Portfolio Website:Paul Bennett

Designed like a computer desktop and run on wordpress, Paul Bennett has gone the whole hog to impress. He has used Ajax and JQuery to allow windows to be moved, minimised and expanded redefining the limitations of blogging.

Internet archaeology

Internet Archaeology does exactly what it says on the tin: saves and preserves websites and their design from a dying age.

The idea was born from the death of Geocites. The director and founder, Ryder Ripps, saw it "as a major milestone in the internet's history"(.net issue 197 p16). It is quite similar to the Internet Archive however has a more modern design and simpler navigation, eliminating the need to remember complicated URL's. "it is not only important to historians, but also artists and designers".

I find the concept of this site quite interesting from a preservation point of view, but I find it hard to value the individual works. Perhaps over time this kind of museum type site will hold more value as the unstylish and badly designed becomes 'historical' but at the moment I think 'good riddance!'

Website Crit: STA Travel

STA Travels website follows quite a standard layout but with a simple and effective quirk. The use of transparency and background image is a clever way to create a sense of escape and instant recognition of the brand.

Web Design Critique: Neave.com

Paul Neave is an interactive designer and his site takes a new spin on portfolio sites where the emphasis is on his work not himself. The site shows off his capabilities and not only encourporates roll overs and quality design, but also uses sound which creates a sense playfullness and involves the user. The site follows a simple navigation structure with small explainations of each link. The links on the HTML and Javascript homepage take you to a number of fun and sophisticated Flash games and interative elements.

The main element that interested me is 'Vote'. This is a type of quiz which follows a multiple choice format where the options are more humerous than challenging. Neave asks random questions, most of which the options are so obscure that the user forgets about being 'correct' but instead focus on giving the most popular or humerous answer (the results of all users are displayed).

I think this is very interesting concept.I found myself answering the questions very honestly when a more serious one came up just because I was entertained. The answer became almost irrelevent because you are only given one question at a time and very little thought had to be put into it. I also think that the slow transformations of the background focuses the users attenion on the more static questions.

I'm not sure how effective this would be when addressing breaches of copyright and piracy but i will keep it in mind when decideing upon my interative element.

Website analysis:OwnYourC

Larrisa Meek has "been a 3D animator, Miss USA finalist, model, actress and reality TV star."[1] and is an addict of behance.net[2].

OwnYourC (own your choices) is a sophisticated flash website with original navigation and layout. It targets the younger audience with imagery and use of language like "sick", "sup!" and"yo!". Combating current issues like smoking, drinking and physical appearance, it involves the user through questions and collaboration with others. The data is visualized in a simple yet effective manner and can be filtered by age, gender, active users and location. Its stylish animation and design doesn't distract from the sites purpose, although it " feels closer to social networking than public information"[2].

OwnYourC targets a similar audience as many of the Anti-Piracy sites I have looked at and is also is tackling government issues. It is interesting to see how effective different sites are and the ways they involve the user.

[1] http://www.larissameek.com/about/
[2] .net magazine issue 193 'The top 20 designers'

Bebo Critique

"Bebo" is an acronym for "Blog early, blog often"

This is the homepage of Bebo. If we compare it to that of Facebook's, we see a lot of differences. On facebook's the registration form is already there you don't have to read loads of jargon and scroll down to view the' Sign up now' button. Also login form is clearly visable not hidden away in the corner.

As I am a member of Facebook I am most probably biased, but I wasn't impressed with the layout or design of Bebo. You need to put a lot of effort into the page before it looks any good and I'm not quite sure why there's a huge easyjet advertisement in the middle of my profile page.

As a 'first timer' I was hard to get started. To find friends there is a search field, but when you get the results of this search there is no image of the potential friend to comfirm if you know them or not. There is also so many sections to a profile and even when looking at a regular users; it looks empty. Although these can be viewed in sections with a series of tabs allowing you to flick between them all.

In a lot of ways it seems very similar to Facebook allowing you to upload video and photos, join groups and instant message. There is a lot of emphasis on link your bebo account with other account such as twitter and Even the top bar is the same, but its just very confusing and to me not very easy to use!!

Reviewing these sites makes me aware of the pit falls of other social networking sites. Simplicity is the key; no one wants to use a site that complicated to navigate around. The fist timer experience is also crucial and will determine whether the individual will return. Its hard enough to get peoples interest so its vital once you've got that interest to keep it!

Facebook Critique

Facebook has taken the online social networking world by storm. Founded by a Harvard graduate, Mark Zuckerberg, membership was originally restricted to Harvard college students where there was already a strong sense of community. Within the first month, more than half the undergraduate population at Harvard was registered. Gradually they opened membership up to more American Universities, then High schools until September 26, 2006 when it opened to anyone of ages 13 and older with a valid email address.

