Lately I've been contributing to charities using their websites to donate money directly - rather than hand money to a chap on the street. The experience has been interesting to say the least. As you would expect, some websites are poorly designed, unnecessarily complicated and make it very difficult to donate. One website I used was actually misleading - getting the user to set up a monthly subscription when the user thought they were going to make a one off payment (if you didn't see the check box with the small print..). Most website design guides focus on layout/composition, colour, texture, typography and imagery. Modern web designs will have you focus on social aspects - such as design for sign-up, on-going participation, collective intelligence and sharing. I'm not going to dig into these topics (it's easy to look up) - but the good and the bad are exemplified in the two examples I've chosen to illustrate the experience. I will apologise here for makin...