feedback on design

timmothy

timmothy

timmothy

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27 Sep 2008
Posts
1,356
I am having to do a website for college and have come up with an idea of using the border as the nav-bar, sounds weird i know but i like the idea. Now before i go any further with this design i wanted peoples opinions on whether it is easy to navigate and user friendly for all types of people as that was one of the design briefs. Also i have used the logo as the home button and made it jump out a little on hover, do you think this is a good idea or would a home button be better?

If you guys could look through what i have done so far and give me some feedback it would be great. I have only done the home, services and contact page so bear that in mind.

Also this is my first proper website i am making so be kind.

http://www.ichunes.co.uk/home.html


Thanks guys
 
One problem you have is that the navigation menu is dependant on the vertical height of the monitor. I'm on a laptop with a 1280x800 res monitor, and I have to scroll down to get the bottom 2 buttons which annoying. Other than that, I can't see anything glaringly wrong though. :)
 
Aye - as cool an idea as you think corner-based navigation is, it isn't.

Lots of reasons why not; MK has just highlighted one of them.

Perhaps more importantly to you, this doesn't fit the "user friendly for all types" of your brief. Depending upon the fastidiousness of your tutor, this alone may be a fail.

To answer your second question: no, a jump to a bigger logo image may not be enough. It also looks odd. Consider a different approach, one that doesn't force a user to assume. You may need a dedicated 'Home' button. Just put it in the fifth corner ;)

Typically for someone's first design, you've approached it as if designing for a paper page of fixed size - but remember, this is a different, infinitely flexible medium. There are lots of little flaws - as is to be expected - but the important thing, i.e. the content, is cleanly presented and accessible. That's a good basis :)
 
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i did design it to fit on a monitor that is at least 1024x768, my monitor is 24" so was a bit difficult to get the design right for a tiny monitor... maybe i did not take into account that the user might not be using the browser to take up the full screen as there is the windows bar at the bottom..might have to rethink it,

Thanks for the feedback
 
thanks simisker, thats the kind of feedback i wanted.

I know with the corner based navigation that its a bit "out there" but thats kind of what i wanted, as almost everyone in the class has the same rough color scheme and layout so wanted mine to stand out a bit.

With regards to the home button, im not to sure where i could add one without ruining the clean layout i wanted. i was maybe thinking of adding a small navbar with three buttons on being " back, home, forward" do you think that might help as if it is someone not used to different designs it might be more recognisable to them, i would still keep my corner navigation though, this small navbar would just complement it.

As regards to the little problems you mentioned, could you maybe elaborate as i want to get this site right.

Thanks again for the feedback and everyone else keep it coming
 
First thing's first.. always design for the lowest most common resolution (800x600) and make sure that your page width doesn't exceed about 860px. Height can vary.

Your navigation idea isn't going to work as it makes it difficult for people to navigate around the website. What if people don't realise that they are buttons? You should lay your content and main parts of the webpage within view as soon as the page loads i.e. at the top of the page (this is why most websites place their navigation at the top of the page). Another way to think about this is, if a website wants to promote or sell a product, they will always place the advert or whatever at the top of the page. This way, if the user quickly visits the page, they are able to get an idea of how to navigate your website before even having to scroll down. The less time that the user has to 'figure' out how to use the webpage, the more likely they are to close it and go visit another site!

What I advise you do, is play safe - keep your navigation at the top of the page. There's really no limits to this.. you could have it as a horizontally expanding bar at the very top of the page, or you can have it further down the page. You could even have it vertical if you really wanted to.

For typography, I pretty much always use Arial as it looks good, it's generic and easy to read. It's not hard on the users eyes and looks quite funky too!

I know this is your first website, and it's good that you're thinking into the design, but before you submit it I suggest you look into XHTML and CSS (I don't know whether you are already coding using these as I haven't checked, just quickly browsed the site) but that'll really look impressive if you can ensure that your code is both XHTML and CSS compliant (try and use a doctype of HTML Strict).

You need to also consider coding for all types of browsers, mainly IE and Firefox as these browsers use different page rendering techniques so whatever you design to look good in firefox will most likely look different/worse in IE. The best thing to do is design for firefox initially and then look into 'IE CSS Conditionals'.

That's all I can think of at the moment off the top of my head. If I think of anything else, I'll post it here for you.

:)
 
thanks for the feedback guys, does not look good for me then :)

oh well i guess i just got carried away and was not thinking of what others would think of the design.

