Category: ARTM2210 Intro to Web

Our group decided to join Mexican and Chinese cuisine together to make a fusion restaurant called “Panda Loca.” In order to get inspired and also to take a look at what kinds of restaurants we could potentially be competing with, we looked at and analyzed websites for restaurants such a Mad Mex, Kiyoshi Bistro, TGI Friday’s, and Olive Garden. The one website, though, that could ultimately be one of our competition restaurants was Mad Mex. (https://www.madmex.com)

Looking at the layout of their website, it is very plain. Their background is a solid color and does not make it very exciting to look at. The content of the website is centered in the middle of the page with a navigation bar, a cover photo, and a logo for the restaurant. The text is very simple, but there is a lot of it on a majority of the pages as your navigate through the website. The homepage does good job of creating a “site identity and mission,” one of the main things Steven Krug talked about in Chapter 7 of his book; it is very laid-back and gives visitors a sense of the restaurant’s atmosphere.

The colors used throughout the website are very warm. The use of deep burgundy, gold, green, and white all work very well alongside one another and good a job of complimenting one another. This scheme, as defined by The Principles of Beautiful Web Design, is an analogous color scheme; the colors are not the same, but they all work together to make the page look cohesive. I do not think this website has much texture to it. Texture, as defined by The Principles of Beautiful Web Design, is anything that gives a distinctive appearance or feel to the surface of a design or object. Mad Mex’s website is solely designed of solid colors and pictures that have no additional pigment, pattern, or texture to make them stand out in any way. On a positive note, the website is very easy to navigate and allows users to find anything and go to any tab using the fully functioning navigation bar on the top of the page.

Since the content on the website is very bland, it is hard to read through since there is so much text in such a little space. A lot of people get bored and don’t feel like rummaging and reading through long paragraphs at text to get to the point. A lot of sites choose to use bold, large headings and short sentences to not only keep visitors interested but to make sure space is being utilized and is even. Being that all of the text is also going straight up and down the page, it is sometimes easy to get lost in the words and forget about what you were originally trying to find or read.

Panda Loca’s website combines accents and colors of both Mexican and Chinese cultures. Our background uses texture by incorporating bamboo in the website’s background. We use light, neutral tan colors and accent our most important features with yellow, black, red, and white. Each page that the navigation bar takes you to a new page that maintains the overall tone and atmosphere of our restaurant but also adds variety and makes the viewer want to look at the every different page. Our overall vibe is more laid-back and fun compared to that of other websites. The Panda logo on the top of every page adds a comedic effect and keeps the viewer interested. We have tabs in our navigation bar for every occasion/customer need and we overall do a better job of representing our company compared to others.

 

A possible contender for our restaurant, The Woking Taco, is Over the Bar Bicycle Cafe. Over the Bar Bicycle Cafe is located in Southside in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  This restaurant is competition for The Woking Taco because it is in the same general location. Also, the two restaurants have have similar brand qualities when it comes to appeal, audience, and overall tone as they are a more edgy/quirky themed restaurant with a unique name.

 

For Over the Bar Bicycle Cafe’s website, it is quite simple. It is a one page site with very little information offered at first glance. There are links to the different menus that they offer and a link to apply for a position. They have a link for directions and to their social media accounts. This layout makes navigation tricky. This page feel less engaging and harder to locate the information/answer that you are seeking; it takes a bit more digging. The colors are consistent on the homepage. The darker colors with the bright green adds a fun element to it but keeps it clean. The background, wooden panels with drawings of bicycle/sports related logos, adds a bit of texture to the page. All of these elements, however, are lost when you click on the menu links. The theme is not as strongly represented on the other pages, which causes some disconnect when switching from homepage to linked menus.
When comparing Over the Bar Bicycle Cafe’s website to our site for The Woking Taco, it is clear that The Woking Taco is more cohesive across all pages of the site. The Woking Taco’s website is consistent in overall design with special regards to color and layout. The links and the information that they hold are easily navigated. This is the most important aspect of our site for The Woking Taco that stands out against the website for Over the Bar Bicycle Cafe. This is because a user is more likely to stay on a sight when it is extremely easy for them to find what they are looking for. Not only does the Woking Taco offer easy navigation on our website, it also offers a pleasing and sensible design and layout for a restaurant. Having the colors cohesive throughout all links within the website will stand out against our competition’s websites.   

