Category: Site Review

Explore each of your choices, then describe and compare the two sites use of Balance, Unity, Emphasis, and Layout. How do they use these principles and implement Krug’s five important “things” to make sure users see and understand the site? Is one site more effective than the other at drawing your attention, and why?

 

For this site review, I chose BRGR and Burgatory. Burgatorys layout and design I think overall is better than BRGR. Burgatorys website has a great layout of balance and unity. Things are evenly placed on the nav bar and as you scroll down theres not too much information. The layout is really key to their site. They also emphasize the different names in their nav bar which is really cool. They absolutely thought outside the box to rename what most restaurants would use in their nav bar. BRGR is a little different. They were a lot less creative in this process. Its a little hard to figure out where the nav bar is until you are on the site for a second and it only scrolls down the site for you. This is interesting but not that great. I created an off center feel to the site and the emphasis felt like it was lacking. It was hard to bring it all together. I honestly think it would have worked better without any nav bar and the name being huge and in the middle of the top page.

 

The five important things I see is the Site I D, the page name (whatever page you are one), the major sections of the site, local navigation, and where I am on the page. I think overall Burgatory is the winner. They create an experience on the site yet you still know exactly where you are and what you are doing the on the site the entire time.

 

 

 

For this assignment, I decided on reviewing Taco Bell’s website in order to compare it to my group’s.

The layout of Taco Bell’s website is relatively stylish, it’s easy to find what you need and find it fast. There are photos and a slideshow, and the colors and scrolling work well. The homepage is available to scroll down to see different elements, while our fusion restaurant website scrolls down to everything that is clickable in the tabs.

The colors are the typical Taco Bell colors of purple and white with some accents of black and grey and light green. Some of the buttons featured are different colors and turn a darker shade of that color when hovered on.

The texture of the Taco Bell website is not as good as it could be in my opinion. There is a lot of white space where nothing occupies those spaces, making the website look a little empty. The texture of the buttons mixed with the colors and photos is a good texture.

The navigation of Taco Bell’s site is relatively alright, it can get a little confusing when you’re scrolling down vs. using the buttons to link you to other parts of the site. If you’re just trying to find the menu or order online, it is very simple.

Our website will stand out because it has all the elements a website needs to be functional and stylish as well. It has color, a good layout, simple navigation, and texture. We have crafted out website in order for the user to be able to find what they need about our food and about our restaurant as a whole.

For this review, I decided to compare the two websites for The Burgatory and No. 9 Park. These two websites are actually quite similar in style and layout when you first land on both homepages. When you proceed to scroll down, No. 9 Park has more to be explored rather than Burgatory who does not, essentially telling its viewers to use the bar at the top to navigate the website.

With balance, Burgatory’s website has less compared with No. 9 Park. In its dropdown bars, only the first two selections have dropdown items, while No. 9 Park sticks with not having any at all.

Unity works well with both websites. They both feel like they were made to flow well and attract customers in order to get an appealing site.

Both websites have an emphasis on photos as soon as you land on the homepage. Burgatory has a slideshow of photos while No. 9 Park has more as you scroll down.

The layout of both websites is very sleek and attractive to consumers. No. 9 Park focuses on a fancier scroll down system which lets the potential customer see photos of the restaurant and read about it as well. As it is an independent eatery it has more space to do this, while Burgatory, which has many locations, cannot do so easily.

They implement Kreug’s important things by making the sites easy to navigate and locate what they want right from the start. After clicking on the menus for both No. 9 Park’s is simple and gives you the ability to be lazy in your scrolling or clicking. Burgatory’s however only allows you to click on one section of the menu at a time before having to go back up to the dropdown menu in order to go to the next selection.

Upon first viewing, Burgatory’s use of photos and informal texts attracts me more, but for navigational sakes, No. 9 Park is a better website overall. No. 9 Park’s use of photos throughout the website and ease of use makes it superior in the comparison between the two.

