COP 3813 Fall 2015 - Assignment 1

All,

This will be the first blog post in a significant amount of time. I believe the last time I even touched this website was when the iPhone was just taking off, Facebook was filled with Farmville requests, and college was still kind of a foreign concept. Now I have attended two institutions, worked for over five different employers, and am now laden with dreams, purpose, and excitement.

This blog will be revisited for now to fulfill on an assignment for COP 3813 – Intro to Internet Computing at FAU. The purpose of this assignment is to drum up five websites to critique for poor or outstanding reasons and to identify what about them makes them stand out.

First I’ll be grouping the following websites into categories. This list is just a preliminary list for this assignment and may be further expanded should design of websites be something I investigate further. The four categories are websites for the purpose of information—purchase—content consumption—and content creation. I initially intended to review eight websites. The assignment only requires five, I will be covering two informative websites, two purchasing websites, and one content consumption website.

Per category, each website will be judged subjectively based on the following litmus tests:

For the informational category, the checklist goes as follows:

    1. Is everything available at 1280*800 resolution without scrolling?

    2. Is it visually appealing?

    3. Do I feel the experience of learning and understanding something after I'm done?

   

For the purchasing category

    1. Is everything I need to get to or want to consume available without scrolling?

    2. Is it visually appealing?

    3. Am I left with the experience of wanting to come back?

   

For the content consumption category:

    1. Is everything I need to get to what I want to consume there without scrolling? Is discovery relevant and available?

    2. Is it cluttered/visually appealing?

    3. Am I left with the experience of being entertained?

   

For content creation category:

    1. Are all the tools I need to create content there without scrolling.

    2. Is it visually appealing?

    3. Am I left with the experience of having gotten work done?

Finally, I will give conclude with an overall rating based on the ternary scale (0 being non-functional, 1 being forgettable, and 2 being memorable).

I hope you enjoy the following blog posts and I encourage you to visit again in the future!

Best,

Chris Carl

http://christophercarl.blogspot.com/2015/08/starwarscom-review.html
http://christophercarl.blogspot.com/2015/08/wikipediaorg-review.html
http://christophercarl.blogspot.com/2015/08/applecom-review.html
http://christophercarl.blogspot.com/2015/08/applecom-review_26.html
http://christophercarl.blogspot.com/2015/08/netflixcom-review.html