Midterm Review

midterms are absolutely amazing. I am very impressed with how they turned out. I was really drawn to the sites that were based on cafes. I had done a café site and found it interesting to see what everyone included into the site and especially how the menu was designed. I know that it was difficult for me to include what I wanted in the menu and I didn't have nearly as much information as the Nuts N' Berries menu. When I was taking a look, I really liked how Marvin Arreola set up his menu. It is all on one page, but he realized that there was too much information to just slap everything on a page and make the user scroll up and down. He included a menu bar to navigate throughout the menu selections at the bottom of each food type category. I found that really helpful when I was looking around.

Another site that absolutely amazed me was Yuko Kishida's portfolio site. I started to laugh when I saw how absolutely wonderful he splash page was compared to mine. I wish that I could have pulled something off like that. If I was looking for someone to create a site for my business this splash page along would grab my attention well enough to make me look though the rest of her stuff: this is what I did. This was what was disappointing to me. There was nothing else on the page. I'm sure there was a reason for this (lack of time, bad server, etc.). If the buttons on her home page would have worked this would have been a very impressive site.

I think the best site so for, not only the actual design, but the material in it is Jessica Haberman's. I was so impressed with it. I really enjoyed the visual design. In terms of usability, I really liked once you were inside either the paint, drawing, or photo sections how the swatches highlight when you scroll over them. If that wasn't there I don’t think many could figure out that they get larger. I think that this is a very good touch to the site.

There were a few things that I noticed needed work on. Some of the menus are pretty hard to see; there were two major mistakes, either the text blended in with the background or the text was just entirely too small. There were also some problems with buttons. I don't know why it would be intentional to have buttons that look AMLOST the same; it looks like a mistake. They either need to be made the same or completely different. There was also a site that used a bit of Flash at the bottom. It was the name of the business, Bestec, but it was going too fast. I wouldn’t have been able to know what it said if I hadn't read the top (where it actually wasn't very apparent).

When it comes to my site, I think I would have tried to incorporate more Flash. It scares me though. When I was doing this site, I was just trying to make something. I think that I got a little bit more confidence (even though it is kind of simple) so hopefully I can build up my courage and take this next site on. I really want to have something I am really proud of by the time I leave this class. This time I am going to try and get things done early so at the end I can ask Karl all of my questions. Lol.