Author: Amy Li

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Review 4

For your final review choose a website that could be considered competition for your fusion restaurant. Discuss the website’s use of the following three elements: layout, color, texture and navigation. Then critique their effectiveness at guiding the user through the content. Lastly, compare this site to your final project’s design, and suggest how your website will stand out.

For this final review, I chose the website http://humblepotato.com. The website Humble Potato is a neighborhood eatery, where they serve their interpretation of comfort food with a Japanese flavor twist. They are influenced by urban arts and cultural diversity. Their restaurant is located in Culver City and Westchester. Their website is very casual and gives the audience a very relaxed feel. The website is also very clean, when you first click on the website, you are greeted with a slideshow of their food, drinks, and various areas of the restaurant. Right under the slideshow, you see their mission statement. Below that, they have a tile of images of their menu. When you click on the image, a new tab opens and takes you to their Instagram page. Their homepage layout is very simple and balanced. The layout of their website is very similar to our website because we also tried to use our images to tell the story and the text to be there as an assistance. I wish that they would have used a different typeface for their mission statement because everything is so casual and relaxed. With that being said, because their typeface is not consistent, it is hard to guide a user through their content because everything look like a separate identity.

Comparing our Mashed Restaurant with Humble Potato, I feel as though our website is a little more consistent with our typeface. We have a more consistent with color theme as well unlike Humble Potato, they have a lot of strong reds and yellows from their food; however, they chose to use the color blue as their menu. The blue is a good color to choose but I think that, they could have used a color from their food to use for their branding. Their typefaces are not consistent because one their first page they used a sans serif typeface and then on their other pages they used a more slab serif typeface. It feels as though each page is supposed to be part of a different website, it does not feel unified. They also focused on using their logo as their site ID like we did. As you click on each page of the website, they used a dark gray to show that you are currently on the website but it is a little hard to see because it is not much different from the black. On our website, we chose to use a different color so that you can see which page you are on easier. Regarding aesthetics, our websites are pretty similar, we are both going for a more casual and relaxed feel to it and they are definitely going to be a big competition. I think our website would stand out more because our typeface is consistent and our colors coordinate with one another. In addition, our layout is easier to navigate through and our navigation bar is easier to distinguish than theirs.

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Review 3

For this review, I am going to compare the two websites: Six Penn Kitchen and No. 9 Park. The two websites are very different in their own ways. Six Penn Kitchen is a local restaurant in the Pittsburgh area, it is a single page website (http://sixpennkitchen.com/index.aspx). The website is simple, it is more of a visual site. There is no navigation to the website. The website is very balanced, the colors they chose makes the content pop out to the user. Also, the light grey lines are settle enough that it separates the content but also makes it look like it all goes together. The colors ties in together with the images, they chose to put on the website, which makes it aesthetically pleasing. The layout is very simple and there is no complexity to it. One thing that seems out of place is the logo, it is confusing because they have their name at the center of the page and their logo on the far left corner, both could be the site id. No.9 Park (http://www.no9park.com) is a restaurant located in Boston, they have a navigation bar. Their navigation is very clear, they have a down arrow to direct you to go down to reveal more content. It also tells the user how to use the site. They have only one site id that makes it clear to the user that they are on No.9 Park, unlike Six Penn. Their navigation bar is clear and it is visible, so if there is something that I wanted to look at, I could easily locate it. They also have a bar on the far right that indicates where I am at on the site. The website is broken down with large landscape images and short paragraphs of text for each image. Their layout is consistent and every style is carried throughout the website. No.9 Park emphasizes their main content by making the text pop with white text over the images and solid dark colors.

