Constantine and Lockwood principles for a flashy site

We were shown a presentation about user interface/interaction in the Interaction seminar with David. Five useful principles were introduced which can help us effectively analyse a site for it's successfulness in the above mentioned arena.

Now I have gone onto the web and done a quick analysis using their principles for www.thoughtpile.org , which comes courtesy of the daily FWA.

Constantine and Lockwood have provided a number of ways to way look at a site to assess it's usability.

The structure principle

There is a consistent feel to the structure for this site. Seperate links are placed at intervals around the outside of the screen. More content can be accessed via the funky design, which you can always alter to be close up or further away. This unique design does sort of appease the structure principle because the orange dots are grouped in twos or threes, and with this being the case, the content they hold is sort of interrelated.

The simplicity principle

At first you do think what is this animation that's coming at me, but on playing with the scroll wheel, you learn that it enables you to zoom in or out accordding to what you want to see. Once clicking on a node, it does seem slightly ambiguous as to what it is telling you, but icons are used, and with symbols such as a heart or a plus or a minus, it does lead you towards an understanding. This is confirmed by applying more information once you roll over one of the buttons.

The feedback principle

With the addition of further information on rollover it minimises doing something without understanding the consequences.

The tolerance principle

The site does feel thought out. In the email address registration part, again, it is considerate of errors when entering email addresses etc.

The reuse principle

The design is consistent throughout, with the node structure taking the main format. It makes it slightly more interesting by when clicking upon a certain sector, it pans to a different point of view. But the colouring is consistent, you become accustomed to expecting orange to have some additional content behind it.

It is these principles that I will need to consider my site in too, once it is nearing completion, so if I do find anything out of order, I can then fix it.

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