Lupton Grid: Hulu

Hulu is a very user friendly website. Thousands of people use the website daily to watch some of their favorite shows. Hulu, after getting some user feedback, changed their search results page to make it easier to find a show you are searching for. They changed from a 2 column layout to a 4 column layout, which makes it easier and more efficient when trying to find a video. The grid, to me, looks to be a 12 column grid, with plenty of gutter space for an easy view. Also, Hulu uses plenty of margin space, creating a lot of white space on the site. This makes you focus your attention more on the content, centered on the page.
Hulu's homepage also makes use of this same grid system. The homepage also has a four column set up, with a lot of white space. This makes it so much easier to navigate your way around the site. If they did not have big gutter space and large margins, the site's content would be too bunched together and would make it harder to find the content you were searching for.

Lupton's Text: HULU

One of the most visited media sites on the web is hulu.com. For a website that attracts a great number of users daily, it needs to have a clean  layout that users find easy to navigate. Fortunately, it conveniently provides this through a simple - perhaps generic - layout.

The image that most immediately grabs the user's attention is the rotating promotions for several TV shows. This takes up most of the top half of the page and forces the user to look at it. Therefore, he becomes engaged to whatever show the rotating slides are promoting at the moment. Right above it is the easy-to-use menu that has shows organized by genre, 'most popular,' 'recently added,' etc. Most of these categories are listed on the bottom of the website as well, but with links of thumbnails of videos that serve as examples of what kinds of shows are under each category. It serves as a mini-version of what the user will find once he uses the actual menu. Once the user clicks on the menu, he is navigated to a page that lists the shows in that category. The layout of this kind of page is also very simple and looks similar to what the bottom of the Hulu homepage looked like. The design is clean so that it does not distract the user. If the user opts not to waste time with the menu, there is also a search engine on the top right of the page. In providing these many ways for the user to reach his destination, Hulu tries to make navigating the page as easy and convenient as possible.

In terms of the design of the website, there is not much color used in the layout: only gray, white and green (on the logo). The fonts are also fairly generic fonts. There is not much uniqueness to the site that makes it distinguishable (aside from the logo). However, these generic aspects of the site make it seem familiar. Again, it seems easy to navigate not only because it is simple, but because we have seen it various times on other websites. The user does not have to spend time learning how to use the site because he probably already knows what to expect. Therefore, the layout of the website is well designed to suit the needs of the user.