I chose to compare my final website Doblé Dragon with the website for the restaurant: Ellen’s Stardust which is located in New York City.  I chose to compare these websites because they both are restaurants that focus on the experience of being there.  Doblé Dragon is geared towards an alternative younger group of people.  It has quite a dark theme and could be considered “goth” in its style.  Ellen’s Stardust is a family restaurant that is popular for the performances the staff do because they are all people working while trying to find a job on Broadway.

Beginning with Ellen’s Stardust, the homepage is set up in a very simple manner, the nav bar is located on the left side of the screen and there are several photos covering the home page.  The photos depict the different activities that occur at the restaurant.  It is somewhat confusing because little blurbs of information pop up when the cursor moves over the image making you think it’s clickable.  The nav bar is set up in an easy manner.  The different links to the pages are clear leaving zero hesitation when clicking on a page.  The gallery page doesn’t link to anything so I don’t know if there is something wrong with the website at the moment but that’s the only page not working.  Everything else is set up in a clean manner.  When moving through the pages, there is a good mixture of images and type.  There isn’t a lot of type making it very easy to take in the information.  Images are used a lot to help assist the reader take in information.   Their use of type stays consistent throughout the website except for the menu.  But every other page uses the same font and font size to differentiate between headings and blocks of information.  Every page has the navigation bar on the left which contains links to all of the pages of the website while also including the logo and links to their social media pages.  The website is predominately white, allowing the images to bring color to the website.  This website overall is created in a clean manner that makes it very easy to use.

Comparing Doblé Dragon’s website, the homepage is also created in a very simple manner.  The only items contained are the logo, hours, nav bar, and location with google maps.  The nav bar is set up in three different pages with a sub navigation on the menu page.  When reading the nav bar, the page titled “our people” could possibly be slightly confusing because it doesn’t have a clearly named title.  The style overall is very consistent with limited images and spaced out type.  We kept the information light on the website as to not overwhelm the user.  When clicking the menu, there is a sub navigation menu that breaks up the menu into the different types of food or drinks.  This was done to make it very easy for people to find what they are looking for.  Both of these websites have very simple designs with few different pages.  They both have limited text use to make it easier to read as well.

While both restaurants focus on the experience that will happen when you visit it, Doblé Dragon focuses more on the people who work at the restaurant.  In addition, the Doblé Dragon website has a strong style to it that matches what the atmosphere would feel like when at the restaurant.  Ellen’s Stardust says that it has a retro style within the restaurant itself but has very little to represent that in the website.  I believe that is a major draw back because if the viewer isn’t captured by the appearance of the website they might not be interested enough to read about it.  So not giving a feeling of your restaurant in the appearance of the website can make people click away if they feel they don’t have the time to find out if it would be a restaurant that interests them.

For Review number 4 I chose to do P.F. Chang’s as a possible competitor website for our fusion restaurant. They are considered an Asian/Chinese fusion restaurant that has been popular for a while now.  P.F. Chang’s website is actually pretty similar to the way that we are making our website as far as the layout and overall style of the site goes.  They have a main navigation bar with menus, reservations, rewards, etc. Then they feature almost a “block” style design where there are different tiles with information on them. The overall look and feel of the website is very simple, clean, and to the point which in my opinion is very important for a restaurant website as people are basically going to be doing two things- ordering or looking at the menu and that should be as simple as possible. The home page itself is built small so that there is not a lot of scrolling involved. Instead you are clicking on links to travel to the other pages. The navigation is simple and very easy to do with everything being in one central location. In my opinion the website could use a bit more, whether it was some added color or maybe something that makes the sight feel more interactive. It does its job for what it is needed for but I feel as if something more could be added to it just to make the experience of the website a little more interesting to browse.

