Who doesn’t want rabies for kids??? Well, I imagine nobody wants kids to get rabies. Let me introduce you to a site called Rabies Just For Kids! It is a government site from CDC and the link is
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/kidsrabies/
You may want to put on some sun glasses before visiting the site, the colors are INTENSE! Below is my critique of this site.
* Who are the users?
– Kids who want rabies, right? Animals that want to give kids rabies? People looking for words that rhyme with babies?
* Information chunk
Yes, a huge chunk of information in the top left corner. Lots of space in the rest of the page
* Relevance (graphics, content, reading level, text)
I don’t know if the graphics are trying to appeal to kids or burnt out hippies who have been wearing the same tye-dyed shirt for the last 40 years. The text overlapping the graphics is unnecessary and some of the graphics are irrelevant. I can’t tell what some of the things are.
Is it just me or is the animation a bit confusing?
* Labeling (visual with text)
Kind of goes back to relevancy. In the activities, there is a picture of a dog’s brain getting sliced open. WTF?
The menu bar is extremely hard to read, especially with the bright background
* Consistency (visual, text)
There are too many little clip arts and most of them don’t get repeated. The black shadow effect on the menu bars are not repeated anywhere else on the pages. Are they even using a color pallet?
* Detail (too much on one page or one screen)
The graphics are not well laid out. The homepage has all of the information in a tight corner
* Other comments
What do the little squares on top of the page have to do with anything? Are rabies red, purple, and blue?
On Interactivity.
* Orientation (Can you find the path, and know your way around?)
I lose the menu bar when I scroll down.
* Navigation (Branching)
The links are a bit hard to read.
* Functionality (Does it work?)
It gives informative information about rabies. On the otherhand, I could see a kid going directly to another site like wikipedia.com if they had to write a paper on it. I doubt that the kids really take advantage of the activities section.
* Information access (Multiple entry and exit? Logical path?)
It is not so user friendly since the menu bar is not in constant view and the links are difficult to read. But, there are several links to the “top of the page”
On Screen Design
# Attractive (first impression)
Woah! What does that say? What the hell is that?
# Resolution
small clip arts low resolution
# Color
Too many colors
# Lay out
Too much open space
# Readability
hard to read the text
# Other comments
Possibly put together for free.
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