Assignment
Mar 01, 2010
Please identify 2-3 sites that you enjoy spending time on and write a few bullets on aspects of the frontend – what you like and what you do not like (and why). Please submit the assignment via the comments below.
Also, make sure that you are keeping up with your weekly readings.
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New York Times
• Pros:
o Mimics the look and familiarity of the physical media
• Cons:
o Mimics the look and familiarity of the physical media
• I don’t consume new media in the same way as old media — difficult scanning the layout for what I want to read.
• Most of my NYT consumption is done thru Google Reader, where I can scan the headlines of day, picking which articles I want to read.
• Even though the NYT is my “home page,” I only go there to see if there is any breaking news.
Herman Miller
• Pros:
o I’m a junkie for the clean lines and experimental materials of midcentury furniture designers, whose designs were represented and sold by Herman Miller
o The UI exhibits the same attention to clean and simple design as the furniture, which was originally produced as “good design” for the mass audience (ironically, this furniture is quite collectable and is expensive today)
o The site is elegant in its simplicity (“Products,” “Design Resources,” “Research,” “Blogs,” “About Us”), but also has utilitarian features with their “Design Resources (“Models,” ”Materials,” and “Product Downloads”) — even non-professionals can design/decorate home and office spaces.
o Great blogs (particularly on “Lifework”): Why settle for an ugly tape dispenser when there are so many beautiful ones you can buy. Garage remodel tips (I’m currently in the planning stage of my own garage remodel) from pros and, more importantly, non-professionals.
• Cons:
o If you’re interested in this kind of stuff, it can be a “rabbit hole.”
o Not the site’s problem, but the online store is too expensive — there are better and cheaper outlets for buying these products.
Huffington Post
• Pros:
o Perhaps the most widely read online newspaper with a decidedly liberal political slant.
• Cons:
o Violates every design convention — honestly, I get a headache just looking at it.
o Bad search.
Facebook – 6 months ago I would have laughed in my own face. Now, I have to check it each day. I love being mocked, mocking other people and keeping in touch with friends all over the world.
Likes:
- information is very easy to share
- sharing links is as easy as cut and paste
- you can keep your community small or big. You have control!
- Stories and updates are chunked and easy to browse
- navigation is easy to use with only a few menu options.
- profile creating and modifying is very easy/photo upload easy
Dislikes
- advertisements, they are everywhere!
- becoming a fan of something and getting updates pushed to you.
Mashable.com – although most of the information I get from this site is in the form of an RSS feed (thank you Josh and Tom) I do occasionally go to the site to browse the stories.
Likes
- they do a great job of chunking the information.
- photos are eye catching and don’t monopolize the story
- easy to skim the stories with great titles
- no reason to actually use the navigation for this site
Dislikes
- revenue stream is obvious through the multitude of ads
- too many navigation options/sub-navigation
Perezhilton.com – admittedly it is a guilty pleasure. I don’t spend a great deal of time this site but I know what to expect and there is a good amount of satisfaction from it.
Likes
- expectations are always met (entertainment)
- there is usually only one headline per story
- photos (usually vandalized)
- Information is always chunked to a “click here for more”
- “News” is always laid down the center
Dislikes
- There is TOO much advertising
- The background images are busy/too large and heavy (KB)
- Craigslist:
Positives:
1. The listings are easy to read – it is easy to find the category of goods you’re looking for
2. Search bar on the left side bar – because there are quite a few listings, searching is an easy, viable way to get to your destination.
3. Event calendar – this distinguishes the products from the events
4. Listing of cities – although this may seem extremely lengthy, it shows how comprehensive the list is. Even if you move cities, or even countries, you can still use Craigslist wherever you go.
Negatives:
1. Not as visually aesthetic: too many lists – although this could act as both a positive and negative characteristic, I think this detracts from the reputation of Craigslist. It is so renowned all over the country, yet the front end is not very professional.
2. The listings do not have a specific format – when I was looking for a cell phone on Craigslist, it was difficult to navigate through the listings because people post their own titles. Oftentimes, they use all capital letters or incorporate prices in different places.
3. The left sidebar contains links to other popular destinations that Craigslist supports – there is no title that describes what the links are. It looks almost haphazardly constructed and people looking at a glance will not comprehend it as quickly.
- Google Map:
Positives:
1. Each week is clearly laid out – the color coordination, simple lay-out, clearly outlined dates, weather updates, and time bar are easy to follow and to organize events
2. The features are extremely comprehensive; contains all of the facets like a regular planner but with more convenient options – repeating events, setting alarms, choosing times, naming the event, locating it, describing it, etc.
3. Changing of views – you can choose how to view your calendar: by the day, week, month, or 4 days at a time
4. Search other calendars – it is easy to transfer data from one calendar to another with permission (rather than re-organizing it personally)
5. Month-long calendar on left side bar – it is useful to view details of your calendar and compare it relative to the month-long calendars that extend years in advance
Negatives:
1. Screen zoomed in too large – it is not possible to see the whole week view at a glance. You must scroll down to see the later events at night.
