Your Name
Dell
www.dell.com
The colors are pleasing to the eye (nice contrast), dark font on a light background. The
tabs on top make it easy to find products or support services; the submenus list a more
detailed list of items. There is a lot of white space and doesn't feel overwhelming with
text. The bottom menu is easily seen. The graphics are clear and vibrant. I like how on
the front page the banner displays different deals that they currently have. Very
professional and user friendly.
Marina K.
Joy of Baking
http://www.joyofbaking.com/index.html
I love this website for, number one, the content! I find that they have anything I need. If
I'm looking for a specific recipe, I can do a search, but they also have categories based
on certain ingredients, upcoming holidays, certain types of foods, and most recent
additions. They also have a "Top Ten" recipes list at the bottom for every month. It
includes pictures with it.
I like the fact that the main picture on the site cycles through different pictures, and
changes angles. I understand that this may be problematic for slower internet connection
speeds, but it works for mine.
This website not only covers recipes, but it is also educational. If I find I am out of an
ingredient, I can check here to see if there is something else, and in what amounts, I can
substitute with. If I have a foreign recipe, for example Indian, sometimes the
measurements are in grams. This website has a conversion option to help out.
Jill C.
Salt Lake Tribune
www.sltrib.com
I chose this website because it is one I use every day and they have recently made a
couple changes that I very much appreciate: the addition of "top stories" and "latest
news" sections to the top of the page. This way I can easily see what has been recently
added and which articles are receiving the most attention.
Christine C.
1
Eng 674 | Favorite Websites
Your Name
Pasty Central
www.pasty.com
Although it lacks a good "design" in terms of graphics, it is my favorite website. It has
links to all of the local businesses in the area, keeps track of the local snowfall, a new UP
photo every day, and other extra stuff. It's all about the home area (which I love) and I
have my own photo gallery on the website (along with family and friends). This is actually
how they choose the photo of the day - through the guest galleries! It's actually really
neat to be selected and then there is normally conversation about the photo selected and
local happenings.
Katie Tormala
Affinity Plus Federal Credit Union
affinityplus.org
I like the way my bank's website is set up. Affinity Plus Federal Credit Union,
affinityplus.org contains its logo, colors and vision on its homepage along with easy -tonavigate tabs and side bars. It is easy for me to find what I need. I sometimes go to
Minnco Credit Union, minnco.com for my brother's account and I find that site to be
busier on the homepage with pictures, rates in large font, and links. It was harder for me
to find the online banking link. So, of the few sites that I do get to go on, Affinity Plus
Federal Credit Union, with it's easy navigation and simple appearance, is my favorite.
Katie Chisholm
Married to the Sea
www.marriedtothesea.com
It is a daily comic made by a married couple who each have their own daily comics
(www.toothpastefordinner.com and www.nataliedee.com), and each comic features a
public domain image with new captions. I love this website not only for the content, but
for the layout. Each day they post one and only one comic on the website, which keeps
the page from being cluttered. If a viewer wants to see earlier comics, they are archived
by month right below the comic of the day, or the user can search for a specific comic in
the search bar just below the archives. Above the comic they post announcements about
new merchandise, sales, and other news about the website, as well as links to their other
comics. All of their links are easy to find yet discreet, which keeps the website looking
neat and clean. The simplicity and usability of this website makes it quick and easy to
start my day off with a laugh.
Carrie M.
2
Eng 674 | Favorite Websites
Your Name
Minnesota Lakes: Lake Vermilion Resorts Homepage
http://www.lakevermilionresorts.com/
I particularly like this website because of the simplicity and navigability of the homepage
to other informational pages. It links several other websites together on one homepage
that makes searching for recreation, rentals, resorts, homes for rent or sale, activities,
dining, and other northern MN activities very easy to find and very user friendly.
Samantha B.
Lynda.com
http://www.lynda.com/
Lynda.com provides low cost learn at your own pace software programs for a nominal
fee. The site isn't attractive and the cycling banner is annoying but the products are very
useful.
Dana L.
Vermont State Parks
www.vtstateparks.com
I find the design to be perhaps a little better than average - somewhat visually busy. But I
thought the usability was very good and, I would guess, probably has a good mix of
meeting user/client needs. Information is presented in various forms for a wide variety of
users with differing goals/styles. For example, you find a state park by name if you're
familiar with the state, a map if you're not, or even get a list of the top 5 in an area of
interest. The state map is interactive so that a visitor can easily view both where a park is
in the state and its amenities at the same time - either by process of elimination or
tabular. All information seems to be well organized and easily accessible. Making
reservations was friendly and resources very thorough for unfamiliar visitors - with even
photographs of individual campsites within the parks, etc. I haven't explored behind every
link, but the collective home page has links for employment, state programs, conservation
requirements, volunteers, etc . . . I would anticipate that they're similar in usability.
