Starwars.com
Star Wars.com is a website that is built by Star Wars
nerds for Star Wars nerds with the understanding that not everyone may be
immediately familiar with what midichlorians are--but at least they've heard
that Darth Vader is Luke's father.
The layout is a fairly standard modern fare, consisting
of a header navigation bar, nice color choices for the Galaxy far, far away...
but something seems a bit off about it. It's actually a glorified blog--a Pinterest
of Star Wars content that the different branches within the Disney-owned
franchise now operates. For me, as a fan of Star Wars, this layout indicates to
me a very aggressive social media approach to the franchise--sharable content,
videos, easy articles, and stuff that fans will probably already know by heart.
Does it pass the litmus test?
For the informational category:
1. Is
everything available at 1280*800 resolution without scrolling?
Yes.
Everything that I could want to get to or find is available with a Search bar
in the upper left hand corner. The letdown is that it's not immediately
apparent if they even have biographies for their own characters.
2. Is it
visually appealing?
Yes. As a
casual consumer it practically looks like YouTube on an Apple TV, designed to
be scrolled through lazily without actually intending to consume anything. It's
a window shopper's dream.
3. Do I feel
the experience of learning and understanding something after I'm done?
No. As a
fan, the information contained on the official Star Wars page pales in comparison
to other websites like Wikipedia and fan forums. Coming from the eyes of a newcomer
who just wants to find out what Star Wars is, it doesn't make sense that
there's no obvious ingress point to learn about the franchise.
Is it a good website?
On the ternary scale (0 being unreadable, 1 being
unmemorable, and 2 being memorable), I give Star Wars.com a big fat 1. Its only
purpose is to provide Star Wars social media promoters to be able to promote
something while fans eagerly await the next movie. For me, I have other sources
for the Star Wars information I need, and the official website just doesn't cut
it.
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