2. Lack of Google Calendar image – Google might want to include this logo to indicate what site the individual is using
- Food Network:
Positives:
1. Easy-to-locate search bar – most people visiting the website intend to find a certain recipe. Using the search bar is extremely simple to locate and browsers can reach their destination efficiently.
2. Visually stimulating images of food – the images that automatically show up on the home screen look appetizing and entice you to keep search the site
3. Top three tabs: Recipes & Cooking, Shows, and Chefs – these three categories clearly delineate at the top of the screen where you should be directed if you’re not looking for a recipe
4. Quick Meals search – you can customize the recipe you want to find based on the criteria you select
5. My Recipe Box – allows you to keep an accurate list of your favorite recipes
Negatives:
1. Overwhelming content – I think they could have organized their features in a more compact way. The front page has videos, recipe boxes, searches, customizable functions, surveys, on-air updates and more
2. Large advertisements – a large ad is located in the center of the website and takes a significant portion of the screen. This is distracting to the browsers.
3. What’s Cooking = Random – the recipes listed in the “What’s cooking” section do not have a common or relevant theme. They are not even pertinent to a specific chef in particular.
Facebook UI
Pros:
–Easy to see who you’re “talking” to
–Simple pictures/text/pictures/text format
–Top to bottom represents timeline, which makes sense/most recent on top
–Ability to make groups…well, you used to be able to do this. Can’t find it now. (See Cons!)
–Ability to hide stuff you don’t want (Farmville updates!)
–The “thread” visual is good…being able to follow all the comments…
Cons:
–Facebook was thrown together and not thought out at all. Now, they’re stuck because people like it. WHY?!!!!
–So, this idea of adding/deleting features on the fly is just weird. Or does this fluidity make sense because it’s “groupware” not “software?”
–The “wall metaphor” doesn’t work for me/ What is the difference between a wall and a wall-to-wall post? People still get mixed up and post things publicly that they meant just for one person
–How to send a direct message. Inbox before. Now, “Send Zach a Message.” Isn’t clear that this is private
–No filter/I want to display comments from all my high school friends
–The modal-ness of FB is weird. When I click over to someone else’s profile, their stuff “takes over” my screen, yet there’s no indication that the top tabs still take me back to my Home/Profile/Account
–So much of this app is just not discoverable…you have to rely on asking other’s what to do…what is the difference between a Box and a Note?
The818Now UI
Pros:
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–Simple, clean look (Facebook blue
–Awesome pictures that convert to summary text with fade out as you mouse over
–All navigation is at top/ no question about how to move within site
–Do a really good job of repurposing content to make it seem more meaty than it is
–Featured category always lives in the third column/ads always on right rail
Cons:
–Clicking on an author’s name doesn’t link you to a bio, instead all the stories in the left column change to stories by that author.
–No indication that this is happening, it just does
–Stories repeat across all categories (again, a smart move for making the site seem more than what it is, but annoying once you figure this out)
–The Thought tab doesn’t take you to any Opinion pieces at all, just more News…
Twitter – I think I’ve become addicted…used to think it could work well for only famous people, but it’s a great to feel connected and a part of “what’s going on.”
Likes
-I like how you can follow anyone/anything you want–you don’t have to wait for a friend request confirmation
-When you view someone else’s response to a tweet you can also view the person who initiated the first tweet (the third person)
-Great for stalking
Dislikes
-I can be stalked–too open, so be careful what you say!
-Some people have made their twitter account into an open chatroom–I don’t think it’s meant to be like an AIM
Hulutv – I have such a busy a schedule, and no time to watch what the Bachelor! Perfect for watching what I missed.
Likes
-High quality video
-Short ad clips
-Good content
Dislikes
-Only have certain network carriers (no CBS)
-Sometimes they don’t have the content I’m looking for, or at least not all of it (e.g., not the whole season of Desperate Housewives of Orange County)
-Etsy
Likes:
-very clean homepage; easy to navigate
-soooo many ways to “window shop” or browse
when you aren’t exactly sure what you are
looking for
-provide useful/interesting content through
their blog
-”my account” portion is also very easy to
navigate/leave feedback on items purchased
-no ads anywhere! (or at least none that I’ve noticed)
Dislikes:
-my only real complaint is that the search tool will not search items and sellers at the same time
-Newegg
Likes:
-fairly clean homepage/not too jumbled
-promotions are easy to look through (I’m a sucker for a good deal)
-ads are kept to a minimum, and are at the bottom of the page
-reviews:
1.really encourage customers to leave
product reviews and they are usually very
helpful
2.review search options are awesome/many
ways to search and sort
Dislikes:
-despite the fact that the toolbar/drop downs seem very well organized, finding products can sometimes prove to be difficult
-when ordering, they often have combo packages that have free items available for the same price, although its on the page it is very easy to miss that little box and miss out on an even better deal!
