Reshma Kumar 02 May 2013

  What The First-Ever Website Teaches Us About Usability

  The below is the earliest known screenshot captured of what the first-ever website looked like. This early creation still represents the basic tenets of good design and usability. For instance, it is highly readable and provides great contrast with a very basic white background and black text. There is no gratuitous imagery. It utilizes the times roman font-face at a legible font-size. There are blue, underlined links clearly defined which we have all come to recognize as clickable. The page is written concisely with information-carrying words hyperlinked - notice there are no "click here's". And, I bet it scales to any resolution, is cross-browser compatible, and is mobile-browser friendly :). Twenty years later from when this web page first went live, it is still a winner in terms of ease of use and usability. ...