Activity 1: Good and Bad Design

Tasks
Post a message in the vUWS Discussion Topic 'Examples of Good and Bad Design'.This message should provide a live link to

A) a web site that you think exhibits good design and explain in a few sentences why you think the design i s good and
B) a web site that you think exhibits poor design and explain in a few sentences why you think the design is poor. (Note – this should NOT be one of the examples on webpagesthatsuck.com, search and find your own example).
C) Examine some of the posts by others. Respond to at least one post where you have a different opinion to the author. Give your reasons for disagreeing, but remember to follow the rules of Netiquette

A) In my opinion the Apple web site at http://www.apple.com is a good example of a well-designed web site. Some of the main reasons for my choice include;

Nice clean uncluttered site that makes good use of white space
Simple CSS/List based menu that is search engine friendly and uses mouse over effects to highlight link selections
Ajax based search box that auto displays results in a drop down menu
Makes good use of graphics and video without being obtrusive
Makes use of modern Javascript libraries such as Prototype, Scriptaculous etc to take advantage of a range of special layout and graphic effects
Is designed using XHTML and is WC3 standards compliant

To be honest you could write a book about the good design features found on the Apple site.

B)  The MSY online shop at http://www.msy.com.au/ however is a terrible looking site which displays a general lack of anything approaching an aesthetically pleasing design. The problems with this site include;

Terrible use of colour to highlight text selections
Links that are in different colours
A strange combination of text sizes unrelated to any hierarchical structure
Has a very early 1990’s look about the design with a lack of graphics to add interest
Total lack of any logical menu system making the site hard to navigate

MSY may have cheap prices but the design is so bad most potential customers would be turned off buying products online. This is perhaps one of the ugliest web sites on the Internet.

C) Critique
I may see the humor in http://badgerbadgerbadger.com/ for about 30 seconds, but respectfully I cannot say I agree that this is a good site.

Firstly having a Flash based home page/web site is a very bad idea

* Ignored by search engines
* Takes too long to load if you have a slow connection
* The repetitive soundtrack is incredibly irritating
* To hard to differentiate whether the top menu or the menu under the Flash animation is the main menu for site
* Menu items take you away from the main site
* The menus are not consistent throughout the site
* Some of the pages are very ugly
* Foul language used on site so not child friendly

I could also go on about the poor code; non-accessible elements for the handicapped eg screen readers etc as well.

Good and Bad Design | Your Own Site | Research-Based Guidelines | Assignment