As for comparing our website project to P.F. Chang’s I think we are going for a very similar general look and navigation style but I feel as if we are adding a bit more interactivity to our website. Its not just going to be plain with pictures of our food and simple things. We are featuring a convenient online ordering system right on our home page so that customers don’t need to search for anything and can just quickly order from our website and head out to pick up their food. I think this is a strong idea because it is straight to the point for the customer and also includes a bit more interactivity and ease for the customer when navigating our website. We certainly do not want to overdue it so that there is just a bunch of junk that is thrown all over our website but something that makes sense and works well for our customers.

 

For this assignment, I looked at the website for Noodlebox (http://www.noodlebox.ca/). This restaurant is looked at as competition to our website due to the Asian-styled food mixed with another element, westernization.

The website at first glance seems like a one-page website, then moves on to being a multi-page website when you click on the last two tabs. This layout is concerning and very startling when you don’t expect it. The other concerning element is the delivery menu at the top of the screen. Every time the page is changed the last thing to load is this delivery option, causing the whole screen to jerk down for a moment. This web page has some pluses when it comes to layout also. The screen’s menu scrolls with the rest of the website, following you on the way down. Picture galleries can be found on the homepage and they flow well with the rest of the page.

The whole website has a very dark black color with white text and red elements. The black makes the words pop but very difficult to read after a while. The name of the restaurant also is put over a photo and is very hard to read at first glance. If you scroll to the bottom of the page, you have to scroll all the way up in order to get back up. If someone wants to find something on this website, they most likely can.

The website is very professional and compared to ours looks like it has had a lot of time put into it over a long period of time. The amount of information put on each page is overwhelming at times. The darkness is unsettling on Noodlebox’s website and ours is more welcoming comparatively. Our website has a more uniform feel when it comes to navigation and that is what stands out amongst the two.

Masian versus Zen Fusion

 

A restaurant website that would be competition for my group’s website restaurant, “Masian,” would be zenasianfusion.com/. The website itself, aside from the actual quality of the restaurant itself, appears to be portray a good quality environment. This is shown through their effective layout, color and texture, and the navigation.

The layout of the site is organized in detail. There are seven separate tabs for different user needs, making it not clustered all in one area. The restaurant name/logo is right at the top, which is good for establishing the site right off the back. Right in the middle at the top is a big graphic describing an upcoming event, which is good for highlighting the extra events they throw. The rest of the homepage is all description of the event that week. It is good for highlighting what is to come, but it would be nice if they had a little bit more info about the restaurant itself right on the homepage too for viewers interested in the restaurant, not the event. Underneath is a button to contact them. That button is on the bottom of the site no matter what tab the viewer is on, which makes it easy to find.

The color and the texture of the site is mainly black and white with the occasional hint of red. The font is not consistent, which is a little bit bothersome. Every now and then there is a hint of a bright, different color, which may throw the viewer off. For the most part, the color is clean though. There is a little bit of texture only in photos, not the actual site. The logo in the top corner, while convenient, is also a tad fuzzy. However, the overall color and texture appears to be clean, but needs tweaked a little.

The navigation of the site is organized for the most part. As stated above, there are seven separate tabs breaking up the website. They are all clearly organized, making it easy to navigate the site without getting confused. However, hidden within the site and at the bottom, there are a few links that take the user somewhere else not labeled at the top as well. Luckily, they stand out so they cannot be accidentally clicked and throw the user off. However, overall the website is easy to navigate and all flows nicely. They effectively guide the user. Especially by keeping the navigation bar fixed, so the user doesn’t even have to scroll back up to click to another tab.

In comparison to our site “Masian,” there are many similarities. Most of our tabs if not the same, are vastly similar in how the website is broken up. There are photos scattered throughout to break up paragraphs as well, much like our site, especially in our “About Us” page and their “Our story” page. However, I’ll site will stand out because it will be more bright and inviting through our use of color, rather than the dark contrast their site has. Our font is also consistent throughout, unlike theirs.

Although there are many similarities throughout the two sites, there are enough differences that they each stand out in their own way as well. However our website will differ and make sure the mistakes made on the site reviewed are not reflected in Masian as well.

