hiiii everyone :) crazy crazy week… wanted to share this posting i did for interactive web design class blog... the prompt is examples of good and bad web design. more today – promise.

While searching for examples of with good and bad design I found that there were pros and cons to every layout.  It is the website’s responsibility to convey information effectively by making it simple to navigate – Good web design needs for me must to be intuitive, beautiful, thoughtful and smart.

I approached this assignment by examining interfaces that vary in the quantity and type of content (visual, random information, news).

Example 1:

BESPOKE STUDIO – content : Visual

Bespoke is a previous employer of mine – which gave me a unique perspective to the companies message.

^ background info – (When text is unable to be copied from a site it is preventing  people from sharing your business information from certain devices)

Website Pros:

-  Clean Organized Interface

- Combination of white space and simple layout accentuate sites simplicity.

-  The Portfolio section of the website  is sharp and beautiful.  Simple thumbnails represent entire editorials -  allows viewers who know what they are looking for to browse easily.

The visual content is scrolled through by placing the mouse over a the right or left sides of the screen – this puts the images in a “cover flow” motion. one of my favorite ways to browse visual information – what about you?

- The combination of content, garamond text, minimal format make for a gorgeous website that is enjoyable to explore.

Website Cons:

-      When you go to bespokestudio there is a portal page – meaning an image opens before it takes you to a page you can move around in.  Personally, I think this is inefficient/ dated and although some may think it is “pretty” it serves no real purpose.  Does it effectively convey to the viewer what the brand represents/does?

-  Another personal preference when surfing the site is to have the URL changes as you go from page to page (i believe flash does not do this?).  I find this feature essential  when directing others to a specific image.  Maybe I am wrong but It seems like photographers and magazines considering using Bespoke Studio would want that share ability.

-  One serious annoyance about the websites design is the absence of citations and general information.   For example, there is no information about the photographers, models, stylists, and publishers of the work  BESPOKE has been retouched.  (I am sure BESPOKE has a good reason for withholding said information) This information should be sited because BESPOKE studio is a business and it is important that they credit (and site) the artists they collaborate with.  This would also build a “social network” of BESPOKE’s professional community.

-  It would be nice if there were more ways to move through the website – perhaps viewing one editorial could link to the studios other related works.  This would probably increase the time people spent learning about the company.

-  The Service Page has very little information about what is actually done at BESPOKE. I understand the idea of having a minimal website but maybe if you could click on these to learn more or see examples of that kind of work.

-  No Search option and very to little information about the work that is featured.  This website has a very specific audience/content so the simple layout works.  If you are unfamiliar with the work on the website it would be difficult to know what you are looking for/at and impossible to search based on any lead you may have.

-  Visible company contact information (phone number or email address) visible always as part of site’s footer – after all this company is selling a service.

This photo agent LUNDLUND website’s layout is similar to BESPOKESTUDIO – do you find it more effective?  It gives you many thumbnail references instead of just one.

Example 2:

NAAG.com, content: Blog – Mix of Visual and Information

Website Pros:

-       Similar to BESPOKE, the use of a clean format, white space, and sleek typography make this airy website easy on the eyes.

-       Clean Simple home page which clearly highlights the four site categories (Culture, Fashion, Places, Beauty) – Information is organized in quadrants based on content.   Posts are published often to the home page and include a related picture.

-       The newest posts are listed above a related image in a larger bolder font than the topic.  Beneath the image are two recent postings. This is effective because the reader can choose what they want to see based on article or category.

-       Once you select a posting to read you are navigated to a page featuring the article.  I like that the content/visuals are minimal.  The categories are now listed in a toolbar to the left of the article.  Very easy to move around.

-      Search option allows you to reference previous postings based on information you remember.

-      The Tool Bar categories drop down viewing sub-categories.  This saves the reader time and allows for specific browsing.

Website Cons:

-       I can’t help but want to view this website in a traditional blog  format – It would be nice to have some sort of option to read the postings in a chronological order.  When websites share information over time it is very helpful to have organized archives (monthly?)  I say this because I don’t usually like to read about just one category – variety is the spice of life?

-       The images featured to represent the articles are not always telling of what the story they are meant to represent.  The image posts represent a story it is important that the image is able to 1. Catch the reader’s attention or 2. Give the reader a brief idea of the story/content… otherwise there is no practical purpose?

-       Once you navigate through the site – (example going to toolbar – culture – local artists) the page only shows an overview of two articles, requiring you to click again to read each.  It would be better to show more full articles on this page because they are very short.

-  I am Undecided whether the most recent post titles should be in a larger/bolder font than the general categories – thoughts?

Example 3:

Newsmap, content: News

About:

Put simply this website allows you to compare/customize news based on your interests.  It is visual and for some people (like me) this is easier to read through than a black and white news website… as you scroll over a topic more information and links pop up.

From the site:

A treemap visualization algorithm helps display the enormous amount of information gathered by the aggregator. Treemaps are traditionally space-constrained visualizations of information. Newsmap’s objective takes that goal a step further and provides a tool to divide information into quickly recognizable bands which, when presented together, reveal underlying patterns in news reporting across cultures and within news segments in constant change around the globe.

Newsmap’s objective is to simply demonstrate visually the relationships between data and the unseen patterns in news media.

Google News automatically groups news tories with similar content and places them based on algorithmic results into clusters. In Newsmap, the size of each cell is determined by the amount of related articles that exist inside each news cluster that the Google News Aggregator presents. In that way users can quickly identify which news stories have been given the most coverage, viewing the map by region, topic or time. Through that process it still accentuates the importance of a given article.

Newsmap also allows to compare the news landscape among several countries, making it possible to differentiate which countries give more coverage to, for example, more national news than international or sports rather than business

Currently, the internet presents a highly disorganized collage of information. Many of us are working in an information-soaked world. There is too much of everything. We are subject everywhere to a sensory overload of images, bombarded with information; in magazines and advertisements, on TV, radio, in the cityscape. The internet is a wonderful communication tool, but day after day we find ourselves constantly dealing with information overload. Today, the internet presents a new challenge, the wide and unregulated distribution of information requires new visual paradigms to organize, simplify and analyze large amounts of data. New user interface challenges are arising to deal with all that overwhelming quantity of information.

Website Pros:

- Visual News = Genius

- Use of color to designate topics

- Customizable

(I will continue to add to this!)

Example 4

ICONIQUE,  content: Visual

 

Also, here is another fashion website ICONIQUE that has an interesting visual layout – however it is chaotic and needs simplifying… do you think it is possible to maintain a layout/theme like this and still share information efficiently? isn’t flash becoming obsolete because of inability to browse via smart phone?  I may have made that up.

 

hello!!!! :) hope your day is going amazingly!  my apologies for inconsistent postings… i am back to parsons and temporarily detoxing from the internet/technology… refocusing my goals and such!  all is well – many beautiful things to share very soon!

 

Most people have no idea of the giant capacity we can immediately command when we focus all of our resources

 

-Anthony Robbins