Assignment 1

Today’s assignment is to find & critique
5 websites that fit  these categories:

commercial
information/news
personal promotion purposes
artistic
could be improved

1. Commercial: Rachel Comey: Men’s Shoe Shop
Rachel Comey Men’s Shoe Shop takes an unconventional approach to the commercial website in that it adopts an artistic attitude and ephemeral air, which is a first point of attraction to the site for web browsers.
It works for many reasons. One, it is mysterious.  It shows you the minimum–and already the unconventionality of its scattered photo design is enough of a hook to get most people clicking around for answers. Second, it is minimalistic. There are simply photographs. Of shoes. And from a stylistic deduction–one would guess they were men’s shoes. With a hover of the mouse, the non-blase reaction would be surprise to the fact that the thumbnails are in fact mini movie clips. After exploring the cinemagraphs to satisfaction, one can click on one of the stills to go to the product page.
But besides being mysterious and unconventional, it is also somehow very straightforward. On each product page, there is clear organization and navigation. On each product page, the same types of information are always located in the same spot. For example, one would always know in what general area of the page to glance at for price, description, shipping info, and contact info. Thus, not having to guess about where to look makes it user-friendly ( and happy web users can often make for happy future customers ; ) ). Also, each product page is set up in a linear, vertical listing format–making the process conform to natural eye movements across a page.
The only complaints for this site’s design would be that the background color schemes clash a bit with the photographs–and the background also has a grainy resolution. The photographs, while aesthetically pleasing, are not the best at showing actual quality of the product.  The site also fails to provide a search bar–but the purpose of the site seems to be more about exploration and buying the “brand/lifestyle,” and not a singular product one has been “searching for.” Overall the site does a good job of keeping people interested, and the navigation is user-friendly while at the same time distinguishing itself from the boring “photo-grid set up” of most commercial websites ( see the shoe sections of Target.com, Payless.com, and Bass Shoes ). Novelty is oftentimes a huge selling point for most products, and this website’s design is truly refreshing in a sea of cookie cutter photo-grids.

It is important to remember, however, that while  this website works–it is by no means a template to replace all commercial site designs. It works  mainly  because in relation to other websites out there for most shoe products, it’s so unique. Otherwise, the familiarity and marketability of the “photo-grid set up”  is ideal within commercial sites, where such a set up is dominant for a reason.

2. Information/News: HYPEBEAST

HYPEBEAST  is an informative magazine for Fashion, Arts, Design and Culture worldwide–with a focus on the urban and forthcoming.  From first glance, the site has clear design that separates it from other “white scheme minimalist” layouts. It is clean, with proper spacing of items and a balanced proportion of white space. The gray scale/ white color scheme  does not overpower the material presented–namely the articles and pictures. Since it is a magazine focusing on the Visual Arts in general, it makes sense that the focus is on what is visual, and the images pop and grab the viewer’s attention.

In terms of organization & navigation, there are two columns on the home page. The column on the right consists of a four-square grid containing article titles and images, and the column on the left contains a loop presenting singular images with previews of the accompanying articles. Each image also includes stats of date posted & views, with the most popular and most recent articles being featured on the front page. Scrolling down, the articles get older, and are now organized in a vertical linear fashion so that the eye does not get lost looking across a page that contains millions of links to many articles–which seems to be a problem with so many news sites ( and I will discuss that issue later, so keep on reading!).

Ease of use continues with the placement of a clearly delineated navigation bar at the top of the page, with well defined topics, as well as subtopics organized underneath them via drop down menus.If one were looking for something specific, a standard search bar is also in place. Even the typeface chosen is clean and uncomplicated, giving the entire site a subtle design without taking away from the content.

And that is what people come to a news site for anyway: the content. Be it news covering the arts, or covering a war on the other side of the world, the delivery of content–of ideas and information is the main purpose. And I do believe that consuming content is not enough. People need to interact with, and be influenced by what they hear–and HYPEBEAST encourages that active consumption by integrating social networking sites like Facebook & Twitter, as well as providing comment boxes under each article.  Furthermore, even if you click on these links, they automatically open in another tab or window, so the site itself does not close –allowing readers to stay as long as they want to keep reading articles. HYPEBEAST does what every great news website should accomplish: delivering content –and it  is definitely one news site that accomplishes that mission well.

3. Personal Promotion Purposes: http://www.acceptjoel.com/

Acceptjoel.com is the creative portfolio of web/graphic designer Joel Califa. The main purpose of his site is to promote his art and hopefully be accepted by Parsons School of Design in NYC. What makes this site successful is not only the  organization of the content, but the creativity of the content organization–which is done in a more original way than the very commonplace process of uploading images and portfolios and being done with it. It is very clear that Joel put a lot of effort into how he was going to present his work and himself– his layout was a distinctive representation of his humor, personality, and creativity.

