Friday, October 12, 2007

Virtual Flea Market

I pulled the same points from the article as Jen. If a web sites mission is to be painfully simple then why does craigs list get bashed. It is one of the easiest sites that I use. Everything is laid out for you and it doesn't take much thinking. As for the aesthetics the design leaves something to be desired, but I think that there is beauty in the simplicity, and it fits the audience.

I would like to see what Nielsen and Co. think is the perfect website, or if they even have one. I think that the major point that is being missed by these two chapters is the target audience. If people are coming to these sites, they at least have a little background information and can adjust to the different design styles. I understand that they are trying to make it very simple, but I think that they are taking some creativity away with these strict rules and standards.

-Tim-

3 comments:

Unknown said...

That's true. But, where do you think that they knew the information from before looking at the website?

RDMillner said...

See you assume that people think for themselves Tim. As much as I disagree with a lot of what Nielson says, I'll give him this point.

We grew up visiting websites, so we can adapt very easily. The generations that learned to do things on pen and paper won't find it as easily. Plus, we're in grad school. We're smarter than the average population, another reason we can adapt to different layouts.

To keep the web for the masses, you have to make things as simple as possible. The best way to do this is to maintain similar layouts that everyone can follow.

Trevor B said...

Personally I love using craigslist, I think it is very user friendly and I woundn't change a thing if I could. I agree that the authors may focus too much on simplicity. Some websites need to cover such a large amount of information, that simplicity simply doesn't work, like espn.com, which needs to cover articles, scores, schedules, rosters, fantasy and more for ALL of popular sports. I dont think all that information can be reduced to a few tabs effectily