Hannah Daman

 

Professor Ames

 

I chose to compare burgatory and madmex’ websites. Madmex’ site uses a series of muted colors associated with the restaurant’s color scheme. There is a banner at the top with a photo of the inside of the restaurant with their logo laying underneath it connect to a menu bar. As you scroll down the menu bar attaches to the top of the screen and the logo shrinks a bit. The balance of the site seems to be leaning to the left because the block of text with their news information in it is smashed together.  The photos to the right of the copy are a little boring sliding between 3 photos left to right. At the bottom of the page rests another menu bar with comments, about, privacy and search listed for easy navigation. Based on the color scheme the page seems unified but the typeface chosen for the text makes the eye uncomfortable to read. The layout is somewhat basic and sort of unappealing. As for burgatory’s website theirs is vibrant, modern and done tastefully. At the top of the screen is a nav bar showing the menu, their locations, news, merch, some kind of member sign up, contact, and their social media accounts with the burgatory logo in the center. Under that is a slideshow of various images of customers and staff members enjoying themselves at the restaurant. The titles for the different sections are 3 to 4 times bigger than the text underneath of them showing great visual hierarchy and style. Under this there are 3 panels one to sign up for the mailing list, a thank you message to the customers and a link to “join the crew.” Burgatorys layout, visual hierarchy, and balance is all accounted for while madmex’ site is jumbled up and messy.

I will be reviewing the two sites, No. 9 Park and Six Penn Kitchen. Both of the sites are really well designed, but if I were to pick my favorite I would have to say the No. 9 Park was the best. They both have great Balance but No. 9 Park’s site is a little bit more balance oriented. For example, they they have a constant header that is easy to navigate and the Six Penn Kitchen’s header is a little bit less clear. Krug mentions a few important “things” in design. I would say his most important idea is to you make sure users can see and understand your site. This is extremely important because if a basic user can not understand what you are trying to show them, then there is really no point in even having it. Lastly, I think the No. 9 Park website just grabs your attention a little more over Six Penn Kitchen because they have a newer “modern” feel. Overall their design is just more clean and crisp.

For this review we were to take a look at single page websites. A personal favorite of mine that I found on Reddit is one called “Every Noise at Once” which is found at everynoise.com

I enjoy music, and I believe that anyone else who enjoys music would definitely want to visit this site sometime. What it is, is a collection of songs from all known genres and plays you a sample of which ever genre you want to find out more about. When you choose a genre, it will show a large collection of artists that have songs for you to listen to. I actually have been able to find new and interesting music simply just by going through the options at random. I find myself going back to it whenever I’m bored or want to see how obscure music can get. I always end up finding something cool and I never leave disappointed.

The website is plain and minimalistic, with the words forming a scatter plot that fills the page. You can scroll up and down to find about 1607 different forms of music. In my personal opinion, I believe that this website is well made and straight to the point. Everything fits and doesn’t detract from the overall experience.

If you have a spare moment and you want to find out more about Catholic psychedelic synth folk rock, you’ll be sure to find something that gets your attention!

I chose the site, favoritealbums2017.yaybrigade.com, for my second review. This one page is what it says it is, Yay Bridgade’s top albums of 2017. This one page is extremely interactive and combines movement of the user with audio of a song from the album displayed. The site’s color is simply amazing. They essentially use the album cover as inspiration for the design. This lets the sound of the album translate into the design of the page. With every album that plays a different color scheme and design are displayed. It is almost as if you get a feel for the album through that design. I greatly appreciate the time and effort spent to make the users experience more aesthetically pleasing. Texture also plays a key role in the design of this site. It has a clean look with the circles and the movement of the individual records. This utilizes shape as one of its key design elements. The circles not only represent a clean interesting design, but actually basing it off of this idea of vinyls spinning is a really creative way to tie the piece together. This site also plays with repetition in the sense that it uses the album covers as a “nesting doll” like appearance, aka one inside of each other. This plays with the feeling of depth through layers. The usability of the site I would say is well thought out and contains some experimentation.  All that you have to do is hover your mouse over the spinning records to listen to a sample song, know the name of the album, as well as the name of the song. As the sample song goes on, a rising color overwhelms half of the site, letting the user know how long the song will play until its over. Its little elements like this that help the usability as a whole. There is also a stacked way of using it where you can clearing find and preview the album and song. I think it is nice to have the two versions so as to please users. Especially viewers that want a more simplistic view of the albums. Overall, I would argue that site’s design is good in the sense it is well thought out and creatively experimental. I think that the design attracts users who want a little “spice” in their web design. I think that they have mastered a balance between making their site look complex without sacrificing usability and simplicity.

