[thelist] Site check please....

Ian Anderson ian at zstudio.co.uk
Tue Apr 11 18:17:24 CDT 2006


Jay Blanchard wrote:

> http://www.pocket.com/foo/index20060328.php

Hi Jay,

Lots I like about the design, but a few comments - hope these are of use:

1. Visual design/UI convention:
I think the navigation tabs extending downwards are a design error. The
visual language here suggests that the material in pink is being
labelled, when in fact it is the material in white. I think that this is
an abuse of a UI convention, and that it would probably be better to put 
the tabs the right way out. (extending upwards from the related content 
into the header area)

 From a purely visual perspective, the result is an ugly sawtooth effect
as it stands at the moment. It looks a bit undesigned.

2. I think you should link the thumbnails of the products in the phones
page to the enlarged view as well as the text "enlarge".

3. I think it is evil to put a link called "Product Detail" to a 1.8Mb
PDF file without warning (the KX440 Phantom). Supply product details as 
HTML in addition to the PDF? Put the information about the binary file 
format and download size into the link?
e.g. Product Detail (PDF, 1.8MB)

Or even better, make the PDF _not_ the size of a cow...

The others seem to more reasonable sizes - a couple hundred Kb - but the
same goes for them. I believe you should never link to a binary file
without it being explicit in the link text.

4. There are no units beside the prices. Could put Euro or $ or
whatever here for the avoidance of doubt.

5. Why the mini-logo in the top right corner? I think this looks very
odd. It is too similar to the Wifi icon on a laptop. It doesn't
sufficiently resemble the logotype to reinforce brand identity, imho. It
just makes the user stop and wonder what it is for a moment. Best gone.
STOP PRESS - It's worse than I thought. That's the button for the search
form? It really needs to say "GO" or similar active verb. I would never
have realised in a million years that I had to click that to make the
form work.

I think it is acceptable to flip it around; put the word search after
the input field and make it the form submit button. I would also move it
down into the big pink bar because at the moment it's running into the
site tools, which themselves are well positioned and well labelled.

6. This part also makes the design look bad because neither the minilogo
nor the edge of the search box line up with the right hand margin. Looks
well untidy.

7. The animated logo fing should stop after three iterations. If not
much sooner.

Hope this helps

Cheers

Ian



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