Good and Bad Assignment

Good Design features:

Text: In a good website the text should not be too small or too big. This way it is easy to read for all age groups. There should be a balance between too much text, which is overwhelming, and not enough text, which is boring. The text shouldn't be one big paragraph or stretch all the way across the page because that is hard to read. Instead it should fit on a standard 600x800 screen and be easily scanned.

Navigation: In a good website the navigation should be easy to understand, clean and simple. It should tell you where you are, where you have been and how to get back to the home page. Color changes easily aide you in this. The navigation should also be the same throughout your whole website, keeping things consistent.

Links: Links should easily take the user to other pages in your website. The links should be easy to understand where they are taking you, should actually take you where they say they are taking you, and should be a useful destination. To know where you have been before, it is a good idea to have the links change color after the user has traveled there. Useless links break the flow of the user, potentially sending them elsewhere.

Graphics: Graphics should be relatively small, because if they take forever to load, the user will just move on. They should be relevant and not distracting. Flashing lights or graphics distract the user and we have learned to ignore them. The internet population has also learned to ignore anything that looks like an ad or banner.

General Design: Websites should be designed for the purpose of solving the users needs. The site should reflect the purpose of the site: a site for SAM should look museum like, not like YouTube, etc. In order for the user to easily read the text on your page, there should be high contrast between your background and your text. The website should be clean, no useless graphics or text. All the pages of your site should have similar aspects so they work well together and are cohesive. Keep it simple!

Notes: A good IDT website is Anthony Garzzona's. http://anthonygarzzona.com/index.html . His site is clean yet classy, his navigation is very easy and the same throughout the whole site and I really like how he displayed his work. Instead of leading you away from his portfolio pages, it was a popup slideshow, which is really easy to navigate.

Bad Design features:

Text: Huge type, or super tiny type. Similar hue to the background so the contrast is low and you can't read your type. The type is in skinny long columns, really stretched out paragraphs, formatted like a book-with all type one solid paragraph, ALL CAPS, all bold, all italic, or any combination of those.

Navigation: Mystery Meat Navigation where you have to scroll over blank icons to find the link. Confuses the user because they cant figure out what page they are on, how to get to where they want to go, or how to get to the home page. Navigation isn't the same on each page.

Links: The links aren't clear as to where they take you. The links are dead, meaning they don't lead you to anywhere. The links should have a color change so that the user knows they went to that link already, thus not going there over and over again.

Graphics: Large graphics which take forever to load. Too many graphics. Flashing graphics. These all distract the user, or they just ignore them.

General Design: Poor contrast between the background and the text, making it hard to read. Distracting background image. Too many focal points on the page, drawing their attention in too many directions. No sense of cohesiveness between the pages.

Notes: So I wouldn't call Aaron Sim's website terrible, http://www.aaaronic.com/index.html , but there are aspects about it that really turned me off as a user. When I navigated to his portfolio work and started looking at his images, the navigation bar went away. I tried to go back to the homepage but didn't find the link for it. The link I thought was the home link, actually led me to sending him and email. So the navigation was confusing and off putting.