What is web development? Web development sounds simple enough. It's about developing websites, usually for a business. But once we start to look deeper into it, it's not as straight forwards as one might think.
"web development involves the creation and maintenance of websites. By "website," we mean a collection of web pages that are publicly accessible on the internet"
The definition of web development according to Codeacademy.
You start by writing your code in HTML and CSS or any other coding language that has the framework to make a website. Then we get to the more Indepth part of web development. We must differentiate between static and dynamic websites. In static websites all the content is put manually in HTML while in dynamic websites we use SQL and PHP to get content from a database, while the design structure is from HTML and CSS.
More than that we also have to difference between front-end and back-end development. What we call front-end is what the user of the website will be able to see while back-end is everything in the background. What the workers see, when getting the content from a database like PHP for example. Other code languages that can be used are Python, Java, JavaScript, Ruby and more. (Marius Rohde Johannessen, 2022)
UX (user experience) also known as UI (user interface) is what we use in this context for everything about web development, because the part with coding in HTML and CSS is just a small part of UX. A lot of UX is about the total experience a user will experience in the meeting with a digital product. The goal is for the user to get a desired finished product with the least amount of trouble possible. (Marius Rohde Johannessen, 2022)
"the process design teams use to create products that provide meaningful and relevant experiences to users. This involves the design of the entire process of acquiring and integrating the product, including aspects of branding, design, usability and function."
-Interaction Design Foundation
UX is not something new, but it's only in the last decade that we have started applying it to digital products.
UX is about the entire prosses from an idea to a finished product. This also includes the stuff outside the digital world. For example, the same method is used on physical stores. A good way to do UX is to look at the “UX Honeycomb”. It’s a model that shows what is needed for a good Userfriendly website.
The “UX honeycomb” tells us a good website should be:
Useful- It should be something the user needs
Usable- Easy for the user to navigate
Desirable- It should be designed to be wanted to be used, both in the sense that it should have useful functions and be visually pleasing
Valuble- It should offer value to the user
Findable- easy to search up for the user
Accessible- it should be able to be used by every user group
Credible- It should be trustworthy
A way to structure UX-design is to use the Herbert Simon prosses.
Definition- what is the problem, why are we making a website
Research- Find out more about how to solve the problem, often ask users in interviews or other ways
Ideation- Come with the different solutions, and processed with the best one
Prototyping- The best ideas get developed further as a very basic shell of the website, ether on paper or in HTML/CSS
Choosing- if you made different prototypes choose the best one
Implementing- build up the finished product
Testing- the finished product is tested in users and changed accordingly
Since a lot of information is involved in UX we separate them into three main faces:
Analyzing/understanding
Analyzing and understanding is the beginning part of UX where we seek out to get to know the user. The central goal here is to get to know the user and what they need. We should be observing the user in their daily life. From everything to how they are acting with each other, how they are treating the end user. Users often act very differently depending on where they are working. If it's from home, at work on their phone. All that should be taken into account, to try and figure out what is needed from the new website. (Marius Rohde Johannessen, 2022)
Exploring/design
The second main face would be the design and exploration face. Here the goal is to start looking for or exploring the different ways to solve the problems, to fill the needs of the user that we found during the last face. We can for example use one of the methods written about further up, to start looking and try for different solutions. (Marius Rohde Johannessen, 2022)
Realizing
The last face is of course finishing and realizing the website. To finish and code the website, and to get it out and working. There is an important part that comes after realizing, that is about implementing the website in a good way that doesn’t disturb the users. (Marius Rohde Johannessen, 2022)