For my review I decided on the website for Tignes, which is a ski resort in the French Alps. The website is designed well, the colors flow together. Cool colors of blue and white are used throughout with accents of black. The texture of the website is also very good, with small circles, stripes, and triangles framing different parts of the website and used as the background in other parts.

The website is a one scroll option, all the viewer has to do is scroll up and down in order for the content to appear. There are only a few links and they are used sparingly only for links to photo galleries and social media. Throughout the entire time scrolling down there is a toolbar at the top that allows you to choose one of their other websites, share the page, and change the language the website is translated in.

The site is easy to navigate and read due to the feature that makes everything appear as you scroll. Nothing distracts you from the content you are reading. Each element comes in when it is appropriate and does so in a cool manner by flying in from different directions. All of the text is wrapped around a photo or graphic, making it interesting to read.

This website’s design is well done due to the freshness and originality of the design. It is not a commonly made website and makes use of the best features you can use in making a website. From all point of views the website’s elements are well put together and thought out for the advertisement of a ski resort. It dives into the resort, the people at the resort, and what you experience at it.

For this month’s review, I chose a single page site that has been highlighted on http://onepagelove.com/. The site is called Photoshop for designers that don’t use photoshop, which I thought was a funny and clever name. The layout and color used on the site reminded me a lot of the Adobe/ creative cloud emails that I receive regularly.The contrast between the black , white, and accent color is also aesthetically pleasing. The site really does not use any texture.To navigate from one section to the next the user must simply scroll up and down, the content is separated by colors. I really think that the colors play a big part of the readability as well as the contrasted typeface, and the simplicity of the whole site.The bottom of the site also includes a coming soon list, and although it is a bit long it is nice to see what is coming. This feature also keeps the user coming back for more.

David Schurman

Monthly Review 2

Intro to Web Design

 

The single page website that I chose to analyze is Mort Modern https://mort-modern.losttype.com/.  Throughout the website, the colors used are yellow, pink, purple, blue, green, and black. These colors are all slightly shaded which makes the website come together.  The texture of this site makes it look unique.  Each style font is broken up into sections.  Other images have drop shadows and borders which help the texture pop off the page. To navigate through this website all you do is scroll down.  Each style font is broken up into sections separated by color. Two design elements that I noticed on the site are unity and alignment.  Unity could have easily been lost in this website with the variety of fonts and styles used.  The designers did a good job in making everything come together. Alignment elements are arranged in a way that helps the viewer naturally scan the page.  I really enjoy this website. The overall design looks really cool.  I think the colors and texture create unity. My favorite part of the website is how you can interact with the font. For example, the user can change the font text from sample to any word they like. This allows the viewer to see the font before they buy it.

 

After visiting the onepagelove.com site, I chose to analyze “Moe Amaya’s Portfolio.” In terms of color, it is pretty simple with a white background and bright blue text. The shapes that are included to the homepage add some texture and detail. In terms of navigation, this site is kind of difficult to use. Some of the links listed do not work. They are not really well organized either. The site scrolls from top to bottom, making it easy to scan. Bold text helps keep some organization, but the categories on pages are all over the place. The categories that are listed don’t really emphasize that they are click-able. The user has to hover over the text to find the option to click. This site is suppose to be advertising for his portfolio, but his name is written rather small compared to the other sections. After scrolling down the page, there are more details about the artist, but the boring theme continues. There is a lot of text and the site makes the user feel like they are scrolling forever. Overall this site is pretty plain which can be fine, but in terms of this site, it does not make a user want to spend much time on this site.

