Analyzing Visual Design Assignment
The Good Stuff
For what this is, I think it works great. You log in, you see pins that are associated with boards you already have…you can just scroll and scroll and scroll to your heart’s content. The top nav is simple: search for more pins, there’s a dropdown for ideas (in case you aren’t feeling that inspired), or go to your profile that shows all your boards, followers, following, etc. The upper left has a board they think you’ll like (based on your other boards). If you see an image you do like, hovering on it gives you options to like, send it or pin to one of your boards. If you click on the image, it expands in a modal. If you want to pin it, click and a modal comes up for you to decide where. You choose a board and the modal exits leaving you exactly where you were (same for if you click to expand). Beauteous. Get pinning!
WIKIPEDIA
Again, you’ve come here for one reason. You enter whatever it is into the field and hit go. Granted, there is a lot of other nonsense below, but if you’re not looking for any of that it’s easy to ignore. Maybe you are multi-lingual? Whatever you speak it’s probably down there somewhere.
Once you’re in you can read about your thing (I entered “user experience” on the Home Page). You get an overview and (usually) a lot of other info, and you can jump down to any place in the article by clicking on the Table of Contents. You can start another search in the upper right corner. And, again, there are tons of things on the left side you can do or not do. Hell, if you even want to edit the thing you were looking for you can do that too.
GOOGLE MAPS
So simple, so easy. Type in the address, and you can get directions, see it on the map, save it, send it to your phone, etc. The little tab hides it all if you just really want to get down and dirty with the map. There are pictures of the place taken by creepy vans that drive around the street. You can jump to street view and creepily wander through the neighborhood. Btw, this is not my house, just my neighborhood. I don’t know who lives here, so I wouldn’t just “drop in” if you know what I’m sayin’.
The Not So Good Stuff
PROSPERITY BANK
So much here crammed into such a small space. Also your banner ad has your logo in it (which I guess is fine?), however it’s cropped off and stretched? Tsk, tsk. Although good job on being an award winner! Even if it wasn’t for your site design. When you click the (extremely three-dimensional!) nav you get a long list of things (see below), but some of those are already listed under the banner? There are 3 box links at the bottom, but the content is not called out well enough for you to care really what they are saying. Also why not have them span the width of the page? OR have the News & Events run longer (and maybe be bigger…I wear glasses and still had to lean forward and squint). The very top nav seems a little disjointed in terms of it’s links, and the order they’re in. I’m not sure that if I had lost or had my card stolen I would be in the same state of mind as if I needed a calculator.
TRADITION ENERGY
First of all, (and admittedly this is a big peeve of mine) I hadn’t been on the site for more than 2 seconds when…
I’m bumped to the bottom of the page to perhaps have a convo with Michael. “I’ve completely forgotten why I came to your site now, Mike. Not only do I not want your help, but at the moment I’m considering going elsewhere all together for my energy needs.”
Top nav, including logo, is a wash of info that has no hierarchy. The bottom of the carousel has it’s own little nav, but it’s practically unreadable the way it is treated, and the photography underneath isn’t helping. What is the blue heading? Is it your tagline? There’s no body copy under it…I’m not sure y’all care at all what it is, where it is or what it’s doing? It’s a rogue headline! The whole page, really, is a wash of things that all have the same prominence in my opinion. You’re looking everywhere but at the same time not really caring about it anyway. And they cannot want my email address too badly if the sign up is at the bottom of the page. With Michael.
