csadesign.com is Charles S. Anderson's Website. After hearing about him in class, I was excited to go home and check out his website. I was impressed by his work, but let down by his site. Since I am studying Web Design along with this class, I noticed some things that didn't seem right with his site. The navigation was very confusing, and there were a few inconsistencies. Upon first glance, his site looks clean and nice. Once I decided to click on icon design, I had no idea where to go next. I had no clue what I had to do to view all of his icon designs, or how to see the next one. I became frustrated, and decided to click a different link. As I scrolled back to the top of the page, my cursor ran over this weird looking graph on the right side, and all of a sudden a new image popped up of an icon design. I then realized that you had to scroll over the cells to view his other icon designs. Honestly, I did not think this was very user-friendly or effective. In Web Design we learned that the viewer should never have to think, where do I go next, or how do I view this? It should be straight-forward, or they will get frustrated and leave, like I was about to do. As far as inconsistencies go, some pages had the text contained in the overall shell of the website, on a few other pages, the same type of text was extending out past the page. I don't think this was intentional. If this were a student's website, I do not think anyone would hire them based upon the layout of the site. It may turn them away because the student didn't care about the presentation of their work, even though the work itself was great. I just feel like the site could have been thought through a little bit more. I posted an example of the graph on his site above. The other image refuses to upload, but I will keep working on it.
Monday, December 1, 2008
csadesign.com
csadesign.com is Charles S. Anderson's Website. After hearing about him in class, I was excited to go home and check out his website. I was impressed by his work, but let down by his site. Since I am studying Web Design along with this class, I noticed some things that didn't seem right with his site. The navigation was very confusing, and there were a few inconsistencies. Upon first glance, his site looks clean and nice. Once I decided to click on icon design, I had no idea where to go next. I had no clue what I had to do to view all of his icon designs, or how to see the next one. I became frustrated, and decided to click a different link. As I scrolled back to the top of the page, my cursor ran over this weird looking graph on the right side, and all of a sudden a new image popped up of an icon design. I then realized that you had to scroll over the cells to view his other icon designs. Honestly, I did not think this was very user-friendly or effective. In Web Design we learned that the viewer should never have to think, where do I go next, or how do I view this? It should be straight-forward, or they will get frustrated and leave, like I was about to do. As far as inconsistencies go, some pages had the text contained in the overall shell of the website, on a few other pages, the same type of text was extending out past the page. I don't think this was intentional. If this were a student's website, I do not think anyone would hire them based upon the layout of the site. It may turn them away because the student didn't care about the presentation of their work, even though the work itself was great. I just feel like the site could have been thought through a little bit more. I posted an example of the graph on his site above. The other image refuses to upload, but I will keep working on it.
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3 comments:
I looked at the site and see what you mean. There are a lot of sites out there that use over simplified buttons, like this one. Upon looking over the graph a second time, I noticed the word "view" that sort of tells you what to do, but more or less it's left up to the viewer to figure out. Website design seems like it should be easy, but when you get into it, it can get really complicated!
The site seems confusing without even visiting it. Just from your description I wouldn't want to go to the website. Like you said about being in a web design class right now, the point of having a web site is to make it user friendly. Hello 'birth of the user' (Lupton). Or the book suggested by my professor was "Don't Make Me Think", you shouldn't have to think where to go next or if something is an icon and what not.
I liked the website but agree with you all. I found the roll over text in the home page confusing because I thought you could click on it, but you can't. Also I didn't know how to get back to the homepage because there's no standard language, you have to click on his name (which doesn't rollover either). I did enjoy his table though to scroll through his images/work examples. I figured out what it was meant for on the first try and think that it is a creative application. He probably intends for the user to stick around on his site for a while anyhow.
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