Hannah Daman

Intro to Web Design

Professor Ames

February 20, 2018

Review 2

I choose to review the single page website called Tignes. Originally in Italian this page can become confusing fast unless you can figure out that the little white circle in the top right of the page can change your languages. Once you get past the language barrier, this site is well organized. The layout of the “main page” or first thing when one would see when opening the site is very attractive. The title Tignes is in a very large, bright blue typeface with a contrasting background of the mountains and a lake behind it. At the bottom is a bright blue, moving arrow pointing downwards towards more content. As you scroll down it transitions into a dotted background keeping that same bright blue in all of the background images and layouts throughout the page. The typefaces for each chapter, heading, subheading, paragraph and even all of the first words of each paragraph have a playful image on them. This makes the site easy to scan because you don’t have to search for hours and hours for something that you’re looking for. Just read the huge header, if it has anything to do with the topic you’d like to know more about keep reading! The overall design of this site is very playful and subtle. With all the flat, heavy black text on the page it needed that little bit of blue color to bring it back to life. The actions the site provides with each section is sure to keep any viewer entertained and intrigued.

Choose a single page website that has been highlighted on http://onepagelove.com/. Describe and analyze the site’s use of color and texture. Further, as this is a single page site how does user to navigate from one section of content to another? Does the user have to scroll left to right, top to bottom, all over or is navigation provided that takes the user to the content? What design elements make the site easy to scan, read and understand content. Lastly, make an argument for whether this site’s design is well or poorly done.

The page I chose to review from http://onepagelove.com/, was http://wearelair.com. The website LAIR was pretty self explanatory for a single page website. LAIR’s main color is a vibrant blue, so when scrolling through the website, the blue really pops out at you making you stop and read the blue text. Lair uses the blue to highlight their main points. The website seems to rely on their negative space to separate their content. Texture can be anything from distinctive appearance to the feel of the surface in a design or object. On LAIR’s website, the texture is created through their beautiful pictures and text. The website has a very minimalist feel to it and simple to read. When visiting this website, I noticed that the navigation is quite simple, you scroll from top to bottom. They do have some hyperlinks in their texts but it is much easier to scroll. What makes the website easy to scan is the spacing, the website is free of clutter and the main points are highlighted in blue so that if you’re looking for something specific you just read the blue. Everything is legible as well, the texts are well spaced out that there will be no distractions. The only problem I have with the website is the design, the website looks like it was thrown on all together and they look like they are separate content instead of all one. Like the pictures are overpowering the text because it is bigger than the actual text so it is overwhelming.

David Schurman Review 1

1/23/18

For my monthly review, I decided to choose Amazon.com.  The product that I chose to search was an essential oils diffuser.  I thought it was extremely easy to find the best product that was available on the website.  Amazon has a good customer feedback section so it is easy to find the most highly reviewed item.  The main homepage has a lot of clutter but after doing a quick scan it was easy to find what I was looking for.  Also, it is easy for the eye to locate the search button, product page, account info and special prime deals.  One negative aspect of the website was the tags associated with each product.  For example, I search essential oils diffuser and many items that were not diffusers such as oils, candles, and jewelry were displayed.  This is not a major problem but it can get frustrating when I am deciding on which diffuser to choose out of the five hundred that are available.  These unrelated products should be located in an ad in the shopping cart.  After adding the diffuser to my shopping cart, it was very easy.  Three small steps and the product is on its way.  When shopping users want to get in and out as soon as possible.  I think Amazon does a great job in understanding that is how users want to shop.  If I knew what diffuser I wanted prior to opening the page I could have found the product and purchased it in under one minute.  Overall, I think Amazon has a good website and shopping cart.  It is fast and easy to find precisely what you are looking for.