Recently, my personal printer decided that its printing days were over; yes, right in time for classes. Now I find myself looking for a new printer. My previous printer was a Hewlett-Packard, so that is where my research began.
When I was welcomed by Hewlett-Packard’s homepage, I was immediately able to find a link that would lead me to the “printers” section. Therefore, I did not have to do very much thinking to enter the section I was intending; the reading Don’t Make Me Think would be proud. Once I clicked on the “printers” link, I was directed to a page with a plethora of different types of printers. At first I was overwhelmed, after all, I’m not a printer connoisseur so I’m not that familiar with the different capabilities of each. I then realized that each category of printers had a picture of what they would look like and a small description of their capabilities. These features made it very easy for me to make my next click. Once I did that, I was now on the HP DeskJet Printers page. The first thing I see are special features that their newest DeskJets offer. I continued scrolling down the page, scanning quickly, like the reading pointed out, and was confused to find that only two printers were being advertised. I quickly, scrolled back to the top and found another tab, in small print, which said “View All Products.” When I clicked the link, I found myself exactly where I wanted to be to being my printer buying exploration.
I found that my overall experience with HP’s website was very easy and convenient, which are two major things that web designers shoot for according to the readings we’ve done so far for the class. Don’t Make Me Think emphasized numerous times how important it is to make your site foolproof and I feel that HP did just that. Everything that was a link to be clicked on had a different color, which let me know that they were different, thus probably able to be clicked on. My only complaint would be that the “Features” and “View All Products” tabs in the DeskJet section were a little bit small. In the reading Principles of Beautiful Design, the importance of site flow was pointed out. The author emphasized how important it is make each page of your site look like it belongs to the site. HP handled the design very professionally; creating a clean layout on each page and making it obvious that each page was part of one website. Well done Hewlett-Packard.