Posted on by TBash

Elements of the User Experience Questions Answered

  • The primary goal of Apple’s website is to sell their products. When I entered their site, their goal was to sell me the iPhone X first, then other products in their inventory. The iPhone was prominently displayed with an in-your-face photo, a large headline of the product name and two links to either find out more about the product or purchase it. The next item on the list is the iPad with the same headline and links. You then have to scroll to see anything else.
  • When looking for product support for my brand new MacBook, the site was straightforward to navigate. I clicked on support, then the Mac icon. I had to scroll a little to find the MacBook icon for my next click. The first thing I saw upon entering the MacBook support page was the question “Have a new Mac?” and the site tells me that I can learn how to set up my new computer. I clicked on that link which led me to a very clean, concise page with natural to follow prompts for the most common scenarios that new users might encounter and need help. I found the site to be beneficial and easy to use. This experience tells me that Apple cares about making sure their customers have no trouble with their new products.
  • The functional specifications of Facebook’s wall are to be a social content management system. Users should be able to create posts to share with their friends and view posts created by their friends and by businesses and groups that they like and/or follow (middle and largest column in the layout). Easy access to the different areas of interest for the user is on the left of the page (navigation). Search, and global navigation is at the top. Other tools and links to friends who are active and that you can have live conversations with are located on the farthest right of the page. The primary function is to let people connect with each other through various means of communication.
  • The four architectural approaches to information structure and their examples:
    • Hierarchical – https://www.jaspersautorepair.com/
    • Matrix – https://www.walmart.com/
    • Organic – https://www.wikipedia.org/
    • Sequential – https://www.intechnic.com/
  • Index pages and percentage of navigation vs. percentage of content (none of these sites has a literal index, so I assumed this meant the home page):
    • Huffington Post – 60% nav/40% content (percentages are my best guestimate)
    • Google – 99 nav/1 content
    • Wikipedia – 95 nav/5 content
    • Etsy – 75 nav/25 content
  • Lander.com uses bright red buttons to draw your attention to the desired shop now button. The shop now button was the first thing that I saw when I entered their site. The next thing that I noticed was the extra large banner ad for their Labor Day sale which included a rather nice photo of a black backpack with a gray background. They have very nice product photography and a lot of white space, so the pages don’t feel cluttered or crowded. The color scheme of black, white and gray helps the bright red to draw your eyes around the layout. The colorful, but not too bright photos help to draw your eyes to each product without overpowering the red highlights that are the main focus on each page.