- 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? (pp. 41-56)
I think Apple’s entire site is made with simplicity in mind. It’s made to bring the specs of all of their products into one concise site. Apple highlights some of the best features of any product as you scroll through their pages, not just the MacBook. For someone who just purchased a Mac Book, it is easy to find what will be some of the most exciting things you can do with this machine. What to learn down to the very tee what its retina screen is doing for you? What about the inner design of the product? Just click the “learn more” button and you will probably find all the information you need. That is how Apple helps any new user to their products.
- What are the functional specifications of Facebook’s wall? If you are not on Facebook what are the specs for the signup page? (pp. 72-75)
Facebook’s main focus on its login page is ease of use. The login/register page is very easy to understand. You know where you are with the simple top banner that clearly states their name. If you’re just signing up, they give you a small blurb of what Facebook is all about, 4 short lines of text. Finally, they let you sign up right there on the home page. I believe this was done to let people think that it is so easy to sign up for Facebook, so you might as well do it right now.
- What are four architectural approaches to information structure? Find one example of each. (pp. 94-106)
The first structure is hierarchical. An example of this structure would be ESPN’s website. There is the main page, and then a banner with the various sports covered. When clicking on a specific sport, there is another page that will have an even more in-depth banner to make your search for stats or a specific team even easier. The second structure is a matrix structure. RMU’s library search engine, run by EBSCOhost, is an example of this type of web structure. You can search through the website in multiple ways, making it a matrix in nature. You can use key words to find an article, or only use dates for a certain time frame, possibly find only peer reviewed essays. You can do all of that on the libraries website. The third structure is organic. McGraw-Hill’s connect website seems organic in its nature. When navigating through e-books or learning a lesson, there is no trail of where you have been, meaning you have to start all the way from the beginning if you want to do something over. The final structure is the sequential structure. A YouTube channel with playlists is an example of sequential structure. A person’s channel is placed in order of time, and the individual playlists are also meant to be watched in sequential order.
- What percentage of The Huffington Post index page is navigation, and what percentage is content? What about Google, Wikipedia, and Etsy? (pp. 116-134)
Huffington Post: 30/70 nearly everything in the page is linkable to somewhere else, but they do have lots of headlines that give some content information. Google: 85/15 everything here is a link. The only information you get is the one word description of what you are clicking on. Wikipedia: 50/50 there’s a good mix of actual content versus just navigation, the most balanced of the three so far. Etsy: 25/75 you get information on what you’re clicking on from the pictures that are the links.
- How does http://www.landor.com guide the readers’ eyes and focus their attention on what is important? (pp. 144-155 )
Landor’s home page is stark white, and then the information shows up in the highlighter yellow that makes you stare right at the information. It effectively moves the eyes of the reader to each sequential piece of information.