Hall of Fame/Shame

www.jamilin.com/

Description of why you think it is very good or very bad.
This is a truly awful site. The irony of it is that this is supposed to be about Fung Shui. One of the first principles of Fung Shui is to clear cutter (think zen). They should start with this site. It’s a mess.

Speed – This is one of the more intuitive aspects of usability, measuring how quickly users can accomplish their task.

Unless your task is to be confused, there is not much speed on this site. For being all about Fung Shui, I found it to be about as non-calming and un zen like as possible. Beyond the clutter, the floating boxes on some pages were annoying. Each page is very, very long and wordy. In the end, every link to some free advice is really a tease to sell you on a consolation or product.


Efficiency – Related to speed, efficiency is a gauge of how many errors the user makes while completing tasks

The site is as confusing to use as a maze. Just the home page is crazy, with a rotating banner, two layers of menus – one of which drops down into the information on the page and the other opens new tabs for every click, so you are trying to go back using the back button when you need to simply close the tab. Additionally there were links to things that were not even remotely Fung Shui related – like face massages and skin cream.


Learnability – Learnability describes how easily a user learns to effectively interact with the interface.

I don’t think there is any interacting effectively. This site bombards you visually. There is no intuitive-ness built into it. It is mostly text based and unless you were familiar with their use of the terms, you will spend time surfing the site to find anything.


Memorability – Memorability is a measure of how easily users remember how to use the interface

I would think that if you actually wanted to use this site, you might remember where to go, but more than likely you would bookmark that page.
User Preference – Even with all of these other measures, it is important to consider what users like on a page

I can’t see anyone using this page because they liked it. If Fung Shui is your “thing” than perhaps you would put up with the site to get the information or products you wanted, but other than that, I would avoid it.

I found this site through an online article - “Web Pages that Suck” found www.webpagesthatsuck.com/worst-websites-of-2012.html

In addition to what Andrea has said regarding the feng shui page, I think there are some serious issues concerning the link and menu usage. When visiting this page, it was not at all clear to me what should be considered a link or a menu. Although the links are in the standard blue, they are not underlined, and it is sometimes difficult to determine the color difference on the varying backgrounds that the pages use.

The pop-down menus (below the banner, starting with "Jami Lin's Musings", etc.) were a surprise - I had no indication that these were links or menus until my cursor happened to scroll over one and a menu appeared. The menus themselves are confusing, as each item is in plain white text and as I hover over them, I am given a text cursor instead of a hand cursor or standard arrow cursor. There is no way to tell that I should click on them, and even once I do whether I will be brought to an external page (which some of the links do, such as Exclusive Products - My Etsy Store).

www.fanfiction.net/

My Home away from home. I have used this site consistently since I was thirteen and though it IS a fan site it is one of the most well organized, well-developed and perfectly run sites and communities I have ever seen. This site caters to a HUGE audience, basically anyone who has a anime/manga series, book series, TV show or anything they like can use this site and find fan made stories about them and meet people.

This website is catered to meeting the Preference of the User, I've seen several writing sites and groups for original and fanficion based work, including LiveJournal, A03, Deviantart and many others and everyone I talked to agree this site is their favorite and the best for writing, posting and commenting on stories and this site included several smaller branches to cater to specific needs of users such as www.fictionpress.com/ for original work.

As a usability evaluation goes, this site passed all of my tests with flying colors:

Speed: the links perform beautifully and take you directly where they need to go, everything is labeled and lists are easy to navigate for it is very easy to find what you're specifically looking for. Searches can also be changed based on title, author's name date published (both newest to oldest and oldest to newest) and the simple search offers three simple ways to search and all the speeds perform quickly and easily. The only issue with speed I found was if a file didn't exist it took the system longer to find it, not because it slowed down, but because it checked ALL its holdings BEFORE saying there was no file, as has happened to me when several stories I searched for were deleted.

Efficiency: in continuation to the above statement the site is a brilliantly organized system that breaks down literally everything until the sun into a category, from there, you can find the specific title you're looking for in alphabetical order, and once you find it you have an entire database of interesting stories. The Efficiency does not stop there, however. The site is also easy to join. I joined in college cause I believed it would be complex or require certain information I didn't want to add, on the contrary the site was simple and joining was easy. The only case where mistakes may be made is when you first set up your homepage, which will be explained next.

Learnability: This is a cite where if you can read or know how to use Google you can basically use this site no problem, and all the features are super easy to use. For example, say you're looking for a Naruto Fanfic title Red River (totally random example) and you type it into the search under the feature story and you get hits from the entire site: using the search feature you can break the search down to Anime/Manga: Naruto and offers other features to narrow down the search. The basic site is very easy to learn and Remember.