Politico.com
Pros:
Ease to navigate.
Content, in depth coverage of U.S. political news.
Multimedia platforms (video, blogs, online community)
Cons:
Limited access (reader needs to register to read all the other users comments)
No rules for comments (some comments are plainly inappropriate)
Craigslist.org
Pros:
Simple but effective layout.
Easy search functions.
Fast.
Many categories.
Cons:
Scams could be hard to detect for some users.
No format for ads (for this reason, ads can be hard to understand or unclear).
Pollster.com
Pros:
Frequently updated with polls.
Easy to navigate and find information.
Allows comments (online community aspect)
Cons:
Occasional mistake
The Economist
http://www.economist.com/
The design of the site overall is a great attempt at reincarnating the quality content from a traditional media format into an easy and convenient new media form.
Likes:
-The aesthetic design of the site follows The Economist magazine’s colors and style: red and blue on top, and simple white background for the main body.
-The flash player displayed in the top center of the page features four pictures of four headline stories as a teaser. It still retains the feeling of a magazine, but it is very easy to get information you are interested in.
-One the right side of the flash player is a “Most Commented” and “Most Read” section, which places the interaction between the magazine and its readers into the spotlight and invites more feedback. I absolutely love this feature.
-The headlines and a quick lead of important news in the center section make it very efficient for people to quickly grasp the information they need.
-Scroll down a little bit on the front page, and there is a Video and Audio section, inviting the authors of feature stories to share additional insights into topics, and gives The Economist more multimedia features.
-The navigation on the left is clearly sorted and easy for people to find information.
-It also provides a place for blogs on the bottom left of its front page
Dislikes:
- The ads take up two prominent spots on the site, the top and the center-right. But it is understandable to me as a pay-off for getting free quality content on the website.
-After you read an article, the reader’s comment section of the article leads you to a separate page devoted entirely to comments, it would be nice to see the comments and article on the same page.
-The Economist has opened Twitter and Facebook accounts, but they are too shy to put these two colorful icons on their front page, so it’s not easy for people to know of their social media existence.
Hulu
http://www.hulu.com
Likes:
-The flash player at center imitates the feeling of a TV screen, and it rotates the hit shows as teasers.
-Love how people can easily add tags to shows. These user-submitted tags can get very descriptive of a show (example: people added derisive tags to Jay Leno’s show during his dispute with Conan). The tag function helps you find similar content, and is even more fun than the reviews and rating functions on the site.
-The review and discussion functions have really generated feedback about some popular TV shows on the site. It is nice after you watch a show, you can see right below it what other people think of it.
-The search box on the top-right helps people easily find shows they like.
-Navigation system on the top is easy to use and the channels sorting by genre are also good for people who love a certain type of show to find similar shows.
-Ad-free on the front page.
Dislikes:
-On the front page, shows are listed by three vertical columns of “Popular Episodes”, “Popular Clips” and” Recently Added Episodes”. Sometimes this vertical sorting method can get very confusing. It’s not entirely clear that shows are sorted into columns, so often I click on a show expecting a full episode, but it turns out to be just a clip.
-The site could become more customized for its registered users. I subscribed to a couple of shows on my Hulu account, but every time I enter the site after I’ve logged on, it just displays the universal front page content to me. It would be nice if it could be like Youtube, placing recommended and subscribed shows to me in a column on the front page.
Sina Blog
http://blog.sina.com.cn/
One of the most popular blog-hosting and aggregating sites in China
Likes:
-The editorially-selected and featured topics on the top-center, with links to blog posts that discuss both side of that topic, also links to blog posts related to that topic.
-The feeling that a quick glance at the front page can help me understand what is being talked about in China, and subsequently I can go deeper with rich content via the millions of blog headlines displayed on the front page. (But this feeling is just misleading, see the dislikes)
-Search box is useful to find out specific blogs and blog posts about a key word.
Dislikes:
-Too much content on one page, it is overwhelming and distracting; the result is that, except for a couple featured headlines, none of the one million blog post headlines get the attention they deserve.
-Too much content makes the page looks disorganized. No matter how desperately Sina tries to categorize these posts, for example by the bloggers’ popularity, the topic genres, etc. all that effort is in vain because of the busy and crowded format.
-There is a strange, common census among all popular Chinese portal sites: the more, the better. All of them just pour all their content into one page without considering the side effect that all this content would compete for attention and result in a big blurry, conglomerated chunk of content.
Reddit
Pros: Simple layout, straight forward ranking system.
Cons: hard to find old articles. Comments sometimes get hidden. Not visually pleasing.
