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Concept Reviews
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Hi Carlos,
I visit the website and really looks much more cooler than your print screens :P! I was about to say "hey what's up with this black thing :D", but now makes sens after visiting the website!
It enjoy the drop down, really cool stuff! The Slider with the background change is cool and interesting! Quite original I have seen this type of slider :) I like everything that I see here, I wouldn't change anything, I mean the content and how is arrange!
But you have a big problem of usability! You have everything align to left! And in bigger resolution which are quite popular our days you website doesn't look that nice! You have to align everything to center!
So this is the only thing that I see as a problem! Left Align! Good luck my friend!
I will add some notes to highlight some stuffs as well!
Notes Added to Images View
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1Newsletter Signup...but where is the input?
I read here Newsletter Sign up, but where is the email input and Sign Up Button? I don't like how this link take me away from the website! This is a usability issue, because you don't want to take people away from the website, you have lots of space here, to load here the inputs! Just use some jquery to hide a #div which contains the <form> and when click on the Newsletter Signup just show the #div! This make sens? If not reply to me I will show an example!
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2I like this, with the opening hours!
I like this contact text because you also put the opening hours!
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3I like this!
I really like this, very cool how you arrange the content text!! Nice one!
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4This is the most cool part of the website!
This is amazing how the image loads in the background, really original! I like the images now on the live website!
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5I have to say that I enjoy this Nav Menu!
I really like this Nav Menu with the Drop down, really really cool!
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Questions: What is the purpose of this site? To just hold information OR to inspire and bring people into the museum?
Here is an example of a site that makes me want to click into it: http://szenesprachenwiki.de/ - it has a sense of fun and exploration. It reminds me of wanting to explore a museum or library, but in the digital world.
Overall, the site has a basic look and feel. It displays content in a clean and simple way. That said, I expect museums to be more visual with larger anchor pictures and additional pictures within each article.
Navigation does seem to be a problem. I visited the test site and it is starting to look complicated and cumbersome.
Right now, the pictures and navigation make it feel more like BBC than the Tate. And, the black wrapper (top and bottom) don't seem to flow well with the white screen shot for "Schools and Teachers."
Though I'm not a fan of all of these, here is a link to some navigation examples you may want to take a look at: http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/galleries/inspirationalnavigation-menus/ http://makeitrightnola.org/ http://nationalarchives.gov.uk/ http://www.teenagecancertrust.org/
I would also ask how deep does your public website need to go? Do you need a sub-site for a specific purpose (teach.dnms.org) that is shared with members or teachers or others. You can handle sub-sites differently if users are emerged in that space, they may only need a way to get back to the main museum site home page but otherwise might not need the rest of the main navigation. Right now, it feels very clunky, like a site within a site.
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Hello Carlos,
the screen shots don't do this website justice. I was going to comment on some of the choices, but when I visited the site all things fell into place.
Nicely done.
A couple of things that are bugging me:
The navigation style / fade is really bad. Fade is annoying and should rarely be used in UI's because it's of delayed response. It might look ok the first time, but after using it it becomes cumbersome because the site is not as responsive as I wish it to be.
The navigation in the footer is not usable. Why not create a larger footer and stack the navigation links 4 in each group in, say, 4 columns?
When I view the website on a widescreen display the image terminates on the 2/3 mark. It is using dynamic width for the image, which is great, but the rest of the site is not dynamic in width - so the search box and footer address are still stuck in the same place. On my monitor it becomes disorganized, on a 1000px width monitor it's fine.
The tree boxes - all good here, like the slider. Why not make the links obvious? You use the nice blue color for the "call to action" elements, so use it on the titles to let me know they're clickable, too.
Some secondary pages are a bit unorganized. Content can be laid out in a better fashion. (eg: http://beta.dmns.org/plan-your-visit/hours )
That's all i got. All it needs is some light tweaking, otherwise you're on the right path.
Notes Added to Images View
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1Indicate that it's a link
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Notes Added to Images View
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1Padding width
...should probably be the same all around the image.
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2Nice
I like the way the active state is shown.
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3Bad.
Stack them, it's unusable at it's current form.
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4Blends
These links blend a bit much for my taste. How about using a little "tabbed" design here with slightly different shades of color to indicate each slice?
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Purpose I like that you cover three things that I would look for in a museum web site - what the new exhibitions are, where it is and when it is open, and any special events.