The only case where learnability may be a problem is when you first begin using your profile, before you can post or use anything, the site requests that you read the directions (and their rules of regulation) and sign that you understand them. The Publishing stories feature is tricky to grasp at first because first you have to save your document as a single doc in the Document Manager feature: I made this mistake when I want to post a single chapter but had all the chapters in while file and the doc was saved as that single file and included all that had been currently types. Thus i had to copy the chapter i wanted to upload and paste it in a new file. Then in Doc manager you learn to edit the chapter how you like. Once its done however, THEN you go to the Publish Feature and chose either Manage story (to post an additional chapter to a current story, or New Story to post something new entirely.
Thus being a site member gets a little complicated.

Memorability: Despite the Member use being a bit complicate FanFiction provides easy to follow instructions and like many things, the best way to remember is by doing. With this site it is very easy to remember how to use the features and once you've done them once, it is simply remembering to do them again, and once you've performed them once the complex feature is conquered.

Overall, I have to say this site has some of the best usability I've ever and above all it caters to is target audience above all else.

Many of the sites that have been sighted as Hall of Shame entries look as if they were designed using "build-a-site" site. These promise that you will be able to build a site in 3 steps with no experience necessary. Those statements alone should tell you that this is not the correct way to design your website especially if you wish to appear professional.

The Hall of Fame sites all appear to be simple and uncluttered. People are learning that the more the better is not always a good idea. The comparison of Yahoo and Google shows this better than anything I could say. Yahoo used to be the go-to site but their redesign has even lost my vote and I was a long-time proponent of Yahoo's design.

Thomas, Justin:

art.yale.edu/

I'm pretty sure that Yale University's School of Art attempted (although, they are still actively updating it all the time--it's a Wiki, apparently!) to make their website into something of a sly dadaist joke art project--but honestly, that is being too gratuitous and giving them too much credit. Regardless, I feel as though I can say that the site is supposed to intentionally look and navigate in as terrible a manner as possible and to be as aesthetically unpleasing as possible (seriously: there is just no other way)--but of course, if you make a bad website, whether you intentionally meant to make it bad or not, it's still a bad website. This one belongs in the Hall of Shame for how it tries its hardest to hurt your eyes, alone.

Speed: At first glance, the website might look as though someone threw everything at the screen in a completely haphazard manner, but upon closer inspection, it seems as though it is supposed to be as intentionally cluttered and confusing as possible. While one can generally navigate to where they might want to go with the navigation links located on the left of the screen (which at the time of this writing, currently consists of black text on a greyish-white background, so it is actually more legible than most of the other content on the website), a user's speed will surely be greatly derailed when they do navigate to any one of the pages from the navigation links and actually try to make sense of the information they find there. But to give a very easy example of a user's speed being impeded, say, for example, they wanted the address to Yale's School of Art? Well, the orange text containing said information is illegible on every page because of the arrayment of backgrounds it is paired with (if you want to actually be able to read the college's address without having to highlight the text with your mouse, then you're going to need to go click on the Visiting navigation link and go to that part of the website).

Efficiency: With the website's (intentional) assault on the eyes, I have a hard time imagining a general user's efficiency not being compromised--that is to say, it just seems bound to happen that a user's efficiency will be compromised, by design. As mentioned before, the navigation links on the left are actually the most efficient and straight-forward aspect--but with the site being as terrible on the eyes as it is, I would believe that it is bound to happen that a user will make plenty of errors while trying to complete simple tasks (namely, trying to find the information they desire about the school).

Learnability: I really can't imagine that the people who made the site and have edited it and continue to edit it (remember, it's technically a Wiki) want you to learn how to effectively interact with the website's interface. It is possible that this might be a weeding out process to deter would be applicants who are not blindly dedicated to the idea of attending Yale University's School of Art.

Memorability: Even if one were to memorize the madness that is Yale University's School of Art's website, since it is a Wiki (and therefore it is updating all the time), it is quite possible that things could only become more convoluted during later visits (sure, the site could actually become more user-friendly during later visits--but it's a difficult scenario to imagine).

User Preference: I'm pretty sure the only people who would find the website preferable in any manner would be the actual students and faculty members from the Yale University's School of Art who actively edit the website/Wiki. I can't imagine a normal person navigating the site and saying, "Yes, I love the website like this, you should keep it like this. Don't change a thing because I like to live in a constant state of discombobulation. Oh, and I also generally like my eyes to be attacked--that is always preferable to me, and this site does a bang up job of that, so don't change a thing."