8 Principles of Web Design: Good and Bad

        One site that I felt was a good example of some of the 8 principles of web design, was Pandora Internet Radio. Immediately I saw that this was a cite that had a few of the criteria done. Similar to what was shown in the article with Spotify, Pandora meets the parameters of Fitt's Law, which says 

"the time required to move to a target area (e.g. click a button) is a function of the distance to the target and the size of the target. In other words, the bigger an object and the closer it is to us, the easier it is to use it." 

This was again evident, as the play/pause button is made so that it is slightly bigger than the other buttons on screen. There is also not a lot of clutter on the screen, allowing a more comfortable viewing of the page, and meaning more accurate readings, It's more streamlined, as shown in Hick's law, which says:

 "with every additional choice increases the time required to take a decision...So in order to provide a more enjoyable experience, we need to eliminate choices. The process of eliminating distracting options has to begin from the get go of the web design and should be carried on throughout the design process."

 I also noticed a little bit of the Rule of Thirds, as the main part of the page has one third for the selected artists, neatly organized, and the second third shows the main play, pause, fast forward and rewind buttons, meaning that this third is the most important in the whole page. Then the third section is for the person's account, and more personalization to their profile. All in all, there were enough of the 8 principles of sound web design met that makes this a well made web page.

        Then there's this site. This is TeacherXpress.com. While this does have the Rule of Thirds down, It has completely forgotten about Hick's Law, despite the fact that it has some poor level "organization". The main reason for this site not being well made is because it's far too busy. Right off the bat, you notice that there are way too choices for the viewer to look at at any given time. This needs much more organization and filtering, and could even use more Visual Hierarchy, as everything seems to be on even ground, which in web design terms is not necessarily best.
        Although you do see a little of both Laws of Proximity and Similarity, they don't help to aid the viewer in gaining more of an understanding of what to look for and where. There needs to be some sort of main graphic to draw people in, and then have a more simplified, organized way of showing all of the links that this site has to offer. Too busy in this case is terrible for the site, as even though there is tons of information here, there is just no one that will be able to go through all of, or any of it, really.



Links:

Teacher Xpress Main Site:
http://web.archive.org/web/20101225204203/http://teacherxpress.com/


Pandora: Internet Radio Main Site
http://www.pandora.com