For the final review, I choose www.kiyoshibistro.com website that could be considered as the competition of out fusion restaurant. The layout of kiyoshibistro is very simple. They have all the content embedded in two rounded rectangle shapes. One of them is a navigation bar and the other one has the main content of the particular page. All the content is vertically aligned on every page. In the menu pages, text goes in a line followed by an image at the top.

The color scheme is pretty simple. Their website has black color as the background for all of the pages. Yellow/gold color is used for the navigation bar and hover property. Also they have used the tone of yellow as the background of their menu image. Some white and black text is also in the use at certain pages of the website, mostly on the home page. So, overall three color are used throughout the website i.e., yellow, white and black.

The navigation of the website is pretty simple and easy. Obviously, you can scroll up and down throughout the page. Other than that, there is a navigation bar at the top of the page which directs you to the specific page you want to go. Also, on each page there is a navigation button for the home page and a button to go at the top of that specific page. Since, there is only one way of navigation, it is easier for the users to navigate throughout the site and find the stuff fast and easy.

The texture of this website is not as good as the other components of design such as color, layout etc. But it’s not that bad either. It doesn’t have any unique line making up different shapes than the other websites, it’s kind of the usual shapes that has been used everywhere. There is some repeated stuff used at different pages but again it’s all the usual stuff. There isn’t enough depth in the in images, design, and shapes created, but it doesn’t look bad as it is.

The guidance to the user through the content of the website is quite effective. There are only six pages in the website and the navigation to each page is at top of each page in the navigation bar. There isn’t any other further link in the website except those six pages, so the user shouldn’t have any problem accessing the website.

The website that my group has made would have different color used than kiyoshi’s website. We used orange, green, and white. Also, our website has more pages than kiyoshi. Kiyoshi’s pages have different menu for lunch, dinner, sushi bar, and signature dishes, but we didn’t use our pages that like. Instead, we have all the dishes in one page names menu. And further we have more pages like gallery, reservation, events, shop, contact, about, and home page.

The font used by kiyoshi doesn’t  look good, and the line height is very less which makes the text hard to read. Since we have used good font and would have good line height and spacing, it will help our website to stand out. Also, in the gallery we used good looking images that can make a customer really hungry and order food from our website. Finally, the reservation page will help a lot for our website to stand out because a user can reserve a table by himself during a busy day or before without being in the line and waiting forever.

The restaurant my team and I decided to create is a fusion of Chinese and Mexican foods. The name of the restaurant is Panda Loca, a family friendly chain-like restaurant with good food and a good time. As far as our competition, I would consider Panda Express’s website to be one of our closest competing websites. The layout of the website is relatively easy to navigate. It starts with a navigation bar at the top and bottom of the screen with content between the two navigation bars with relative information to what tab you click on. It is very clear what is clickable and what is not. There are animations to all most of the elements that are clickable, making it very simple to find what you need to click on. They have a fairly simple color scheme of red and gray; but the site consists of images all over the page giving it a very bright look with many colors. I think the use of these many images makes the website look busy and is a bit overwhelming to the eye. The way the site is animated makes it feel 3 dimensional, with the way the elements jump out at you. In a way I think this can be helpful to find what you are looking for, however at the same time with the many colors and so many animations it feels a bit chaotic.

I feel that Panda Express does a decent job at guiding the user through the content. The navigation bar is fairly simple, but then has drop downs with more options. This is a very large site with many different pages of information, so I feel with the amount of content they needed to include they did do a good job at organizing it. I think the way they coded the movements of the navigation bar and the other various elements of the website is what makes this website so effective. The user doesn’t even have to click on anything to find a certain piece of information, for the most part it is right in front of their faces. This makes for a very well done, effective website. The one thing I would try to change would be the amount of images on the site, and perhaps trying to condense or exclude unnecessary information. This site has so much content it can be overwhelming and possibly frustrate users.

