There’s a lot today that’s being said about artificial intelligence and image processing – and some of it’s shedding light on how we perceive images as humans.
Essentially, we have specific visual processes through which we take in pictures – and on the web, that’s even more specific, since we’re interacting through a particular interface – the browser.
Businesses have made a close study of how we track images, what we respond to the most, and what makes sense on the web.
Old-School Internet
Back in the 1990s, as the Internet was growing and maturing, part of the struggle was to actually present working images to an audience.
Many webmasters had simple JPEGs that they had to stick into sites through an HTML coding process. It wasn’t unusual to see broken links, or grainy or blurry pictures on a site, and a cutting-edge website was often considered to be one that had glossy pics and video embedded in it the right way.
Now. We look back and see even Flash 5 and high-res pics as yesterday’s news. We want more of a design approach to the web – including responsive, phone-friendly design. That’s a lot of what webmasters now wrestle with as they innovate.
Dressing Up Images for “Web 3.0”
We’re well beyond some of the technologies that represented the best the Internet had to offer 20 years ago. Today, companies can innovate by adding functionality and dimension to the images that they provide to an audience.
Here’s a good example – the slideshow has evolved from a simple sequence of pictures to its own kind of embedded interface.
One best practice is to include a slideshow where every picture is represented by a small circle at the bottom of the screen, in the middle of the image. This simple visual helps to track what slideshow picture is being shown – it doesn’t include numbers or other distracting quantifiers, but individuals recognize it intuitively as a slideshow tool, and they can click into any given picture, or go back to view something that they had just glanced at before.
At Websubstance, we think of these visual tools as an essential part of the webmaster’s toolkit. We know that in today’s modern Internet, just working with text and images isn’t really enough. There has to be a design philosophy that’s responsive and mobile-friendly, and competitive with best modern practices in order to make the company look impressive. So much of modern commerce takes place through computers or smartphones that it’s absolutely imperative for companies to compete in these spaces – and Websubstance helps companies to do that effectively. Ask us about the range of services that we offer modern businesses. We want to help your firm to benefit from the best in web design and web services!
