Manufacturer Sites that Sell is an article on asktog.com that discusses sites that are successful in providing an informative, trustworthy and professional shopping experience for their customers. Also mentioned are various sites that fail in this regard as well.
While I felt the examples were rather biased, leaning towards a particular style or "look and feel" and inferring that this style of design is the only type that works for e-commerce.
Overall, the article "Manufacturer Sites That Sell" is informative and well presented but again my argument lies in that the ways mentioned are NOT the only way and Apple.com is far from being perfect in my opinion as a user and as a designer.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Cooliris
I have tried Cooliris on my browser and Iphone both and I really liked this application specially for using Youtube and Facebook photos. I liked Cooliris for youtube because I can easily navigate through videos and watch them in a thunmbnail order and easily find the video I'm searching for. I also liked it when I was going through my friends pictures in Facebook. Navigating through pictures in Facebook is kind of a hassle and I don't like the way they make their pages, but when I used Cooliris I could easily go over the whole album in a single wall which has a fantastic 3d graphics and very user friendly environment. Overall I think Cooliris is a very great app that I enjoy using it on my browser and Iphone both.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Friendfeed
FriendFeed disappoints – start to finish. From the empty-feeling opening page to the lack of interactivity, this site is a big downer.
The first thing I noticed was all that space. The opening page looks unfinished and rather ‘cut and paste.’ The only clickable icon was to ‘create and account.’ I wanted to find out what I was creating an account for first, so I looked around. On the right-hand side are icons with some minimal info, I clicked on them, but nothing happened. Very frustrating. After all, everyone knows all icons are clickable now.
I had to click on some smallish text toward the bottom right-hand side to find out what was going on.
The bottom navigation is simple and efficient, but nothing special. The internal pages tabbed navigation on top was nice, but not entirely consistent throughout the site.
Overall, I think the site needs a lot of work. If they want to make the product appealing, they need to make a much more attractive, interesting, compelling site. I was instantly put off by the lack of the familiar and functional interface and I had little interest in pursuing the site further. If it wasn’t for this assignment, I would have left immediately because there was nothing visually appealing at all and what little content was there was too bland to get excited about.
Friendfeed.com
The first thing I noticed was all that space. The opening page looks unfinished and rather ‘cut and paste.’ The only clickable icon was to ‘create and account.’ I wanted to find out what I was creating an account for first, so I looked around. On the right-hand side are icons with some minimal info, I clicked on them, but nothing happened. Very frustrating. After all, everyone knows all icons are clickable now.
I had to click on some smallish text toward the bottom right-hand side to find out what was going on.
The bottom navigation is simple and efficient, but nothing special. The internal pages tabbed navigation on top was nice, but not entirely consistent throughout the site.
Overall, I think the site needs a lot of work. If they want to make the product appealing, they need to make a much more attractive, interesting, compelling site. I was instantly put off by the lack of the familiar and functional interface and I had little interest in pursuing the site further. If it wasn’t for this assignment, I would have left immediately because there was nothing visually appealing at all and what little content was there was too bland to get excited about.
Friendfeed.com
cooliris on iPhone... wa wa wee wa!
Cooliris is a great app and all the excellent reasons for using it have already been listed in this blog. However, I downloaded the iPhone version and I must say, the marriage of the two in regards to functionality and mapping is a nice match!
Without even peeking at any instructions or looking at the help file, I did a search for "flowers" and hit submit. The windows as demonstrated in class on the browser version of Cooliris came up, and when I tipped my iPhone at an angle, the windows began to move on their own. As I increased the angle slightly, the speed of the windows picked up as if they were rolling by gravity. The thumbnailed pictures rolled by quickly, and the ones that were videos had the little "play" symbol on them.
I tried dragging through the windows with my finger and that worked as in all other applications. When I put my finger on a picture, it showed the name of the picture, the URL of its parent page and also view options. Also available were icons to email the picture's URL and to download the picture itself.
I am quite glad this one won.
Without even peeking at any instructions or looking at the help file, I did a search for "flowers" and hit submit. The windows as demonstrated in class on the browser version of Cooliris came up, and when I tipped my iPhone at an angle, the windows began to move on their own. As I increased the angle slightly, the speed of the windows picked up as if they were rolling by gravity. The thumbnailed pictures rolled by quickly, and the ones that were videos had the little "play" symbol on them.
I tried dragging through the windows with my finger and that worked as in all other applications. When I put my finger on a picture, it showed the name of the picture, the URL of its parent page and also view options. Also available were icons to email the picture's URL and to download the picture itself.
I am quite glad this one won.
Friend Feed, copycat with an extra dose of unnecessary info.
While friend feed seems to have well intended motives it basically seems like yet another attempt to be the next Facebook or MySpace they aren’t the first ones to try and they certainly wont be the last. The main problem they are probably going to run into is that Face book and MySpace already have such a massive number of users that few will be inclined to switch why have to try to convince all your friends to switch to another site and have to yet again find each other when everyone’s already in one place already? Unless for some strange reason Facebook or MySpace shut down then friend feed would have a market but it doesn’t look like that’s happening any time soon. Why reinvent the wheel when the old one is working just fine?
Yeah they added extra things like the ability to let your friends know what your doing on other sites like YouTube but is that really necessary for us to know if I find a funny video I want to share I usually forward the link but that’s not really pertinent information it’s like adding a spark to a Swiss army knife sure it’s nice to have but do you really need it?
Yeah they added extra things like the ability to let your friends know what your doing on other sites like YouTube but is that really necessary for us to know if I find a funny video I want to share I usually forward the link but that’s not really pertinent information it’s like adding a spark to a Swiss army knife sure it’s nice to have but do you really need it?
Cooliris is Cool Indeed...
Being somewhat of an amateur graphic artist and all around web-media junkie, I found CoolIris to be especially helpful in sorting and locating all types of media in a timely manner that also serves to be entertaining almost as much as the media itself. When I'm designing a flyer or a T-shirt design for bands, a good portion of the time spent on the project is spent searching the web for images that I can alter and/or sample for inspiration. With Cooliris, I just click the icon (when I'm searching supported web sites) and scan the results on an infinite 3-D wall. This saves time by eliminating the need to click through page upon page of google images, when instead I just scroll through the 3-d wall and browse for whatever catches my eye.
I'd surmise that I watch quite a bit more TV shows on the web more than I do on actual TV. With the inception of web sites such as HULU and the like, I have a feeling that scheduled TV will be a thing of the past in near future anyway. Cooliris is supported by HULU and like google images, I just click the icon and away I go, locating my desired content usually within under a minute. This thing is practical as practical gets, and seeing as how this is only version 1.9, I can't wait to see further developments. Ever since I've downloaded it to my laptop and my desktop, I've used it every single day...I definitely give this product a big thumbs up.
I'd surmise that I watch quite a bit more TV shows on the web more than I do on actual TV. With the inception of web sites such as HULU and the like, I have a feeling that scheduled TV will be a thing of the past in near future anyway. Cooliris is supported by HULU and like google images, I just click the icon and away I go, locating my desired content usually within under a minute. This thing is practical as practical gets, and seeing as how this is only version 1.9, I can't wait to see further developments. Ever since I've downloaded it to my laptop and my desktop, I've used it every single day...I definitely give this product a big thumbs up.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)