In its infancy, Facebook didn't actually offer anything new over its competitors. In fact in a lot of ways Myspace offered more, allowing the user to personalise their page and add applications such as music players etc. In my opinion Facebook's success is down to the way it was launched: targeting a whole university's students where there is already a strong sense of community.

Facebook is also a lot simpler to use. I was a member of Myspace for a little while but I wasn't that keen on the idea of personalising my page. Although this allows the user to create their own little 'space' and gives their friends a better understanding of their personality; I felt there was a sense of competition, who had the better layout design, music etc. Facebook doesn't have this focus, the design is much more conservative allowing the soul focus to be on interacting with eachother. Its quite conservative design helps to appeal to a very large audience, blue being a safe colour and use of very pale colours makes the content (posts etc) appear more important.

May 24, 2007 brought about the launched of Facebook Platform, providing a framework for software developers to create applications that interact with core Facebook features. To date Facebook has many applications you can add to your page including: games, drawing tools and collectibles. By constantly adding new applications such as Facebook Chat, it keeps users interested

Facebook creates a platform that allows you to keep in touch with people you wouldn't otherwise. For me the main reason for using Facebook is because my friends use it and its quite intruiging to see what they've been up to through viewing conversations, photos. It is also quite interesting know who knows who through the Mutual Friends section.

uses PHP

HBO Voyeur Website-Nosey Neighbours!

Made by American agency Big Spaceship, HBO Voyeur is a theatrical multimedia experience and marketing campaign launched in 2007. As far as i can work out HBO are an American television channel provider similar to Sky. Once loaded this website takes you to a high-rise flat window. By clicking you are then given the choice of zooming into several apartment blocks.Within these apartment blocks you ca instigate the stories of the people living there.


This website is not only clever with the use of technology but also the concept too. It works on the idea of people watching and limitations. Its a human characteristic to be curious about what others get up to and this site allows you to do just that without getting caught! The way only a couple of rooms can be view at one time(unless you choose otherwise) offers a limited view evoking curiosity and keeps you coming back to view the other stories.

TarnThai Evaluation

I began this project by researching current restaurant websites and initially ones in London as I imagined them to be of a high standard. The first one I chose to analyse was The Club: a restaurant and bar, located just off of Regent Street. This is a well designed and simple flash site with good use of 'white space' and easy to use navigation. Within one click you can access the information you visited the site for, as there are no further links on any of the pages. Although this is a Flash site, the interaction and animation they're associated with, is kept to a minimum. This clearly was a concious decision and a good one as the imagery used keeps the users interest. I thought the site would benefit from combining images with the text as although the menu is displayed well, streams of text are easier to read with images alongside.


Next I started to explore the restaurants owned by celebrity chefs and as the majority of them have more than one, they act as micro-sites. Jamie Oliver's London based restaurant fifteen, follows a quite standard layout with its left-hand-side, vertical navigation and portrait orientation. The imagery used conveys the purpose of the site which is necessary with an obscure name like fifteen and gives the impression of trendy urban restaurant. It softens the quite formal feel portrayed by the layout, while at the same time appealing to a wide audience. Navigation is far more complex than The Club, however taking the amount of information into consideration, it is well structured and organised. Personally I would prefer to see this site with more concise information to reduce user scrolling, and although I like the pink strip in the third column aesthetically, it seems a little pointless on quite a few of the pages.



Owned by Antony Warrel Thompson, The Barnes Grill website is flash based. Aesthetically this website is very appealing, however it acts as a micro-site and so has links to his other restaurants. These are so big that they dominate over the links concerning The Barnes Grill and leave very little room for information. To overcome this problem the designer has created scroll bars. I'm not too keen on this idea as scrolling can be frustrating, especially when there is so much 'white space' round the edges.


When researching restaurants' websites, I turned my attention to local Nottingham restaurants. This led me to the Nottingham Restaurant Awards website, and from here I came across Tarn Thai. It had been nominated for Best Oriental Restaurant in 2007 and 2008, so when I visited their site, I was quite disappointed. They have clearly made this themselves, the layout is illogical and the content is long-winded and in some parts irrelevant.

Tarn Thai really stood out due to its lack of design. Despite this however, I was intrigued by it as it had been nominated two years in a row. With this in mind I went to visit the restaurant and found that it was stunning. This made me want to re-design the website to do the restaurant justice. From my visit I took a take away menu and a contact card. The only current branding they have is a logo and the use of gold and maroon.

(More critiques)


When in the design stages, I started by using the colours and logo from the contact card. I decided on positioning the main content to the left so it is the first thing your eyes are drawn to as typically our eyes read from left to right. I started by thinking about what information the user is most likely to use. I decided upon: address as for local customers, this would be enough to locate the restaurant, opening times and telephone number; so these will be displayed on all pages.