And the organization is integrated into his creativity—the composition is set up as a “plan of action” of sorts. This doubles not only as the design of the page, but also the organized navigation of the content. On the first page– the color scheme is  uniform, and the plan or purpose Joel hopes to obtain is already laid out in plain english.The arrows in the illustration serve as visual aids to navigate people to the next portions of the site that he wishes to be viewed next. Navigation of the rest of the site is also simple, because even the links to his portfolio open external windows that do not leave the page you left off at. Navigating the site is a pretty linear process if the arrows are followed, and by the final arrow–almost everything about Joel Califa’s art should have been examined by the web users. To cap off the user experience, he makes sure he gets the most out of the peoples’ exploration of his site by devoting an entire page to different methods by which one may contact him–and on the final page he  organizes it so that you do not forget he wants to be accepted into Parsons  by making it the last page on your mind.

It seems that Joel may have gotten the art portfolio process down to a T: his domain name is an active verb: “accept” Joel, and even the URL icon says ” SAY YES.” There is no search function, but rather a “Home button” on every page–and this leads to the first section with Joel’s main objective for making the site anyway–so I would say there are not too many flaws with this original portfolio design.  This was actually one of the more creative portfolio concepts I have seen in a while on the web, proving that he indeed has the inspiration all designers need to think outside of the box.

4. Artistic: Industrious Clock

The Industrious Clock by famed Japanese web designer Yugo Nakamura is unique because it is a web art installation. It shows a real-time countdown, drawn by hand, down to the second. It is a commentary on time, industry, productiveness, wastefulness, and it’s so perfect for a web art installment because time is very universal. Sometimes, even as universal as art is, there are moments when the subjects of art can be controversial to some nations–but time is not one of those things that can be seen in a different perspective: It is seen in pretty much the same light by almost everyone. And the design choice is interesting because it is an analog recording of time ( paper and pencil) translated into video and then placed on the internet.

Organization wise, this web art installment is part of a site with other web art installments, and there isn’t much navigability, or a search bar–and that may be because the purpose of this installment is as if you were at an art gallery. The minimalist interface and white background serve as a blank palette to clear the mind. The purpose is, after all,for discovery and thought provocation–not quick access to information and quick exit.

5. Could Be Improved: The New York Times

What is the purpose of a reputable news provider? To deliver the most information possible? No. Yet, that seems to be the only thing The New York Times can accomplish within their site. I always read the Times because I live in New York and it is a prominent paper in the industry, but their presentation is sub-par, to say the least. And perhaps it is because of their reputation that they do not put as much emphasis on appearance of their site–since they already have a stable consumer base. However, their reputation may soon suffer if people aren’t able to efficiently filter the content that they need from that mess of a website. A poorly organized website wastes time–and in this information age…there are plenty of other sources vying for our attention and the public will eventually go to the sources which provide the same well-written and researched content in a more organized manner. Especially with the ever growing paperless movement, it would be wise to get someone to organize their cluttered website ASAP!

So where do I even begin addressing this? For starters, the home page is overcrowded–there is no balance, and as one scrolls–there is no focal point to draw the eye. It seems to be composed of a canvas of irregular grids, columns, and tables with navigation bars carelessly placed wherever they could fit.  By the time you are halfway down the page, all of the articles that do not seem to be organized under any topic are all competing for your attention. By the time the reader gets to the bottom of the page, one is either overwhelmed, or has no idea where to begin reading.  Information–news– gets lost in this canvas and perhaps even typography choices are partly to blame since all the black text seems to blend together until all you see is words, not news articles.

Along with the confusion described earlier with the scrolling and the middle of the page, there is also a similar problem with navigation all along the left side of the web page. The site provides a navigation bar, meant to organize and make navigation simple–but the truth is that the subjects are not even organized properly and the subjects chosen as search terms are not even conducive to proper search/browsing. Most of the topics could be subtopics, or are synonyms for other words on the navigation bar–so in actuality those separate tabs could be combined to thin down the navigation bar that seems to scroll on for forever.  Besides this terribly organized side bar, there is also the navigation bar at the top, with useless tabs such as “video,” which could mean any news topic under the sun.

In order to fix this: there needs to be a return to the purpose, which is to deliver the news as it should be–fact separate from fiction and opinion.  One way to return to this goal, and to clear some clutter on the homepage is to remove the “features” section. Featured articles can create a bias because whether or not someone realizes it– knowing what is featured can affect one’s opinion on the rest of your comprehension of the news. Thus, it is better to just get rid of it. And instead of the current awkward grid set up displaying articles on their home page, maybe a simpler linear format could be better. Perhaps something along the lines of Google’s interface for returned search results— It’s fast to scroll through headlines and no articles get lost during a quick visual scan. The search bar already on the site returns results in this manner, so why doesn’t the rest of the site function this way? A more uniformed browsing format would definitely create a more user-friendly and time efficient experience.

And even with all these issues it is clear that people continue to return to the site for it’s content–but that does not mean The New York Times should settle. Coming up with a well organized design will not take that much effort if the company sits down and comes up with a user interface that is both clean and content-worthy. Granted, it may take a little more than one sit down–but in the end it would definitely be worth the effort. After all, if they are sloppy with their content design management, who knows what else they may be cutting corners on?