Is Your Website Design Effective for Spreading Awareness on Diseases?

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sid_galt
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I've made a website for the doors to diplomacy competition. Its on spreading awareness on diseases.

URL: http://www.lifeonthedge.com/"

there is a 1.4 MB intro.

Please judge it and point out any places needing improvement.
 
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Top three things you need to change right off the bat:
1] Lose the Flash intro.
2] Lose the Flash intro.
3] Lose the Flash intro.

I know you're really in love with it and everything, but honestly, Flash intros do nothing for users except annoy them, and in your case, actively drive them away (since it took so long to load, I still have not seen it.)


I'll look around the rest of the site When I have a little more time.
Oh: some of your links our broken. 'Mission', 'Links'.
 
1) I don't like flash intros in general (Just a personal preference).
2) You need higher resolution images on your site. They are all pixelated.
3) A bunch of broken links (e.g. mission, links)
4) When the menu pops out in the sidebar and you move you mouse to the second menu the first menu should still be hightlighted. This just makes it easier for the user to know what menu they came from.
5) Try centering the page. (Again this is a personal preference. I like to either have the page stretch with the page width or just center it.)
 
I tend to agree with Dave, though I didn't watch the intro due to not having Flash 8 (which should also tell you something...).

First impressions of the main page:

-I'm not a big fan of the font in the menus on the left (the font on the top menus is better).
-The banner at the bottom is messed up. Looks like it was drawn at a resolution that didn't scale properly. When I do things like that, I design them at a very high resolution, then resize it to the exact size I will need it, making sure to use anti-aliasing, then convert it to a .gif.
 
Thank you for the comments.

DaveC426913 said:
Top three things you need to change right off the bat:
1] Lose the Flash intro.
2] Lose the Flash intro.
3] Lose the Flash intro.

I know you're really in love with it and everything, but honestly, Flash intros do nothing for users except annoy them, and in your case, actively drive them away (since it took so long to load, I still have not seen it.)

All the winning sites uptil now have had flash intros. The websites will be graded on 34 questions, first by other website teams and then by judges. The loading time comprises of just 1 question out of the 34.

DaveC426913 said:
I'll look around the rest of the site When I have a little more time.
Oh: some of your links our broken. 'Mission', 'Links'.

Yeah, I know. A bit of the content has to be added which I'll be adding tomorrow.
 
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Thank you for the comments.

dduardo said:
2) You need higher resolution images on your site. They are all pixelated.

I presume you are mainly referring to the top and the bottom banners.

Top Banner - It's really tough to find a better image. I found one like this but it was copyrighted. Is it looking really bad?

Bottom Banner - It's one by the Doors to Diplomacy people themselves so I can't do anything about it.

dduardo said:
4) When the menu pops out in the sidebar and you move you mouse to the second menu the first menu should still be hightlighted. This just makes it easier for the user to know what menu they came from.

I will try it. But wouldn't that make the menu highlighted forever (as long as you are on the page)

dduardo said:
5) Try centering the page. (Again this is a personal preference. I like to either have the page stretch with the page width or just center it.)

Is there a code for it that automatically centers for every resolution?
 
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Thank you for the comments.

russ_watters said:
-I'm not a big fan of the font in the menus on the left (the font on the top menus is better).

I'll try changing it. Do you think that the font of the text in the center is good?

russ_watters said:
-The banner at the bottom is messed up. Looks like it was drawn at a resolution that didn't scale properly. When I do things like that, I design them at a very high resolution, then resize it to the exact size I will need it, making sure to use anti-aliasing, then convert it to a .gif.

It was provided by the Doors to Diplomacy people. I can't edit it.
 
sid_galt said:
It was provided by the Doors to Diplomacy people. I can't edit it.
Are you showing it in the same dimensions as the image was provided in? If not, IE resizes it and makes it look terrible.

Edit - yeah, that's what it is. The image is 468 pixels wide and you are displaying it at 640. The resize is making it look terrible.
 
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russ_watters said:
Are you showing it in the same dimensions as the image was provided in? If not, IE resizes it and makes it look terrible.

Edit - yeah, that's what it is. The image is 468 pixels wide and you are displaying it at 640. The resize is making it look terrible.

Ya, I have increased the size to fit the bottom bar completely. But I'll edit after checking on some other computers.

Btw, does the background image on the top look fine or does that look terrible too? I have had to resize and distort that too.
 
sid_galt said:
Bottom Banner - It's one by the Doors to Diplomacy people themselves so I can't do anything about it.
Well, you could start by displaying it at 1:1 pixels. You're showing a 468x65 image at 626x111. Not only are you scaling it, you're also distorting it.



sid_galt said:
Is there a code for it that automatically centers for every resolution?
Yes. Place your entire content table inside a div tag:
<div align="center">
<table>...</table>
</div>


That is a HUGE header. Depending on the user's screen rez, it eats up anywhere from 25 to 50% of the usable content area. For such a huge area, it adds very little value: 2 images, a title and a subtitle.

Solution: Halve (or more) the height of the banner.


I don't yet know what the site is about. The landing page 'The Crisis' expounds at length - too long to read for me to wait to know why I'm at this website at all.
Solution: Place a tagline in your header - it sums your site in a very discrete nutshell: "promoting awareness of the threat of disease" or some such. Six words tops.
 
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Your site is cool.
everything is perfect & proportional except the wanderer pic!
I think that it should be a bigger atleast the length of the side links( with proportional breadth).
Also increase the font of top linksa bit so that its more readable!
 
I also don't like flash intros very much, they're fun to develop but generally users don't really like them. One exception to that is when the presentation is embeded with the actual website instead of in a separate page by itself. In this case it's easy to load an image if the user doesn't have the flash player. I'm also working on my new website and that's the approach I'm taking. I'm trying to follow a similar idea as was taken by the people at http://www.autodesk.com and http://www.novell.com, of course I'm nowhere as good, with animation that is, I'm a master of flash programming :smile: .

I also think in your animation the scrolling of the images, could/should be smoother. You can accomplish this by increasing the frame rate and, if the scrolling is script-based, decrease the amount of scrolling.
 
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-Job- said:
I also don't like flash intros very much, they're fun to develop but generally users don't really like them. One exception to that is when the presentation is embeded with the actual website instead of in a separate page by itself. In this case it's easy to load an image if the user doesn't have the flash player.
As a Usability Specialist, I can tell you that you've hit the nail on the head. Flash is best used as a visual adjunct to other content by embedding it within the page - or for games.

Now that we understand Sid's agenda (to win the contest), we can see where our recommendations do not necessarily apply.

OTOH Sid, though you say load-time is only one question, it would not surprise me if they made mention of it above and beyond that. They might even skip watching it - as I did.