1. General User – What to consider……..

• Text legibilty – font style, size and colour
• Download speed
• Accessibility and Legality
• Good, consistant navigation
• Informative, interesting
• Colour schemes – eye catching
• Relevent technology
• Friendly layout
• Relevent pictures
• 3 click rule

2. Printable Version – What to consider……..

• Text legibility – font style, size and colour
• accessibility and legality
• Pictures – using less pictures, small pictures
• Download speed
• Consistant navigation
• Colour schemes – very little colour, keep to black, white and grey
• Inromative, to the point
• margins reduced to fit onto A4 paper
• Restrict what gets printed i.e. links
• Easier to use tables for layout design

3. Children – What to consider………..

• No adverts or pop ups – can be confused as content
• keep intersting – can loose interest very quickly
• Down load speed
• Colour schemes, bright and eye catching
• should be playfull and interactive
• age appropriate content
• animation and sound affects
• relevent pictures
• very easy to use and navigate through
• clearly labled

4. Dyslexic Users – What to consider…….

• Short paragraphs
• Use default font settings
• left justified text is usually easier to read
• consistant layout and format
• keep the site simple, not too busy
• do not use frames, software that reads text to users dose not always recognise them
• make all links seperate, not within the text
• use small icons to help with navigation
• aviod flashing text, animation or moving graphics
• aviod back ground images behind text
• give users a choice to turn on any background music
• keep colours simple

1.  Colours Used – 3 – The colours are quite natural with little brightness, this makes the text easy to see.
2. Site Layout – 3 – The layout of the site is simple, the title is easy to see and tables have been used to design the layout of the text.
3. Fonts Used – 2 – Personaly i find the text a little hard to read.
4. Images Used – 4 -I think the the images used help to bring the site to life, all the images are relevent to the content.
5. Navigation Controls – 2 – Although the links are consistant and the top links are easy to see, the side links are too bunched up and are hard to read, also there is no indication of where the user has been.
6. Hyperlinks – 3 – There is a page dedicated to other sites, all links are easy to see.
7. Use of Language – 4 – The laguage is easy to understand for non-salsa dancers as well advanced salsa dancers. There is no irrelevent text.
8. Overall ease of use – 3 – I find this site quite easy to use and navigate round.
9. Overall Look and Feel – 3 – I feel that the site does have a nice look to it, quite salsa like, its not too busy.

1. Design a clear and simple navigation system – a good navigation system should answer three questions:-

• Where am i?
• Where have i been?
• Where can i go?

2. Keep the content clear and simple – eye catching designs are good but its the content that keeps the users at the site and returning, content also boosts the site in search engine rankings.

3. Support you brand – this can create or reinforce a users impression of the site.

 4. provide visitor feedback

5.  Test the site on real users

I feel that all of the points are relevent when looking at usability, the site goes into alot of detail on each point, making it easy to follow and to understand. The site explains about colour, text font, style, layout as well as much more.

• It is a local salsa company advertising classes and events.
• It downloads fairly quickly on all of the pages.
• The pages are central, users have to scroll down to see the whole page.
• The site has no irrelevent information or pop-ups that appear which is good. The text is clear to see and the navigation is consistant.
• The bad points about the site are: – There is a sentance at the top of each page that moves from side to side, this can be quite hard for visually imparied users, the layout and use of tables could be improved, especially on the FAQ page. The site looks quite plain, not very eye-catching and could use a few more pictures to attract customers.

Overall i feel that the company would benefit more from having a website makeover, not changing the information but just adding more colour, pictures and re-thinking the layout design.

• It has to be easy to navigate around the site, the navigation links have to be clear and easy to see and being consistant is a bonus.
• The general layout of the site needs to be simple yet attractive, not too busy, good use of tables and spread out.
• the colour of the text has to stand out from the colour of the background so its easy to see.
• No irrelevent ads, text or pictures.
• The home page at least has to beable to fit on to a standard screen, its so anoying when you have to scroll from side to side as well as up and down to see the whole page.
• Its a bonus if the page downloads quickly, so not have huge pictures or animations.
• Making the website clear about what its actually about.
• Making the website relevent for the type of users it wants to attract e.g. young children or adults.
• If there is alot of text on a page, using relevent pictures to break it up and keep it interesting.
• The website has to work on at least more than one browser.

does anyone have anymore ideas?