ConceptArt.Org Site Evaluation

**Pontemonti** · September 30th, 2004, 06:02 PM

Hiya everyone,

I am taking a course in school called Human-Computer Interaction. A friend and I have chosen to evaluate a system, the conceptart.org site (the main page - not the forums), for our assignment.

To do this, we can use as much input from you as possible. While "random" comments are of course very useful to help improve the site, we would mainly like you to answer a short "survey" we have put together. It consists of five "tasks" for you to do, together with some questions for you to answer after each task has been solved. All in all, there are around 20 questions in total, and all are answered with simple radio buttons. You can also add comments if you want to.

Edit: Evaluation link removed. We thank everyone who answered the questions and will post the results/report here when finished!

If you have any other comments, or perhaps questions or suggestions, please either post them in this thread or pm/e-mail them to me.

Note: even though this is a school assignment, we will of course make use of the results from the evaluation. That does not mean that there will immediately be changes made to the main site, but at least we will keep some important parts in mind for the future.
And another note: this evaluation does not really focus on the speed of the site. We already know that it isn't as fast as we want it to be

**davi** · September 30th, 2004, 06:14 PM

did and done, please help pontei and our other staff members out by completing this evaluation.

**nil** · September 30th, 2004, 06:35 PM

done.

interesting survey, excellent questions. hope this helps the site improve

**Skank** · September 30th, 2004, 07:28 PM

done! yo! good stuff

**S.C. Watson** · September 30th, 2004, 07:36 PM

did and done.

Cheers,
~Oreg.

**Red_Rook** · October 1st, 2004, 12:57 PM

done

**Signature** · October 2nd, 2004, 07:50 AM

Yeah I too think there is too much content on the mainpage and too much on the forum index-page.
And the biggest problem of the layout is that some elements should be grouped ... others should be separated more.
The elements melt and it is hard to navigate.

I think the best idea would be getting rid of the barrier between mainpage and forums.
Spreading the content over several pages and integrating the forums into those pages ...
that shouldn't be too hard with vBulletin templates.

For example:

showing the Events-forums on the mainpage. Maybe the news could all go in a simple news forum then!?
Announcements could be handled like on the current mainpage.
showing the Artwork forums on a gallery site. There could be thumbnails for the "featured artist" galleries on the same site.
adding an employment site ... and a learning/resources site ... and so on

Admins would have to maintain it, though.
Especially editing templates when new forums are added.

I think that is a bit too much:
"Home - Forums - Workshop - About - Chat - Links - Sponsors - Industry jobs - Contact us"

I'd cover "Contact Us" under "About" ... maybe "Chat" as well.
Industry jobs is a bit lost there. That's why I think an employment site would be good.

**cartoonfox** · October 2nd, 2004, 08:29 AM

done ^-^

peace

**skrubbles** · October 2nd, 2004, 04:05 PM

I have a bunch of ideas floating around in my head to make the main page less messy but still cool (cooler) and contain everything... I think I may just try and take the time to redo the page in my vision tommorow (don't know if I'll finish tommorow though)... ya know, explain with a visual because I suck at explaining things with words... LOL.

whisper

**skrubbles** · October 4th, 2004, 12:45 AM

Ok I did a mockup of what I think the site should look like. This design incorporates everything that's already on the main page, same color even... its just less of a mess and has a lil more style. Oh, this might take a moment to load as its not optimized and is mainly just to show layout....

http://www.skrubbles.net/conceptartorg/

this is mainly to show the layout... nothing is clickable... you can rollover the "best of" image to see text, but it doesn't go anywhere.

If you like this let me know and I'll be happy to go ahead and do the coding for it... I am strapped for time until I move at the end of the month though.

**gasmask** · October 4th, 2004, 01:02 AM

im in favor of lous, its sick

**Sok N. Wett** · October 4th, 2004, 01:05 AM

Pretty good Shit Lou, I kinda like that, like most people I don't go straight to the main site, I go straight right into the forum, I think it needs an eye catcher, something that says stop, look, and listen.

Ok I did the evaluation, done and done!!

**Pontemonti** · October 4th, 2004, 04:23 AM

Wow, that's quite an improvement

Still not "perfect", though...

I think the navigation links should be placed below the logo. That is, as far as I'm concerned, more standard, and will make it less confusing for new users.
These scrolling thumbnails are annoying. If I want to read a news article (or anything else) in the "check it out" box, the scrolling images will be a disturbance (you read the text and see something moving, you look up to see what's moving, notice it's only the thumbnails, go back to read, etc...). That "Featured Artists" just above the thumbnails seem a bit out of place as well. You could possibly move it somewhere and make it bold, like "THE BEST OF CONCEPTART.ORG".
Another thing...the massive black logo you use as the background for the announcements box. I believe the contrast is too big...makes it hard to read the text. Maybe you can make the light parts a lot darker (almost as dark as the background) ?
Next thing, which is the last I can think of at the moment, is the main box. "Check it out". I believe the double scrollbars (one for the entire page and one for this box) is both annoying and confusing. It would be a lot better to get rid of this frame and put the content into the page. This would make the main page (the one with the news) very long, though (lots of news articles on one page)...which means that the news part will need to be redesigned a bit (possibly only showing headers/subjects and dates on the main page, with links to the full stories).
It's great that you put that "welcome to conceptart.org...." text there. It needs a whole lot more focus, though, IMHO. If you haven't visited the site before, you will most likely want to know what it's about, which makes that text the most important one on the main page. Of course, it doesn't have to be there when you have logged in. Something like "Welcome back to conceptart.org, you are logged in as ____" would be better then.