Originality From a content, usability, and navigation perspective, I'd say this is not a groundbreaking museum web site. I don't see a lot of engagement with users, either using social media or by offering them something to bring them back to the web site. It's very much "look, but don't touch" to use a museum metaphor. I think the Science Bites might be what the museum is trying to do to engage customers who aren't planning to visit the museum, but it's really not clear from the front page that Science Bites is a movie.
Visual Design: I really like the page background changing as your content carousel loads a new div - definitely engages the user.
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I think the UX on the second page,"current exhibitions" is more successful than the homepage. It's very clean, engaging and has great choice of images. The homepage should WOW an audience and want them to see the museum, especially for people who would find this stuff boring!
Check out this museum's site. Although the images are interactive, they are very engaging and eye catching (they really pop).
http://www.mos.org/
Good Luck!
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I think that this is a really nice clean looking site. However there are a few places that could be tidied up, and a few areas that let the side down. With a bit of work you'll have a great resource.
Regarding your concerns about the navigation (on this page beta.dmns.org/teachers), I think that functionally it's fine, but could use some tweaks in terms of design. I would also make sure to test it across browsers and operating systems. I have only checked it in Chrome on a Mac, but the tabs are too long and so wrap around to two lines.
Notes Added to Images View
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1margins
notices the margins on the left and right of the image are different sizes. They should be the same. I would increase the width of the image to reduce the gap
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2spacing and contrast
I like this box, but I would consider the contrast and the spacing as two things to look at. Firstly the spacing. The padding at the top is quite big, but that makes the tiny padding at the bottom look like the content is being squashed in. All you have to do is shift it all up 10 pixels to fix this. I would also add some extra line-height to the text to make it easier to read. Regarding contrast, I think the text is too light for a white background. Just make it a bit darker and you'll be good.
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3footer could do with some clarity
The newsletter signup link looks like a heading so it took me a short while to realise the text underneath was not related to the signup and instead was links to useful content.
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Notes Added to Images View
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1polish this
this could do with some tidying up. It's great that you've added it but I would recommend adding some extra spacing, and making the fonts you've chosen match the fonts on the rest of the site
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2image spacing
Like the homepage I would make the images in here wider so that the sides line up with the margins on the text below. This is simply to make things look more structured.
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3move these
I think the buttons would function better if they were higher up. At the moment there is a gap between the position of the buttons and the text they relate to. I understand that they are in a containing box, but I think they should be closer to the content that they are talking about.
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Notes Added to Images View
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1tidy up the tabs
I don't like the blue gradient on the tabs. I can understand why it's there but it looks a bit cheap and tacky. I think just having a strong bottom border that matches the colour of the selected tab is enough to tie the tabs to the content. I would also suggest making the deselected tabs a different colour so that there's more contrast between them and the selected tab
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2messy
These rounded boxes look really messy. The dark blue borders don't match the more subtle grey you have used everywhere else The rounded corners look a bit nasty, and the spacing of the content inside is totally off. It looks like someone different designed this section to the rest of the site. I think with a more subtle colour on the borders and better spacing this would look quite good, but as it is it ruins the professionalism of the rest of the site.
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I like this design. The colors and fonts are good choices and adds very nicely to the site. It is very neat and easy to navigate through. I like the video's and pictures, they are very engaging. There is a lot of information on this site and I feel it is a credit to the museum.
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I really like the work on this one, nice set of colors, easy on the eyes!
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I really love your website but I think you have to work on some points to improve it ..
- the website background doesn't feet the size of screen if you're using wide screen ..
- text only when u click on "text only" in site display at the top the website went crazy in (IE8, firefox3.6.8)
- huge empty areas in some page inside the internal pages in the website
- content alignment in the carousals at home page the content of the carousals are not exactly in the center of the boxes
- technical feedback you have no meta tags in any page in the website
meta name='description' content=''
meta name='keywords' content=''
- Google custom search is not working ...
- the navigation need some more improvements
that's all, take care
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I really like the layout overall. It's very clean, simple, and looks easy to navigate with all information where it needs to be. The only thing that really stuck out at me was the blue navigation on the "Schools and Teachers" page, which appears different from everything else. Maybe because of the gradient at the bottom or because the gaps look really apparent compared to the flatness of everything else. Also, the content boxes ("At the museum"/"at school" / "scholarships"...) are aligned left which leaves a weird gap on the right that's not lined up to the navigation. Maybe just something to take into consideration.
Thanks for the feedback. The issue with the newsletter is that it is controlled by an outside service in which the form in hosted externally. I will definitely look into maybe making it a modal and load the page that way. Again thanks for the feedback.