Mashable
pros: colorful, relatively simple with clean lines.
Cons: too cluttered on the right hand side.
Twitter!
Pros:
- Simple design, which makes figuring out the site a quick and very easy task
- Not saturated with advertisements
- The ability to see what other Twitter users are talking about (a.k.a. Trending Topics)
Cons:
- The frequent fail whale
- Difficult to sort or search through your list of followers and the list of people you follow
- Twitter no longer shortens links automatically/lack of integration with third party applications
Facebook
Pros:
- Lots of information presented to you
- Ability to hide posts and updates from certain third party apps
- Flexibility with privacy settings
Cons:
- Way too many third party apps and advertisements
- Can be difficult to navigate
- Frequent errors with chat and search features
YouTube
Pros:
- Easy to find content
- Suggested search
- Ability to share/embed videos on other sites
- Respond to videos with comments or video responses
Cons:
- Copyright issues/companies frequently have videos removed
Yelp
Pros:
-Great content for feedback on businesses
-Easy to navigate and use on the front end
-Engages users to interact within community
Cons:
-Find it a little difficult to use on back-end as a user
-Suggestions and interactions between users to improve user content are subjective
-Difficult to find and search friends and send messages
Hulu
Pros:
-Free video service online streaming
-Easy to navigate within to search for videos
-Great suggestion feedback box for users w/ questions/comments
Cons:
-Commercials in between videos
-Streams through official website
-Older episodes/shows taken off after a certain time period
Facebook
Pros:
-Great way to keep up with friends, contacts
-Easy to find and search long, lost friends
-Cool functionalities, eg. Birthday Reminders, Create events
Cons:
-Frequent updates and redesigns to the front and back-end
-No control or rights over personal content, eg. photos
-Too many applications that become distracting
News.Google.com
Pros:
Tons of content on one page
Ease of use
Fast Flip integration at the bottom
Search centered at top and bottom
Header links to many other Google services
Count of similar aggregated stories
Video integration under news stories
Aggregates tons of news sources
Intuitive search
Cons:
Not enough video content – I want every story to offer a video summary
Not all news sources aggregated, e.g. Reuters Video
No comments option under news stories
Torrentz.com
Pros:
Large search engine
Tag cloud of popular searches
Categories, sorted by date
Tracking 8,812,320 live torrents
Rating system
Cons:
No direct downloads
Deceiving “Sponsored Links”
Spam
Not enough control against voting bots, etc
No intuitive search
Last.fm
Pros:
Intuitive search
Very efficient and intelligent sorting
Lots of pictures
Good combo of unique content and social networking features
Smart URL shortening
Cons:
None, I love it!!
CNN.com
Likes:
-Main headlines, “don’t miss” section
-Simple user interface
-Lots of images, media content
-Fluid design
Dislikes:
-Embedded ads within the content
-Difficult to find most popular stories
-Hard to navigate, llots of content on homepage
Apple.com
Likes:
-Extremely easy to navigate
-Very elegant, simple user interface
-Large images, media
Dislikes:
-Nothing, love it all!
LATimes.com
Likes:
-Large main headline
-Lots of content
-Small ads
Dislikes:
-Hard to navigate
-Unprofessional design
-Not enough multimedia content
http://espn.go.com/
What I like:
-Easy to navigate
-Live scores at the top of site
-Extensive fantasy gaming
-When a story is unfolding you can watch “Live” play-by-play
-A lot of strong sports writing
-Big pictures
-Ability to click through different picture to get to different stories
-Brief blogs that keep track of press conferences or media days etc.
What I don’t like:
-ESPN Insider (paid service)
-When you click on a story the video on the page will automatically start without you telling it to
-No real community aspect
https://www.bankofamerica.com/index.jsp
What I like:
-Easy to use
-Useful tabs
-Ability to create alerts
-Allows you to set up automatic payments
-Ability to make immediate transfers
What I don’t like:
-Does not give specific description of what was purchased
-When you go to pay the bill it does not actually show you on that screen how much you owe
-No sound effects
http://games.asobrain.com/
What I like:
-The ability to play against other community memebers
-Increase your ranking
-Competition
-Social aspect inside each game
What I don’t like:
-Slow to load
-A lot of features that are not explained
-Nerdy
-Not very easy to navigate
OrangeSlyce.com
-Very easy to navigate
-The contemporary style is simple and welcoming
-The buttons are big
-The site doesn’t have too much going on, so it is fast
-There is clear repetition throughout the site
-The colors are welcoming and the site seems friendly
-The menu bars are in the places that they typically are on other sites, so they are either to find
-The service that the site provides is explained immediately upon landing on the site
Weebly.com
-The service is explained right away
-The Flash demonstration is very useful
-The site subtly has testimonials recommending it on the bottom corner
-The menu bar is very simple, understandable, and direct
-The type face is easy to read and comfortable to look at