In the old days of web development "design" meant adding a few pretty pictures to a page full of text, or at the most, playing around with the colors of the background and fonts.

 

Years later, a "good" web designer would think about the layout of a page, and how to make it easier for site visitors to read and absorb the information contained on that page. This evolved into creative ways to display buttons and other interactive objects on a page to drive engagement and make the visitor feel good about interacting with the web page.

 

As CSS and JS became mainstream components of websites, people began to think of new ways to help users navigate pages and find information throughout a website. But it wasn't until the birth of applications that the idea of planning for both user aesthetics and usability became part of web design.

 

I've always started with consumer research when managing technology development - Discovering what's already there and what works and researching the latest trends in UX development and natural use patterns. Then combining that research with heat mapping analysis and user feedback forms during alpha and beta testing.