Six Penn Kitchen does a really good job implementing Krug’s five important “things” by putting very little text on the home page, to showcase their dishes and have the customers want to seek more if they are interested in trying out the restaurant. In the book, Krug also stated that putting more into a to make the page shorter helps with people being able to see the content so that they do not have to scroll anywhere. Six Penn does a really good job implementing this on their homepage. No.9 Park, on the other hand, makes you scroll up and down to see the content. Which makes it hard for the user to skim through the website. It makes the user slow down, and that is not how you really use a website. This makes the website harder to navigate around because you can only scroll. However, both of the websites have a clear hierarchy. You can tell what’s the most important content on the website and what is secondary. Even though Six Penn Kitchen does not have much on their site, they omitted any needless words to help the users skim through the site without thinking too much about it.

In my opinion, I thin No.9 Park draws more attention to me than Six Penn Kitchen because it has more content to explore. When you land on No.9 Park, you land on the home page with an arrow that tells you to scroll down so you can read more about their “Chef Barbara Lynch’s Flagship Restaurant in Boston’s Beacon Hill.” They also have a very clear navigation menu, so if you want to know about something then you just press on it. It is also easy to navigate from one page to the other. In addition, it is very easy for me to locate the home page because you just click on the site id and (poof!) it takes you back to the homepage. They also have more clickable links that Six Penn Kitchen.

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Review 2

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.

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Site Review: AMAZON

Guidelines: first choose a large eCommerce site like ThinkGeek, Puma, Fab, newegg etc, then search for a product you are interested in and place it in the site’s shopping cart. Because it takes a great deal of planning to create something that takes little or no thought to use reflect on how much the site made you think about this process. Refer to the reading and discuss how the site either makes it easy or not to find and buy a product you are interested in.

I chose to visit Amazon for my site review. When I got to the website, I was immediately overwhelmed. There was so much going on that I didn’t know where to go first. There was pictures and text everywhere. There’s no sense of hierarchy either. Once I saw the search bar I went and clicked the all button to see what was in it since it looked that it should be the first thing I should press on. Then a huge list popped out from it and I felt a bit anxious because there were too many options, there are too many categories and some of the categories seemed like they could possibly be combined with each other. So I ignored that and went to the search bar and typed in “shoe storage” because I have been looking for a storage space for my shoes. The products that showed were not what I was looking for. The products were coming from the category “Home and Kitchen,” which is far off from what I was looking for. The website clearly ignored what I was searching for and gave me products that were sponsored. So then I typed in “shoe shelves” and it was close to what I was looking for. So it seems like I have to be a little more specific about my search. The products did not look like it was organized in any specific way as well. Once I found the product I wanted to purchase, I clicked on the product and it took me to a page that talks about the product a little more. Once I’ve decided on the bag, there was a big yellow button that read “add to cart.” I clicked on it and it took me to a log in screen. I typed in my username and password to my account and it walked me through the steps to checkout. Once I entered in all of my information, there’s another big yellow button that read “place your order.”

Overall, I feel like Amazon could improve their website a little bit so that it is easier to navigate through and not as overwhelming. Not only could they make it a little easier to navigate they could combine some of their categories because there are many products that could be in 5 different categories and it gets confusing and makes the visitor feel dumb. A visitor should not have to think too much when going on the website unless they are thinking about what they are wanting to buy. I understand that Amazon is trying to showcase all of their products to their customers but it is overwhelming the way they did it.

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Chapter 6 Response

As time continued, society began to accept that technology was capable of assisting an individual in their daily life. People could utilize the computers to write software for the engineers, and make designing quicker for the designers. Designers who focuses on usability strive to decrease the cognitive dissonance, emphasizing speed and decreases the time spent on tasks. Designers who focus on usability can create a product that is more user-friendly and the tasks that the user would need this product or feature would be able to finish their tasks quicker. Not only would decreasing the time spent on the task, if the product is easier to use, the user would not experience as much technical difficulties when using it. By focusing on usability, the designer will minimize the number of errors a user might have while using a complicated system. Usability has become a huge solution to any given design problem; however, there is more design than usability. There is more value a designer can bring than making an artifact easier to use. A designer could also form an active judgement and criticism within the context of a specific design problem. In the book, they gave an example of a phone. So, if a phone is designed to make phone calls, and a designer decides to make the phone more of a social media based phone, then the phone’s main purpose goes away. It is crazy how much a simple design can change the overall purpose of an object. If you change a single thing, the designer has affected the culture dramatically, essentially inverting the established norm and by making a phone more public, communal, and social device.

