Concept Reviews
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Hi Ming,
I like your site and understand you want to improve user experience but you took the difficult, long and tiresome way to do it.
I would suggest creating wireframes for each page. Wireframes can be build and 'redesign' 10-50 times faster then normal mockups.
When you show wireframes to CF community and ask about review on usability and data presentation they will not comment on colours and fonts :)
Graphical elements will not distract you from your main goal which is usability improvement.
Start from the homepage and then follow the new user path to get the best results.
Keep it simple just like you did so far. More features does NOT mean better user experience (often is the other way round)
Be even more extreme and try to cut out unnecessary features - Do you really need the 'Shoutbox'?
USABILITY REMARKS
Pagination should be bigger so it's easier to user.
I don't think there is a need for language link in the user menu
Increase the contrast of the top user menu
Sections headings should be more prominent because pictures steal user's focus
Fonts on tabs in user profile should be more visible
Keep up the good work :)
Cheers!
Michael
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Ming commented:Thank you Michael for your useful comment.
The reason I'm doing a graphic mockup is because renewing the visual style is one of the major things we would like to achieve throught this revamp, and would like to hear feedback on this aspect too. By presenting color and font detail by these 2 main pages, I will definitely work on wireframes on other pages to focus more on usability.
I will work on improving the contrast of the main nav / sub tab as you suggested.
Some issue I would like to disccus on usability: 1. We are keeping the 'Shoutbox' coz it's an old feature that is commonly used by existing user and contains quite alot important conversation between users, also it seems good to have a 'casual chat box' to say hi to user, similar to 'write on wall' of facebook. Any suggestion on this feature? Or should it be combined with 'personal feed' as one?
- The reason for having 'language selection' on user menu is becoz anobii has multi language version, for Italy / Taiwan / Hong Kong visitor, it would be important to provide a quick link for them to switch interface language, it is also one of the edge anobii over similar book review sites. Any thoughts on improving its piority? Maybe seperate it from user menu?
Thanks again!
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Hi! I definitely like the design better than the current one. Here are some of the things that i noticed:
- You might want to move the Best Price box from the side bar to right under the books section. It seems like the side is used mainly for social interaction.
- In updates, have a page navigation at the top as well as the bottom
- What is Microsoft BizSpark? It is an advertisement, or something else? You might want to label it as an ad.
- The My Activity and Shoutbox could probably be mixed together, into a "wall" like feature. I like the idea of separating the two, but since users can comment on your activity anyways, it seems unnecessary to have them be separate.
- More contrast with the inner tab navigation would probably help, I can barely see the bracketed subscript
- What is the difference between edit profile and account setting? It's a little confusing, although tooltips would help this.
That's mostly it. The site is a huge improvement over the current one, and I think it meets the objectives fairly well. Keep up the good work!
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Ming commented:
Thanks Atin for the kindly review.
- We place the best price box on side nav coz we define it as a 'option you may also interested in', it takes random book from user wishlist to offer them a discount price for easy checkout. If putting that under the 'recommend books' section, do you think that may interfere user from browsing the main content?
- top pagination for updates seem make sense, we'll try that out.
- yes the Bizspark thing is a template banner for placing ads, will mark it up to clarify.
- we're keeping the shoutbox coz its an old feature that user get used to, we'll discuss with tech team see if it is possible to combined with personal update.
- I see the problem with the subnav contrast, will work on improve it
- Edit profile means changing display name and 'about you', 'account setting' is about email address and language preference etc. We'll see if we can improve the wording to make it clear for user.
Thanks!
Damn, I wanted to add a few remarks to your screens but I can't do it after the review is submitted.