Lauren C.
YouTube
www.youtube.com
The site is visually appealing and fairly easy to navigate. The site offers the number of
hits and viewers comments, which is helpful for a teacher who wants show some short
novelty video.
Amber T.
3
Eng 674 | Favorite Websites
Your Name
Lego.com: “The Official Website of LEGO Products!"
http://www.lego.com
Lego.com is a favorite website in my family because of its rich content, usable interface
and good design.
Kids and adults in our family use Lego.com for different reasons. My kids use it to browse
products, play games, download coloring pages, make a birthday/Christmas wish list with
product names and prices, and watch short, animated films featuring their favorite toys.
Adults in our family use Lego.com to compare prices and order products. Lego.com is a
rich and detailed site for novice and sophisticated users. For novice kid-users, Lego.com
is easy to use and safe. My kids can explore the site with very little supervision. The site
handles errors well. I know this because my kids are not constantly needing me to help
them recover from problems. The site does not retain my payment information, so
products are not ordered "accidentally" (as could be the case at Amazon.com). My
mother is a novice adult-user and she is able to order gifts with few problems. There are
features available for sophisticated users as well as novices. For sophisticated kid-users,
there is a social networking component of the site where a user can build a homepage
similar to Facebook or Myspace. There is a lot of information available for parents about
the safety of this networking. I have read it, and it conforms to the design and rules of
other kids social networking sites. For sophisticated adult-users there is a rich corporate
information section that offers much more that the usual legal disclaimers and “about us”
verbiage. The corporate information section give additional resources for kid education as
well as adult education and a section for career seekers.
Lego.com is a usable site. It is learnable: adults and kids are able to complete easy
tasks the first time they use the interface. It is efficient: tasks can be completed quickly.
It is memorable: tasks can be completed quickly even when a user has been away from
the site for some time (I am a great example of this as I order products infrequently and
have never had a problem). It is easy to recover from errors in this site (as demonstrated
by example in the previous paragraph). It has a high rating of satisfaction: this site is
used often and my kids and I are satisfied with our experiences. In addition to these
usability quantifiers, the site is available in languages other than US English. It is easy to
change the language of the site from the home page. Certainly, usability testing would
uncover issues with the Lego.com site. But, from the general perspective, Lego.com is
usable.
4
Eng 674 | Favorite Websites
Your Name
Lego.com is a well-designed site. The navigation is clear. For novice users, there are
icons and short words to show the main sections (products, play and shop). For more
sophisticated users, there are quick links with more words and a section where a user
can find out what’s new. The colors are bright and appeal to kids. They also match the
main colors of the Lego toys, which are red, yellow, and blue. They typefaces for the kid
sections are bright and child-like, but the typeface for the adult section (along the bottom)
are a standard color (dark gray) and non-decorative.
I think that my family’s preference for this site goes well beyond my kids’ love for Lego
toys. If I were to rank the reasons that we prefer this site, It would look like this: (1) rich
content, (2) usable interface, and (3) good design. These three things make Lego.com a
perennial favorite. Even though rich content is the first reason for our preference of this
site, we would be unable to discover it without the usable interface and good design.
Julie S.
Paul Reed Smith guitars
http://www.prsguitars.com/
Right now my favorite website can be found at Paul Reed Smith guitars. Here are my
reasons:
Design: This site is elegantly designed. By elegant I mean simple, effective, and
attractive. They use a black background, which compliments the other aspects of the site.
It is not a site where its homepage is almost a page and a half. It is a page long. The links
site was cleverly placed at the top of the page. The most recent products grab your eyes
right away because they were put in the center of the page. Finally, any news about the
company is uniquely placed at the bottom of the page. Little text, the right amount of
pictures, and smart placement of components. These are the reasons why I like the
design of this site.
Usability: This site is very easy to navigate through. Not too many bells and whistles, just
enough to catch your eye and keep it on the page. They seem to have focused on what
they do best: make high quality guitars. They don’t get so involved in marketing and other
areas that the site suffers. They know that people are there to look at guitars, not read six
pages of text. They also seem to know that guitar players aren’t looking for complicated
sites. They want their instant gratification and that is exactly what they get. Pictures of
guitars, with a little information on the guitars, and an easy to use site. That’s why I am
such a big fan of their site.
Pershing C.
5
Eng 674 | Favorite Websites