Good vs Bad

Erin Lackie COM 336
Twitter Project

 WEBSITES I THINK ARE WELL DESIGNED:

1.) www.Facebook.com: I use Facebook the most because it allows me the ability to keep up with friends and family I do not have time to see as much as I used to. It allows me to see how they are doing and them to see how I am doing. I think that Facebook has become more users friendly over the past few years. They have made improvements on photo sharing, video sharing, as well as interacting within posts and comments. The only thing that needs to be changed is the new news feed that shows the most popular post verses most recent posts. I know you can change this too most recent while navigating via a PC or Mac, but not on a mobile device.

2.) www.Google.com I use Google as my one and only search engine. I also use it for YouTube, blogger, and G mail. I search for images and news on Google as well. I like that you can filter searches to narrow down to what you really want to find. I think, in general, Google is very basic and easy to operate. I would like if Google maybe had apps instead of links at the top to navigate to these different branches of Google. Aside from that, I believe Google is extremely well developed and navigation is a breeze.

 3.) www.yahoo.com : I always use yahoo for my email. I check my email everyday online. That way I can see sales and everything because I am addicted to shopping. I think yahoo is very easy to navigate. Aesthetic wise, it is very busy. The homepage to Google has A LOT going on. They have so many different branches it may be confusing to others, but I have been using yahoo since I can remember and I think it is easy navigate.

4.) www.netflix.com: Navigation is very user friendly. Design wise, it is well designed. It is interactive. These are all the things I look for in a well designed website.

5.) www.gap.com : Gap's website is focused on all their brands and all of their ad campaigns for the season. Aesthetically, the website is flawless. The colors always coordinate, the sales are bright and pop off the screen and the images added make it appealing. The navigation is great and there are forums for each item to rate it and discuss the product. This is a great way to interact with your consumer base and for your customers to tell you what they like and dislike. 

6.) www.msn.com: I am always attracted to MSN's home page. The layout of the site is very appealing and the content matter in the website is very unique, timely and/or important. I keep MSN as my homepage to quickly navigate through news and see the hot topics of the day.

7.) www.ESPN.com: This site is extremly interactive. The score charts at the top keep me up to date on scores, time left in the game, and the teams that have already won their game for the day. Fantasy teams is extremely popular. It is easy to do, navigation is pretty easy and it is interesting to be able to interact with people over the internet via real life games.

8.) www,twitter.com: Twitter keeps all post in chronological order. This makes it easy to read and to pickup from where I left off. Twitters posts are limited to all messages are concise and get straight to the point.

9.) www.YouTube.com: Navigation is easy and it is a Google operated program. I think Google is a great site and YouTube definitely fits well with the aesthetic of its parent site and the design is perfect for  a video sharing site. It is easy to upload a video, interact with other videos and share these videos as well.

10.) www.pogo.com: Pogo is an extremly interactive game site. You get to play games against others as opposed to computers and you can even chat with them while you play,. 

WEBSITES I THINK NEED SOME WORK

 1.) www.buffalostate.edu ‘ Since we go here, I think it is not a surprise that I use this site a lot. My biggest pet peeve about our school website is navigation. Having to click mybuffstate then students and then finally getting into links to navigate elsewhere is just inconvenient. A few branches of the parent website that are not easy to use would be the E. H. Butler Library website. They redesigned the website, but I have no idea to fins what I am looking for on there. It took me about an hour of clicking on different things to find things I needed for a research project. Another branch of the Buffalo State website is banner. When registering for class or searching for classes you have to constantly refresh or it will not conduct the search.

2.) http://q-c-p-solutions.com:  This is my moms website for her new business. I have no idea who she paid to design this, but I have explained to her that it is the worst design ever. The font sucks, the colors suck, the background sucks, the content sucks and there is no navigation through the site at all. It looks very armature and unprofessional.

 3.) www.buffalo.wikispot.org: The navigation on this site is horrendous. The aesthetic is terrible. The fonts are not good and the content for the wikis are either does not exist or not informative enough.

 4.) www.pinterist.com: Their mobile app is better than their actually website.The website is a little over whelming when you are brought to your home screen with everyone's pins. Maybe if there were a way you could pick and choose whose pins you want to see in your feed. 

5.) www.justfab.com: The aesthetic of the website is not that great. There is a lot going on and it gets confusing when you start to shop for the shoes. The filters used to refine searches actually make the search more difficult.

6.) Google+: I have no idea how to use it. This is not a user friendly social media site. Someone please teach me how to get people in my circle!

7.) bing.com: There is just way too much going on. Bing is overwhelming. The homepage is fine, but anything after that is just too much information all at once. the fonts, backgrounds, and advertisements distract me from finding the actually content I am searching for.

8.) blackboard/angel: Navigation sucks. I like that you can change the layout and templates so it is more personal, but navigation sucks and it is hard to interact with one another. Discussion forums are terrible and the messaging feature is too. Outdated technology.

9.) AOL.com: This is outdated as well. The design is not that great.

10.) tumblr.com: Tumblr is pretty much an online diary. Also, you can re-blog things people blog. Most of the time it is just photos or quotes. Tumblr gets boring, the most fun I have had with it is changing my background and layout.