[thelist] design critique (long)

[Madhu Menon]

> > Oops. I think it's so subtle that I missed it completely.
>
>oddly, we started doing that because we got comments from some
>leads who were all Mac shops (ad agencies) and felt that since we
>had shots of IE/win, we couldn't do anything else... since then, we
>change it up, trying to mix IE/NN and win/mac...

So your site audience is also ad agencies? If not, their opinion doesn't 
count that much. If yes, er, it does.


>[...]
> > make it stand out. I mean, what *is* this picture:
> > http://algonquinstudios.com/files/as_images/screencaps/thumbs/pill_cob
> > .gif ? Somebody's neck? (?!?)
>
>erm, part of a flag and part of city hall... (http://www.city-
>buffalo.com/)... although your imagination intrigues me...

Hey, after seeing that picture of you in your Hawaiian shirt, I thought 
this was just another shot of you in a similar shirt. Look carefully. It 
looks like a guy in a red t-shirt and a blue shirt with stars on it on top 
of that. :)


> > Categorise them by both industry and type if you must. Make one of
> > them hyperlinked to a separate page if required.
>
>we do that in our clients page, but it seems that isn't adequate...

Yes, yes, you organise it by industry. What I'm saying is that you add 
another page that organises it by "type of work" (use better label) such as 
"corporate identity", "web site design", "web application", "knowledge 
management solutions", "e-commerce sites", etc. It shows versatility in 
more than one way.


> > Established UI convention makes me think that icons are *separate*
> > from the hyperlinks. When I see the site name, I think that it goes to
> > site and that the "case study" icon goes to a case study of the site.
>
>oh, i know, but nobody clicked on the icon -- no matter what size
>the icon was... they'd click on the text with a mag glass and get
>the site, because they didn't think they should have to click the
>icon...

Oh, there's a simple explanation for that. The text hyperlink is the 
biggest "clickable" thing there, hence that's what will get clicked.

Want a solution? Remove the hyperlink from the text completely. Put "case 
study" and "view site" icons next to them as necessary. More importantly, 
make them *look* clickable. This means making them slightly three 
dimensional. I've done a 2 minute job on a portion of your page and 
uploaded it at: http://expressa.com/images/misc/algon-3.gif

(Don't judge my work by those graphics, however. I'm sure you could do a 
much better job. I just hastily put it together)

Adjust to desired aesthetic quality. ;)

Now there can be no mistake in identifying the proper hyperlink. By 
removing the text hyperlink, you have eliminated significant confusion.

Let me know what you think. I'm on digest, so it'll take a while for a 
response.

Madhu

<<<   *   >>>
Madhu Menon
User Experience Consultant
e-mail: webguru at vsnl.net

Weblog: http://madman.weblogs.com