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.