Dematerialized meeting places and digital design for interaction and participation

Abstract: In the context of webdesign for public utility communication, the website is a necessary tool for a startup or an institution that turns to users with a diversified profile and with uneven levels of digital skills. In this compound, more than in online communication for companies or professionals, the website is configured as the place of provision of services and information and, as happens for physical places, it must be easy to find, it must comply with accessibility criteria for all and allow users to feel at ease and give them the certainty of receiving safe information and being protected while using the "digital place". Hence, a website becomes the place of disambiguation and in the Covid-era, the place for meeting and participation. The website of a museum, for example, or a university, like physical places, needs to meet inclusion and sustainability criteria, it must be smart, flexible, adaptable, renewable and with features that allow energy savings. Even if dematerialized, the objects that make up a website must follow the rules of the real world in order to be understood and used without an instruction booklet. Visual design adapts to the laws of perception, and calibrates the elements of the design pattern, colors and font families on the principles of fruition for all users. Designers identify valuable design strategies based on inclusion criteria. This contribution describes a design experience conducted by a group of young designers as part of a thesis path in Communication Design. A summary will be presented of how the new generations of visual designers for the web, in order to achieve accessibility and inclusion objectives and which allow the website to be easily recognized and remembered, use two fundamental elements of design: digital materials, that is the design pattern used to build the wireframe and the visual layout, and the strategies of value, that is, objectives, actions and content that driving and characterizing the website.

Keywords: Communication Design, Visual Design, Webdesign, Inclusive, Smart, Digital Materials

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe100961

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