IKEA Trip

The IKEA trip was a good time. I started out by getting a dollar ice cream cone and then had the 15 meatball meal with a lingenberry mouse dessert. It was delicious. Then it was time to analyze the store. My experience was overwhelming, but also interesting. Although there were arrows to show where to go, I still felt like I was in a maze, and like most other people's reactions, it was frustrating that it seemed you had to go through the entire store to leave the place. I did like the interactivity of the place. I was free to roam, touch, sit, feel, and smell all of the items. The "look inside" tags made me want to look inside and see the surprise. I did find it very user friendly to have so much food outlets scattered about the store (ice cream kiosk, restaurant/cafeteria, and Swedish grocery store)...and there was good music.

Project 4-Before/After

For project 4, our Team Aquarius, recreated the Aquarius Records website, www.aquariusrecords.org.

We first created a brand new site, and then performed approximated 10 user tests to see what problems that users may experience. We found that most users went straight to the search bar when asked to find the albume "Australasia" by the metal band "Pelican". Most users seemed to have an easy time navigating throughout the site. Below are links to Noah Jackson's blogsite, which have both the first and second versions of our website. You will just need to click on Old Aquarius for the first version and Aquarius Records, Update 20 APR 2007, for the second version. Enjoy

Textbook prices site

I thought that this might be a good example of a site that makes it easy for students to buy books for cheap. I know, many people/students may already know of this site, but for those who don't, you'll be able to save some phat cash buy checking out this search engine. It basically finds all of the cheapest sites throughout the web and gives a great summary of cheap e-commerce sites. Alright, I have given you a little not-so-secret secret, no fly with it.

http://www.campusi.com

Top 10 blogsites

Alright, I know.....It has been a long time since we last met, whoever is reading this. I do have a link that I will post once I am back at my house. I am at school right now. I have bookmarked on my computer, a link that deals with the top 10 blog sites on the internet. I thought it showed some interesting examples of the variations and solutions regarding the blog as a design medium. For now, I will leave you in suspense, but keep in mind that it will be worth your wait............maybe.

Okay, I'm back. Here is the link for the website. http://elliottback.com/wp/archives/2006/04/16/top-ten-best-designed-blogs/

GPS, and speed limits

I recently was reading Wired magazine and there was a small feature about an innovation of the future that would curb speeding. The article explained that each car would have a GPS sensor and the speed limit of the car would be enforced depending upon weather conditions. It appears too much of a "Big Brother is watching" type thing, but it did bring up questions of usability, and almost lack of control for the user. Anywho, I'll try and get the issue number for yous guys later.

Eatock's Website Template

I friend of mine at work told me about Daniel Eatock's template for making a website. It is pretty simple, yet very effective in organizing content. Here's the link: www.danieleatock.com

Project 3-Trunk Test #2

I tried out a second trunk test with five more participants after discovering that my first design of the website needed some modifications in the secondary navigation area of the site. I decided to create more of a spacing between the page name and the secondary navigation. I also spaced the secondary navigation a little bit better and made the highlights of the "you are here" indicator and secondary navigation indicator more aligned with the main navigation heading (in this instance, the heading "Men's"). Here is a little of the participants' results from the second trunk test:

Participant 1: 15 sec.
Participant 2: 22 sec.
Participant 3: 27 sec.
Participant 4: 31 sec.
Participant 5: 35 sec.

The scores were a lot better and was probably from a combination of changing the design and explaining the test a little bit better beforehand.

Here are some examples of my new page site modifications:

The Home Page:

The Men's Page Drop Down Menu:

The Men's Felt Hats Page with the rollover on "Felt Dress":

The Men's Felt Dress Hat's Page, with a selection in the secondary navigation of "Borsalino":

The Men's Felt Hats Page, specifically "The Genoa Hat" Page:
I decided to give the main navigation tabs a little bit of difference this time. I had the selected part of the main navigation blend with the brown strip across the top of the page. I also spaced the page name a little bit more underneath the main navigation. I made the highlighted selections in the secondary navigation flush with the word of the main navigation, in this case, "Men's". I also added a shopping cart icon and deleted "My Basket". Finally, I aligned the "checkout" indicator with the right of the search box.

Project 3-Trunk Test

Well, I gave the trunk test to six of my friends concerning the "Men's Felt Hats" page in my redesign project. I got a variety of results. I have listed the results in order from shortest to longest amount of time to find all of the elements in the page:

Participant 1: 34 seconds
Participant 2: 38 seconds
Participant 3: 44 seconds
Participant 4: 50 seconds
Participant 5: 56 seconds
Participant 6: 75 seconds


On last Thursday in class, we were instructed to apply a Gaussian Blur with a radius of 1.5 pixels to our web page and print out some pages for people to look at. Each participant had to find six elements to the page. They were:

1. Site ID
2. Page Name
3. Main Navigation
4. Secondary Navigation
5. A "You are Here" indicator
6. A Search Option

I found that a lot of the participants had trouble locating the secondary navigation of my page, or they were confused to what the secondary navigation actually was. I remember giving them hints like, "what would you think the secondary navigation is?" or "where would you look after you selected from the main navigation?". The amazon.com site was also brought up as an analogy to think of tabs for navigation. The participants also were pretty much talking the whole time while they were trying to find the web page elements. Some would go in order from the list that I gave them and a few would start with the items that they definitely knew (i.e. the search box).