A Review of JungleDragon by Steven Johnson

Hi Ferdy,

Great design, it's definitely visually appealing.

Here's my suggestions:

General

1. You need a tagline below the logo. It took me about 30 seconds to find out exactly what the site does. I should be able to get it within 5 seconds. A tagline would definitely help this.
2. Under the number of votes, what does that icon do? I don't really understand it. I would also put some bottom padding underneath the Vote button.
3. I would move the image heading 'Young Javan Lutung close-up' above the image and make the text bigger.
4. I'm not sure what the image to the left of the top right login box does until I hover over it. I would lose that image.
5. I would add the label 'Search' to your search box and make the input text slightly bigger.
6. Once the site's out of alpha testing, I would replace that box with a big Upload button.
7. I've just noticed the tagline is underneath that box, move it to underneath the logo as I said earlier. Lose the image to the left.
8. The 'Popular / Fresh / Suprise' tabs look mis-aligned somehow. Maybe vertical align the text to the middle and increase the margin between those and the 'Most recent' buttons below. I would also make the active button a different colour, that would sort out the missing border on the bottom of the active tab.

Image Page

1. The vote feature to the left of the heading, I didn't understand what it was for until I hovered. I would label it as a vote button.
2. In the 'More by' box to the right. I would lose the active image as you can't click it, so there's no point showing it.

Join Page

1. Have the fields all the same width.
2. Change 'Username' to 'Nickname'. Users might think they have to choose a username to login with, but as I've noticed you login with your email address (which is good).
3. I would ditch the image verification. It takes too much thought. It isn't the users fault if you haven't got good enough protection backend to stop spam. Users just want to fill out the form with no hassle, and that is hassle.
4. The 'Law of the Jungle' in a nice play on words instead of terms and conditions, but it might confuse users. I would just rename to terms and conditions.
5. I would drop the 'Cancel' button. If they don't want to sign up they'll hit the back button.

I'll go through more pages and in more detail when I've got time.

There's so much I like about this site, so don't think all I'm thinking is negative!

Hope it helps,

Steve