Vitamin C: 3/18/07

Converse website

The Converse website is used to promote many shoe styles of Converse corporation.

What I really like is the loading page icon, that is a shoe. Depending on which page is loading, the shoe will show different states, for example changing the color of the shoe over and over again. Though it's very cute to have something like this, I think Converse can help users predict the response time in downloading by showing the size of the download next to the shoe.

It is very useful when there always is additional information about the link. Whenever users is moving the mouse over the link, the link is change into the information explaining what the link really means. I think it's good to help new users interact more accurately and effectively. By doing this, Converse has shown respect to supporting users’ navigation behavior.

Another thing that I really like is the sound effects (actually I always like websites offering audio feedbacks to users). Though the designers just use one sound effect to illustrate the states of various kinds of button, it's kind of nice to let users know they've successfully pressed a button.

A successful point of this website is the well design main navigation. Whenever users move over it, the options appear actively and strongly, which fits the main theme of such a site promoting shoes for teenagers like that. Besides that, if the mouse is out of the specific area, these options automatically become their original states smoothly. Moreover, before coming to their positions, these buttons rock themselves to and fro. Though this kind of movement is very simple, it shows the extremely careful observation of the designers.

As Converse is the type of stylish shoes for young people and who wanna show off :p so the background needs to be powerful to fit with other elements such as the navigation, the loading icon, etc. I have to admit the background is quite messy, but due to its confusion, an extreme stylish, strong and modern mood can be built stably and lively. Moreover, the background is filled with the images of good-looking and healthy models wearing Converse shoes, giving a modern and stable look for the whole site. It also makes the site different from other simple sites. It's surely "Less is More", but sometimes "More is More".

* Note: we decided to design a similar navigation, in which the options will pop up when users move over it.

HotMonkeyDesign website

HotMonkeyDesign

This website is kind of fun to explore. In my opinion, it's both informative and exploratory due to its experience design.

First, what I like best in this website is the music and the sound effect. It’s especially good to combine sounds with visual cues to help users know they've just moved the mouse over a button or something like that. I think HotMonkeyDesign makes strong use of sound in its interface. We can easily see that different buttons make different audio feedbacks, and the sounds are quite impressive, giving it an unique personality.

Another good experience that HotMonkeyDesign offer is it always gives a message to show how many percents have the user been loading and also some humorous sentences to make people feel less bored and impatient! I think that's a good point that every page needs to apply in their own site. Some sites takes me time to load but never shows where I am now, so sometimes I get bored and angry before visiting them.

The next nice experience to me is the very perfectly smooth movement and design. After a minute of waiting, audiences can view a 30-second intro. The movement is fast and very smooth, which make users feel more interesting and curious. The design looks very clean and uncomplicated, but it requires extremely good skills of drawing on the computer and using Flash to do such an animation interface like that. It's easily seen that the graphics are very interesting to look at and the chosen colors are very harmonious with the main theme of the site.

The navigation is very easy to use since the designers use the plain texts. Some buttons are disguised as small bubbles, giving users another chance to feel interesting and surprising after finding out this kind of button. The choice of typography is kind of plain, they just use san-serif for the whole site, but I think it's suitable for the whole theme as well as emphasizes other important things.

Lastly, I like the animation always works in the background after we finish loading a page. The site seems to be "moving" while people are exploring it, then they'll be curious because they don't know what will happen next! In my opinion, this doesn't only draw audiences' attention, but also makes the site more special.

*Note: it's sure we can do some similar effects like this site. I think we need to re-visit it more and think about its sound effects and music, it's great, isn't it? :p

Lollipop research

Actually when we thought of making a navigation for our website, we wanna choose something cute like candy or flower. But it's hard to choose which candy is suitable for our site, so I had to research something about candy and then our group agreed that lollipop was the best choice. It's totally because of its colorful design, fun and chic stripes as well as very cute shape. I think it'll be giving a lively and special look for our site, helping us draw more users' attention and gain more curious audiences.

Lollipop Drum: The easy-to-hold drum on a stick!
Kids love the colorful design of the drum.

My research will help Dung, the designer and Tri, the information architect know which kind of lollipop they can use to illustrate the main navigation bar and where they can place "this kind of navigation" to fit properly the whole theme and portion. Besides that, I hope that this research will help Dung make up any new stories for our site.