My website’s final design has a similar feel to the design of Panda Express’s site with the bright colors and pictures. I think our site pops more with the colors I chose. I went with a four color scheme that gives it that Mexican/Asian feel: red, black, yellow, and white. I think something that gives our site an advantage is the layout we chose. It consists of a top and bottom navigation bar with content in the center of the page. It is clean and simple to navigate. The animations on the page are milder, making it less overwhelming than Panda Express, and yet still assisting the user to guide them through the website. Panda Express has so much going on in terms of content with their layout that it can be hectic, this is where I feel my website stands out. It is clear to the user what is where and how to get to it. The information is placed right in front of them with an aesthetically pleasing design. My site is designed well, with a great theme of the crazy Panda. Each page is consistent and users will enjoy and be well informed when visiting my site.

The two sites I chose were very different. They were No9 Park and Six Penn Kitchen. No9 Park seems to be on the fancier side, while Six Penn Kitchen seems like a nice sit-down family restaurant.

 

Six Penn Kitchen has good continuity throughout their site. They use at least one big picture on every page with words either above it or underneath it, giving it a good balance. The color scheme is very monochromatic too, making it nice to look at. When looking at their menu, it is a one page site, so it is very easy to read. The menu items are a little close in proximity, but it doesn’t bother me too much. Overall, this site was my favorite because of the simplicity and how it was easy to use.

 

No9 Park was not my favorite. It also didn’t go overboard on the color, which made it nice to look at. However, I found it difficult to find the menu items. Also, it was lacking balance wise. It had the navigation bar on the side, which is fine; however, it had words right next to it and almost no pictures. This made it seem off balance to my somehow. It had good proximity throughout. I also think they could have made it more unified. Every page seemed different to me, which was off putting.
I liked the Six Penn Kitchen website a lot better. It was nice to look at and seemed like a restaurant I would want to order from. The No9 Park website was okay, but it also seemed stiff and some of their design was strange to me.

For the third review, I looked at the latter two of three given websites, no9park.com and sixpennkitchen.com. Both websites are for respective restaurants, and upon first glance looked very good. I took time to review both websites page by page, looking in depth at their styles in terms of Unity, Balance, Emphasis, and layout. Both websites work considerably well in terms of unity, with all themes, pictures, text, etc matching up. Neither site overcomplicates things, which works to their advantage. We are taught not to overcomplicate things for the sake of making them look “prettier” or to even try and dazzle the viewer. Each website attempts to these things to their advantage to grab the attention of their viewers and customers, and they work very well. We as humans tend to find things that work, and then stick to that thing. When something works, there is a natural sensation for us to stick to it and not search further for other outlets. As someone who has never visited either restaurant in person, I can tell just via the websites that their simplicity along with their calm color schemes would prompt me to look no further in the search for a quick bite. There’s no part in particular that stands out, giving both sites a good sense of unity. When it comes to balance, the SixPenn Kitchen uses a block layout with no option to scroll, their homepage is solid and very balanced. No9Park is balanced decently well, but their navigation bar runs along the left side of the page, with pictures and information in the right column. As you scroll down, the navigation bar doesn’t scroll with, which bugs me. After you scroll until the navigation bar is out of site, the website becomes very unbalanced and leans more towards the right side. It’s small inconveniences like this that may throw users off, causing them to change sites or even get temporarily lost and frustrated. It seems ridiculous, but it’s something that has been proven time and time again. When we go to a website, if it doesn’t immediately load then we can get frustrated and automatically start to refresh or restart. We as human beings are naturally very impatient with small things, especially technology. When looking at emphasis, both pages are very even. The only common emphasized thing on each page is the logo of each individual restaurant, which is what the user should be viewing when looking at the pages. No9 has a huge rotating slideshow at the top as well, which is another point of emphasis. The slideshow displays images of meals prepared by the restaurant, something users may like. Finally, there’s layout. This to me goes hand in hand with balance. No9Park is a dark layout and theme, very simple, with rotating pictures of different dishes and other various things on their homepage, with an equivalent theme on each page. The same can be said for SixPenn, using a cool blocked layout and theme to make everything easy to view. When picking which site is better, I am biased, but I have to choose the SixPenn Kitchen website. I am a sucker for the block layout with no scrolling, it makes things easier for the viewer to navigate, and confuses the audience less. Their is also a better overall color scheme, incorporating a cool orange to make different things on the website pop out at the viewer. Hats off to the SixPenn website design team, overall a very well done website.

