505 homepages:

Peer Review

Below are some of the basic things we've covered in class and in the proposal. Use these as points of departure for your responses to the homepages. You don't necessarily have to hit all of them, but try to get into some specifics based on these topics in your responses.

1. Audience/Purpose

The site should have a clear primary audience and the designer's purpose in relation to this audience should also be identifiable. State what you think the primary audience and purpose is.

2. Page design and layout

Page designs should incorporate tables, have clear visual logic and balance, have a visual hierarchy, and have appropriate line lengths. Note for the designer where these elements work or are problematic.

3. Navigation

Navigation should be clear and intuitive, should not have too many pages to get to content, should have a clear rhetoric of departure/arrival, and should provide an articulation of the site's structure. Note any elements of the navigation that breakdown.

4. Site design

Site design should have a clear hierarchy, have file names that are short, simple and descriptive, should have text or content in logical units/chunks/pages, and should have clear and consistent page titles and headers (in terms of form and content). Note where the categorical structure of the site works or doesn't work.

5. Typography

Good typography should have appropriate font types (serif for body text, san serif for larger headers), shorter line lengths, appropriate use of bold and italics, readable size, proper cell padding (space between text and table borders), should be left justified, and have antialiasing where needed. Comment on the quality of the typography.

6. Color Scheme

Colors schemes should not be too bright or too dull (shouldn't be distracting or hard to read), should run around 3 or 4 colors, should have some kind of connection to the overall identity the site wants to project, and should tie tables, text, links and images together. Note your initial reaction to the color scheme as you loaded the page, and then comment on the details you noticed after a closer look.

7. Content

There should be ample content specific to the site (not too much or too little), each category or section of the site should have a balance amount of material, and the content should be clearly relevant to the site's purpose and focus (personal, academic, professional).

8. About/Links

I asked that sites have both an about page and a links page. This can differ with various audiences and purposes. If the site has them, check the about page for editorial style and the links page for relevancy to the site's focus and for clear rhetoric of departure/arrival. Comment on their rhetorical success.

9. Consistency

All of the design decisions should be consistent across all pages of your site, and should in many cases be dictated by the audience and purpose. Discuss the overall coherency of the site's design.