OT - A little critical review required

[nick in* england]

I have dabbled in a little amatuer web design for a while now - simple stuff really - and probably a little out-dated technically.

 

A friend asked me if I would create a website for his wife's photography business - the starting point for her changing her career to do photography full time. A little daunting - but hey I thought I'd give it a stab...

 

So the link below is the site as I have designed it. Hopefully it speaks for itself. I'd appreciate your unreserved comments and criticisms. FYI - it's currently hosted temporarily on my own server, so obviously she'll have her own URL, etc, when I am done with the design phase. Also - the wording of the text will change in time - as soon as the client has written it. I created what is currently up there from her original brief...

 

Imagine Photography

 

Fire away

[JimBob2232]

I dont like babies.

[billsfanone]

Looks great! Clean and professional looking .

[nick in* england]

I dont like babies.

5837[/snapback]

:I starred in Brokeback Mountain:

[Guffalo]

Very slick, uncluttered, clean.

 

You may want to slow the picture crawl a little, but great concept for viewing the gallery. Especially with only one picture in the frame at any given time, adds to the proffesional look.

[IDBillzFan]

I agree. Nice and clean.

 

But that feet thing kinda me out a bit at first.

[aussiew]

1. Suggest swapping the locations of the "about" button and the "gallery" button.

2. The feet tend to act as a sub-conscious barrier. Also, I think bare feet is an offensive image to so many arab and middle eastern countries - which could greatly reduce her available market if she's promoting in the London area. I'd suggesting using an image that "invites" one in.

3. Slow the image crawl a bit. The faster movement tends to blur it.

 

Overall, it looks great.

[nick in* england]

1.  Suggest swapping the locations of the "about" button and the "gallery" button.

2. The feet tend to act as a sub-conscious barrier. Also, I think bare feet is an offensive image to so many arab and middle eastern countries - which could greatly reduce her available market if she's promoting in the London area.  I'd suggesting using an image that "invites" one in.

3. Slow the image crawl a bit. The faster movement tends to blur it.

 

Overall, it looks great.

5929[/snapback]

 

Thanks Aussie - that's great advice... I hadn't thought about the mid-eastern angle. And how are you using the image crawl? I'd like to find out if you are using the thumb drag...?

[Fezmid]

I'm looking at this from a UI point of view (which I've studied and taught at the U of M).

 

First of all, most people expect to see the "about" and "contact" information on the bottom of the page. I'd move that down below the picture on the splash screen.

 

Aussie is correct about the foot observation; I don't have any religous problems with it, but the foot was very shocking to me as well. I'd put a more traditional picture up there.

 

Regarding the picture, it's too big. You want all of your information to fit on one screen - you don't want the users to have to scroll on an opening page. The average attention span on a webpage is 2 seconds. You have to hook them in that amount of time. I'm running my monitor at 1024x768 right now -- most people are still at 800x600. Something to think about.

 

The UI on the picture gallery is *annoying.* Yeah, it looks cool. But it's not very usable. The pictures shouldn't scroll just by having my mouse over them. The bar underneath is nice and works well, but I don't like the "pressure sensitive" picture scrolling - that will put off a lot of people, because it violates a basic principal of not acting like other similar applications do.

 

The overall look is nice and clean. The usability just needs a little tweaking.

 

If you want an AWESOME book on User Interface (not computer specific, it relates to everyday things like phones, doors, glass, etc), check out this book:

 

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...=books&n=507846

 

It's an AWESOME read and will make you notice every UI flaw in the world for months...

 

CW

[nick in* england]

I'm looking at this from a UI point of view (which I've studied and taught at the U of M).

 

First of all, most people expect to see the "about" and "contact" information on the bottom of the page.  I'd move that down below the picture on the splash screen.

 

Aussie is correct about the foot observation; I don't have any religous problems with it, but the foot was very shocking to me as well.  I'd put a more traditional picture up there.

 

Regarding the picture, it's too big.  You want all of your information to fit on one screen - you don't want the users to have to scroll on an opening page.  The average attention span on a webpage is 2 seconds.  You have to hook them in that amount of time.  I'm running my monitor at 1024x768 right now -- most people are still at 800x600.  Something to think about.

 

The UI on the picture gallery is *annoying.*  Yeah, it looks cool.  But it's not very usable.  The pictures shouldn't scroll just by having my mouse over them.  The bar underneath is nice and works well, but I don't like the "pressure sensitive" picture scrolling - that will put off a lot of people, because it violates a basic principal of not acting like other similar applications do.

 

The overall look is nice and clean.  The usability just needs a little tweaking.

 

If you want an AWESOME book on User Interface (not computer specific, it relates to everyday things like phones, doors, glass, etc), check out this book:

 

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...=books&n=507846

 

It's an AWESOME read and will make you notice every UI flaw in the world for months...

 

CW

5975[/snapback]

 

WOW -= just what I was looking for. UI is not my specialty, so thats useful input...

 

The feet will be gone for the second iteration, and I will fix the auto-scrolling on the gallery (that bugged me too).

[MDH]

From a photography standpoint, if she's a professional she should have a much larger body or work to sample from. There should be no more than 1 photograph from any given shoot. It appears as if she's done 4 shoots and you've put 2-4 photos from each on the site. The pics of the boys w/ their father aren't even that strong, to include 4 of them is a bit much (I get the impression that those are her children which is why she's favoring those shots). Have her pic the best single picture from each set and use that (unless she really doesn’t have that large of a body of work, which if that's the case I'd say get her out there and take more photos!). She could use more diversity in the images as well. The feet pic is a nice start to that diversity (though I wouldn't have it on the front page) but there are an awful lot of exterior medium shots or close ups of children's faces. Some studio work w/ children would be nice to see as well as more abstract/close ups such as the feet or the child holding the flower.

 

As for the construction of the site, I don't care for the scrollbar in the gallery at all. I don't think it moves to fast and I understand the purpose of wanting only 1 image on the screen at a time, but if somebody is coming to a website they'll generally give it only a few seconds before they move on if something else if something doesn't catch their eye. If they scroll through the first two or three images and see nothing they like they'll go to another web site. Although less clean and more cluttered looking a few thumbnails on the same page accomplishes this better. Even if you really like the scroll bar make sure that the image size is consistent throughout. Having larger images at the end of the scroll looks sloppy. I realize the aspect ratios of the photos have changed (from portrait to landscape) but the size of those images should remain consistent.

[nick in* england]

From a photography standpoint...

6180[/snapback]

Well you pretty much nailed it there..! She has a very small body of work at the moment, as she is just converting to photography from social work. I have told her that she really needs to get some more shots soon if the website is going to have the impact she wants. I'll see if she is open to some suggestion on the direction of her shoots so I can get some more diverse images up there.

 

I think that I may use some script to generate a random order for the pictures on the gallery. I know what you are saying about the scroll bar - but it is what the client wants and the client is always right huh? I know I'm meant to be the designer and she should listen, but in this instance she's seen other galleries done in this way and wants that for her site. Good point about image size at the end - I'll try to make the images the same size - do you think it is OK to change the aspect ratio of the images she has taken (by cropping) to achieve this?