Review 3

Morgan Torchia

 

I chose to review the two sites Six Penn Kitchen and Huge Domain. In my opinion, I believe  Six Penn Kitchen is better entirely as an overall website compositionally than Huge Domain.

The balance is slightly off on Huge Domain. Some of the titles are centered, and other ones are left aligned, making the website uncomfortable. The entire website seems almost like a game of hopscotch with certain aspects having two squares next to each other, and others just being on giant square. With Six Penn Kitchen, the website is neatly organized. Everything looks like it fits together neatly in one border. It is easy for the viewer to follow.

The unity is off on Huge Domain. The colors are all over the place, making everything jump out at once. It gives the viewer a headache. There’s too many random splotches of green and red and blue, rather than just one bright color and some black. And there isn’t just one theme to tie it together. For Six Penn Kitchen, the overall look is clean, with colors reflecting the food. Yes there’s more than two colors, but they are subdued in a way that blends it into the website’s aspect.

The emphasis is clear on Six Penn Kitchen that the main point of the website is the food. Your eyes directly go to the bright colorful food, and then to the information surrounding it. For Huge Domain, the layout is sloppy, and the viewer isn’t sure what the important information is.

The layout for Huge Domain is sloppy. There’s a lot of buttons leading you other places making it awkward. For Six Penn Kitchen, there is a clear menu bar, making it easy for the viewer to navigate, unlike Huge Domain.

In conclusion, I firmly believe Six Penn Kitchen is a more aesthetically pleasing site than Huge Domain.

The two websites I chose to analyze for this assignment were the restaurant websites of Olive Garden and TGI Friday’s. Olive Garden is national Italian restaurant chain with several locations throughout the greater Pittsburgh area. TGI Friday’s is also a national chain restaurant that serves classic Bar and Grill restaurant and has several locations throughout the Pittsburgh area as well. Although both are high in popularity, each restaurant has a completely different atmosphere; they also offer to very different types of websites.

Olive Garden’s website is very classic and rustic looking. It uses neutral colors like green, tan, and brown. The layout is vertical and requires the user to scroll down the page. There are several tabs, including Menu, Specials, Gift Cards, and more, that allow the user to easily navigate through the website. One of the most prominent features on the website that Krug discussed in his textbook is the site’s use or promotions. A majority of each page from the navigation bar features some sort of promotional effort to get people to come to the restaurant. The website also has a very cohesive layout; a majority of the content is in a square shape and they all are relatively close in size. It all looks like one cohesive layout and showcases it’s food through lots of visuals.

TGI Friday’s website is very up-to-date with technological trends and demands. The website’s homepage includes video backgrounds of the food being prepared and tossed; this not only makes it stand out from other websites, but it also makes the food much more appealing. Like Olive Garden, their site also does a good job of emphasizing their features and promotions.  Krug’s book tells readers to “use as much space as necessary” when trying to get their promotional messages across. TGI Friday’s does have a lot of white space on some of their pages, but it does not take away from the quality of the website. The traditional colors and balance of images make the website very classic and true to the restaurant’s vibe.

I think TGI Friday’s website does a much better job at catching the attention of users. The layout is much more visually pleasing and the colors aren’t distracting. It also easy to navigate and understand and all of the text stands out. It looks like one cohesive website and has an overall better visual appearance than Olive Garden’s does.

In this review I have chose the two restaurants Red lobster and Buca di Beppo. When opening these two sites they have very similar headings and layouts. The balance of the two websites sites are also very similar, they both use the whole page with a variety of options to click through and pictures that are clickable. The websites both have city between the different pictures and the clickable menus. The Red Lobster Menu has a drop down that has pictures of each of the different menu’s to help guide each customer to which point they want to reach. In the Buca di Beppo menu you must select your location and your store to see the different items they offer to each individual store. The emphasis is based on the photos of the food and then it transitions to the special they are running. The sites implement the important things because it is well set up and is easy for ease of access. You are able to get through the site with ease, and quickly find the information and tradition back to anther page. The Red Lobster page is a little bit to smoothed together and its hard to focus on one piece of it. The buca di Beppo is a little more subtle but I do not like how much you have to go through to find the Menu items in your local store. I would say that the Red Lobster Page would be drawing more propel attention into it, just for the fact that has more going on and the drop down bar is easy to use.

