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"People are often keen to blame themselves when objects appear to malfunction, it is not the fault of the user but rather the lack of intuitive guidance that should be present in the design." - Don Norman

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The characteristics of good design lays in its usability.

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The hierarchy of needs in UX

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The Characteristics:

Color - 

Color serves as the building blocks for creating an emotional connection between a person and a brand, or guiding the aesthetic base-line of a website. However there are constraints that need to be addressed when designing because of accessibility for the color-blind. If you are creating a website for a primarily female audience, there may be no reason to take this into account. 1 in every 12 males is color blind, while 1 in 100 women are. Many website creators will choose to focus on incorporating the color blue into their website, because it's a color which is visible to most forms of colorblindness. This can be seen in the creation of Facebook when mark Zuckerberg, who is color-blind, famously choose the colors white, blue and black to avoid using colors on icons and text. Mind the contrast of the writing and background and try to keep one neutral color as the focus of at least 60% of your website. 

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CV simulator is a great app for reviewing products to make sure they are accessible for the color-blind.

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Previous experience -

If people are used to a service's website looking one way, they will expect them all to be similar in layout. Therefor it's important to serve the user in a way they will intuitively move through the product, by keeping its design layout similar to its competition. Previous experience also comes into place when having icons that are easily recognisable. Intuitive design is man-made and often based on things we learned not only in other websites, but even in childhood. 

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Location -

Having the banner and search engine in the forefront as well as an easy-to-use menu, will determine what the first impression of your website will be, and hopefully will allow users to understand what the website is about and where they need to click. Websites on computers or other horizontal devices will often have its users scan the page in a Z shape, while on a vertical device people scan in an F shape.

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Using good hierarchy for focal point scanning-

Having differences in hierarchy through things like font size, location or boldness will really effect what people will look at in your design. Make sure to mind the information architecture of what goes into your design within: Organization systems, labeling systems, navigation systems and searching systems. Mind also the font size to not be too small is also incredibly important if you are designing for people over 40. Your goal as a UX designer is to make things visibly clear and easy to use. Therefor if people have to squint to read something, and it makes them feel old and like they can't understand the website, they won't like using the website. 

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Choose the right typography-

You want your websites typography to create the right emotions, feelings and associations for your user. While this is an integral part of branding, this could used across the spectrum of making a loveable product.

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Strong and clear stimuli for contrast ratio -

A website needs to take into account the colors used for backgrounds and for writing to make sure they are easy to read. Check out how challenging this website is to understand:

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Manipulating the eye-
We are drawn naturally to things like human faces. In addition to that, if a human face is faced towards something, we're more likely to glance at what the other person is looking at. Here you can see a heat map of what people looked at when seeing this page. Note that the red is the highest center of attention.'

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Extra Tips

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• If you update a website, do so gradually to avoid any jarring effect on your users.

• Avoid noise and movement, unless you're trying to capture attention. This will make it hard for your user to focus on anything else.

• Always include a call to action you want your users to do.

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