User Interface: The of Disneyland Website - Case Study Example

Contents Introduction 3 Purpose statement 3 User control 4 Homepage banners 4 Secondary navigation and offers menu 5 Communication and relevance 5 Language 6 User control 8 Feedback and Error prevention 9 Help and documentation 9 Evaluation Summary 11 Introduction This review shall be about the Disney website at http://disneyland.disney.go.com/. We shall review the user interface on the following points. Communication and relevance: how effectively does the site pass across the message it intends to get to the user? Is the information all necessary? User Control: how easy is it for a user to navigate and manipulate actions based on the users’ primary objective? Simplicity and minimalist design: Is the information intuitive and easy for the user to understand? Feedback: Does the site keep the user informed on their current status throughout their visit on the site? Are tasks easy to follow and progress through? Consistency: Is page layout homogeneous without being monotonous and tiring to look at, is the organization of content similar across pages? Help: How easy is it for a user to find assistance in case they are stuck, lost or content is incomprehensible? Short term memory load: does the user have to unnecessarily remember content? How reversible are actions of the user? Error Prevention: Does the interface reduce chances of users making errors while using the site. These shall however not be discussed in individual topics as listed above since the areas tend to over- lap. A table shall be presented at the end as a review of the site as a whole as reviewed by guidelines provided by Gerhardt-Powals’ cognitive engineering principles meshed with Jakob Nielsen's heuristics. Purpose statement The Disneyland website is built to help people planning holidays and visits to Disneyland to plan, book and pay for their visits. The site does not at any point attempt to explain what is Disneyland, where is Disneyland and the purpose of Disneyland. This may be because Disneyland as a brand is large and ubiquitous and anyone stumbling on the website should know what it is. It may also be an oversight or flaw in the development of the site, either way it is hard to speculate on this. User control Figure 1 Disney world's primary navigation This site has three main navigation panels. The first is at the very top, it is in a subdued grey colour sitting on a washed out silver backdrop. This makes it blend in with the browser which it sits adjoined to. By instinct the user skips over that bar and the second bar already grabs the user’s attention. This is in a brighter shade of purple or hot pink with a hexadecimal value of #BC3B87. The second menu is right next to the logo, the logo is on the top left where most people start to look at a web page. The links on that navigation menu are all descriptive and easy to understand. These navigation items allow users to find most of the items they would need when planning a trip to Disneyland. The things one would need on a visit to Disney are where to eat, tickets and packages, things to do and where to stay. On this part Disney has navigation in order. It is conspicuous, descriptive and intuitive having all the menus at the top. Right below the menu there is a quick holiday price finder. It has two calendar widgets, and drop down menus to select number of children and adults. There are radio buttons to select mutually exclusive data. These make it hard to make mistakes and filter for wrongly entered data. The form is well designed but the color is a deep blue hexadecimal value of #0F6786. This makes it hard to spot and the eye’s attention is suddenly pulled down to the banners on the site. Homepage banners The site has a large banner right below the holiday calculator. The banner is split into two as shown below. The half on the left is about Disneyland as a resort and the second is about Disneyland as an amusement park. The banners expand like an accordion when the mouse hovers above the little blue arrow in the middle of the banner. This then starts a slide show of about four slides that elaborates more on the banner. The banner is very aesthetically pleasing. The effect is intricate and plays well with the eyes. It is however hard to figure out that the arrow in the middle triggers the slide show. This would easily make one miss the arrow. The two static pictures that form the banner are not obvious and intuitive. The look like illustrations and one who does not know much about Disneyland or Disney as a brand would be lost. Figure 2 Disneyland banner and secondary navigation Disneyland has periodical offers and promotions. They have a display holding four items beneath the banner. The display is four small panes each with a link to get more details. The descriptions are concise and easy to understand, the adjoining thumbnail however does not make much sense unless one is an avid Disney fan. Secondary navigation and offers menu The Disney world site then has four panes with hyperlinks in blue making them look they were in early HTML versions where all hyperlinks were in blue. The links make the site look heavily worded and seem like repetition of the primary navigation menu. All the items with the exception of the help and answers could have been in the primary menu. Communication and relevance The Disneyland site for the most part communicates the message it needs to. It however has many instances in which it uses Disney terms and characters so that if the reader is not very familiar with Disney may get lost. The site is concise in most cases and with the exception of the Disney Lingo does a good job at communication. Information is neatly laid out in lists that are intuitive to follow because the look like placement in catalogue or restaurant menu (pictured below). Figure 3: Neatly laid out information While the neat lay out is commendable the most intuitive action for a site visitor is to click on the thumbnail not the link. The thumbnail however has not HTML anchor attached to it and does not do anything once clicked on. Language The language on the website with the exception of the Disney terms is simple and to the point. There were no grammatical mistakes noticed. The site is also has translations in Spanish and other languages making it more acceptable. Figure 4 Disneyland gallery page The gallery page has neatly laid out thumbnails that open into larger images. The images do not however have a description and an observer has does not know what they are looking at except that they are pictures in the Disneyworld gallery. User control For this website user control is mainly by direct manipulation using a mouse and HTML hyperlinks. Figure 5 Disneyland form Some of the user control on the website is through web forms. The forms are neatly designed; there is no memory load on the user. Chances of making mistakes are reduced by having drop down menus, radio buttons and check boxes. There is also a chance to correct mistakes since the site asks for confirmation of form values after the form is submitted. The user can easily return and amend the form since a link is emailed to them in case they want to make changes to their original reservation. Feedback and Error prevention The website is for the most part intuitive and easy to follow. The steps are self-explanatory and the individual browsing does not need to be prompted and prodded to achieve other objectives. There is useful feedback by use of alerts and pop up screens. There is also an email feedback to confirm bookings and reservations. Error prevention works by not using text inputs apart from where they could not be avoided like in the case of entering emails, names and addresses. The rest of the required input is done using check boxes radio buttons and drop down menus. Help and documentation The Disney menu provides a link to find help. The link is however at the bottom of the site hard to find and does not stand out. The link is not easy to find when the user is filling a form and needs it most. The help is also not specific to the content one was looking at. Figure 6 The help menu at the bottom The help button opens into a general help page, that page is shown below. Figure 7 The help page. The page for one breaks away from the general theme taken by the rest of the Website. This violates the rule of maintaining predictability and consistency across functions. The website if it was better planned should have the help link as closer to the top where it is more visible. The page that the link opens to should also have taken the very same theme taken by the rest of the site. The help page should also be specific to the page it was clicked from. The help page should not be general and almost like an FAQ page as is the case now. If for example the page was linked to from the where to stay page help should be specific to accommodation at Disneyland and not just general help. Evaluation Summary Guideline Observation Score out of five Automate unwanted workload The site achieves this by providing the simplest way to accomplish a task for example by use of calendar widgets. 5 Reduce uncertainty The site does this well by providing adequate feedback but communicates poorly where they use terms unique to Disney. 4 Fuse data Data is as concise and not unnecessarily verbose. 5 Present new data with aids to interpret The site does this well, most actions feel familiar 4 Use names that are conceptually related Does this well especially when describing their theme park. 5 Aesthetics and minimalist design Site is attractive to look at with no unnecessary decoration and appropriate use of graphics. 5 Help and Documentation Help is hard to find and even harder to locate a specific area of help 2 Reduce memory load Barely any recalling required on the site 5 Consistency and standards. The site layout and design is consistent for the most part but some pages deviate from the theme. The site is still for the most part homogeneous. 4 Read More