Author: Cassie Graham

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.

I chose to review the websites for MadMex and Six Penn Kitchen. When first reviewing the sites I analyzed and compared the aesthetics of the sites. In my opinion, I favor the overall look of Six Penn’s website. In terms of balance and unity the site does a great job, for instance you can view all of the important information without even scrolling. MadMex’s website lacks unity and balance because of the negative space in its homepage. The introduction on the first page exceeds in length the size of the image to to the right, and throws of the unity and balance of the page. Six Penn’s website has a much more balanced and cleaner layout than MadMex. The images on Six Penn’s site stand out more because of the simplicity of their layout and the background color choice. MadMex uses a multiple earth toned colors that make the site more chaotic. Six Penn’s color choices most definitely help to emphasize the images and information on their site.

Krug has five important “things” to make users see and understand a website. The first thing is to create a clear and visual hierarchy on each page. Without a doubt, Six Penn Kitchen does a phenomenal job at creating a simple layout that highlights the important information while making it obvious what is clickable. Six Penn Kitchen’s website is made very easy to navigate for users. MadMex is fairly easy to navigate, but in comparison to Six Penn’s site there is definitely room for immprovement. MadMex could benefit from emphasizing key information with a more simplistic layout. The next thing Krug lists is to take advantage of conventions when creating a website. MadMex does not take advantage of conventions; I feel that they could have used better styling to make links and things that are clickable stand out more. Six Penn does a great job with the convetnions of their website. The colors and styles used, especially the navigation bar at the top are the first thing the eye is drawn to. The next important thing is that pages are broken up into clearly defined areas. Six Penn does an excellent job at this because each page is clearly defined. Not only is the site well organized to begin with, but it also uses stylistic techniques to section of information, like dotted and solid lines. This consistently keeps the whole site well organized and clean. MadMex on the other hand could do better with its organization, and needs help in styling to keep the sight organized. Important information does not fit all on one page, and the site has a lot of pop ups which adds to the chaos. The fourth thing that is important is to make it obvious what is clickable. I think that both sites do a good job at this. However, Six Penn takes the lead once again just because the stylistic quality is better. One thing I do not like about MadMex is that the text in the navigation bar is the same color as the site’s background making this information fade into the background. Lastly, the fifth important thing is to minimize noise. My feelings on which site did this better should be clear at this point. However, just to clarify Six Penn did a much better job at minimizing noise by keeping a well organized, consistent style pattern, and well sectioned site. MadMex uses too many colors and the content does not fit the page well.

I find that Six Penn Kitchen catches my attention more than MadMex. To summarize, the main reasons is that Six Penn uses a more appealing color scheme and styling, is more organized, and did a much better job making the site simple to navigate. Also, I personally feel that Six Penn Kitchen’s website has a much more professional look. I think MadMex should consider improving the style and organization of their site in order to more effectively draw customers’ attention.

I chose to review the single page site NativeSwinson.com.  My eye was drawn to this site because of it’s simplicity and nice design.  After opening up the site, I first analyzed its texture and color.  I think its use of white and black backgrounds keep the site clean cut and allows the content to stand out on the page.  The use of both black and white as backdrops give the website depth. The homepage stands out the most with its use of background images that look almost as if they were drawn in the background.  I think the use of the paint brushed drawing that change on the homepage give the site even more depth and dimension.  This is something that I think works really well in the design. Native Swinson also uses a set color palette of cool colors that go together nicely.  The choices of blues and greens give the site a serene, and nature like feel which is appropriate for the content of the site.  Overall, I genuinely liked the use of texture and color throughout this site and find that the design elements work well together.

As for the navigation of the site, I find it to be slightly chaotic.  In order to scroll through the site, you do not scroll but you have to click on the words in the navigation bar.  Once you click for example “About” button the entire screen shifts either left, right, up, or down.  I feel that not everyone will grasp this concept as quickly as I did and may be confused that you really can’t scroll and that there is no blatantly obvious indication on where to click to get to the next portion of the website.  As I mentioned above, I liked the different images on the homepage however they only appear if you click an arrow key on your keyboard. I think there should be some indication that there are more images, like with the use of arrows on site’s homepage. Another specific portion of the website that I would like to mention is the setup of the Gallery. At first, I did not even realize that the list of content on the left was even clickable. Then I noticed that if you move your cursor across the content the image changes on the right.  The problem I find with this is if you move your cursor the image changes, so I think it could become frustrating to some users that the image they want isn’t staying up.

There are design elements of this site that I find make the site easy to scan, read, and understand despite the criticism from above.  The site is very well organized with content that is clearly sectioned off, making it easy to read.  I like the simple fonts and overall layout.  I also find that the site has a very clean look, it doesn’t overwhelm you and has no clutter. Although I find that the use of the navigation bar to scroll may not immediately stand out to some users I do find that the flow of the site overall works very well.
All said and done I think that overall this site is done very well. To highlight some key points I made above, the texture and color design elements are done very well.  As far as the navigation I think the site can be improved with some minor adjustments. For example, I think that making it more clear what is clickable would be an improvement. I think making what’s clickable more bold to users will help them to more easily understand and navigate this site. Also, making it a point to display that there are more images to be viewed on the homepage would be another change that I think would improve the site. I think adjustments  on the sites Gallery portion might be something they want to consider.  I think the Gallery could be more user friendly by using thumbnails of images with their titles below them. Like I said overall I think Native Swinson did a great job at designing their website, but there is always room for improvement.

I will never forget the first time I shopped online, I thought “Wow, this great, simple way to feed the shopping addiction I have.” Initially, I hesitated jumping on the online shopping bandwagon, thinking the process would easily frustrate me. I worried about misleading products and having to deal with various return policies. However, I was wrong; online shopping has made shopping so much easier at the click of a button. However, I was let down recently when I went to make a purchase at Fabletics.com.

Fabletics.com features an athletic apparel line for women created by Kate Hudson and JustFab Inc. I thought “Look at Kate Hudson, she’s fabulous. I want to be fabulous.” This is when I decided to venture to the website. My first impression of the site was that it was fairly easy to navigate, with simple fonts and a nice little drop down arrow where it says “shop”. The site makes it obvious where to click on things, the prices stand out, and the merchandise is presented well. I had the perfect outfit selected and was eager to checkout. As I went to purchase I noticed it did not take me to my shopping cart, and a quiz popped up. The first wave of frustration came over me as I discovered I had to complete the quiz to purchase. The quiz is made to customize your shopping experience. I thought this was a nice feature and would make my shopping experience more efficient in the future.

What I did not realize is that to shop on Fabletics.com you must sign up to be billed every month for merchandise, and must skip each month by a certain date if you do not wish to purchase that month.  I found it irritating that I would have to go through the lengthy process of a quiz and remember to cancel subscriptions to make a single purchase. This I did not like; I feel that this complicated the entire checkout. When reading Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug something emphasized throughout the first couple of chapters is that the website user is always in a hurry. This is a very true fact, and imagine trying to explain how this site works to your grandma, I doubt she would remember to cancel that subscription or take the time to take a quiz every time she shops. I won’t be expecting any gifts from Fabletics.com from grandma any time soon, because the site complicates one-time purchases.

A sad ending to the story, as much as I loved the athletic wear on Fabletics.com I never purchased anything, because I find the checkout process to be a headache. It would be wise for Fabletics.com to allow guest checkouts that do not require any kind of subscription or extra steps to checkout. I would purchase merchandise from them frequently if they simplified the checkout process.