Sort it out russell!
While we are still on the topic of web design, i couldn't help but notice a perfect example of this not too far from home. Whilst looking through the resources page of the HCI website, i was appalled by the poor layout.

http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~rxb/Teaching/HCI/resources-active.php

Even if you discount the poor, dull colour scheme, the page itself is badly presented. There is an overload of information on the page, which has resulted in the page being overly long. The user is blatantly going to get bored before actually attempting to read everything on the page. I'm sure a lot more people would actually do more extra reading if this page was more attractive and interesting.
Furthermore, it is very easy to get lost in the website hierarchy. I was trying to find my way to the page containing all our blogs to check out what other people have been writing, but finding your way around is a nightmare.
I'm sure this is actually just a clever ploy on Russells part as the only pages i could seem to find where the ones with his portrait and an image of his book.

- posted by Adam @ 6:57 pm 1 comments

 
Good Web-based Interface Design used in Applications
In Monday's Lecture Russell was talking about the methods employed by web designers to create an effective, attractive, efficient web page. In designing an interface we must consider 3 factors; the audience, i.e who you are aiming the site at; the architecture, how is the site going to be organized; and the information, i.e. what is going to be displayed on the site.
One thing i have noticed though is that most modern day programs are now adopting this web-based look themselves. Take for instance Football Manager 2005, the developers of this game had to go back to the drawing board and develop a new interface for the game after their last game's (CM4) interface was heavily criticized for being overly crowded and clumsy.



As you can see from the screenshot above, the interface is well thought out, using many proven techniques. For instance, FM05 sets out the page with a title bar at the top, which is pretty much fixed as you scroll through the various pages. This alerts the user where they are currently and any other important information (date, time, etc). Then there is a side bar on the left, which is menu driven. The user clicks on a '+' icon next to a word which expands the menu into menu sub-areas, to directly get to a particular part of the game quickly. Along the bottom of the screen, there is the 'bread-crumbs' styled progress bar, which tells the user exactly how he has navigated through the game so far. So far instance if he is viewing the premiership table it would be displayed as: Home > England > Premiership > League Table. The main glut of information is dynamically displayed in the middle of screen.
In my opinion, as the internet has become more user-friendly in recent years, application and game programmers have learned a lot from web pages and are beginning to adopt these successful interfaces for use in their applications.

- posted by Adam @ 1:25 pm 0 comments