I then started to create different variations in Illustrator, altering colours, menu positions and adding images as I thought my initial design was basic. I also added a 'Do we deliver to you?' section where the user could enter their postcode to check whether they fall in the delivery zone. I didn't think i'd have time to make this function but it conveys an idea.


After some constructive criticism, I went back to using a similar palette to the contact card and ditched the white background. I feel this gives it more warm feel and its starting to feel a bit more 'Thai'. I've kept the layout very similar although I added a footer and replaced the generic picture of a Thai dish with one from their website.






At this stage I was quite happy with the design and took it into dreamweaver; but as time went on the imagery just didn't seem right, it lacked depth and wasn't at all dynamic.


I took my images back into Photoshop and added Emboss, Shadows and Gradient Overlay styling. I feel this give the site a more finished feel and reflects the quality that you should expect from a visit to Tarn Thai. Before the imagery was far too flat. I also moved the logo as I thought it detracted from the text when reading.
Although, I liked the colour of behind the logo I removed the box in the second column because I wasn't sure suited the rest of the page.


This is my final design for my Tarn Thai website. Looking at my previous screen shot I think I prefer the main text on the left hand side. This reduces the chance of the logo interfering in the text when displayed in different browsers and separates it from the text in the second column. I would also increase the size of the buttons as I don't think they are look in proportion with the rest of the page.

The menu's proved quite problematic as they are extremely extensive. Having 20 odd html pages or displaying them as PDF's were not really options for me. It was made more challenging as the dishes aren't in English, making the description more important. This brought about having a Thai Cuisine Dictionary. This way I could divide each menu into sections, each displaying on different pages but only list the names and prices of the dishes. By having relevant Thai words translated at the side the user could work out what the dishes meant. This would be quite quirky and also add interaction for the user.

I have wasted a lot of time though tweaking the layout and the background images to make them match. I should have produced my final design in the design stages and so reduced the time spent in dreamweaver. If I had more time I would've liked to get the postcode entry working and also to have used the font from their contact card.

Through this project my HTML and CSS skills have certainly improved. I have learnt how to use and style

tags and although it did take quite a long time, I also managed to achieve a drop-down list. I think my CSS sheet and use of headers is more logical although I have however used a lot of 'padding' and 'margin' options in the headings rather than containing the text in more

tags which I am now aware I shouldn't do as different browsers display these options differently.

I feel this website is of a higher quality than for the project last term and I am quite pleased with my final outcome. There are a lot of benefits from making mistakes, and by learning from mine my technical abilities are certainly improving.

Restaurant Website Critique

The French Laundry
This American restaurant is voted as one of the best restaurants in the world. The website is strangly quite relaxing, and does have a certain 'french' feel. It is a flash site, although it isn't flashy and has a simplistic and balanced layout.

Barnes Grill
Owned by Antony Warrel Thompson, the Barnes Grill website is flash based. Aesthetically this website is very appealing, however it acts as a microsite to his other restaurants so it has links to these. But these links are to big in comparison to the content window, that very little room is left for information and they dominate over the links concerning The Barnes Grill. To over come this problem the designer has created scroll bars. I'm not too keen on this idea as it can get quite frustrating having to keep scrolling all the time. Especially when there is so much 'white space' round the edges.

The Club
This Flash site gives the impression of a young, trendy and modern London restaurant/bar. The key to this site is its simplicity, with a few concise links allowing for easy navigation leading to all the information you might need. Its a great example of good design. The purpose of the site is clear, the links are where you would expect them, and subscription is positioned so that you are aware of it there but it is easy to ignore if you so wish. There is no need for the user to search the page for anything, and the information isn't clouded by flowery descriptions, everything has a purpose.

Marlybone 108
Although this website is aiming at a more mature audience, in a lot of ways is very similar to that of 'The Club'. It has key images and transparent boxes that contain the content. The colour scheme gives a impression of freshness and good quality and generally the site is well thought out. However, I'm not too keen on how the menu is displayed-a PDF in a new window. The only thing I would say is that the text is quite small and especially as they have an older target audience, this could prove problematic for people with bad eyesight. If I were to be really picky Iwould also make the darker bar with the sub categories perminant so it wasn't a roll-over effect.

Fifteen
This London based restaurant is owned by Jamie Oliver and as expected the website is well thought out and aesthetically pleasing. This site acts as a microsite, linked to all his other restaurants and products. All of which have their own identity all of which made by The Plant. The design itself is quite clever, addressing quite a large ranged audience although at times the quantity of text and links does seem overwhelming and would benefit from being reduced.


