Imagine you’re browsing the web looking for a cool site to learn about space/astronomy and you come across the website above. This website alone could make you click away and never Google space again.
The name of this website is Space is the Place. This site is poorly designed for multiple reasons. The first thing I noticed is it doesn’t have any headlines, organized text or a central focus. The main content section is overcrowded with unconstrained text and it blurs together.
The navigation on this page is confusing. There are no widgets on the top or sides of the page which makes it hard to find what you are looking for on the site. The links are unorganized and spread out throughout the paragraph. The about section is poorly written and at the top of the web page inside an unnecessary frameset. The about section should be on a separate page, but there are no additional pages to this site.
The layout is inconsistent on this site and it does not have enough contrasting colors. The text is light blue on a blue background and these non- contrasting colors make it hard to read.
The graphics are poorly placed on the website, they are centralized with text below or above which leaves empty space around it instead of text. The main picture can be seen as a religious mockery since the guy is posing in the clouds and appears god-like.
The guy that made this site could have saved time and made a blog with a well designed theme that was already made. The entries seem to be blog posts and so it would have been easy to make it a blog on wordpress.com.
When I first started as the advertising and public relations intern at the UNLV Newman Center, I couldn’t look at our website for more than five seconds without getting bored. Although our website is now under construction by a designer, I started a blog through wordpress.com to promote our events during my internship.
Comparing the layout I picked for my blog to the main Newman website is an example of good design vs. poor design.
Newman.unlv.edu is the main website for the church and it has red, gray and white as its main colors. The main problem is the layout. The events are listed down at the bottom of the widget section and the office hours are at the top. The website should draw people to come by advertising what events it has to offer.
Another problem with the current website is the main space is poorly utilized. There should be a picture to draw people into the text, but there is not one picture on the website. All there is in the main space is text and there is so much it blurs together. There are no headlines to distinguish the information from each other.
I like the use of the color red on the current site because it stands out and it is one of the UNLV school color. I also like the drop down menu for the about page.
The blog I created for the Catholic Newman Center is centered on being informative and user friendly. The layout I chose has three columns available on the main page so it can show three blogs at the top at the same time. It displays the colors white and red.
The widgets are located at the bottom of the site in three columns as well. The widgets include an about blurb, categories, Newman links, and recent news. This allows users to quickly navigate to what topic they want to read about within the site. It is important to have categories with this layout because the main page only shows three blogs at a time, the rest are archived.
One thing I would like to add on the page is having a drop down menu for the page options at the top of the page. I would also like a category tab there.
I’m excited to see how our current home site will be redesigned. There will be a link to the blog I created to the new site.