Thursday, May 19, 2011

Principal of design

We are starting the web design unit in CyberARTS, we we're taught the 10 principles to making a good website.

1. Don't make users think
2. Don't squander the user's patience
3. Manage to focus the user's attention
4. Strive for feature exposure
5. Make use of effective writing
6. Strive for simplicity
7. Don’t be afraid of white space
8. Communicate effectively with a visible language
9. Conventions are our friends
10. Test early, test often

This is an example of a BAD website design





Principles of design missing:

1. Don't make users think
2. Don't squander the user's patience
3. Manage to focus the user's attention
4. Strive for feature exposure
5. Make use of effective writing
6. Strive for simplicity
7. Don’t be afraid of white space
8. Communicate effectively with a visible language
9. Conventions are our friends
10. Test early, test often
Pretty much, all of them.

There may even be more, the main point is this web design doesn’t work because it's sloppy. Image files are broken and missing and even some images are overlapping. They are over using the animated icons, which is making it crowded. The background color is hard to look at and is distracting, making you want to leave it. With the pictures that do work there too big and with all of these things happening you can't concentrate on the words.







Now, this would be a better more simple and enjoyable website

Principals of design used:

1. Don't make users think
3. Manage to focus the user's attention
4. Strive for feature exposure
5. Make use of effective writing
6. Strive for simplicity
7. Don’t be afraid of white space
8. Communicate effectively with a visible language
10. Test early, test often


This website design demonstrates clean colours, lot's of white space and a bright look giving it a light and inviting feeling. Each new section of writing has big font that tells you what it's about instead of it being one long page of words. The images and font used are clean and simple which means it's readable.

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Rio


This weekend has been so rainy, depressing and boring. On a rainy day, what’s the best thing to do? Watch movies! Today I went to the theater and saw Rio! It was such a sweet and fun movie! There were many beautiful parts of the movie that showed Rio de Janeiro, and the rainforest, and the beaches, and some stereotypical characters and situations. It was an adorable love story about a domestic blue macaw and a native macaw and how they are the only two left of their species! Together Blue and jewel have crazy adventures in Rio and meet new friends! The music was awesome! I really liked it, the music makes you feel anywhere from warm inside to you want to get up and dance! The movie takes place in Brazil, and the main character is from Minnesota. I love movies like these because anyone can watch it and really love it. This movie I would give it a nine out of ten, it's well worth seeing!