Btw, thanks for the help with the evaluation everyone!

**jester** · October 4th, 2004, 04:49 AM

Done!

Skrubbles' layout would work fine for me!

Jester

**skrubbles** · October 4th, 2004, 08:06 AM

Thank you guys

The News section. Instead of scrolling, maybe just show the last three news articles and then a link at the bottom leading to an archive for previous articles. Or maybe have all the articles but only show the subject and two lines of text and then trail it off with "..." and a "more" link to see the rest of that article in a popup or something. Oh, and the news article's icons could be smaller two... squares instead of rectangles. Also the news could be the full articles being shown and stretch that area down making the mainpage longer... If that's a route then I'd move the thunderdome, artist spotlight, and poll over to the left and group them under the artist showcase section... and that also means the "about" blurb would need to be moved as you already stated.

About the self scrolling thumbnail section. I personally like it but there are alternatives. I think having them broke up into two sections isn't the best idea. Honestly the second group that was on the bottom of the page... I didn't notice them for the longest time. So I think they should stay pretty much where I have them now. But instead of being self scrolling just make them scrollable... but not with a stupid scrol bar on the bottom that you move left or right. Reason why that doesn't work is because even if you set it up to look cool with costum colors those of us that use a different web browser like mozilla just see the same stupid scoll bar. So I think left and right arrow bottoms on either side of the thumbnails would work just fine... Make the "featured artists" text bolder and properly placed and have the text "scroll to view more featured artists" or something to that effect, placed closer to the right arrow.

BTW since you don't want frames for the news section and ugly scrollbars... did you still want the featured artists info and galleries to display there? don't know how to do that without frames... but I think a better alternative would me just to click on the featured artist thumbnail and have a small popup that has that info... plus you could make it super cool and have the left and or top show one of their kickass artworks.

The announcements section and the placement of the site links I'll fix up as well.... and I'll try to get these changes done tommorow or wednesday after work. Let me know what news section idea you like the most and I'll implement that into the next design. Hope you guys really do like this, because I don't mind putting the time into it... and Ponti, like I said I'd be glad to code or help code this page... if you end up liking the design that is.

**Miau** · October 4th, 2004, 09:09 AM

d-d-d-done

**skrubbles** · October 4th, 2004, 10:56 AM

hmmm... just checked mine out on a higher resolution 1280x1024. Some parts of the header don't seem to be spaced appropriately... I'll have to fix that up as well.

**skrubbles** · October 7th, 2004, 02:02 AM

okay... here's an updated layout:

http://www.skrubbles.net/conceptartorg2/

changed everything you mentioned... except I still need to find a better place for the welcome messege. As for the Featured artists... I'd make it so that when you roll over the image their name and position appears to the right of "featured artists..." and when you click on it a small popup gives info and a thumbnail gallery of some of their work. As for the featured artists icons... you really need them all together and at the top so people notice them, but they can't be too big or else they just take up too much space and people will have to scroll a whole page down to get to news (like they do on the current design).... The icons are smaller but I think they work great this way.

Let me know what works and what doesn't... like I said if you really like the design I'll be glad to start coding it.

**S.C. Watson** · October 7th, 2004, 10:57 AM

Hey Skrubbles,

I just wanted to chime in as a former front-end web designer and say that your design and layout is really well thought out, and looks really, really good.

Good job, mate!
~Oreg.

**skrubbles** · October 7th, 2004, 03:12 PM

thank you very much Oregano... I love designing websites and its great knowing that I can help a community that's continues to give me so much.. learning alot from fellow members and showing off my art, plus if it wasn't for CA then I wouldn't be hanging out with 15-20 artists/friends every week.

I'm glad you folks are liking the direction the site design is going in... and its only gonna get better. A few things still need to be changed and moved around till the layout is perfect... Coding is gonna take a lil bit atleast until I move to my new apartment on the 30th of this month... I'll be closer to work and I won't have 5hours taken out of my day just for commuting.

**conceptx** · October 10th, 2004, 08:14 AM

Sorry my first post to be a compliant, but in case you wanna know the evaluation crashed my browser. When ??? well I was trying to open Jamz axe-like image, it failed tried it again and ka-boom everything went only getting the feed-back page I use

Code:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040913 Firefox/0.10.1

but it's all fine now am gonna procede with this evaluation.

**mtw** · October 11th, 2004, 04:38 PM

Done and done. I tried to give a good explanation for opinions when I could.

I'm kind of liking the floating boxes of content because it doesn't require reloading the whole page each time you click a link, but right now it is slow in loading up, even on fast connections. I guess technology will need to improve before we can have nicer websites.

**LaPalida** · November 22nd, 2004, 02:25 PM

Hey Pontemonti. I posted this a long time ago (and obviously in the wrong thread) but I just don't know how to repost it here so I will just give a link to it http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=28548. It's just my comments on button use and visibility.