 

Design serves as a cultural backdrop for our world. When a designer decides to slightly change an artifact, a user would not notice it; however, that is because these decisions have a delayed impact as they reach the marketplace. A designer can make a variety of design decisions when they create a product, but these products would be delayed as the physical or digital product would go through a variety of completion gates. Not only that, the product would go through a mass production to propagate throughout the world. As a designer, it is important that the product is “finished” before sending out the final prototype because what if there are some other changes that you want to make but you must go over the process again to send a massive amount of information throughout the world. When the products are sent out, consumers are oblivious, and they rarely have the time or awareness to understand how complicated product is affecting their life. It is very important to make the product easy to use. Simplicity is best. It is important to understand your user when creating your product because it could help you in the long run. If you understand your consumers, you would be able to create a product that they would want to utilize. A product is one of thousands or millions of things that can affect a person’s behavior and a single product can apply to an individual’s social norms, genetic predispositions, and various external influences in shaping how someone act, behave, and make decisions.

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Thoughts on Interaction Design Response Chapter 3,4,5

What information can ethnographic tools give you to improve the interactivity of an online banking website?

The ethnographic tool is used to understand what peoples do and why they do it. It is often used to observe the user with their interaction within their normal environment. The tool can help designers identify problems with the existing designs. If I was to use the ethnographic tool to help me improve the interactivity of an online banking website, the tool would be able to me understand how people work, play and live, and identify why people do things they do with the product, service or system. By using the ethnographic tools, I would be able to know what our users use the online banking website mainly for and what the banking website could do for them to make them interact with the website more.

 

At what point is a design finished? What makes it a success? What is its purpose? (pp. 54-62)

A design can never be finished, one could work on it and think it is finished but it is not considered finished until the user considers it finished. If the user thinks that there is a design problem or cannot navigate or understand the product/concept then the design is not finished. What makes a design successful is if the design can interact with the user and create a dialogue that has can create an emotion with the user. A design’s purpose is to help the user engage in a conversation fluidly.

 

Identify a product family you use regularly (can be anything from technology to consumables except for coffee). How has its branding effected your use, relationship and experience with the product? (pp. 78-84)

A product family that I use regularly is Apple. I use their phone, tablet, laptops, and Macs. When I use my Apple products, I feel safe and secured. I think my products are reliable and they will do what I want it to do and more. Sometimes I even find new things to learn about it. The branding has affected my use by giving me that safety and draws me in to their new products and only stay in their family. I feel like because I used Apple on the daily, I feel as though I could not go to another product family because I feel like I am cheating on the company. When I get a new product from Apple, I always get excited because I know that I would not be disappointed with the product and the products are always so sleek and innovative.

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Thoughts on Interaction Design Ch. 1 and 2 Responses

What makes up interaction design and what are some of the industry’s challenges?

An interaction design must include a goal-drive design which focuses on personas, user scenarios and experience maps. Usability is also important; the product must be intuitive and reliable before it can be used by users. Learnability, so that the interfaces would feel more natural and more usable with less distractions. The interface should also be quick at responding so that it would feel like a real conversation for the user. Some of the industry’s challenges would be trying to create convergent products that are easy to use and pleasant to encounter; however, as the physical and digital product development evolves, the only differentiator in service would be the cost. Not only should the design be easy to use, the design should also have a strong emotive aspect to engage the user.

What is interaction design, how its evolving. What fields does it draw knowledge from?

Interaction Design is the dialogue between person and product, system, or service. The dialogue is both physical and emotional in nature. The dialogue is manifested in form, function and technology. Interaction is evolving because interaction used to be intangible. Interaction design impressed users with simple interactions with unexpected to animation, but now it became a required feature with the interface. New interaction designs continue to arise as new technologies are developed. Interaction design draws its knowledge from the field of psychology because interaction design uses the cognitive, memory, and perception from it to create designs for the user.