I chose to compare the websites created for No. 9 Park and Six Penn Kitchen.  They will be compared on their layout, balance, unity, and click ability.  When looking at the homepages for both websites, Six Penn Kitchen is much easier to read and understand.  No. 9 Park is very text heavy on its homepage and a couple other pages making it slightly overwhelming to search for information.  In addition to the text heavy pages, the lack of emphasis between different parts of the page make it extremely confusing on what the viewer should read next.

Six Penn Kitchen was laid out in a very clean manner, allowing the user to reach their destination in no more than three clicks.  Each page listed in the global navigation bar is very clear and understandable.  The user to sure to find the information they are looking for when using this site.  Emphasis is used very successfully within this site, especially in the menu.  They focused on ensuring their menu was easy to understand.  They have clear color distinctions that create a hierarchy of information.  The most important information, or the headers are a bright green that stand out boldly from the background.  Next in order falls the subheadings, often the name of the food, in white that also stands out from the background and from the green headings.  Last, Six Penn Kitchen made their descriptions of the foods a light tint of grey allowing it be read but not overwhelm the user with information.  Their layout throughout the website is centered which could be varied up occasionally to create more visual excitement but it makes it very easy to use because the user knows what to expect.  The global navigation located at the top of the screen assures the user that they can easily return to the home screen or visit another major topic of the site without having to search randomly around the site.  As Steve Krug explains, “Web navigation compensates for this missing sense of place by embodying the site’s hierarchy, creating a sense of ‘there.’”  The navigation is the basis of this website, making it extremely easy to use.

No.9 Park is less understandable.  Steve Krug talks about killing happy talk in websites because it takes up space.  He explains, “Unlike good promotional copy, it conveys no useful information, and it focuses on saying how great we are, as opposed to explaining what makes us great.”  No.9 Park uses happy talk right on their homepage, making it feel very crowded.  They attempted to get the user’s attention with the small paragraph of happy talk along with moving images of the food, and different drinks they specialize in.  But it all feels very overwhelming for a homepage.  They attempted to create a hierarchy by changing the color of text but they needed to incorporate that more into the page itself instead of only using it in the navigation bar.  The number of clicks needed to achieve finding information varies.  It is somewhat confusing arriving at the full menu and some of the pages were given vague titles, leaving the user unsure of what they are about to look at.  On all the pages, there is a lot of information; but not a lot of useful information.  Especially in the process of trying to find the menu, the user has to sift through paragraphs of information because the sub-navigation links to the menu don’t stand out.  Every page is laid out the same, with the global navigation bar on the left and all of the information justified to the right.  The most confusing part is the location of the sub-navigation bar as it seems to disappear in the pages.

Six Penn Kitchen is much better at catching one’s attention than No. 9 Park.  The simple layout and sparse use of text make it extremely easy on the eye.  The navigation is much simpler than the navigation used in No. 9 Park.  It simply takes a lot less thinking to use the Six Penn Kitchen website than the No. 9 Park website.

 

The two sites that I took a glance at were sixpennkitchen.com and no9park.com. The both of these websites have a very modern and blocky type layout, which works well with emphasizing certain material. The material that is highly emphasized is the pictures that are placed on each tab. The blocky type layout also sets a nice balance to the page because everything is ordered and symmetrical. With both of the site’s design layout being so balanced, it is easy to create a visual hierarchy to show what the most important things on the page are.

If you notice on both of the websites, they are broken down into different areas. With the Six Penn Kitchen, these areas include the headlines with all of the different tabs on the top and the body below it, whether it holds pictures or text. As far as the No. 9 Park goes, it is arranged a little differently with the logo and tabs on the left side of the page, a header for what page of the site you are on up top, and the body of information below it. Though they are arranged differently, you can still tell that they are clearly broken down into different areas.

One thing that both of these sites have is unity. The layout created for the each of them creates a sense of unity among the site because everything is in order together and nothing seems cluttered.