Author: Justin Portz

For our final project we are making a fusion pizza resonant called ZA Pizza. So for my final review I am analyzing a similar theme restaurant call Pizza fusion. I will be looking at its color, texture, navigation, and layout

When I enter a site the first thing I notice is the color of the site whether that be conscience or subconsciously. In the Fusion Pizza restaurant site it is clear that their color pallet is a complimentary color scheme of both greens and reds. When you get into the phycology of colors this seems to make perfect sense. Red is an attention getter and also in some people increases hunger or apatite. For a pizza restaurant this is a perfect color. Green on the other hand represents nature; freshness and growth all help describe their pizza is all-natural. While some times it is hard to pull of a green and red color scheme with out getting the feeling of Christmas. I believe that Fusion pizza did a very good job at bringing the whole scheme together with the incorporation of some neutral colors into the mix. I would overall give their color choices and A+.

The next design principle I want to talk about is the texture of the site. While there are some geometric shapes through out the site it is clear that they want everything about their site to be organic. Everything from the textured wood background to the green vegetation type print on the lower half or the site. Most of these organic textures not only send a positive message about their product but also help to make the site look more interesting. While geometric shapes make a subtle appearance in the site its work does not go unnoticed. The use of these geometric shapes along with some repetition and rotation of objects adds a little guidance to the eye and cleanness to another wise organically filled site. Between the two uses of texture I think they work well together to bring a sensible compromise to these to styles.

The layout of pizza fusion seems to be pretty strait forward. It is a three Colum system with a block style organization. The Colum layout dose change a little depending on the page your on for example in the menus page it changes to a two Colum system but keeps the block style organization. In the layout they also do a very good job at guiding you eye with text. They use everything from type of font to color of the font. It is clear that there is a hierarchy in the information that they want you to know.

Lastly the navigation is also made to help your time on their site to be a pleasurable one. They use a hierarchical navigation to help convey their most important messages and guide you around the page. Similar to most other sites there global navigation can be found in the nav bar above all other information on what ever page you are on. If you hover over each nav bar every other link shows you supplementary content related to the globe content being hovered over. While I think there navigation works I think it need the most work out of all the sections. The first thing I had a problem with is the home button is not intuitive. It took me a few seconds to realize that you need to click the logo to go home. I also think that they have way to many selections in their nav bar. They could benefit from some condensing of their information. They also might benefit from a breadcrumbs bar that tells the user were they are and were they have been so they can make their way back. While I think the navigation works I do also think it needs some work.

Our site is going to stand out one because it is simpler and easy for our customer base to breeze threw information and two because our site will be more interactive. The lac of simplicity of pizza fusion is something I think might turn users off and make them look else where for a better site. Our site with its strait forward design and intuitive navigation will hopefully give our users a pleasurable experience at our site over our competition at pizza fusion. The second thing that pizza fusion didn’t have was anything that the user could interact with on the site. This keeps the user engaged on the site and is something ZA pizza hope to deliver. Everything from and interactive slide show to dancing pizza slice arrows that guide our users back to the top of the page.

Due to their contrasting styles I chose to write my review 3 on Burgatory and Bravo Franco’s.

The first site I looked at was Buratory’s site. When I first saw it my reaction was that of a very playful less serious company. I get this impression because of the layout of the page and playful working. While it is very balanced using what looks to be a three- four column system. The content is not symmetrically balanced, as I would see in Franco’s (a more up scale restaurant). But it uses this to its advantage drawing some attention away from the over whelming content rich left side to the more minimalistic right side. This right side contains information such as milk shake menu, Helluva burger, and the log which is a portal to the home page. The unity of the page is mostly in the colors and textures used on the page. The perfect accents of red mixed with earth tones are used perfectly to make some parts stand out while letting others slip into the background. As stated in the “Don’t make me think book” they use different size fonts to form a hierarchy of information. More important information is larger while less important information is generally towards the bottom and smaller.

The second site I looked at was Bravo Franco’s which looked to be a very clean site with everything lining up in it three column block style site. Side from the pictures the site only uses about 3 colors, which I think, add to the unity of the site. It is a very symmetrically balanced site with nothing that might draw your eye away from the important information. Similar to the Burgatory site it also has a hierarchy of text sized with their company name front and center and in large font, which stands out clearly. The site also has a lot of containers; at no point other than the phone number and the address at the top leave the confinements of the box which most of the information lives.

Both of these sites have very good navigation system. Everything is laid out for easy of use and maximum utility. Each has a well thought out nav bar at the top or on the side of the content. Though I think the Bravo Franco’s nav system is less convoluted and to the point( partly because of the wording). Each also has clear indicators on what can be or cant be selected for more information. Lastly each has a home button that make navigating the site a pleasurable experience. At no time was I frustrated or confused where to go. Each site has its pros and cons but over all I think both site are well designed in their respective styles.

For my review two of a one page website I chose the site Alyoop of the week “http://alyoopoftheweek.com”. This website caught my eye with its simplicity and kept me interest by its ease of use. It is a scroll up and down website with a page wide illustration of their choice for the best NBA alyoop of the week. As I commented earlier this is a very simple but eye pleasing site.

First aspect I noticed is the colors, none of the colors they use are very dual colors. Even the blacks and the browns they use have a sense of glow to them. They also use a lot of warm captivating colors such as red, orange, and yellows. The last thing I noticed about the colors are they are integrated into each illustration carefully and represent each teams main colors. Using small accent colors help to bring out the players and relevant designs on the page.

Another aberrance that I noticed on this site is how the content is set up. There is a very apparent vertical grid system that seems to be used with most of the content being center justified. Each illustrations text is looks to be some kind of slab serif font that guides you eye down to the players cartoon like illustration. The cartoon like illustration is very simplistic but each player is still very recognizable.

Lastly aspect I noticed was the navigation. While there is not much to say about it other than it is very easy to use. This is so because there are very few choices you have to make. You look at the player and ask do I want to see is alyoop and if so there is a distinct watch button under the player. If press watch it brings up a video screen and plays the video. With an “X” so you can exit the playing video when your done or keep it up and school to other players.

Over all I think this is a very successful site due to its ease of use and the visually pleasing content. At no point was I board or put off by any of the navigations. Lastly it left me with the feeling that I wouldn’t mind coming back to the site to see future content. Which in my opinion is what making a good site is all about.

 

The web site that I decided to use was the popular retailing cites Amazon. I chose to search for shoes. The first thing I noticed was it gave me some random shoes initially but the side of the page it gave me options to narrow my search. They had some very helpful short cuts such as brand, price, or even ratings. While I think this is a very clever way to go about narrowing someone’s options and it worked very efficiently. I would like to see more done with the initial browser when a generic topic like shoes is typed in. Maybe even moving the brand selection into the main page and divide the page into types of shoes instead of hiding it to the side. After finding the shoe I wanted I added it to my cart and noticed a few things that I never noticed before. One was the short and concise wording that is used. The second thing I noticed is that they do not ask you to commit right away. It is kind of sly but first it takes you to the chart then asks you to proceed to the check out. They have taken away wording that may make you question your buying option. In the past I found words like buy now or check out seem very final making you question your choice of whether you really need it. Over all I thought the experience is very pleasurable but after reading the text and going to the site it has opened my eyes to what I may have been to naive to notice before hand.