 

 

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Strategy and Scope for App

Strategy
As a group, we decided to go with the idea of creating an app for our client Jerome Smith, who was clearly having a bad day. Jerome is 32 years old, who works in the Finance Department at PNC, he commutes from Sewickley everyday and always needs a cup of coffee when he gets up. He is also a very frugal individual. As a creator, our goal is to create a gas station app that would be able to connect to every gas station for convenient payments while providing roadside services. Because Jerome is a busy and frugal man, we hope that our app would allow Jerome to be able to access perks of saving money using this app while being able to go about his busy life without having to wait in line at gas stations. Not only would Jerome be able to access the convenience of paying, he would also be able to experience of being on time from the roadside alerts.

Scope
Our gas station app had many features and functions that will meet our goals. In our app we added in the function to add gas station membership cards (GetGo, Sheetz, BP, etc…) so that our users would be able to access any gas station with just one app and earn rewards to save money on gas. In addition to adding membership cards, our app users are also able to add their preferred payment to the app and the app will be able to automatically charge the card when they get gas. Not only would our app be able to add membership and payment cards, our app users are also able to compare gas prices near their location. This will allow our app users the ability to save some money when they need to get gas.
Due to the fact that our users are probably busy people, we also included notifications of when the gas tank is low. This will allow user’s ahead of time of when they should get gas before they forget that they don’t have enough gas to get to work the next day and end up late. We also added the feature of ordering gas ahead of time or prepay at a specific pump to save our users some time so if they are on their way to somewhere they would just have to pump and go. We also took the consideration of adding an alert to the users to put their gas cap back on because people can forget to do that all the time. In additions to alerts, our app users will also be able to receive roadside alerts for traffics, closed roads, and accidents. This feature would allow our users to know ahead of time that they should probably go a different route.

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Week 1 Responses

What are the goals of Apple’s website? How does Apple’s website address the needs of a user who has just purchased their first MacBook? (Chapter 3)

  • Apple’s goal is previewing all the latest gadgets trying to grab the user’s attention. While doing so the user’s become an existing user and they could also navigate to their designated tab such as Macbooks or IPhones, they want both new users and existing users to find use for the website. Another feature they allow new or existing users to do is navigating to the support tab in case they have questions on the product or assistance with a malfunction.

What are the functional specifications of Facebook’s wall? If you are not on Facebook what are the specs for the signup page? (Chapter 4: Functional Specifications, Content Requirements an Prioritizing Requirements)

  • Facebook is meant to be a site for people to connect with friends and families. The website allows one to share posts, images, or memories with one another. On the Facebook wall, users are presented with recent shared images, posts, and ads from different sites.
  • When signing up on Facebook, you are asked to insert your first and last name, email, birthday, and gender.

What are four architectural approaches to information structure? Find one example of each. (Chapter 5: Information Architecture)

  • Hierarchial – family tree
  • Matrix – clothing websites
  • Organic – wikipedia
  • Sequential – a textbook

What percentage of The Huffington Post index page is navigation, and what percentage is content? What about Google, Wikipedia, and Etsy? (Chapter 6)

  • On the Huffington Post index page, the entire page is navigation while there are a few links to content.
  • On the Google index page, majority of the page is content and no navigation.
  • On the Wikipedia index page, there is no navigation just content.
  • On the Etsy index page, there is a little bit more navigation than content.

How does http://landor.com guide the readers’ eyes and focus their attention on what is important? (Chapter 7: Follow the eye)

  • Landor guides the reader’s eye by giving the user a guided tour, there are very few options its just a straight scroll up and down. The website is trying to use as little distractions as possible so that the user has an easier time navigating through the website. They also use very bright colors like yellow, to really grab the user’s attention on what is important. The most important or most recent post is of course the first image you see on the page.