Heightened awareness

----------E-Journal 4

I have not surfed a lot on the Internet. But I do like the page which has very simple layout and has better organization. The page I don't like is that the page, which has very big pictures and makes download very slow, and on the homepage there is no clear information about the site. In this case, I cannot know what the site is about and where I should go first.

One example of my favorite page is http://www.dotad.net. I like the page when I first looked at the page. The page has a very cute image. The layout of the page is very clear and from the layout I can have an idea about the whole structure of the site. Therefore, the conceptual model of the page is quite clear. The page uses the white background, which makes the site very clean. The page mainly uses blue color and the color is consistently all over the site. The font selected looks good and readable. The rollover buttons stand there and provide interactivity with the user and buttons also are naturally mapping and users can predict what is going on when buttons are clicked.

I know that on the Internet there are many web sites are not very preferable, one of my examples is: http://www.io360.com. The site use black background, and the font on the site is not very readable, so the visibility is bad. The site also uses a Flash-made image, which is downloaded very slowly at home. Finally, it is very hard for me to figure out what the page is about. On the homepage, there is no clear information about the company and about the site. From the links, I cannot predict what I am going to see on the next page. The links are not descriptive, and the natural mapping and affordance of the site are not very good.

The two sites I chose is according to the impression of my first glance of the site, so from the point of view, I do think the first impression of a site is also very important. If the site is better organized and readable, it will attract me to visit it. Otherwise, I think I will give up and try some other sites.

The page is last updated feb.26, 2000 Any suggestion, please contact me here.