TarnThai
This website is the worst site I have come across and I can't think or anything positive to say. They have chosen a horrible poo brown for the background, chucked some almost irrelivant images where ever they happened to land and whats with the tacky waterfall animation?! not to mention the links with their orange background and basic blue link text. There is far too much text on the pages and with very little sub headings and ilogical layout the user is left feeling quite lost! This restaurant was a runner-up for the Best Oriental Restaurant by Nottingham Restaurant awards in 2007, so i'm sure its a good quality restaurant its just a shame they don't have a site to reflect that.

Fashion

This Nottingham based restaurant is addressing a 30-40's clientel. The design is quite appealing, however the information is very flowery with little to-the-point information. The text is qyuite small and ovewr powered by all the images surrounding it. The tab that is opened for the menu's has a similar look and colour scheme however layout wise is completly different/ In a lot of ways i prefer this design. The tabs allow for clear navigation and not over powered by images and the information is more concise and a readable size.
W1
This restaurante is owned by Gary Rhodes and it really reflects his stlye of food: fancy but not pretentious. I was really impressed by this website. It has elements of quirkiness that make it quite entertaining to navigate through. The design and animation is of a high standard and navigation is pain-free. I did notice however that on a couple of the Brasserie menus, the last dish is cut off but this is honestly the only fault I can see.

Lecture Task

ITEM 1
This interview with Dan Saffer, is very informative. He goes into quite a lot of detail and also gives good links. He gives incite into his world and some good advice to the budding designer.

His personal site
His blog has a lot of quirky posts. I find it interesting to see the way designers find inspiration.







He also has written a book: Designing for Interactive
Other links mentioned:
Stamen Design
Stimulent
Dopplr




ITEM 2
Through Joel Schafers brief answers to the interviewers questions, he parts with some quite useful links




Cap & Design- a Swedish magazine for...
Web Desiger- English magazine

Dope Awards
Kirupa
Flash kit
jsgd.se
strange fruits


IDEO
This website instantly grabbed my attention with its bold purple hompage and interactive elements. I hadn't come across IDEO before so I wanted to know who they are. This was answered straight away, by hovering over 'WHAT WE DO' giving me no time to get distracted or loose interest.
As you navigate yourself around the site, the visual stimulus depreciates some what as the site's objective turns to a functional website with informative, however interesting content; rather than design. This made me feel a bit let down to a certain extent....

The site is quite easy to navigate around although I felt a bit overwhelmed by the quantity of links.
SONY
Sony have clearly designed this site to suit the audiences needs. This site is funtional. People will visit it wanting to find information or purchase their products and thats exactly what they can do. It has some nice elements of design like the bar at the top but interactivity is minimal and I didn't feel any urges to explore the site. Like the Sony brand i'm sure its faultless in its funtionality and usability, however some elements of flare would make it more visually stimulating.
APPLE
very much like Sony's site; the design of the website is quite simple which makes the information easy to navigate to. This site is for people wanting to buy apple products and so it gives the audience the information they need and doesn't over complicate things with fancy design.
NOW
I'm not a great fan of the new VLP. The main thing that I find a bit frustrating is the layout. The areas of the site that are used the most (timetable, email etc) are small and squashed at the top of the page while the rest of the page is covered with unuseful information and white space. Its trying to be a social network, with your own profile and buzz, which is also hidden.
One benefit is the library search which takes you where you want to go quite painlessly.
The visual design is very simple and unlike the VLP you can't adjust any settings apart from the font and font size as far as I can make out.


FWA-flash content
(3) For 2 websites with FLASH content from http://www.thefwa.com/ discuss them in your online journal using the same criteria as above.

(4) Have a look and go at the FLASH tutorial available for FLASH CS3, via a link in top right hand widget on the Exploring Multimedia homepage, do this before the seminar in Week 14 28/10/08.

iNtErAcTiVe MeDiA

www.cavemanscrib.com
I found this through facebook. it is a interative flat owned by the caveman. You are able to venture around his crib and read emails on his laptop, play music on his ipod, read his magazines etc etc.

I really enjoy this site. The graphics are of a high quality, its easy to use and extremely well thought out.
It gives the chance to be a proper nosey parker, while you nose about the caveman is still in the flat, and occassionally you bump into him and occasionally tells you off which I quite like. , there is a real sense of humour in the entire set up, especially with his personal blog. i can't critisise it.

www.scifi.com/tinman/oz
This is a very visual piece. the funtionality is easy to understand however the site is not as interactive as the Caveman's Crib is slightly limited as you can only fastforward and rewind the visual. the site does not incorporate the classical imagery of The Wizard of Oz, which for me, made me intrigued

www.stevelawler.com
this is a graphic designer's website designed to basically show his technical capabilities. i especially like the inhaler that the viewer must pump up to reveal the links to other interative pages.
he also has a number of games on his sight which stimuate the viewer, they are all just for fun with no aim, but still work well