Will start again but wish i had asked on here before i had gone so far with it.

The site was made purely with css and a bit of html, my tutor wants as much as possible to be done with css.
 
timmothy said:
[...]I know with the corner based navigation that its a bit "out there" but thats kind of what i wanted, as almost everyone in the class has the same rough color scheme and layout so wanted mine to stand out a bit.[...]
Click to expand...
It's admirable that you want to do something different; investigating alternatives to established conventions is a good idea and can result in better solutions.

But note that I said "investigating". What you're doing here is committing to an unconventional approach simply because it's an unconventional approach, rather than answering the question that the brief and medium poses: is this the best solution for the problem of this site's navigation?

If you're serious about a career in design - any type, not just web - then you'll need to use the power of research and testing. I'm not saying that this project is the right place to start. But what I am saying is that if you are serious, and you have a very good tutor, then you will gain respect/marks from showing your tutor that you investigated the corner-based navigation as part of your discovery process but found it wasn't the best solution for the brief.

Which it isn't, as myself and other posters are saying emphatically. Trust me, lots of designers have done the research.

Don't get me wrong - corner-based interface design has its place; there's a reason why Windows' 'Start' button is in the bottom-left corner, for instance. But that's because it's an interface on a finite, fixed-size monitor.

timmothy said:
[...] I was maybe thinking of adding a small navbar with three buttons on being " back, home, forward" do you think that might help as if it is someone not used to different designs it might be more recognisable to them, i would still keep my corner navigation though, this small navbar would just complement it. [...]
Click to expand...
What you're suggesting here is like designing a dog with three legs, then designing an artificial leg for it. Why not design a four-legged dog to start with?

timmothy said:
[...] As regards to the little problems you mentioned, could you maybe elaborate as i want to get this site right.
Click to expand...
What, and miss the snooker?! :p

One thing that'll help you, and gives further hints at why a corner-based nav may not be best:

View your site in Firefox. Now, go to View > Zoom and tick "zoom text only". Now zoom in, increasing the text size. Yes, some users will have text this big - and remember, your site has to meet the brief of being user-friendly for all types of people.

So, what happens? How can you solve this? What are the knock-on effects of you solving this?
 
simisker said:
Now, go to View > Zoom and tick "zoom text only". Now zoom in, increasing the text size. Yes, some users will have text this big - and remember, your site has to meet the brief of being user-friendly for all types of people.

So, what happens? How can you solve this? What are the knock-on effects of you solving this?
Click to expand...

You get mad with browser rendering/cross browser rendering, throw your cup of coffee across the room and hate IE for the rest of your life? :p

I win? :D
 
simisker said:
What, and miss the snooker?! :p

One thing that'll help you, and gives further hints at why a corner-based nav may not be best:

View your site in Firefox. Now, go to View > Zoom and tick "zoom text only". Now zoom in, increasing the text size. Yes, some users will have text this big - and remember, your site has to meet the brief of being user-friendly for all types of people.

So, what happens? How can you solve this? What are the knock-on effects of you solving this?
Click to expand...

its that bad then:D

that text problem is bad very bad..never even thought about that, just checked the sites that the people made last year and they all have that text problem so i dont feel so stupid :) thanks for pointing that out.

Just for fun i validated the css and xhtml and it passed so i guess thats one good thing.

Looks like i have a long long way to go still but i am enjoying web design a lot..better than working in a pork factory :)

Thanks simisker
 
well i have taken all the feedback on board and will start re designing the website tomorrow. Once i have a working design i will upload it and let you guys see. Thanks again to those that contributed always nice to see that there are people on here that will go out of their way to help and not just comment "thats crap".
 
timmothy said:
I know with the corner based navigation that its a bit "out there" but thats kind of what i wanted, as almost everyone in the class has the same rough color scheme and layout so wanted mine to stand out a bit.
Click to expand...

The thing is... almost all websites follow certain conventions, like having a nav bar at the top. There's a couple of reasons for that: the first is because it's proven to work (it's easy for all kinds of users to navigate). The second is that people are used to it, so they know how to use it straight away. Thinking outside the box is a good thing, but with basic stuff like the nav, I think you need to stick to proven solutions that don't require the user to learn anything new. It's even more important on the web, because people expect to be instantly satisfied. If a user can't figure out how to navigate your site within the first two seconds, they'll click back and go somewhere else. :)
 
The elements are all over the place here.

rck9ow.png


Using Google Chrome.
 
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